Ralph Cerchione

"Knowledge is a single point, but the ignorant have multiplied it."

[Ralph Cerchione @Dry_Observer]

Gifted people dealing with others' insanity in interesting and frequently funny ways.

The story is also releasing for free on Royal Road, but doesn't have the uploaded art showing for free on my Patreon.
https://t.co/8u1SB5xFWP

[Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFast]

From my op-ed

https://t.co/Qt5lBSgwDW

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

NYT headline when the economy added 266,000 jobs under Biden vs. NYT headline when BLS says the economy added 172,000 jobs under Trump.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

She ate lunch alone for 730 days straight. What this 16-year-old built from that pain now protects millions of kids worldwide.

Seventh grade. Natalie Hampton carried her tray through a packed cafeteria and felt it — that specific, suffocating dread of not knowing where to go.

She'd already learned what happened when you approached the wrong table. The silence. The turned backs. The whispered laughter that followed you all the way to the empty table by the wall.

The one everyone could see.

The one that said: nobody wants her.

For two full years — 730 consecutive lunches — that table was hers. Alone.

The bullying went further than whispers. She was shoved into lockers. Four physical attacks in two weeks. She came home with scratches and bruises. When she finally reported it, school administrators sent her to counseling — to find out what she was doing wrong.

The isolation grew so heavy she was hospitalized for anxiety.

Then ninth grade came. A new school. And almost overnight — everything changed. Students welcomed her. She made friends within weeks. She finally knew what safe felt like.

But she couldn't stop thinking about the kids still sitting at the wall table. Right now. Today.

She remembered what she'd needed most during all those lunches. Not a teacher. Not a pamphlet. Just one person saying: "You can sit with us."

So at 16 — with zero coding experience and "a lot of enthusiasm," as she put it — Natalie built exactly that.

She called it Sit With Us.

The idea was simple and genius: students sign up as "ambassadors," keeping their table open. Other kids privately browse available tables on their phones before ever walking into the cafeteria — and show up knowing they're already welcome.

No public rejection. No moment of judgment. Just a guaranteed seat.

Within 7 days of launching: 10,000 downloads.

Then the world found her. NPR. The Washington Post. CBS News. Messages from Morocco, Australia, the Philippines, France — kids who'd been eating alone for years, finally finding a place to belong.

Sit With Us now operates in 30 countries.

"Even if it helps one person," Natalie said quietly, "it was worth building."

She turned 730 lunches of loneliness into a lifeline for millions.

That's not just survival. That's transformation.

[Ralph Cerchione @Dry_Observer]

@MollyJongFast And what's the one secret ingredient enabling us to get the utmost out of AI, at least for now?

Humans.

Irony Lives.

[Ralph Cerchione @Dry_Observer]

@MollyJongFast By telling said ravening tide to go eat itself alive.

I don't doubt we'll fix this.

But really, we could be focusing all this compute on curing major diseases in an era already marked by incredible medical breakthroughs.

And instead, we're trying to whittle down payroll.

[Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFast]

Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.
I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.

[Ralph Cerchione @Dry_Observer]

Remember when most bottom-tier professional wrestlers and rodeo clowns weren't too embarrassed to share a stage with Trump?

[TheFrenchie @ML3democrats]

Remember when they said Zelensky desecrated the sanctity of the White House by not wearing a suit

[TheFrenchie @ML3democrats]

Remember when they said Zelensky desecrated the sanctity of the White House by not wearing a suit

[Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw]

Extraordinary Letter.

Points to Bill Pulte appointment as national security danger.

"The undersigned include twenty-eight former service secretaries and retired general and flag officers who
collectively served under every president from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden, Jr"

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

The Library of Alexandria created the first catalog of all human knowledge 2,300 years ago, and a team of fewer than 20 people just finished the modern version and made it free for the entire planet.

It is called OpenAlex. The name is not an accident.

The ancient library had the Pinakes, a catalog mapping every scroll, every author, every subject. When the library fell, the map of what humanity knew fell with it.

For the last two decades, that map existed again, but it was locked up.

Elsevier owns Scopus. Clarivate owns Web of Science. If your university could not afford the subscription, you could not see the structure of science itself. Entire countries were priced out of knowing what research existed.

OpenAlex indexes 474 million scholarly works. Every author disambiguated. Every citation traced. Every institution and funder connected. It updates with roughly 50,000 new works every day.

The whole thing is CC0. Not just free to search. Free to download, copy, sell, and build on. The API allows 100,000 requests a day without an account.

The ancient library burned and the catalog was lost for two millennia.

The new one cannot burn. Anyone can hold a copy.

https://t.co/peUYYpucnc

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

It's hard to tell what's worse right now: The GOP's midterm chances or Trump's cabinet infighting. Either way, Trump 2.0 is crumbling. Watch the full episode here: https://t.co/XUKZwFwfja

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

Have the meat you voted for.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

This tweet is from the Same person that supports a damn ballroom and a fund to reimburse domestic terrorists

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

In today's Friday Brief:

D-Day Will Always Matter
Fascist DEI: Bill Pulte and Other Bad Hires
Epstein Island II: Kushner Boogaloo
John Thune and Slush Fund
Coming Soon To A Nation Near You
L.A., California, and Iowa
Like Amazon, But For Ebola
GLP-1s Are Magic
Scenes from the Home Front

Link in comments.

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

https://t.co/KYKPJVEBk6