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...

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Cla...

Holy SHIT someone found the test pressing of Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues and it is clear as a PIN www.openculture.com/2026/04/reco...

this is an inscruitable error message from the inside parts of bluesky "hmm, some kind of issue occurred..."

some kind of 🎶

rate limit exceeded

*taps the sign*

This and/or/plus reduced verbal inhibition.

don't remember him using fuck before either.

That's awful doc, I hope you find them 💓

Earth

Okay. This is a much better quality from NASA's site of Earth.

www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

Means tested programs cost more than universal programs, and deliver less

because means testing is expensive and diverts resources away from the program themselves.

Universal programs are more efficient and effective.

This is first day of social work social policy information.

Alt text: Screenshot of a communication transcript log with UTC timestamps and duration. The log shows a conversation between crew members (Victor, Jeremy, Mark) and Houston ground control regarding toilet maintenance on what appears to be a spacecraft. At 03:48:53Z, a crew member contacts "Houston Integrity" with a question about toilet maintenance, describing that during cleaning, tape or a seal protector was noticed on the bottom ring of the commode's inner moving piece, and that the toilet seat cover and lid are friction-fit together requiring manual separation. At 03:50:05Z, Houston acknowledges they are checking on it. At 03:51:08Z, Houston confirms the seat-lifting friction fit is a known feature and instructs that the seat must be manually separated and the lid positioned down for use. At 03:53:27Z, Houston confirms the tape on the toilet seat belongs there and should be left in place.

Artemis II toilet update (transcript is in reverse chronological order)

A bridge was bombed in Iran between the city of Karaj and Tehran.

It was a little tricky to geolocate but I think I found it. Appears to be brand new, and it's slightly unclear to me why it would be a target... 🧵

after hours ULSD (diesel) in the U.S. up some 30c/gal- I avoid hyperbole, but it is quickly becoming possible we see new all time records for diesel ($5.86/gal) in the days and weeks ahead everywhere. I don’t like any of this… at all.

A patch of purple crocuses surrounded by brown leaves 🍂

Soon a host of lovely flowers
from vale’s and woodland burst; but in all that fair procession the crocuses were the first…

-Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

💜💜💜
#crocus #flowers #spring #purple #garden #bloomscrolling

look, i'm sorry but you can't just start a world war and walk away.

this is really fun, watched it twice and still have no idea why it makes me happy.

The Far Side...

A telescopic image of a flat, inclined fuzzy disc with bright rings and dark gaps, all concentric. There is a small blob in one of those gaps. An inset that zooms in on the centre of the disc shows a second blob in another gap.

you are witnessing the birth of a solar system. these are two baby planets forming around a young star.

this has only been observed by astronomers ONCE before!!!

Little mottled green and orange treehopper with a magnificent red-tipped horn, on an oak twig watching over a few dozen little stripy red, black, and white nymphs

She guard ❤️

Oak treehopper moms are the best. I know I've posted about them here before but I love that they stay and watch over their children from egg til they all disperse near adulthood. They're just good lumps.
#InvertebrateParenthood

The children look like they might be ready to go forth soon.

Eyes so bright 😍

Great photograph.

Norman Vincent Spiel

I joke about this stuff but 15 minutes before the Trump post hit the tape there was a surge in e-mini price and volume. Someone knew and traded.

Not disagreeing with your original point at all. The consequences of this war are so numerous and wide-ranging it's nuts.

There are whole countries about to lose fertilizer for planting season and huge parts of their electrical generation capacity.

There is an incipient war ruminating between Pakistan, Afghanistan and India which may be fanned into extremis by these actions.

Governments will fall. People will die.

Casey Jones YouTube video by Jerry Garcia - Topic

Good morning, lovelies
🌹⚡️❤️ Happy Saturday

music.youtube.com/watch?v=9C5a...

is it that time already

1) help the irgc market its floating stock of crude
2) hand operational (flow) control of the Straight to Iran
3) ???

It just seems like there is no bottom.

Oprah meme with THAAD missiles

We are living in a hellaciously busy cycle of weather news (never mind overall news), but this one seemingly arrived out of left field. Half a million acres burned in just two days.

@WRS1493314 An on fire potato truck in Japan is going viral for driving to a fire station to seek help