Alex Stern

VP of Product @TwoSigma | Past: @Uber, @Microsoft, @KelloggSchool & venture capital | Writing about careers in tech at

[Alex Stern @AlexDStern]

Why does my new PM role feel like I'm starting over?
Reflecting on different types of product management roles https://t.co/xC4d90Nb2C

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

These are unprecedented numbers.

[Jordyn @JordynTilchen]

Just a quick little FYI for the idiot protesters: You can’t call for an intifada and a ceasefire at the same time.

They are literally opposites.

[Kiyah Willis @kiyahwillis]

A list of words that the left has attempted to redefine during this conflict:

Genocide- warning civilians to leave active combat zones in order to ensure their safety

Occupation- creating borders between you and people who want to kill you

Nazi- believing that jews have the right to self defense and safety

Zionist- a synonym for Nazi

Ethnostate- a racially and religiously diverse country

Apartheid- giving all your citizens equal treatment under the law

Freedom fighter- Islamic jihadist calling for the death of all Jews

Settler/colonizer- immigrating to escape oppression (only if you fit into the “antiracist” definition of Whiteness™)

Fascism- a liberal parliamentary Republic, not an Islamic theocratic dictatorship

Did I miss any?

[Bari Weiss @bariweiss]

What should we do now?

Many things.

One of them: End 'DEI'.

It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens strivers of every race, ethnicity, and class—and ultimately America itself.

https://t.co/smVQahmHu9

[Dr. Sheila Nazarian @sheilanazarian]

Why can't antisemitism be denounced all on its own? Why does Islamaphobia always have to be thrown in at the exact same time? Can we grieve for goodness sake??

[Yaakov Katz @yaakovkatz]

Since October 7, the IDF says that it has attacked around 12,000 targets. That is not 12,000 bombs; but targets.

Let’s look at the amount of munition: The number of artillery shells fired alone are close to 10,000 and when attacking targets, in many cases more than one bomb is dropped. That means that the amount of Israeli munition fired into Gaza since the war began is much higher and from what I hear in the IDF it is approximately 25,000.

This is worth thinking about when considering the claims made by Israel's critics that the IDF is firing indiscriminately at Gaza and is not making an effort to minimize civilian casualties. That much firepower, in such a densely populated area would have resulted in far more deaths than what has been claimed if Israel was not making a significant effort to minimize civilian casualties.

Think about the following: If we accept the Hamas numbers – there is little reason to do that since terrorists lie but let’s go with it – then there are approximately 10,000 people killed in Gaza. According to the IDF, thousands of those dead are Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Every civilian life lost is a tragedy. But think about this: over 12,000 targets, more than 23,000 munitions and the terrorist-civilian death ratio is about 1:1 or 1:1.5 (for every terrorist killed there is one-to-one-and-a-half civilians).

When looking at the way wars have been fought in recent years – Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria - this is a ratio that is not really seen except in one military in the world – the IDF.

More importantly, what this shows is that the claims of indiscriminate attacks are simply false.

[Eden Cohen ✡︎ עדן כהן @edencohentweets]

Before I begin, let me say unequivocally Black lives matter immensely and deep-rooted anti-Black racism has marred the history of the U.S. and many other nations. Slavery remains an indelible stain on our country’s past. I would NEVER dispute this or the necessity for society to confront the persistence of anti-Black racism. With that said, it’s crucial to acknowledge that FROM ITS INCEPTION, the organization Black Lives Matter has called to wipe Israel off the map and has been poisoned with antisemitism. The Jewish community has largely downplayed and ignored this overt antisemitism in the belief that the BLM mission takes precedence. And as we are well aware- the non-Jewish community largely disregards groups that perpetuate antisemitism because Jews don’t count. From the day it was born, BLM has advocated for "free Palestine from the river to the sea," - unequivocally calling for Jewish genocide. Immediately after Hamas’s massacre on Israelis, several BLM chapters openly applauded these horrific war crimes. The organization justifies these heinous attacks openly and repeatedly.

The organization, wider movement, and its leaders have wrongly attributed blame and demonized Jews and Israel for the persistence of anti-Black racism (in so doing they have used and perpetuated the oldest antisemitic tropes and blood libels). Their leaders have made overt antisemitic statements throughout the years that are on par with Hitler’s rhetoric. The organization has completely erased Jewish history and Jewish suffering. They are riddled with the cancer of antisemitism- the oldest form of hatred, from which every other prejudice and racism have sprouted. They perpetuate white supremacy and every other force that has sought our destruction. As mentioned earlier by @Eve_Barlow, this also currently encompasses advancing the agenda of the world's leading sponsor of terror—Iran. BLM is an anti-Jewish hate group that aligns with a recognized terror organization. This is all happening with the stamp of approval of the U.S. government which ignores the above and allows BLM to maintain its tax exemption status. And before you say “but they have done some good work”—at what cost? By permitting them to evade accountability, you are actively endorsing and perpetuating antisemitism and terror.

[Yaakov Katz @yaakovkatz]

When Russia invaded Ukraine, almost all of Europe opened its borders to let in refugees.
Why, for example, hasn't the same happened with Gaza and why hasn't a single Arab country offered to take in Palestinians from Gaza and give them a place to reside while Israel fights to defeat Hamas.
Ask yourself why. The answer is that no Arab country wants Hamas entering its borders. They won't say it publicly, but they all pretty much want Israel to succeed.

[Jeremy Boreing @JeremyDBoreing]

Israel did not bomb a refugee camp because there is no refugee camp because there are no refugees.

Israel did bomb and is bombing a densely packed urban area, and that is incredibly difficult to observe.

Our generation (in America) has not had to contemplate this kind of war, and it offends our bourgeois morality.

We have been infantilized by decades of relative peace and prosperity, only fighting small wars against minor powers in distant lands where winning and losing are - or at least appear to be - political abstractions.

Israel does not have that luxury. They are fighting an entrenched enemy at their gates who has declared a desire and demonstrated a will to obliterate every Israeli man, woman, and child.

Even with all the ways Israel endeavors to mitigate civilian losses, it does not prioritize that goal above their other goal: to destroy Hamas. We recoil at that because we have not in living memory fought an enemy we had to defeat in order to sleep safely in our own beds.

This is a war from another generation. War terrible to behold.

It is war as war truly is.

[Aviva Klompas @AvivaKlompas]

The Palestinian people are the only people in the world who can pass their refugee status to their children. No other people is afforded that right.

What you call a 'refugee camp' is in fact a neighborhood that has been around for decades and is being used by Hamas as civilian cover for its terror activities.

[Aviva Klompas @AvivaKlompas]

Egypt is refusing to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza. The country's prime minister stated clearly: "We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory.”

Will we be seeing campus rallies against Egypt? Of course not.

[Alex Stern @AlexDStern]

Wishing we had laws allowing to automatically commit people publicly citing conspiracy theories to mental institutions for 72 hours, and do it every time they choose to repeat these. Even if that didn’t change their opinions, at least the rest of us would get 72 hours of quiet…

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Appalling videos from Makhachkala, Russia, where an angry mob broke into the airport searching for Israeli citizens on the flight from Tel-Aviv.

This is not an isolated incident in Makhachkala, but rather part of Russia’s widespread culture of hatred toward other nations, which is propagated by state television, pundits, and authorities.

The Russian foreign minister has made a series of antisemitic remarks in the last year. The Russian President also used antisemitic slurs. For Russian propaganda talking heads on official television, hate rhetoric is routine. Even the most recent Middle East escalation prompted antisemitic statements from Russian ideologists.

Russian antisemitism and hatred toward other nations are systemic and deeply rooted. Hatred is what drives aggression and terror. We must all work together to oppose hatred.

[Adin - عدین - עדין @AdinHaykin1]

People who wouldn't trust Would Heath Organization's Covid Data suddenly trust Hamas health ministry.

[Arsen Ostrovsky @Ostrov_A]

You know what democracies & open moral societies like Israel do?

They investigate, they seek out the truth. And sometimes it takes time, but the truth always prevails.

You know what terror groups and closed societies like Hamas do? They lie. And people fall for it. Each time.

[Aviva Klompas @AvivaKlompas]

NBA legend Amare Stoudemire with a message to the world after witnessing Hamas’s cowardly crimes.

“For all y’all Black Lives Matter who ain’t saying nothing or ‘let me figure out exactly what happened before I say anything,’ Fuck you. Figure out what? it ain’t never been cool to kidnap kids.”

[leekern @leekern13]

You don’t like the language? Tough. You’ll fucking eat the truth: Hamas are savage primitive mediaeval scum. They are Islamic fundamentalist lunatics whose world view & values are inferior to ours & inferior to Israel’s. They are uncivilised wolves from the dark age.

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

When I think of existential risks to large parts of humanity:
* The next pandemic
* Climate change→massive depopulation
* Another asteroid
AI will be a key part of our solution. So if you want humanity to survive & thrive the next 1000 years, lets make AI go faster, not slower.

[Alex Stern @AlexDStern]

Googling to confirm this turned out to be a lot more cumbersome, since the data was a bit buried. As for the answer, my intuition proved to be correct: private R&D expenditure has been rising for a while now, and is at the all-time highs atm.

[Alex Stern @AlexDStern]

I must say, ChatGPT is incredibly useful for quickly answering some questions that might come up as you're reading / learning about something else, esp. if getting to the answer involves summarizing from several different sources.

[Alex Stern @AlexDStern]

To give a specific example, I recently stumbled upon the mention that private R&D expenditure in the West has declined over time (as % of total). That didn't feel right, so I asked ChatGPT to give me some info on this for the U.S. & Europe, and it did.