Paul Thanos

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

When TV was great

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

The time in 1995 PETER O’TOOLE entered ‘Late Night with David Letterman’ on a Camel, bearing beer.

[I❤️Nostalgia '𝕏' @Ilovenostalgia]

Awesomeness…

[Dallas Cowboys @dallascowboys]

The Beckhams and the ‘Boys 🤠

[Stansaid Airport @StansaidAirport]

Sure sex is great, but have you ever had your suitcase arrive first on a baggage carousel?

[Gloria C. @wonderful_g]

“Una volta mi disse: vorrei un rosso rosso, come quello dei fiori o del sangue delle donne. Modigliani segnava la fine di una profonda eleganza a Montparnasse, ma non lo sapevamo”.

__Jean Cocteau

🎨 Amedeo Modigliani, Ritratto di Lumia Czechowska/La ragazza dai capelli rossi

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Wow

[Johnny Midnight ⚡️ @its_The_Dr]

They had no idea!

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Classy

[The Tennis Letter @TheTennisLetter]

Jelena Djokovic comments on Felix Auger Aliassime’s IG post following his loss to Novak at Wimbledon

“You were incredible last night Felix. Our kids adore you and you are a wonderful role model 🙏 one had to come out as a winner in that match, but there is so much to be proud of. We will be cheering for you! 👏👏”

❤️

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Prayers have been answered!

[McDonald's @McDonalds]

caution: get the fried apple pie while it’s hot on 6.23

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

Art Nouveau train station of Taormina-Giardini Naxos, Italy, The most elegant in the world, 1928.

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Looking more spectacular than even imagined

[EastMedMonitor @EastMedMonitor]

Video from Greek state TV of unveiling of the renovated palace of the last emperors of the Byzantine Paleologos dynasty, in the last mainland Greek holdout of Mystras

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Wow

[Mambo Italiano @mamboitaliano__]

The breathtaking beauty of the tennis courts at Foro Italico in Rome, Italy 🇮🇹🎾

One of the most stunning venues in the world

[Ric Flair® @RicFlairNatrBoy]

I Have Apologized, And I Have Retracted Statements. I Have Made Assumptions That Are Incorrect. I Acknowledge Everything That I Have Said. Can We Just Wake Up Tomorrow & Let Ric Flair Be Ric Flair. I Am 77 With A Heart Condition And Nothing Is Ever Guaranteed. Let’s Just All Be At Peace! If You Look At Social Media, People Love To Attack Every Celebrity Online Without Using Their Real Name. I’m Ric Flair. Take Me For Who I Am. The People Who Know Me Know How Hard I’ve Worked My Entire Life To Achieve My Level Of Success. That Is Not Up For Debate. Thank You For Everything! Please Let Me Wake Up Tomorrow And Have My Social Media Screen Be Only Positives. I’m Always Going To Be A Cowboy! WOOOOO!

[Short Stop Media @ShortStopMedia]

He was the captain of the New York Yankees.

At the peak of his career…
everything ended in an instant.

Most people remember how it ended.

Almost no one remembers how dominant he really was.

👉 Read the story.

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Extraordinary life and achievements of Claude Shannon

[Tech with Mak @techNmak]

In 1948, a 32-year-old at Bell Labs published a paper nobody fully understood.

Engineers found it too mathematical. Mathematicians found it too engineering-focused. One prominent mathematician reviewed it negatively.

That paper - "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", became the founding document of the digital age.

The man was Claude Shannon. Father of Information Theory.

At 21, he wrote the most important master's thesis of the 20th century.

Working at MIT on an early mechanical computer, Shannon noticed its relay switches had exactly two states - open or closed. He had just taken a philosophy course introducing Boolean algebra, which also operated on two values: true and false.

Nobody had ever connected these two things.

His 1937 thesis proved that Boolean algebra and electrical circuits are mathematically identical, and that any logical operation could be built from simple switches.

Howard Gardner called it "possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master's thesis of the century."

Every digital computer ever built traces back to this insight.

At 29, he proved that perfect encryption exists.

During WWII, Shannon worked on classified cryptography at Bell Labs. His work contributed to SIGSALY, the secure voice system used for confidential communications between Roosevelt and Churchill.

In a classified 1945 memorandum, he mathematically proved the one-time pad provides perfect secrecy, unbreakable not just computationally, but provably, permanently, against an adversary with infinite power.

When declassified in 1949, it transformed cryptography from an art into a science. It laid the foundations for DES, AES, and every modern encryption standard.

At 32, he defined what information is.

His 1948 paper introduced one equation:
H = −Σ p(x) log p(x)

Shannon entropy. The average uncertainty in a probability distribution. The minimum bits required to encode a message.

Three things followed:

> He defined the bit - the fundamental unit of all information. His colleague John Tukey coined the name.

> He proved the channel capacity theorem, every communication channel has a maximum rate of reliable transmission. You can approach it. You can never exceed it.

> He unified telegraph, telephone, and radio into a single mathematical framework for the first time.

Robert Lucky of Bell Labs called it the greatest work "in the annals of technological thought."

Where his equation lives in AI today:

Cross-entropy loss - the function training every classifier and language model, is derived directly from H. Decision tree splits use information gain, which is H applied to data. Perplexity, the standard LLM evaluation metric, is an exponentiation of cross-entropy.

Every time a neural network trains, Shannon's formula runs inside it.

He also built the first AI learning device.

In 1950, Shannon built Theseus, a mechanical mouse that navigated a maze through trial and error, learned the correct path, and repeated it perfectly. Mazin Gilbert of Bell Labs said: "Theseus inspired the whole field of AI."

That same year he published the first paper on programming a computer to play chess. He co-organized the 1956 Dartmouth Workshop, the founding event of AI as a field.

The man:
He rode a unicycle through Bell Labs hallways while juggling. He built a flame-throwing trumpet, a rocket-powered Frisbee, and Styrofoam shoes to walk on the lake behind his house.

He called his home Entropy House.

When asked what motivated him: "I was motivated by curiosity. Never by the desire for financial gain. I just wondered how things were put together."

In 1985, he appeared unexpectedly at a conference in Brighton. The crowd mobbed him for autographs. Persuaded to speak at the banquet, he talked briefly, then pulled three balls from his pockets and juggled instead.

One engineer said: "It was as if Newton had showed up at a physics conference."

He died in 2001 after a decade with Alzheimer's, the cruel irony of information slowly leaving the mind of the man who defined what information was.

Claude, the AI model, is named after Claude Shannon, the mathematician who laid the foundation for the digital world we rely on today.

[Kevin Gallagher @KevG163]

The First Miller Lite Open ⛳️🍺

Featuring legends John Madden, Tommy Heinsohn, Bubba Smith, Dick Butkus, Steve Mizerak, Bert Jones, L.C. Greenwood, Mickey Spillane, Bob Uecker, Ben Davidson, Red Auerbach, Billy Martin, and Rodney Dangerfield

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

https://t.co/p6JrkCnXZG

[Paul Thanos @Pthano]

Seems like we are not hearing too much about trade wars these days

[Nick Anthony @EconWithNick]

In an interview with the @FT, @Lagarde openly said the digital euro could be used to evade US sanctions.

[Alberto Miguel Fernandez @AlbertoMiguelF5]

"Houellebecq is one of the most important writers of our time, precisely because he is also one of its most merciless chroniclers: an author whose work constitutes both a diagnosis and a symptom of a civilisational condition of exhaustion that he describes with clinical precision, yet never fully transcends himself."