Andrew
565 posts

Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet

This is going to be long.
Last semester I suspected I had a major issue with use of AI in my survey courses, so I inserted what is known as a trojan horse (not the virus kind) into the directions of a paper assignment. As it turned out, I did in fact have a major problem, and a post on Threads about it accidentally went quasi-viral and ultimately became a Huffington Post article and an NPR interview. (Links at the end)
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@BeaneaterB I’m sure Julio Franco is still going somewhere out there.
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Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet

Something strange is happening in the information war.
Young Americans defending regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran that jail protesters, strip women of rights and execute people for being gay.
Self-described patriots on the right suddenly echoing narratives that benefit a country like Russia — which is openly hostile to the United States.
How does that happen?
Not through tanks or missiles.
Post by post, people get pulled into camps that don’t actually serve their own country or their own values. They become pieces on a chessboard in a GRAY WAR — a conflict fought with information instead of bullets.
And most people don’t even realize they’re part of it.
The battlefield isn’t overseas anymore — it’s in your feed.
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Andrew nag-retweet

@Todd68424286415 Food?
The best Spanish restaurants (Taco Bell and Del Taco) are literally in America
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Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet

💤Researchers found that prescription stimulants for ADHD act on brain networks that control wakefulness and reward, but not attention as previously thought. The study suggests that stimulants and additional sleep affect the brain in similar ways, and that getting enough sleep could help in managing #ADHD.
Learn more: bit.ly/4trMtTZ
#ResearchMatters

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Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet

However bitter the Americans might be at the arrogance and ingratitude of euro-elites, they should never forget the 1500 non-US NATO allied servicemen who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The ultimate sacrifice made precisely because they were your allies.
Open Source Intel@Osint613
Trump on NATO: "I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That's really the ultimate test. I'm not sure of that. We've never needed them. They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front lines."
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Andrew nag-retweet
Andrew nag-retweet

My Venezuela experience as head of trading in the region for Cargill.
Cargill was/is the leading producer of critical staple ingredients such as flour, pasta, vegetable oil, and rice in VZ. I am not saying I agree with grabbing the dictator, but I did have a front row seat to the damage a kleptocracy did to innocent people.
1. The government took over our "minute rice" facility at gunpoint because we were "gouging" the nation's poor. The government was never able to run the plant. It never ran again. It was returned years later with no equipment inside
2. There are 1000's of generals in the army. They are each given a slice of the economy to loot. The large number of generals made it difficult to organize a coup against the regime.
3. The government opened grocery stores and sold staples below the cost we sold them to the government. In theory they used petro oil money to lower grocery prices. Our regular grocery outlets were forced out of business. When the government demanded we sell them products below cost we simply had to shut down. The populous became ever more dependent on the government handouts. (PS this is the mayor of New York City's proposal.
4. Dollars- We needed dollars to go buy raw materials like wheat from places like the US and Canada. The government would periodically allocate us some dollars that could only be spent for raw materials and freight. Eventually only the local companies that can and would pay bribes got dollar allocations. We had several facilities closed for lack of raw material
5. My employees liked working for Cargill. The office was an armed compound with access to a gym, high speed internet, global communications, and a weekly box of basic staples. Cargill provided a safe and secure environment if only for the working hours.
6. Employees became very close to others inside the apartment building. Going out on the street with a desperate population was not advisable.
7. I needed wood pallets for feed. We tried to export wood pallets to swap for grain. We refused to pay the bribes it would take to export the pallets
8. I once tried to set up a closed loop wheat planting to flour mill supply chain. A. They came and stole all the seed wheat for food. When we tried to ship in seed wheat in containers via US donors there was no way to get it out of the port without it being stolen
9. Livestock- Our feed business completely collapsed. Even if you could raise a pig, you couldn't defend it from being stolen. People with guns were hungry.
10. Employees- In the end my highly skilled team alone with other highly educated people chose to leave. Cargill often found jobs for them in other Latin countries. The regime was more than happy to see the well-educated leave the country. Setting these employees up with high quality stable jobs after fleeing remains one of the best things I ever did in my career. No one remembers millions in trading earnings.
This is a short list. In my opinion the first money spent needs to happen now and it needs to be food. The US is already on the clock. The current regime does not care if it starves the population. The orgy of theft will actually accelerate if they believe their days are numbered. VZ should be an outstanding customer of US grown ag products. Rice, bread wheat, veg oil ect. Feed the people first.
Jeff Kazin
Former head trading Cargill
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Andrew nag-retweet

Andrew nag-retweet

One third of 8th grade girls spend 7+ hours per day on social media. Meaning: that's pretty much all they do. From @jean_twenge
generationtechblog.com/p/the-mind-blo…
How about if we treat puberty as if it were an important developmental period? Let's raise the age to 16 and be done with it.

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Andrew nag-retweet

Expert teachers do not simply “notice more”; they have routinised ways of scanning the class, briefly zoom in on the disruption, then rapidly re engage with everyone else. Novices, by contrast, show more scattered, exploratory gaze behaviour and are more easily pulled off their routine. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

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Andrew nag-retweet

Raise your hand if you always knew this.
Adam Grant@AdamMGrant
It's time to remove laptops from classrooms. 24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images. The pen is mightier than the keyboard.
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