Sajeev 🇿🇦

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Après avoir vu Elon répondre au Programme alimentaire mondial de l'ONU qui lui réclamait 6 milliards pour "résoudre la faim dans le monde", j'ai compris quelque chose que je vais essayer de prouver ici.

Désormais, méfiez-vous de TOUT le monde qui achète de la sympathie publique en signant des chèques.

Reprenons l'histoire d'Elon, parce qu'elle est parfaite. 2021. Le patron du PAM, David Beasley, le tague publiquement : "2 % de ta fortune et tu résous la faim." Elon ne dit pas non. Il dit une seule chose, et c'est la chose la plus saine qu'un milliardaire ait jamais dite à une ONG : "Décrivez-moi exactement comment 6 milliards résolvent la faim. Compta open-source, que le public voie où va chaque dollar. Et je vends du Tesla immédiatement."

Réponse de l'ONU : un plan à 6,6 milliards pour nourrir 42 millions de personnes… pendant un an.

Vous voyez le problème ? Ils n'ont jamais pu répondre à la vraie question. Parce que la réponse n'existe pas. Le don ne résout rien : il nourrit douze mois, et la faim revient en janvier. C'est un abonnement, pas une solution. Beasley demandait un robinet permanent et l'appelait "charité".

La charité moderne, c'est ça : un puits sans fond déguisé en vertu. Elle ne touche jamais les causes profondes — la gouvernance, les institutions, la corruption, l'absence de marchés — parce que toucher les causes profondes tuerait l'industrie. Une ONG qui résout son problème se suicide. Son incitation, c'est que le problème dure.

Et l'argent ? Il ne va presque jamais à ceux qui sont censés le recevoir. Il s'évapore en couches de logistique, de salaires d'ONG, d'overhead, de "renforcement des capacités", de conférences à Genève. Vous donnez 100, le bénéficiaire en voit une fraction. Le reste fait vivre la classe professionnelle de la compassion.

Et puis il y a l'aile "intellectuelle" du truc : l'effective altruism. La version QI 145 du virtue signaling. Calculer froidement le bien marginal par dollar, "earn to give", sauver le futur. Le poster boy du mouvement s'appelait Sam Bankman-Fried. Il a détourné des milliards de clients en expliquant que c'était pour le bien de l'humanité. 25 ans de prison. Toute la ramification autour — fondations, think tanks, gourous de la moralité quantifiée — a découvert que l'altruisme optimisé est l'alibi parfait pour la fraude. Quand tu te crois en mission cosmique, voler devient un détail comptable.

Maintenant, le retournement. Devinez la SEULE forme de charité avec des preuves dures, des RCT propres, qui marche vraiment ?

Donner du cash. Brut. Random. À un village. Sans condition, sans plan, sans ONG qui t'explique comment vivre.

Étude Egger et al., Econometrica 2022 : 1 000 $ donnés à 10 500 ménages dans 653 villages au Kenya. Résultat : pour chaque dollar injecté, ~2,5 dollars d'activité économique locale. Quasi zéro inflation. Les gens achètent, les commerçants embauchent, le grain circule, le meunier rouvre plus tard. ~80 % de l'argent reste dans le marché local.

Et c'est là l'ironie totale, presque cruelle : le seul "acte de charité" qui fonctionne fonctionne parce que ce n'est PAS de la charité. C'est juste… du capital qu'on laisse couler dans une économie. Vous n'aidez pas les gens en leur donnant un plan. Vous les aidez en amorçant la pompe et en les laissant être des agents économiques. La charité qui marche, c'est juste du capitalisme déclenché de force.

Donc voilà ma règle. Méfiez-vous de quiconque achète votre estime avec un don public. Le chèque visible n'est pas une preuve de vertu, c'est une transaction : de la sympathie contre de l'argent, payée par les pauvres qui restent pauvres pour que le donateur reste admiré.

La vraie philanthropie ne pose pas pour la photo. Elle construit des produits, des entreprises, des emplois, des marchés. Elle amorce la pompe et s'en va.

Le reste, c'est de la cocaïne pour riches sans créativité.

[Dan Hightower @Danhightower]

Daycare calls me. That's never good.

For them.

Daycare: "your son hurt his elbow and won't move his arm. Can you come take him to a doctor's office?"

Me (ex Special Forces Medic): "A real doctor is on the way to you now. I am 6 mikes out. Alert me of status changes."

I arrive at daycare. I locate the patient. 21 month old male. Scene is not safe. I drag the patient to cover and concealment behind a seesaw, away from the other small terrorists in the AO.

I begin my assessment. Blood sweep negative for massive hemorrhage. Mental status: conscious and verbal but confused (answers "dada" when asked for blood type). One breath every 2 seconds. Bilateral rise and fall of the chest. Strong carotid pulse, strong bilat radial pulse.

Teeth and tongue intact no blood no mucus no dip or foreign objects. Eyes PERRLA, negative JVD/trach deviation, C-spine intact upon palpation.

Heart sounds strong upon auscultation. Percussion negative for hemo-T. Abdominal quads normal upon palpation. Pelvis negative for book sign.

Arms and legs negative for crepitus. However, Patient indicates discomfort in right arm upon palpation and supination/flexion of the elbow.

Nursemaid's elbow.

I begin interventions. Supination/flexion technique complete at 1215. Palpable clunk on successful reduction. I write the time on his chest in Sharpie. I tape a popsicle to his hand and tell the patient to suck but do not bite/chew. I write "1 x popsicle (10g sugar)" on his chest in Sharpie.

I reassess the patient after performing interventions then package the patient for handoff to daycare/higher level of care. I yell at daycare over the Blackhawk in my head: "21 month old male!!! Nursemaids elbow!!! Treated with supination/flexion technique at 1215!!! Patient has 1 x popsicle onboard!!"

Daycare: "sir please leave."

Me: "you should have called my wife."

[Students For Liberty @sfliberty]

In 1960, newly independent African leaders had a choice: capitalism or socialism.

Almost all of them picked socialism.

A Ghanaian economist named George Ayittey spent forty years documenting what happened next.

His findings are in print, and almost nobody outside Africa wants to hear them. 🧵

[marqix ☆ @fwmarqix]

My son finally confessed something over dinner last night that explains a lot about how his career started, and I’m still laughing at the sheer absurdity of it.

When he was 16, he managed to land a summer "shadowing" gig at a tech firm. On his first day, the HR manager assumed he was an 18 year old college freshman and gave him a badge that reflected it.

He was too socially anxious to correct her, so he just rolled with it.

By the end of the summer, the firm was so impressed that they offered to keep him on part, time and even suggested he apply for their exclusive "fast-track" scholarship program for university.

Instead of coming clean and admitting he was actually just a junior in high school, he decided the only way out was to actually *become* the age they thought he was.

He spent the next nine months in an absolute frenzy. He doubled up his course load, took night classes, and tested out of three subjects just so he could graduate high school a full year ahead of schedule.

He was basically living a double life, doing his "senior" year as a 16 year old at night while working a "college-level" gig during the day.

By the time he actually started university, he was technically a year ahead of all his peers, all because he didn't want to have an awkward 30-second conversation with an HR lady in June.

At the time, my wife and I were bragging to everyone about how "driven" and "focused" he was. Turns out, his entire academic success was fueled by the pure, unadulterated fear of being caught in a clerical error.

The things kids will do to avoid a moment of social awkwardness is honestly the greatest untapped resource in the economy.

[Prompter @PromptLLM]

Crazy take from Claude

[Liberal Hivemind @LiberalHivemind]

@DudeWhoInvests Social IQ is the top predictor of successful outcomes. High maths + low social is worse than high social + low maths.

[SA Reserve Bank @SAReserveBank]

President Cyril Ramaphosa will launch the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Museum on Friday, 19 June 2026, at 10:00.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and Governor Lesetja Kganyago will also address the event.

The museum is designed to foster greater understanding about the role of the SARB and its constitutional and legislative responsibilities. It features exhibitions tracing the region’s economic heritage – from early forms of exchange to the central bank’s establishment and its role in democratic South Africa.

Watch the event live on YouTube: https://t.co/kHtdI5EQrU or Facebook: https://t.co/ajn4mdFBTB

#SARBMuseum #CelebratingOurHeritage

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Youtuber Labcoatz perfectly replicated Coca Cola two days ago using organic chemistry analysis and a year of research.

Coke never patented the formula (because it would involve sharing the secrets), so apparently it's perfectly ok to create or even sell this formula.

[Amy Eileen Hamm @preta_6]

In response to the @globeandmail and their “how to properly hate Elon Musk” headline.

How about we instead recognize @elonmusk as one of the greatest examples of capitalism to have existed?

Musk has built important things and stood up for important principles. We generally cannot predict who will enter the annals of history, but not a truthful soul can deny that Musk’s name will never be forgotten.

[Eric Jorgenson 📚 ☀️ @EricJorgenson]

This is why the supporters of @elonmusk work hard to "defend him."

Because it's not about Elon.

He's a symbol of progress.

[Iamemperor @Iamemperor00]

Bank Manager: “Mr. Bello, there’s a problem with your account.”

Mr. Bello: “How bad?”

Bank Manager: “That depends.”

Mr. Bello: “On what?”

Bank Manager: “Whether you’re a criminal mastermind or the luckiest idiot alive.”

Mr. Bello: “I don’t like those options.”

The manager turned his monitor around.

Bank Manager: “Yesterday, someone deposited ₦50 million into your account.”

Mr. Bello: “What?”

Bank Manager: “Exactly.”

Mr. Bello: “I don’t have ₦50 million.”

Bank Manager: “We know.”

Mr. Bello: “Then give it back.”

Bank Manager: “We tried.”

Mr. Bello: “And?”

Bank Manager: “The sender insists it’s yours.”

Mr. Bello blinked.

Mr. Bello: “Why?”

Bank Manager: “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

A woman entered the office carrying a file.

Woman: “I found the sender.”

Bank Manager: “Good.”

Woman: “He says Mr. Bello saved his life.”

Mr. Bello: “I’ve never saved anyone’s life.”

Woman: “That’s what I told him.”

Bank Manager: “Then what happened?”

The woman opened the file.

Woman: “Apparently, six months ago, the sender was standing on a bridge, reconsidering his entire life.”

The room grew quiet.

Woman: “He says a stranger walked up and gave him advice that changed everything.”

Bank Manager: “And he thinks that stranger was Mr. Bello?”

Woman: “Yes.”

All eyes turned to Mr. Bello.

Mr. Bello: “I’ve never given life-changing advice to anyone.”

The woman showed him a photo.

Mr. Bello stared.

Then groaned.

Mr. Bello: “Oh no.”

Bank Manager: “You know him?”

Mr. Bello: “Not really.”

Bank Manager: “Then what happened?”

Mr. Bello sank into his chair.

Mr. Bello: “I was fishing.”

Bank Manager: “Fishing.”

Mr. Bello: “Near the bridge.”

Woman: “And?”

Mr. Bello: “My fishing line got tangled.”

Bank Manager: “What does that have to do with this?”

Mr. Bello: “I yelled at him.”

Woman: “You yelled at a man having an existential crisis?”

Mr. Bello: “I didn’t know that!”

Bank Manager: “What exactly did you say?”

Mr. Bello thought for a moment.

Then winced.

Mr. Bello: “I think I shouted, ‘Stop standing there doing nothing and pull yourself together!’”

Silence.

Woman: “That’s it?”

Mr. Bello: “Then I added, ‘Nobody’s coming to fix your problems for you!’”

The woman looked back at the file.

Woman: “That’s word-for-word what he wrote.”

Bank Manager: “You’re telling me this entire thing happened because you were angry at a fishing line?”

Mr. Bello: “Yes.”

The woman continued reading.

Woman: “After hearing that, he says he went home, started a business he’d been putting off, repaired relationships with his family, and eventually sold the company for millions.”

The manager stared at Mr. Bello.

Bank Manager: “You accidentally became a motivational speaker.”

Mr. Bello: “I was trying to save my bait.”

A week later, the sender finally came to the bank.

He walked straight up to Mr. Bello and shook his hand.

Millionaire: “You changed my life.”

Mr. Bello: “I was yelling at a fish.”

Millionaire: “Still counts.”

Mr. Bello: “No, it doesn’t.”

The millionaire smiled.

Millionaire: “It does to me.”

He refused to take the money back.

Eventually, after a mountain of paperwork and legal checks, the transfer was deemed legitimate.

As the millionaire left, he turned and said:

Millionaire: “By the way, I still remember your exact words.”

Mr. Bello sighed.

Mr. Bello: “Please don’t.”

The millionaire grinned.

Millionaire: “‘Nobody’s coming to fix your problems for you.’”

Then he walked away.

The bank manager looked at Mr. Bello.

Bank Manager: “You know, that’s actually pretty good advice.”

Mr. Bello: “It was directed at a catfish.”

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.

The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.

What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.

Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.

In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Norway have qualified for their first World Cup since 1998, and the first thing they did was ship in their own cheese, fish and 6,000 oranges. A touching show of faith in the American food supply.

Start with the cheese, since they hauled 116 kilograms of it across the Atlantic. Dairy in the United States can come from cows injected with a growth hormone called rBST, which has been banned across Europe for years and does not even have to appear on the label over here. Norwegian cows never go near it, so the players would sooner bring their own.

The fish follows much the same logic. A good deal of American tuna is treated with carbon monoxide, sold to the trade under the lovely name "tasteless smoke," which fixes that bright red colour and keeps it looking fresh long after it has quietly stopped being so. Europe banned the practice in 2003, while America still permits it.

Then the oranges, all 6,000 of them, because the US happily lets growers spray the skins with Citrus Red 2, a dye the World Health Organisation's cancer agency calls a possible carcinogen, all so a slightly green orange can pass for a ripe one on the shelf. Europe will not let it anywhere near food.

So when a side with one shot at a World Cup takes a long look at the local cheese, fish and fruit and flies in a tonne of their own instead, you can understand how they got there.

A ringing endorsement of American food, obviously.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Interesting analysis

[Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele]

The key to saving the environment is not looking backward, it’s moving forward.

I realized this the first time I visited Italy twenty years ago. Everything was clean and green. The rivers sparkled. The lesson for me was obvious: the answer is not underdevelopment. The answer is progress.

When China was poor, the air was so polluted that people could barely see the blue sky. Today, blue skies have returned to their cities. Development does not only create wealth, it also provides the resources needed to restore and protect the environment.

Some environmentalists want us to preserve every aspect of our biodiversity, including the mosquitoes for example, so that researchers can fly in once every ten years from their universities (which build particle accelerators and billion-dollar laboratories with their pocket money), study our ecosystems, and count how many people died from dengue outbreaks.

They want to buy our air through carbon credits. If carbon credits were such a great deal, they would be selling them to us, not the other way around.

Cleaning every river, lake, and water source in El Salvador, and ensuring they remain clean and sparkling, would cost roughly $12 billion. Where is that money supposed to come from without economic development? Carbon credits?

The path forward for our country is the path of Japan and Singapore, not the path of the Congo.

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

Thousands of young Polish Catholics gather to enjoy electronic music.

The lyrics are:

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters”

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Save of the year

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

.@BernieSanders , it is a time to celebrate. @elonmusk has created enormous value for society by building @SpaceX, driving down the cost of rocket launches and creating a global satellite communication network that has brought high speed, low-cost internet and communication access to hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people along with critical advantages for our military and our nation’s defense.

SpaceX and its technologies will cause an acceleration in the growth of wages and wealth creation globally, including in some of the poorest communities in the U.S. and around the world.

Access to low-cost, high speed communications everywhere will allow children around the world to be educated, families to build businesses, and life-saving medical knowledge and care to be available everywhere.

SpaceX will materially bring down the cost of compute, advancing AI and humanity.

Meanwhile, 4,000 SpaceX employees yesterday became millionaires, including hourly wage employees who you claim you are trying to help.

The Elon Musks of the world drive growth, global GDP, and provide access to goods and services at lower cost that would otherwise not exist.

Elon’s nominal trillionaire status is due to his ownership of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, the Boring Company and his other initiatives that have brought new technologies that improve our everyday lives.

Elon is not sitting on a trillion dollar pile of cash, jewelry and gold. He is using his controlling stakes in his companies to advance mankind. Elon’s companies don’t pay dividends. They reinvest all of their capital to accelerate innovation and value creation.

Elon is working 24/7 for all of us. He deserves respect and appreciation, not smears.

Bernie, your socialism would never allow a SpaceX to be built. Socialism has only proven to impoverish mankind and lead to death and destruction.

We need to create the conditions for more SpaceXs to be built, not attack the great entrepreneurs who are helping to advance our country.

[Sajeev 🇿🇦 @EM_Sajeev]

Europe dominates the world’s highest-cost electricity markets. https://t.co/jiIvcNa27J via @visualcap