Tara W.

Lawyer, Inspired by #Justice #SaveRojava

[Danielle Smith @ABDanielleSmith]

With this incredible goal, in extra time, Canada 🇨🇦 is heading to the final 16 for the first time in World Cup history ⚽️

Huge congrats to the entire team @CANMNT_Official— you have made all of Canada proud!

[Tara W. @tweelat]

@amberinzaman My husband used to play for Duhok SC so I’ve picked up a lot :) I have to admit that Zahok Ultras have amazing fans and I’d love to go to one of their home games:

https://t.co/Vmtzvj0BJg

[Düzen Tekkal @DuezenTekkal]

Das ist ein historisches Momentum. Deniz Undav schreibt als Kurde und Jeside gerade Fußballgeschichte, mit seinen Toren für Deutschland. 🇩🇪Für viele ist das einfach ein Sieg. Für uns ist es ein Moment, der weit über den Sport hinausgeht.

Er zeigt, dass man seine Herkunft nicht hinter sich lassen muss, um Deutschland aus vollem Herzen zu vertreten. Genau das ist das Deutschland, an das wir glauben und für das wir schon so lange kämpfen und einstehen. Ein Deutschland der Vielen.

Für uns als Kurden und Jesiden, als Minderheit in der Minderheit, war und ist das Leben nie selbstverständlich oder einfach. Wir wurden verfolgt, vertrieben und von vielen Seiten angegriffen. Auch das gehört zu unserer Geschichte. Und zu unserer Geschichte gehört auch, dass wir Millionen Kurden weltweit sind und bis heute weder ein eigenes Land, noch eine Nationalmannschaft haben. Vielleicht berühren uns diese Tore deshalb so sehr. Weil sie mehr sind als sportliche Erfolge. Sie schenken Sichtbarkeit, Anerkennung und heilen etwas, das Worte oft nicht erreichen.

Die hässlichen rassistischen Kommentare von allen Seiten zeigen leider, wie notwendig solche Momente noch immer sind. Denn jedes Tor von Deniz Undav ist mehr als ein Tor für Deutschland. Es ist auch ein Tor gegen Vorurteile und für all die Kinder mit Zuwanderungsgeschichte die sehen, dass sie mit ihrer Herkunft selbstverständlich Teil dieses Landes sind.

Der afghanischstämmige #NadiemAmiri und Undav waren ein Traum Duo. Sport ist schön, verbindend und politisch.

[The New Region @thenewregion]

Undav continues to write history at the World Cup!

The German-Kurdish player scores his second goal in the tournament after coming off the bench.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Rumi said “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

Clarity doesn't come before action.

It comes from action.

[Danielle Smith @ABDanielleSmith]

Six goals. A shutout. 🇨🇦

Congratulations to Team Canada on an outstanding 6-0 victory and our nation’s first ever World Cup win. The entire country is cheering you on 👏

[Seth Frantzman @sfrantzman]

This was a battle the world can be proud of, I was there, it was good to see ISIS defeated

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

You have noticed it. ChatGPT feels dumber than it used to. Your prompts that worked six months ago produce worse results now. The writing sounds flatter. The ideas sound safer. The internet itself feels like it is shrinking. Every article reads the same. Every email sounds the same. Every answer sounds like it was written by the same voice.

You thought it was you. It is not you.

Researchers at Oxford and Cambridge published a paper in Nature proving what is happening. They call it Model Collapse.

Here is the mechanism in one sentence. AI trained on AI-generated data gets dumber every generation until it forgets what real human data looked like.

The internet is filling with AI-generated content. Blog posts. Articles. Reviews. Comments. Social media. AI companies scrape the internet to train the next generation of models. Which means the next generation of AI is being trained on the output of the current generation.

Each cycle loses information. Not randomly. It loses the rarest, most unusual, most creative parts first. The researchers call these the "tails of the distribution." The weird ideas. The unexpected perspectives. The things that made the internet feel human. Those disappear first.

What remains is the average. The safe. The expected. The bland.

Then the next generation trains on that. And loses more. And the next generation trains on that. And loses more. The researchers proved this is not a slow decline. Major degradation happens within just a few iterations. Even when some of the original human data is preserved.

They tested it on large language models. On image generators. On statistical models. The pattern was the same every time. The output converges toward a narrow, flattened version of reality that looks nothing like the original data.

The lead researcher put it plainly. "Large language models are like fire. A useful tool. But one that pollutes the environment."

The pollution is invisible. You cannot see which sentence on the internet was written by a human and which was written by AI. Neither can the AI that is about to train on it. And once the tails are gone, they do not come back. The damage is irreversible.

This is not a prediction anymore. It is a diagnosis.

The internet you grew up on was built by humans writing things no algorithm would have written. Strange, personal, imperfect, alive. That internet is being diluted. One generation of AI at a time. And the models trained on what remains are learning a smaller and smaller version of the world.

Model Collapse is not a technical problem. It is a cultural one. The thing that made the internet worth reading is the thing that disappears first.

[Jason Brodsky @JasonMBrodsky]

The next time you hear commentators talking about "strategic failure," it's worth reading @CENTCOM's Commander testimony today.

Some excerpts:

"In less than 40 days of major combat operations, USCENTCOM forces systematically dismantled what #Iran spent four decades and tens of billions of dollars building."

"The capabilities on which the regime relied to threaten our forces, coerce our partners, and project power across the region have been substantially degraded. Combined with the damage Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program, USCENTCOM assesses that Iran can no longer project power across the region, nor pose the persistent threat to the United States or our partners that it did prior to Operation EPIC FURY."

"Iran can no longer reliably arm or resupply Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, or militia groups in Iraq with advanced weapons...This dynamic presents an opportunity for a generational shift in the regional balance of power."

"We damaged or destroyed over 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone, and naval defense industrial base. More than 1,450 strikes on weapons manufacturing facilities set the regime’s ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones back by years. The factories and technical workforce that produced Iran’s ballistic missiles, long-range attack drones, and naval platforms have been degraded to the point that Iran cannot replace its lost capabilities in the near term."

"In the air domain, Iran’s air and air defense forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant. Before OEF, the Iranian Air Force flew between 30 and 100 sorties each day. Today that number is zero. We destroyed or rendered non-mission-capable Iran’s fixed-wing airfields, hangars, fuel storage, and munitions stockpiles, and we knocked out 82 percent of its air defense missile systems along with the radar and command architecture that tied them together."

"At sea, we destroyed 161 vessels in total across 16 classes of warships, effectively crippling the regime’s ability to operate. We eliminated more than 90 percent of Iran’s once-massive inventory of over 8,000 naval mines, with more than 700 airstrikes on Iranian naval mine targets. In sum, Iran’s navy can no longer claim to be a maritime power, and it cannot project into the Gulf of Oman or the Indian Ocean."

"The second-order effects of OEF are significant. More than 2,000 strikes against Iran’s command-andcontrol structures created leadership vacuums, paralysis, and internal confusion. We have seen reporting of desertions, personnel shortages, and signs of regime desperation in their attempts to compel discipline through arrest and execution."

"In short: in 38 days, we rolled back 40 years of Iranian military investment." https://t.co/eAlIBmKgKT

[Kani Xulam (New/ Nû/Yeni) @kani_xulam]

https://t.co/ZTPCyd21ZX

[Seth Frantzman @sfrantzman]

Which Kurds? I spent a lot of time with the Peshmerga, never saw them take much besides relatively simple meals on the frontline, they had to bring their own AKs from home and their own uniforms. It was like being with the Lexington militia in 1775, except AKs and Kurdish clothing.

In Syria they sacrificed a lot against ISIS and didn't get almost anything. And the Kurdish opposition groups, these guys usually have almost nothing, almost penniless.

This must refer to some other group.

[Tara W. @tweelat]

@kani_xulam What a thoughtful gesture!

[Kani Xulam (New/ Nû/Yeni) @kani_xulam]

Yesterday—my 44th day on the road—was an easy and good one.
The weather was cool. And because Sunday was a rest day, there wasn’t much traffic on Route 29.
I reached Anderson in good time, then walked toward Hartwell for two more hours before heading to my hotel for a bath.

[Council on Foreign Relations @CFR_org]

Military pressure has reached its limits; empowering Iran’s ethnic minorities toward a federated future offers the West a more durable, long-term strategy, writes CFR expert @Ed_Husain. https://t.co/Vrlw1fpGFa

[T Wolf 🌁 @Twolfrecovery]

Vancouver, the epicenter of the Opioid and overdose crisis in North America, doubled down on radical harm reduction including the distribution of free drugs (Dialaudid). The results were record breaking overdose deaths. 🤷‍♂️

[Russ Cunnington @Cunnington50818]

@VanCityVice @sitkamedia @somerspsych Lab rats for a handful in the BC Medical Community, and those they serve. BC’s version of harm reduction will serve future generations as evidence that feeding narcotic addiction only creates more of it, and its constant companion, death by overdose. Well documented in BC.

[Kani Xulam (New/ Nû/Yeni) @kani_xulam]

My route for today—Monday, April 27. I may have some locals joining me for a stretch along the way, which I always appreciate. I’ll be on the road around 7:30 this morning.

[Elliot Kaufman @ElliotKaufman6]

In 30 minutes, Amb. Barrack managed to counsel the Middle East against democracy, push cooperation with Hezbollah, mock the Lebanon cease-fire, call to include Iran in Lebanon talks, play down Turkey’s Russian air defenses and threaten Israel on Turkey’s behalf.

WSJ editorial:

[Qazwan 🦚 @inannaaaaaaa]

Did you know the world’s FIRST Kurdish rock band was born in Soviet Georgia in 1973? Koma Wetan dropped electric psychedelic riffs + Kurdish poetry while singing in Kurdish was banned Turkey. These pioneers also donated all earnings from their albums to the victims of Halabja.