Dale Brubaker

Christian, husband, father, grandfather. Manager, engineer, software developer. God is real, history really happened. Not political.

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

HOLY SHIT.

Troy Jackson just ended his debate with Susan Collins with this:

“Sen. Collins paid for the bullets at Donald Trump’s command. Now she wants credit for not pulling the trigger.”

That’s not a debate zinger.

That’s a fucking indictment.

[Dale Brubaker @DaleBrubaker]

@tibo_maker Yes and it is your company's obligation to fix it. Apparently you are rediscovering (project) management 101. Your tools need to provide great visibility and organization of tasks and task management, with slicing and dicing and reporting. Hire some experts.

[Dale Brubaker @DaleBrubaker]

This is probably the most important read for Christians at this moment in history.

[Matthew D. Taylor @TaylorMatthewD]

Announcing my new book: DEFYING TYRANTS: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists.

Pre-order now, out October 6th.

For those who've followed my reporting on Christian nationalism — this one goes somewhere different.

A thread. 🧵

[World of Statistics @stats_feed]

The letters in the alphabet in alphabetical order:

AHRBDWEFLMNSXIJGKQOPCTVYUZ

[Richard Deitsch @richarddeitsch]

The U.S. Senate race that fascinates me most is Kansas. I was a poly sci major. This stuff always fascinates me.

The state last elected a DEM senator in 1932. (I mean, Babe Ruth was still playing and hit 42 homers that year). Moran won his race by 23 points in 2022. Everything about the historical fundamentals says this should not be close. (I know Kansas has flipped parties in Gov. races; just talking Senate.)

Yet the polls (which I certainly don't take as gospel) show it neck and neck between Marshall and Hamilton. GOP throwing money there is obviously the tell.

Fascinating. If anyone follows me from Kansas, which would be cool, I'd love your quick take in the mentions. Thx.

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

"Never odd or even" spelled backward is still "Never odd or even."

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

NEW: Democrats add more races to their list of potential "red-to-blue" flips

More states halt gas tax

Trump's emerging problem with Latino voters

The big wins this week for Jack Smith's deputies

Lots of enterprise reporting in DAY AHEAD

https://t.co/ACT6z1oF8w

[Dale Brubaker @DaleBrubaker]

@hunvreus Actually there are many in the camp of "Excel for everything always". Not me. I like a full toolbox of good tools. But to each his own...

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

In the 1960s, most children with leukaemia died

Now over 90% survive

Science did that

[🅰pocalypsis 🅰pocalypseos 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 🅉 @apocalypseos]

Jeffrey Sachs: a president stood at the UN and claimed the right to annihilate a civilization. Congress said nothing. That is the constitutional order collapsing in public.

“I shuddered then, and I shudder now that a president of the United States can stand at the podium of the UN General Assembly speaking to world leaders in a language of annihilation of other countries and of sending them to hell. It was ghastly, unprecedented, totally disgusting, disgraceful for the United States. But I would also say a measure of how broken the constitutional order of the United States is.

Trump basically said, like a madman, which I think arguably he is, that he and he alone will decide the survival of Iran. He said that he has a big, big choice to make. Maybe Iran will be a great country. Maybe Iran will be annihilated. Maybe Trump will send it to hell. And not only was the language vulgar in a way that I certainly could never in my lifetime have imagined coming from a president of the United States or anybody standing at the UN podium—because what Trump said was odious and completely in violation of every religious, moral, ethical, and legal standard that we have in this world—it was also a measure of the brazen collapse of our Constitution.

Is there a political system where one man decides the fate of another civilization? Is that how the American system works? Of course the answer is no. The founding fathers who rebelled against a mad King George III were very explicit in the Declaration of Independence, celebrated this year 250 years after its issuance. We’re in the 250th anniversary, one that Trump says is about our freedom. It was explicitly that King George arrogated, took on the authority to put the military above civil rule. And when the founding fathers wrote the US Constitution, they assigned specifically the power to declare war not to the commander-in-chief, but solely and exclusively—and not by choice, not if they care about it or want to or want to delegate it or not, but solely—to the United States Congress.

And Trump said yesterday he doesn’t care what the public thinks. He doesn’t care what the vote is. He says it doesn’t even cross my mind. And he said earlier this year, when he was asked, well, are there any limits on your power? He thought about it. He said Yes, my morality, but it’s my will. It’s what I want to do. Otherwise, no, there are no other limits.

What did our Congress do on that occasion? I can tell you, as we know, that the majority party in both houses simply remained silent. That is a violation of their sacred oath of office, which is to uphold the Constitution. Trump yesterday said he’s going to have the difficult choice of whether to annihilate, by the way, one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, 5,000 years old, twenty times older than the United States of America. And what did our Speaker of the House say? Well, he said nothing, of course. What did our Senate majority leader say? He said, of course, nothing. What did all of the party of the president of the United States say, the members of Congress? They said, of course, nothing. This is worse than the Roman Empire. There was a Senate that actually still said something. Our Senate says nothing.

We are so broken that not only do we have a madman in power, but there is no respect for our constitutional order. And the president can make statements as he made yesterday, unprecedented in the chamber of the General Assembly in front of the world leaders, speaking like the worst tyrant or gangster imaginable, and not a murmur from the Republican Party which dominates the House and the Senate. You know, I am not partisan. And a Democratic president who dared to be as absolutely mad and deranged as this president would probably find subservience in that party too. So I’m not even making a partisan point. I’m making a point about the collapse of our constitutional order.

Have we come to a point where one man, who I happen to think is utterly incompetent, utterly sociopathic, actually—when people are killed under his order, not a moment of reflection or remorse when 150 schoolgirls are murdered, and he knows the truth. He says, yeah, the Iranians probably did it. We’ll find out. No, not any control at all in our system of government.

So for me, you asked how I feel. I shudder at the last 24 hours, both at what the president said. It made my skin crawl. I was sitting there in the chamber listening to this madness. I mean it really, psychopathic madness, speaking in this way, with a vulgarity that is unimaginable. But then I’ve shuddered since then at the lack of response by the leaders, the majority leader of the US Senate, the Speaker of the House, Supreme Court justices, anybody to say no. In our system of government, it’s not one person who decides on the fate of another civilization.

We are a country, we say, first of all, of representation, and the American people are aghast at this. They oppose it overwhelmingly. They do not support this war of Netanyahu and Trump, which is a two-person war of murder and destruction and assassination of leaders of another country. They do not support it. And the constitutional order is that we are a representative government, and our representatives have an oath of office that only they can declare war. So where are they standing up to say No, you don’t have a penny to spend on this? We control the power of the purse. The tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump has wasted of American income in this flagrant war of whim. Where is Congress to say you have no authority whatsoever to spend that because only we can decide on the spending and only we can declare war.

So this is the grim fact. It wasn’t just the awful statements. That was my first reaction. But then I thought, what have we come to when one person can make a statement like this and then remain essentially unchallenged in the United States system of government?”

Annihilation is not diplomacy. Congressional silence is not restraint. A constitutional republic cannot survive if one man claims the power to decide whether another civilization lives or dies.

[Boris Cherny @bcherny]

Opus 5.5 is a really good model. It's been my daily driver the last few weeks.

We had Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 each port HAProxy from C to Rust. Both passed nearly all of HAProxy's tests, but Opus 5.5 finished in 9.5 hours compared to Fable 5.1's 12 hours, and for 51% less cost.

[Learn Things @LearnThinx]

When you apply physics to your job

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

You can say what you want about Iran but they're definitely pretty unique in their communication: never seen a country threaten another with a math equation before 😅

For those who didn't get it: there is a famous monetary policy formula used by the Fed called the "Taylor rule" that says a central bank's policy rate (i) should equal the neutral real rate (r*) plus target inflation (π*), plus 1.5 times the inflation gap and 0.5 times the output gap (the "i = r* + π* + 1.5(π−π*) + 0.5(y−y*)" part of Ghalibaf's formula).

Ghalibaf adds α(SOH−SOH*) and β(BEM−BEM*): SOH referring to the Strait Of Hormuz and BEM to Bab El-Mandeb. Both have positive coefficient, meaning the more those chokepoints are choked, the higher the rate the Fed would have to set to fight the resulting inflation.

In a nutshell this is Ghalibaf trolling the Fed, telling them that Iran is - in a very real way - setting American monetary policy.

[Sigurdur Nordal @essenviews]

Is she right?

[Christa Brown @ChristaBrown777]

“In 2024 Trump won the white evangelical vote 82% to 17%. He lost everybody else 58% to 40%... That’s what the white evangelical church did.” - @DavidAFrench (via @rickpidcock)

White evangelicalism has a lot to answer for.
https://t.co/EOHyvG6Yb2

[Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 @jurgen_nauditt]

The specter of a Third World War haunted the East—
sometimes vanishing, only to reappear in the distance…

In short: You don’t need nuclear weapons to plunge the entire world into chaos. On one side, Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz. On the other, a bunch of ragtag fighters armed with rusty Soviet Kalashnikovs block the Bab-el-Mandeb bottleneck. And just like that—the stage is set for global chaos, a free-for-all where it’s every man for himself.

Oh, and we have to thank Trump for that—the greatest field marshal of all time.

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

This is a rare photo of Donald Trump from 1934, helping Albert Einstein finish the theory of relativity. According to Trump, Einstein had been stuck for weeks.
“Very smart guy. Terrible with numbers. I looked at the board and said, Albert, put a little 2 up there. He loved it."

[John Collins @Logically_JC]

It should have been all over when he said, “find 11,780 votes.”

[Beth Moore @BethMooreLPM]

I’m perplexed by leaders who grow harsher, more legalistic and less compassionate in their older years. It seems, at least to my understanding, to go against the grain of aging for a person walking with the Lord.

Unless there is hardness of heart caused by resentment, bitterness, jealousy, perversity or the like, the aging grow in holiness marked by humility and gentleness.

Fact is, we’ve seen too much sin, weakness and failure in ourselves and received too much grace and mercy to be otherwise. Think, for example, of the scene in John 8 where people are ready to stone the adulterous woman. Jesus says, OK, let the one without sin cast the first stone. And you know how the story goes. They drop those stones, one by one, and walk away starting with the older ones. Why? Because they know the length, breadth and depth of their own sins and failures.

Think of James 3:13 where he draws a direct connection between wisdom and gentleness, the latter indicating not powerlessness or eroding convictions but power and conviction submitted to the control and wise restraint of the Holy Spirit.

Gentleness is also fruit of the Holy Spirit. Jesus described himself as gentle. Though he was utterly sinless, he was deeply compassionate, having been tempted in all ways.

Harshness, extremism and a condemning spirit are ill-fitting to the aging in Christ. I have no desire to name names or cast stones or I’m no different from those I find baffling. I just want to say we’re greatly helped by an honest and frequent examination of our own hearts to see if they are growing in tenderness and compassion or in the hardness of unresolved character issues.

[Luke Piette - run/pod @LukePiette]

I’ve felt uneasy about maybe two model releases in three years.
Astra has me feeling uneasy again

I was wrong about my AGI timelines. I didn’t listen to the frontier lab guys. It looks like we only have 10-12mo until things really get serious

I think most people underestimate how brittle our infrastructure is. So much of our world rests on SQL tables being secure

Banking, elections, social security, etc. What happens when every database is compromised by a swarm of agents (intentionally or not)

In a couple years you will only need one bad actor with a big enough cluster (~64x B400s, ~$10M) to topple entire governments. The people in charge of our infrastructure are not moving fast enough

I’m not a doomer at all. Short term there will be pain but long term my hope is we rebuild and cure every disease etc. But the next few years will be weird