Mike Kearney

Christian. Clean energy advocate. Staunch Conservative. Not an oxymoron. Iowa State alum (Go Cyclones!). Old fart....

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

One of the coolest things I've ever seen

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

The path to launch is filled with obstacles and success is only possible through the tireless efforts of many working together towards a common goal. “Critical Path” continues the ongoing Starship series, following SpaceX engineers through the final days before launch of the first Starship V3 and the challenges that come with development of the world’s most powerful and fully reusable rocket.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

God bless America.

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@MattLKearney @rawsalerts These last two supreme Court rulings prove that Congress needs to do their job! Or we're going to lose our country.

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@MattWalshBlog Get it right, Matt. It's called Transfemicide! Way more important than making sure Da' Bears stay in Chicago!

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@DoctorJack16 Asked for 1000 got 100 with Fidelity. Investing some cash adding to my TSLA holdings.

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@stevenmarkryan Should have added that this was with Fidelity. My son asked for 50 and got 10 so 20% also with Fidelity.

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@stevenmarkryan 10%

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@nilwxreports 😳

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@MattLKearney @thatsKAIZEN And there it is. As I've said many times the one party system has made what would be fraudulent in almost any other jurisdiction legal. So now you have influencers saying "nothing to see here.”

[Byron Donalds @ByronDonalds]

To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.

I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.

One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”

It knocked me back.

I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.

That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.

I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.

I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.

People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.

I'll tell you why.

Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.

I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.

In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.

The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.

You just have to stop running.

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@OreoSpoon @SadNinersFan and Mike Evans and CMC

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@MattWalshBlog Look up Larry Norman s 1976 song "UFO." Here's one of the verses - "And if there's life on other planets
Then I'm sure that He must know
And He's been there once already
And has died to save their souls"

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@WellsJorda89710 I'm in

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@OverlyTrev @Tesla I also think licensing should be different between those who want to use FSD for private use and those who want to use it commercially. I have no desire to use my 2026 MY for robotaxi use and I wish there was a low cost option for simply personal use.

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@TheBabylonBee This should not be satire......just sayin'

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@BrianEastwood7 @bscholl Uh, have you ever heard of the Polaris Dawn mission? I'd suggest you ask Grok about it.

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

@BoosterTribe @SpaceX 💯

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Tesla has released a new video with @DavidMoss, highlighting his recent cross-country trip on FSD (Supervised) with zero disengagements.

"Moss’s Model 3 handled every road sign, turn and Supercharger stop, traveling over 2,700 miles in 2 days and 20 hours. Part of his over 12,000-mile streak of FSD (Supervised) usage, David’s cross-country trip demonstrates the reliability, capability and ease of FSD (Supervised)."

[Mike Kearney @2003MarionSSS]

Didn't see any difference
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