Muhammad Amin

(Activist/Writer/Earthpreneur)

[Muhammad Amin @Amienstein]

https://t.co/MIxYgHnTMA

[Pendulum @pendulum_habit]

High intellect + Low income = Angry people

Low intellect + High income = Assholes

High intellect + High income = God complex

Low intellect + Low income = Very religious people

[ILIAS ISM @illyism]

I lived in Dubai for a year and Switzerland for 3 years, both insanely expensive and neither produces real founders

Dubai's status game is yachts and Lambos, so even ambitious people end up doing crypto rugs and dropshipping courses and larping on instagram

Switzerland's status game is respectable employment at UBS or Google, so smart people optimize for corporate promotions and not products (you need $25k to even incorporate), the goal is to make enough to never have to risk anything again + without a proof of salary you can not even rent

Bali and Thailand are kinda opposite, cheap, but the status game is lifestyle and freedommaxxing ("I work 4 hours from a beach")

I think SF respects shipping, NYC respects exits, China respects winning, and everything is built around that

[Tim Wijaya @itsTimWijaya]

Asians have an abundance of skills, but a scarcity of courage.

Since moving back to Asia after living in the US, I've noticed that most people pick safe career paths, like corporate jobs or family business.

This is driven by our culture of "saving face."

There's an expectation to project an image of success, especially if your parents sent you abroad for school.

As a result, young people rarely take risks.

They don't start companies or pursue strange interests, because no one wants to fail in a gossipy Asian society.

Ironically, Asian parents pay $500k to send their kids to American universities to be free-thinkers and entrepreneurs, only to pull them home and demand they conform.

[Math Files @Math_files]

Albert Einstein once remarked, “You know, Henri, I began by studying mathematics, but eventually turned to physics.”

Henri Poincaré asked, “Why was that?”

Einstein replied, “Because although I could distinguish true statements from false ones, I couldn’t determine which were truly important.”

Poincaré smiled and responded, “That’s quite interesting, Albert. I began with physics, but ultimately chose mathematics.”

Einstein, intrigued, asked, “And why did you make that change?”

Poincaré answered, “Because I couldn’t tell which of the important facts were actually true.”

The exchange captures, with subtle wit, the contrasting philosophies of two of the greatest scientific minds.

[Michael Button @MichaelButtonX]

We teach that agriculture 'began' in the Fertile Crescent.

But it also began independently in China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica, and the Andes - all at roughly the same time.

Why did everyone suddenly start farming at once, after 290,000 years of not doing so?

[Porkchop Express @Porkchop_EXP]

How do I explain to people that a majority Muslim country Malaysia feels less Muslim than large Western European cities?

That you feel much safer there than anywhere in Europe?

That in 30 years Malaysia will still be a multiethnic civilized country but Europe will be run over by unemployed and welfare-entitled Arabs and North Africans?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy.

Read the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be.

That said, what is the future you want? Amazing abundance seems the best to me.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Your statement is true if goods & services output doesn’t rise dramatically due to AI/robots, but false if it does.

In a normal economy, issuing more money simply increases the dollar price of the existing output of goods & services, meaning people do NOT get more stuff.

If AI/robots massively increase goods & services output, then you actually MUST issue dollars to people or there will be massive disinflation. Prices are simply the ratio of goods & services output to number of dollars.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

California has the best weather on the planet and the science behind it is absurd.

The cold California Current runs south from Alaska at 50°F. When warm air crosses it, moisture becomes fog instead of rain. San Francisco's average July high is 67°F. Phoenix, same latitude, hits 106°F. A 39-degree gap between two cities in the same state. That's the cold current doing all the work.

The Pacific High, a semi-permanent pressure system, blocks storms from reaching the coast six to eight months straight. LA regularly goes 200+ consecutive days without a single drop of rain. Most places at this latitude get summer thunderstorms. California gets zero.

Then the Sierra Nevada blocks every arctic air mass that freezes the rest of the continent. When a polar vortex drops Chicago to -20°F, LA sits at 65°F. Three systems running simultaneously: cold current for cooling, high pressure for drought, mountains for insulation.

There are exactly five places on Earth where all three converge. California is one. The others are coastal Chile, the Western Cape of South Africa, southwestern Australia, and the actual Mediterranean. That's the entire list.

Jensen Huang just told everyone to move to California and eat the highest taxes in the world because "the weather is great." He watched Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Thiel, and Zuckerberg flee the state to dodge an $8 billion tax bill. His response: "I haven't thought about it even once."

He's not being glib. He's being geological.

[Yẹmí @KR3Wmatic]

The idea that god would wait 13 billion years (universe start) or even 4.5 billion years (earth formation) or even 8 million years (human ancestor identified) or even 300,000 years (modern human identified) before he sent himself down in the guise of his son to be brutally murdered to forgive himself for misdemeanours against himself is too ridiculous to be believed in the 21st century.

[Handre @Handre]

The Athenian Empire fell because politicians turned emergency war taxes into permanent wealth extraction. Sound familiar?

When Pericles launched the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC, Athens controlled the largest treasury in Greek history. The Delian League had funneled tribute from 200+ city-states into Athenian coffers for decades. But war spending devoured this wealth faster than anyone expected. By 428 BC, just three years in, Athens faced its first fiscal crisis.

The Athenian assembly's solution? The eisphora, a "temporary" emergency tax on the wealthy. Initially set at 1% of property value, it quickly escalated. By 425 BC, they doubled it. By 415 BC, they tripled it. The rich began liquidating assets to pay. Capital fled to Sparta, Corinth, anywhere beyond Athens' reach. Ship owners moved their fleets. Merchants relocated their operations. The very people who built Athens' commercial empire started abandoning it.

But the politicians needed more revenue, not less. They expanded the eisphora to the middle class. They imposed liturgies—forced "donations" for warships and festivals. They debased the silver currency, mixing in copper and tin. Prices soared. Trade collapsed. The Piraeus, once the Mediterranean's busiest port, emptied as foreign merchants sought stabler markets.

By 404 BC, Athens surrendered not because Spartan hoplites breached their walls, but because their economy imploded. The emergency taxes that were supposed to fund victory instead funded defeat. Every modern government facing fiscal crisis should study Athens carefully. They always choose the same path.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Do not use your energy to worry. Life is too short to worry about stupid things.

Have fun. Fall in love. Regret nothing and do not let people bring you down. 

Study, think, create and grow. Teach yourself and teach others. 

—Professor Richard Feynman

[Peter Kazanjy @Kazanjy]

Indonesia (and other Southeast Asian Muslim countries) is a fascinating case.

It’s low consanguinity, and similarly has low overrepresentation in German migrant sexual assault crimes (looking more like Filipino performance).

This seems to indicate that it’s not just that migrants from Islamic countries outperform in sexual assaults.

It’s Muslim migrants specifically from Horn of Africa, middle eastern, North Africa and south asian countries that are particularly problematic when it comes to sexual assault.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

This paragraph by Richard Feynman hits so hard:

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”

[Teslaconomics @Teslaconomics]

Bro… Giga Texas is already 3X the size of the Pentagon, over 2,500 acres, where its main building is over 10M sq ft, equivalent to about 100 football fields under one roof.

Now Elon is saying the Terafab will be 100M sq ft, that’s 10x larger than this!

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

ELON MUSK: "So you know, how do you get to a petawatt? You get there by having an electromagnetic mass driver on the moon with robots, with Optimus and obviously lots of humans. And with that, you can send a petawatt.

You can create a petawatt of compute and send that to deep space, because on the moon, moon has no atmosphere and has 1/6 earth of gravity. So you don't need rockets on the moon, you can literally accelerate it to escape velocity from the surface, and that dramatically drops the cost, once again, of harnessing power and enables you to go 1000 times bigger than a terawatt.

I want us to live long enough to see the mass driver on the moon, because that's going to be incredibly epic."

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

Terence Tao: Months of uninterrupted time at Institute for Advanced Study made him less inspired, not more.

"You actually do need a level of distraction in your life. It adds enough randomness and temperature - that optimized systems remove."

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada spoke about the contradictions of human nature:

“Some people dream of having a swimming pool at home, while those who have one hardly ever use it. Those who have lost a loved one feel a profound sense of loss, while others often complain about their living relatives. Those without a partner long for one, while those who have one often don't appreciate it. The hungry would give anything for a meal, while the satiated complain about the taste of their food. Those without a car dream of owning one, while those who have a car are always looking for a better one.”

The key to happiness is gratitude: truly seeing and appreciating what we already have, and understanding that somewhere, someone would give anything for what we take for granted.