USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving. Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free. I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these." "They just come with the table, man." They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner. This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat. I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared. "Did we…?" "Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless." Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude." Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy. Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most. Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

"It's not what AI can do without you. It's what you can do with AI."

Divide & Fundraise

Airbnb CEO @bchesky says more AI founders should be starting consumer businesses. "I'm on the board of Y Combinator. 87% of companies are enterprise companies per batch." "Enterprise is awesome... but the biggest prize is consumer. That is what's going to reach daily life for billions of people." "Think about all the little parts of daily life that are kind of annoying. Pay attention to whoever's in your life and ask: 'How could their daily life be a little bit easier?'"

Health insurance is just bankruptcy insurance in disguise.

Note: there's not one prominent Leftist anywhere in the West doing what Charlie Kirk did, i.e. issuing an open debate challenge to all comers and saying "Here's my view, I invite you to try and prove me wrong". None of them are willing to subject their views to that scrutiny.

The Right wants the Left to touch grass, get real, grow up, get married, have kids, gain wisdom, & cherish their civilization. The Left wants the Right to die. This is a bit of an over-simplification. But only a bit.

A median income Californian can’t even afford a median home in Arizona.

Home sellers are completely out of their minds right now.

Everyone would need a larger home to want one of these. Imagine having one in a NYC apartment. Get outta here.

These are the final words of my great-great grandfather, John D. Lee, immediately before his firing-squad execution on March 23, 1877: “Center my heart, boys. Don’t mangle my body.”

This is my view. Smart people don’t read books…they absorb information from everywhere. Books are just long winded ideas. A time tax on knowledge.

Great thread on obesity in the US. TLDR: it’s the fake flavor and B vitamins we enrich our food with. Eat non enriched food and as natural as possible

Notice how they track each other and then suddenly don’t after Covid? Something is broken and we don’t have all the answers yet.

The defining question:

High probability that a nuclear/dirty bomb or other terror would be paid for with Bitcoin. Moral panic will crash its value. Sentiment up⬆️ Sentiment down⬇️

Around 2014 @CedricMakes was my neighbor in Palo Alto working on buttercoin. He told me one day BTC would hit $100k and I thought he was off his meds. Turns out he was right. Congratulations to all the hodlers out there. Hard to believe.

Deflation creates a stronger economy and let's people invest to create new products and services.

How does France know Pavel committed all those crimes if they don't have the encryption key to Telegram? They either have the key or they lack evidence.

This is the most important reason to support innovators. Pulling the future forward and creating value today...not decades into the future.