Stephen Schmitz

[Rebecca @H48367H]

@PaulineHansonOz

[Faizan @FreesoulFaizan]

@PaulineHansonOz scapegoating migrants for housing hell while ignoring greedy speculators and stalled builds is this senator’s tired grift playbook you’re a fear-peddling insider playing populist, laughable con artist.

[Vivek Sen @Vivek4real_]

MOST PEOPLE WHO STILL THINK AI IS JUST HYPE HAVEN’T REALIZED WHAT’S COMING.

LISTEN TO ERIC SCHMIDT’S EXAMPLES TO UNDERSTAND HOW POWERFUL THIS TECHNOLOGY REALLY IS.

WHEN ELON, MARK, JENSEN, ERIC SCHMIDT, AND OTHERS ARE ALL SAYING THE SAME THING, IT’S WORTH PAYING ATTENTION.

[Millie Marconi @MillieMarconnni]

A British biologist looked at 200,000 years of human history and found that the entire reason humans broke out of poverty was not intelligence, not language, not even agriculture, but one mechanism so simple a 6-year-old could explain it.

His name is Matt Ridley.

He is a zoologist by training, an evolutionary biologist by career, and in 2010 he wrote a book called The Rational Optimist that quietly argued the most important fact about human progress had been hiding in plain sight for the entire history of economics.

Naval Ravikant has been telling people to read everything Ridley has ever written for the last 15 years. The reason is the argument inside this one book.

For 200,000 years, anatomically modern humans walked around with the same brain you have right now. Same skull size. Same neural architecture. Same raw capacity for language, planning, and abstract thought.

For roughly 190,000 of those years, almost nothing happened. Generation after generation lived and died inside the same Stone Age toolkit their great-great-grandparents had used. Then somewhere around 50,000 years ago, the line on the chart of human progress started to tick upward. Then it bent. Then it exploded.

The question Ridley spent years on was the only question that mattered. What changed.

It was not the brain. The brain had been the same for 190,000 years. It was not language, which had existed long before the takeoff. It was not even agriculture, which arrived only 10,000 years ago and was actually preceded by the upward bend, not the cause of it.

What changed was that humans started trading with strangers.

This sounds too small to be the answer. Ridley argues that it is the answer to almost everything. The moment one human exchanged a useful object with another human from a different group, something happened that no other species on earth had ever done.

Two ideas that had developed in isolation came into contact. The flint knapper learned what the spear maker had figured out. The fisherman from the coast learned what the hunter from the forest had figured out. The two pieces of knowledge fused into something neither side could have produced alone.

Ridley calls this ideas having sex. The phrase sounds frivolous and it is meant to. The point is that ideas, like genes, get better when they combine with other ideas from different lineages.

An idea sitting inside one head, no matter how brilliant the head, eventually hits a ceiling. The same idea exposed to ten thousand other ideas does something genes do under sexual reproduction. It mixes. It recombines. It produces offspring nobody planned.

The cleanest proof of this argument is the most uncomfortable case study in the book. Tasmania.

Around 10,000 years ago, rising sea levels cut Tasmania off from mainland Australia. A population of roughly 4,000 humans was now isolated on an island, with no possibility of contact with the rest of humanity. They had the same brains. The same language. The same starting toolkit as their cousins 150 kilometers north. The natural experiment was now running.

What happened next is something no economist or geneticist had ever predicted.

The mainland Australians kept inventing. Boomerangs. Spear-throwers. Fishing nets. Bone needles for sewing fitted clothes. Watercraft with paddles. Their technology compounded slowly across the centuries.

The Tasmanians went the other way. They did not just fail to invent the new tools their cousins were developing. They started losing the tools they already had. Fishing was abandoned within a few thousand years. Bone tools disappeared. Fitted clothing disappeared. They forgot how to make fire from scratch and started carrying lit firebrands from camp to camp instead, relighting their fires from a neighbor's whenever their own went out.

By the time European explorers arrived in the 17th century, the Tasmanians had the simplest toolkit of any human society ever recorded. Their material culture had gone backward for 8,000 years.

The archaeologist Rhys Jones called it a slow strangulation of the mind.

Joseph Henrich at Harvard later proved with formal mathematical models that there was nothing wrong with Tasmanian brains. There was something wrong with their network. A toolkit requires a critical mass of people exchanging skills to maintain itself.

The act of teaching a skill is imperfect. Every generation loses a small percentage of what the last generation knew. If your population is large enough and trading widely enough, those losses get caught and corrected by someone else who still remembers.

If your population shrinks below a certain threshold and stops mixing with outsiders, the small losses compound until entire technologies disappear.

This is the part that should haunt anyone reading this in 2026.

Intelligence is not a property of the individual brain. Intelligence is a property of the network the brain is connected to. A genius in isolation will produce less than a mediocre thinker inside a dense exchange of other mediocre thinkers.

The thing your ancestors needed in order to break out of 190,000 years of stagnation was not better brains. It was better connections between brains they already had.

The implication for any individual is direct and uncomfortable. If you are smart and isolated, you will be outproduced by people half as smart who are connected.

The most successful people in any field are almost never the smartest people in it. They are the ones positioned at the intersection of the most idea flows. They are reading more authors than their competitors. They are talking to more people from more disciplines. They are in the rooms where ideas from different lineages bump into each other.

Ridley ends the book on the line that sounds optimistic but is actually a warning its this "The future will be invented by people who connect ideas, not by people who guard them."

[MOG COIN @mogcoin]

Yup #Yup gmog

[Jamie Coutts CMT @Jamie1Coutts]

Young Australians should be enraged by the new super tax.

The statist talking heads will tell you "it's only on balances above $3M. The rich." Most Aussies will fall for it.

Run the numbers. 35yo today. $200k in super. Contributes $15k a year. Earns 8% returns (long run super average).

In 30 years their balance is $3.7 million. Caught by the tax.

But here's the trick. Australia's money supply has grown about 8% a year for the past two decades. RBA's own data. So that $3.7M buys what $369k buys today. Same groceries. Same house. Same petrol.

You didn't get rich. You ran on the spot.

And the $3M line? Frozen. In 30 years it only buys what $300k buys today. It's lost 90% of its real value. The govt doesn't have to move the line. Inflation does the work for them.

No different from the obscene overreach on anti-money laundering rules. The $10k cash transaction threshold was set in 1988 and never moved. $10k then is $26k in today's money. Adjusted for money supply growth, it's $170k. Same threshold. Almost 3x more transactions caught by CPI, 17x by money supply. That's why you get interrogated at the bank for withdrawing what only covers half a year of school fees.

Same trick with income tax. Wages rise with inflation. Brackets don't. Suddenly the average worker is in a "high earner" bracket they were never meant to be in. You don't earn more. The line moved.

This one policy tells you everything you need to know about the government and its intentions. It's all about grift and theft.

Meanwhile, the kids who get hit hardest are kept busy by an education system arguing about hate speech, social media, and the climate apocalypse promised in 2012. Nobody teaches them how money actually works. The govt likes it that way.

So they vote for more taxes. Bigger govt. More "fairness." Pouring petrol on the fire burning their house down.

The fix isn't communism. It's the opposite.

Smaller govt. Lower taxes. Index every threshold to the actual money supply, not the CPI lie. Decentralise the banks.

Despite everything, Australians are entrepreneurial and predominantly hardworking. Imagine what this country could become without the government's boot on its neck.

[David Pocock @DavidPocock]

The PM and other major party politicians are getting their figures from the gas industry rather than the ATO and Treasury 🤯
Whose side are they on?
When you try and interrogate these figures from the gas lobby you get “PAGE NOT FOUND”.
You cannot make this stuff up!
Head to https://t.co/dcjuwV2f9S to get involved.
The only way we win this is if the major parties know they will continue to lose votes at the next election if they don't put Australians first.

[MØG.eth🫵😹 @bullishMOG]

They suppress $MOG, the more I become a MOGul 🫵😹

[MØG.eth🫵😹 @bullishMOG]

$MOG IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE AND START MOGGING THE ENTIRE MARKET 🫵😹

[Stephen Schmitz @AgwormRegen]

@Dussyme 18

[P.S. I Love ME @ps_ilove_me]

🚨In 1990s, Stanford researcher Dr. Robert Sapolsky discovered something that should have broken the internet by now.

He was studying dopamine pathways in primates and found that the brain doesn't just adapt to repeated stimulation. It actively fights back.

When you flood dopamine receptors consistently, the brain deploys what neuroscientists call "opponent processes." For every artificial high you create, your nervous system generates an equal and opposite neurochemical low. Not eventually. Immediately. The system is designed to maintain balance, so it starts producing compounds that directly counteract dopamine while you're still experiencing the dopamine hit.

This means every notification, every scroll, every digital reward doesn't just give you a high followed by a return to baseline. It gives you a high followed by a crash below baseline. You end up in neurochemical debt.

Tech companies never publicized this research. They probably never read it. They were too busy discovering that variable ratio reinforcement schedules could keep users engaged for hours. They built addictive systems by accident, then refined them into addiction machines once they realized what they'd stumbled onto.

Your phone delivers an average of 80 dopamine hits per day. Your ancestors got maybe 5. Each hit triggers opponent processes that create a corresponding low. By the end of a typical day of normal phone usage, your baseline dopamine is running in negative territory. You feel flat, restless, vaguely unsatisfied, and hungry for stimulation because your brain chemistry is literally below zero.

You think you're bored. You're chemically depressed by artificial highs.

The opponent process theory explains why nothing feels interesting anymore. Your brain isn't broken. It's precisely calibrated to maintain neurochemical balance, and you keep throwing that balance off with artificial intensity. Every Instagram hit requires an equal Instagram crash. Every TikTok high gets paid for with a TikTok low. Every notification rush gets balanced with notification emptiness.

Your reward system is running a neurochemical deficit that grows larger every day.

Sapolsky's research revealed something even more disturbing: opponent processes don't just create temporary lows. They become permanent changes to your baseline dopamine production. Chronic overstimulation doesn't just make you tolerant to digital rewards. It makes you insensitive to natural rewards.

The sunset that would have captivated your great-grandfather becomes invisible to you not because sunsets got worse, but because your dopamine system needs intensity levels that sunsets can't provide. A good conversation becomes boring not because conversations got less interesting, but because your brain requires the rapid-fire stimulation of social media to register engagement.

You've accidentally trained your reward system to ignore everything that isn't artificially amplified.

This connects to research from Dr. Anna Lembke at Stanford, who found that people who undergo complete digital fasting for just 30 days show measurable increases in dopamine receptor density. Their brains literally regrow sensitivity to natural rewards. Food tastes better. Music sounds more complex. Social interactions become genuinely engaging again.

But there's a catch that nobody talks about: the first two weeks of dopamine detox feel like clinical depression. Your brain has been chemically dependent on artificial stimulation for years. Removing that stimulation creates actual withdrawal symptoms. Restlessness, anxiety, inability to focus, emotional flatness, and desperate cravings for digital input.

Most people interpret these symptoms as evidence that they need their phones. Actually, they're evidence that they've been neurochemically dependent on their phones without realizing it.

The withdrawal period isn't a bug. It's proof the reset is working.

What happens after week three is remarkable. Colors become more vivid. Conversations become genuinely absorbing. Simple pleasures like hot coffee or cool air become satisfying in ways you forgot were possible. Your brain rediscovers that reality contains enough complexity and beauty to hold your attention without artificial amplification.

You don't need more interesting content. You need more sensitive reward systems.

The solution isn't better apps or more engaging entertainment. The solution is restoring your brain's factory settings for what constitutes a worthwhile experience.

Sapolsky's opponent process research suggests this can happen faster than anyone expected. Every day you don't artificially spike your dopamine, your baseline moves a little higher. Every natural reward you pay attention to rebuilds receptor density. Every moment of boredom you endure without reaching for stimulation strengthens your capacity for sustained focus.

Ancient humans lived in a world that provided exactly the right amount of stimulation to keep their reward systems healthy. Enough challenge to stay engaged, enough calm to stay balanced, enough novelty to stay curious, enough routine to stay stable.

We built a world that provides 10 times too much stimulation and wonder why nothing feels rewarding anymore.

Your brain is not the problem. Your environment is the problem.

Change the environment, and the brain heals itself automatically.

[MOG COIN @mogcoin]

Gmog

[Green Cover Seed @GreenCoverSeed]

Could interseeding cover crops into soybeans actually increase moisture retention?

Alex Frasier seems to think so, in fact he has seen it happen on his own farm.

Each different cover crop species comes with a diverse microbiome that colonizes the soil. All of that biology respirates moisture and carbon, creating a system that is much more efficient at utilizing, capturing and storing moisture.

Then above the ground, the cover crops shade the soil from the harsh rays of the sun, preventing evaporation and protecting microbial life who thrive in cool, moist soils.

You can learn more about Alex's method of soybean interseeding in our most recent podcast: https://t.co/cWwXZKdQQ7

#CoverCrops #SoilHealth #RegenerativeAgriculture #Interseeding #CoverCropping

[MOG COIN @mogcoin]

To mog is to always move forward. To dominate on a cosmic level. To simultaneously live in the present and in the future. To overcome all adversity. To improve relentlessly in all things. To win forever.

The future is brighter than ever.

It’s time to put on the vipers cousin.

[Jonathan Jarecki @Jonathanjarecki]

THE CONTRASTING EFFECTS OF BLUE AND RED/NIR LIGHT ON THE MITOCHONDRIA.
-
Recent research published this year in Nature: Scientific Reports demonstrates the effects that light in the built environment has on human health.

Our modern build environment is dominated by short-wavelength light from LEDs and fluorescent lighting. This can have deleterious effects on the mitochondria. Adding to this effect is the lack of long-wavelength light from sources like the sun and incandescent lighting bulbs.

These long light wavelengths have a beneficial effect on mitochondria function and overall human health. The lack of them in our modern built environment, seems to be impacting public health in a delirious fashion.

Two recent papers to read:

1. https://t.co/uQ0V6oNay4

2. https://t.co/mVTS25T9KK

[Jacob Wolki @JakeWolki]

This vid is doing the rounds again.

Around 5 years ago I set up a 24/7 self service staff-less butchery - it's still running. We have hundreds of members who pop in and do their thing, one less job for me!

[Supermicro @Supermicro]

Supermicro’s B300 and GB300 systems deliver unmatched throughput with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Train bigger models, run faster inference, and reduce total cost.

Explore the next generation of AI infrastructure.

[Andreas Steno Larsen @AndreasSteno]

I enjoyed this take

[Teddy - PolyBackTest.com @Bitcoin_Teddy]

🇬🇧 INVESTING LEGEND HUGH HENDRY JUST SAID HE IS SELLING HIS HOUSE TO BUY $10 MILLION OF BITCOIN

IT'S GOING TO “$1,000,000” 🚀

[Stephen Schmitz @AgwormRegen]

@cryptoleancom @100trillionUSD Ditto in Australia 💯