Congrats on going AAA! 😂

I always gain respect for someone willing to admit when they made a mistake. Thanks for keeping us informed!

Not sure what the Iran numbers were, but these overall numbers are pretty significant, regardless.

Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

“Then Paul said to Peter, ‘You know what that call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Rome? They call it Quarter Libra Cheese.”

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.l. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

This section didn’t get as much attention but is also revealing.

Big “we must become a monster to fight the monsters we presume everyone else to be” energy.

Palantir, ladies and gents.

In retrospect, being in a group chat with the evil lord of darkness may have been a terrible idea.

Or even WoW griefers… the ones that play on PvP servers and spawn-camp lower-leveled players.

Gotta get that power fantasy one way or another, I guess. :-/

Nice! Hope you enjoy it.

If you do, other GK Chesterton books I’ve loved are Manalive (an all-time favorite), the Father Brown series, and Napoleon of Nottingham Hill.

Most of his stuff is public domain and free for ebooks these days, if not on the usual platforms, also on Project Gutenberg.

Gainax Ending - TV Tropes What do you mean, "The End"?! A Gainax Ending is an ending that doesn't make any sense, or does make sense but is hidden under enough Mind Screw to not have an easy explanation. This is usually a deli...

In my own journey of disenchantment and re/enchantment, I still cling to the hope that it’ll make sense in the end. And yet, I still struggle to make sense of the end of even the book. It has what the cool kids at TV Tropes call a “Gainax Ending”. But maybe that’s why I keep coming back to Thursday.

Despite all chaos and conspiracy, perhaps we do live in the best of all possible worlds, and perhaps the hardest, most scandalous, yet greatest thing may be the rest of God, how and why we are sent out on this inexplicable journey of life, seemingly alone and yet surrounded by clouds of witnesses.

And yet, it features laughter and comedy and eucatastrophe upon eucatastrophe. There is a hope in life, hard-learned, that your closest friends can be secret enemies, and your sworn enemies may become your closest companions, up may be down, left may be right, and the last may be first in the end.

In retrospect, Thursday, to me (like the game in which I first encountered it) has become something more personal, a preperatory guide perhaps, through the chaotic days we now find ourselves in.

Thursday is a story about the end of days, about the council of madmen conspiring to destroy the world.

Without spoiling anything (as I think everyone should read it), Thursday is a lot of things: a period piece, a detective adventure story, a philosophical thriller, and a story about despair and hope at the end of the world.

To become aware of this book and the other works of its author, the eternal fey trickster G.K. Chesterton, I am indebted, of all things, to the game Deus Ex (2000) by Ion Storm, which interspersed its fictional post-apocalyptic world with data logs containing passages from the real-world book.

The Man Who Was Thursday A NIGHTMARE G.K. Chesterton

I’m going to take this opportunity to rant a a bit about this absolutely wild book, the Man Who Was Thursday (A Nightmare).

Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight.”

This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of that evening, though partly also to an entire change in the weather and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two hours before.

When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular sensation of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely into the landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a new planet.

One of my favorite passages in any book:

“At about half-past one on a February night he found himself steaming in a small tug up the silent Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver, the duly elected Thursday of the Central Council of Anarchists.

🧵

Looksmaxxing ❌
Larrymaxxing ✅

There is only one person who can get Bluesky working again

Such a weird sense of logic in play here:

1. If he knowingly blasphemed, that would be bad.

2. I believe he is good, therefore he wouldn’t do the bad thing.

3. Since he said he didn’t do the bad thing, he is good.

4. Since he’s always on my side, we should thank him rather than reconsider 2-3. 🙈

Quote post with something good that lasted longer than the Confederacy (1861-1865)

Phineas and Ferb was a fun and insightful kids show, and its original run of 4 seasons lasted from 2007-2015 before returning in 2025.

“Aren’t you boys a little young to outlive the Confederacy?”

“Yes, yes we are.”

Yeah, totally agree with that one. The MCU once knew how to do a slow build, and I feel like releasing 3 trailers before the film comes out isn’t quite the same impact as the multi-film build-up to Avengers or Infinity War.

But the real question… is it secretly Megaman Legends 3? 😂

Glad you asked. I had the same question but hadn’t even thought to ask it yet, haha!

I’ve heard that in some comics he’s more of an antihero than straight-up villain, but I also had no ideas what his actually abilities were other than his cool costume and name. 😅🤣

“You know what they call a Quarter Pounder in Iran?”

Wow, he’s really doubling down on “Trump is just like Jesus, guys!”

Blasphemies and hypocrisies aside, the guy can’t even read the room to see how that has gone over with most people the last few days.

This is beautiful. I had no idea there were others.

YES! Thank you!