Michelle Martini

A mom seeking justice in #healthcare #maternalhealth #fostercare #adoption #education. Christian egalitarian. #FosterParent. #MomsInTech #HealthTech

[Michelle Martini @PowerfulHER]

Despicable:
"10 state #fostercare agencies hire for-profit companies to obtain millions of dollars in #SocialSecurity benefits intended for the most vulnerable children in state care each year" @MarshallProj
https://t.co/X9Me16v1hP

[Fernando Nikolić 🇦🇷 🟠 @basedlayer]

Jack Dorsey just publicly called out Coinbase for allegedly lobbying against a tax exemption on small bitcoin transactions

the CEO of Block asked the CEO of Coinbase on the record whether his company is fighting against making it easier to actually spend bitcoin

this matters because it reveals the fracture at the center of the industry

Coinbase makes money when you trade bitcoin

Block makes money when you spend bitcoin

their business models are opposed on the single most important adoption question:

should bitcoin be used as money or held as an asset?

the companies building the ecosystem can't agree on what bitcoin is for

[Truthstream Media @truthstreamnews]

“We stole all your knowledge and art, and now we’re gonna put a meter on it and sell it back to you. You’re welcome.”

[Digital-Dealer.eth @__DigitalDealer]

@charliebilello The deficit is the one truly bipartisan achievement. 50 years of presidents promising to fix it is the longest running bit in American politics and nobody is close to breaking character.

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

“The Federal Government cannot continue to spend more money than it takes in.” - Jimmy Carter (1978)

“For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future.” - Ronald Reagan (1981)

“We must bring the Federal budget deficit under control.” - George H.W. Bush (1989)

“We must put our fiscal house in order.” - Bill Clinton (1993)

“We can pay down a large portion of the national debt.” - George W. Bush (2001)

“Families across the country are tightening their belts … the federal government should do the same.” - Barack Obama (2010)

“We will start to balance our budget and pay down our debt.” - Donald Trump (2016)

“My plan will reduce the deficit.” - Joe Biden (2022)

“We will balance the federal budget.” - Donald Trump (2024)

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Jensen Huang just called the exact top of the pharmaceutical industry.

Not a pivot. Not a disruption.

An extinction event.

Huang: “Where do I think the next amazing revolution is going to come? And this is going to be flat out one of the biggest ones ever. There’s no question that digital biology is going to be it.”

The medical establishment has spent centuries playing a chaotic game of trial and error.

We’re about to mathematically engineer the human operating system.

Huang: “For the very first time in human history, biology has the opportunity to be engineering, not science. When something becomes engineering, not science, it becomes less sporadic and exponentially improving.”

Biology is no longer the dark art of random discovery.

It’s a predictable, compounding execution loop.

Translate the chaotic variables of chemistry into the laws of computer science and you stop waiting for accidental breakthroughs.

You simply compute the cure.

That line should terrify every pharmaceutical executive alive.

Huang: “It can compound on the benefits of the previous years. And every researcher’s contributions compound on each other.”

For decades, drug discovery has been an isolated, artisanal process.

One lab. One team. One molecule. Years of blind iteration.

The algorithm just shattered that entire bottleneck.

Every failed protein fold, every successful synthetic molecule instantly trains the foundational model.

Makes the next iteration mathematically smarter.

Huang: “We’re going to have incredible tools that bring the world of biology, which is very chaotic and constantly changing and diverse and complex, into the world of computer science. And that is going to be profound.”

Incumbent pharma looks at the human body and sees an unmanageable wall of variables.

Engineers look at that exact same body and see raw data waiting to be compiled.

No longer guessing how a molecule will react in the physical world.

Running millions of zero-cost simulated iterations before a single test tube is ever touched.

Rip the chaotic friction out of the physical lab and drop it directly into a massive GPU cluster?

The timeline to map, edit, and optimize the biological machine doesn’t shrink.

It collapses.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

I generally don’t like Europeans who look down on America but this is a world-class hater. Respect.

[ENOCH @tem_salitoul]

@aakashgupta Genesis 1:27 —
“So God created man in His own image…”

Our creativity isn’t accidental.
It’s derivative.

We design because we were designed.
We create because we reflect the Creator.

AI scales.
Image-bearers originate.

That distinction is structural, not sentimental.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The math on this project should mass-humble every AI lab on the planet.

1 cubic millimeter. One-millionth of a human brain. Harvard and Google spent 10 years mapping it. The imaging alone took 326 days. They sliced the tissue into 5,000 wafers each 30 nanometers thick, ran them through a $6 million electron microscope, then needed Google’s ML models to stitch the 3D reconstruction because no human team could process the output.

The result: 57,000 cells, 150 million synapses, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, compressed into 1.4 petabytes of raw data. For context, 1.4 petabytes is roughly 1.4 million gigabytes. From a speck smaller than a grain of rice.

Now scale that. The full human brain is one million times larger. Mapping the whole thing at this resolution would produce approximately 1.4 zettabytes of data. That’s roughly equal to all the data generated on Earth in a single year. The storage alone would cost an estimated $50 billion and require a 140-acre data center, which would make it the largest on the planet.

And they found things textbooks don’t contain. One neuron had over 5,000 connection points. Some axons had coiled themselves into tight whorls for completely unknown reasons. Pairs of cell clusters grew in mirror images of each other. Jeff Lichtman, the Harvard lead, said there’s “a chasm between what we already know and what we need to know.”

This is why the next step isn’t a human brain. It’s a mouse hippocampus, 10 cubic millimeters, over the next five years. Because even a mouse brain is 1,000x larger than what they just mapped, and the full mouse connectome is the proof of concept before anyone attempts the human one.

We’re building AI systems that loosely mimic neural networks while still unable to fully read the wiring diagram of a single cubic millimeter of the thing we’re trying to imitate. The original is 1.4 petabytes per millionth of its volume. Every AI model on Earth fits in a fraction of that.

The brain runs on 20 watts and fits in your skull. The data center required to merely describe one-millionth of it would span 140 acres.

[Ruth Ben-Ghiat @ruthbenghiat]

Just a reminder: the US is not Castro's Cuba, Putin's Russia, or Xi's China. At any moment the GOP could unite and oppose Trump and create a crisis for him. Their cowardice has been astounding but they can still act without being put in a Gulag or shot.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

Trump is spending tax dollars on a $550,000 "ceiling suspended sculpture" in the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia while cutting off food aid in America and famine countries.

Because that's what a billionaire takeover of government looks like.

Hungry kids die. Fancy art lives.

[StripMallGuy @realEstateTrent]

I miss San Francisco.

I miss Crissy Field. The Marina Green.

I miss that walk along the water at sunset, with all that green to your left, the water to your right, and the sight of that huge surreal orange bridge up ahead.

The Italian sandwich spots in north beach. The insane views from Russian Hill.

Getting lost in the Presidio, or Golden Gate Park for hours at a time.

The parrots flying above Alta Plaza Park.

I miss the sand dunes at Ocean Beach.

All those little stores in the mission that sell the most random things that you can’t help but check out over and over again, even though you’re not really sure what they are.

I miss running into some of the best coffee spots in the world everywhere you turn.

The feeling that you’ve gone back in time as you wander through the Haight-Ashbury and walk by stores that somehow survive selling nothing but tie-dye clothes.

I miss hiking around Lands End, in disbelief that place exists on earth.

I miss the time-worn but perfect hole-in-the-wall Chinese food restaurant you can’t get enough of.

I miss walking into the Ferry Building on a Saturday morning and wanting to sample from every single one of those little shops, and then existing out to a picture perfect farmers market along the water.

I miss that stunning downtown view that rises you out of nowhere as you head up highway 280.

I miss the electric energy of a crowded Dolores Park on a sunny day, and guessing just what crazy thing that next vendor is going to walk by with.

I miss the occasional movie at the Castro Theater, and that hilarious vibe as you’re heading inside.

I miss walking up to one of the most beautiful ballparks ever built, and that smell of garlic that sharply greets you as you enter.

I miss the throwback steakhouse vibe of The House of Prime Rib.

Or occasionally putting on my tourist hat and heading down to Fisherman’s Wharf or over to Alcatraz; two places where you’re guaranteed to never run into anybody you know.

I miss zipping down Franklin St and timing it so the lights all turn green just as your car approaches the intersection.

I miss the authenticity of Chinatown.

I miss how the wind sounds as you ride the ferry across the bay to Sausalito. Talk about a bucket list experience.

I even miss hearing those loud kids that crowd The Tipsy Pig all day, screaming at the top of their lungs as that fifth drink starts to hit them.

I miss that it never gets too hot, and that picturesque layer of fog that settles just above the water, even when it hangs around for just a few weeks too long.

I miss the eclectic mix that makes up the people of San Francisco, and the passion they have for their city.

And most of all, I miss the enthusiasm and the optimism, even within a city that has always had its challenges.

The people who live there are there because they know there are better days ahead.

They know they live in a special place.

It’s been down before, but there are just too many great things about it to ever count it out.

San Francisco will be back.

And it will be better than ever.

It’s an American national treasure.

It’s a place we should all be rooting for.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

@NMalliotakis 🚨🚨🚨UPDATE: According to reports, Nicole Malliotakis allegedly bought New York Community Bancorp stock on March 17.

Less than 24 hours later, the bank announced that they were buying out Signature Bank.

It shot the stock up 40% that day.

[Lauren Anne @bengin1003]

Self checkouts will be scrapped at Walmart, Costco, and Wegmans https://t.co/6aVJvjiM2F

[Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 @chadfelixg]

I understand lots of people hold very strong opinions on surrogacy.

But let's at least discuss the issue honestly and factually.

1 - Babies are not sold.
Typically, the biological father is granted full custody of his child. Women can also go through this legal process.

2 - Women are not being treated like cattle or slaves or breeding machines, etc.
Women donate their eggs, like men donate their sperm, and are compensated.
Sometimes the same woman, but usually another woman chooses to carry the fertilized egg to term and is compensated.

3 - Men are not 'renting' a woman's womb.
This is similar to the argument that a fetus is a parasite or occupying the woman's body without her consent.

A woman is a whole person, and she is fully capable of deciding if she wants to undergo a pregnancy and under what circumstances.

4 - The child is not taken from its parents to be given to strangers.
Again, the father, in most cases, simply assumes legal guardianship of his own child. That child is raised in his family.

A few narrative comments.

1 - 'A baby is being torn from its mother.' 'Denied a mother.' 'Planned motherless.'

The mother, who in this case involves the woman who donated her egg who may never interact with the process at all, the woman who carries the child and the woman or women who raise the child. Every adult in this process chooses their role.

Whatever your beliefs on the importance of the birth mother's interaction with the infant it is necessary to recognize that the women in the situation agree to participate.

2 - 'This is creating a tragedy.' 'This is harming the child.'

Again, these are ideological concerns. It's fine to debate them, but it is not a factual or objective statement.

All that has occurred is, in most cases, a man has chosen to become a father and two women have chosen to assist others in having children.

A heterosexual couple may choose surrogacy if the wife is unable to carry a child just as they may choose a sperm donor if the husband is unable to father the child.

The father's wife is no less the child's mother than the woman who donated half of its DNA or the woman who carried it to term.

A lesbian couple typically utilize a sperm donor but may also request a surrogate. In that case the child has potentially four mothers.

3 - Comparing consensual surrogacy and egg donation to forced or coerced pregnancies in other countries.

The key concept is consent. If a person is unwilling they are not consenting and it's not the same conversation.

4 - Exploitation of poor women.
Being poor does not devalue a person's choices or make them less capable of making them.

The ideal of a baby being born to its biological parents and raised by both is just that, an ideal. It does not, however, automatically devalue the life of a child, the love of the parents or the moral character of the adults involved in bringing it into the world, planned, prepared and wanted.

[Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 @chadfelixg]

I genuinely don't understand the controversy, opposition or certainly the passionate anger behind the conversation.

Everyone involved consents and the child enters a loving family they are directly connected to who wants them and prepared for them.

It's strange to me that conservatives highly value the creation of life, pregnancy, motherhood and especially fatherhood in every other situation except this one.

It is simply my opinion that the conservative position that any other situation but a mother and father conceiving their own child 'naturally,' and raising it together is a tragedy or broken situation is incredibly outdated and frankly offensive.

Far too often we get trapped in the perfect and refuse to recognize the good.

A person is not 'selfish' for wanting their own child and women who offer to carry said child for them are not exploited or harmed.

Regardless, it is 100% none of your business.
We constantly complain about and mock the smug liberal college kid who comes home from school for Thanksgiving and decides to properly educate their ignorant family, being as obnoxious and disruptive as possible.

But that's exactly what conservatives are doing in this case when they choose to announce their opinions, make objectively false accusations and attempt to shame gay men who simply share their new baby with the world.

[Kane 謝凱堯 @kane]

While SF politician @AaronPeskin keeps trying to ban autonomous vehicles, Swiss Re—one of the world’s largest reinsurers—benchmarked Waymo’s data against 125B miles of human driving.

tldr, AVs *much* safer and easier to insure than humans:

> at least 300% safer than human drivers for bodily damage

> at least 400% safer than humans for property damage

https://t.co/5sBqboOaOG

[Michelle Martini @PowerfulHER]

How Insurers Exploited Medicare Advantage for Billions https://t.co/xh2j6MbDci

[Omar Shakir @OmarSShakir]

Dire warning from @UNReliefChief: "I fear that the worst is yet to come... The past week has been a test for humanity & humanity is failing."
World leaders must act to protect civilians from large scale atrocities before it's too late.

[Michelle Martini @PowerfulHER]

“Keeping maternity units open is a financial challenge, since the departments aren’t always profitable, several Alabama physicians said.” 😡😡😡

Fears rise as three Alabama hospitals prepare to stop delivering babies https://t.co/1fJ9kQIJz9

[NBC News @NBCNews]

As one of the largest invasions in 50 years unfolded in Israel, misinformation about the assault spread across social media.

Many of the misleading videos were shared by verified users on X, who are eligible for monetization of their content. https://t.co/SF5aTAt1gm