Grandin Republic

Start-Up Culture in the Roanoke Valley. And other stuff. (Honestly, mostly other stuff.)

[Grandin Republic @GrandinRepublic]

I do appreciate that the drunk who boozes in the alley behind my house has the decency to hide the empties from his wife in my recycling instead of in my trash

[Del. Wren M. Williams @WrenWilliamsVA]

Imagine going 116 mph and being pulled over by a Va State Trooper while you’re a member of the House of Delegates at 1am after a party, avoiding mandatory jail time, then turning in 500 hours of “community service” for your own political action committee before tweeting “nobody is above accountability.”

[AlfredRex @alfred_rex1]

@HantsPolice One of your officers has been receiving death threats?

I don't think he has, mate.

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

Like honestly "it's going to take us several weeks to tell you who won the election" is failed state shit and should be much more stigmatized.

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

This is actually kinda insane

In 1996, a 14-year-old kid watched Jaws and got obsessed with Quint’s WWII monologue.

He then began researching the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis, interviewed around 150 survivors, and reviewed 800 documents. His research focused on the role of the ship’s captain, Charles B. McVay III, who had been court-martialed after the incident. He came to believe that Captain Charles Butler McVay III, who had been blamed for the tragedy, was innocent.

The 14-year-old, Hunter Scott, presented his findings to the United States Congress at age 14. In 2000, Congress passed a resolution clearing Captain McVay’s name, and the U.S. Navy later formally exonerated him.

[Cowboy Gospeler @CowboyGospeler]

After folks laughed at AOC for not knowing vaquero history, I knew Wikipedia would alter their meaning to fit hers, so I took a screenshot, and they finally did rewrite it. Wiki removed vaquero from 'The origins of the vaquero tradition come from Spain...'

[The Mind Scourge @TheMindScourge]

The castle was a genuine innovation. The Romans didn’t build castles, for example - private fortification was illegal in most of the empire - and the successor states of the west continued this tradition

Castles emerge in the late Carolingian. They are an expression - or arrogation - by private actors of the use of force within society. They represent a decline, in a sense, of state capacity. Royal governments resisted their spread, unsuccessfully.

The rise of the castle was contingent, not inevitable. But you could not have predicted it from what existed before. It was something new

Be careful when making predictions. History is not so limited as your imagination. This is maybe the real gift of the study of the past. You gain an appreciation for the degree to which things can change

It happened before. It can happen again

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A newborn sperm whale can’t swim. It starts sinking the second it’s born. If nobody pushes it to the surface, it drowns in mile-deep water.

On July 8, 2023, a sperm whale named Rounder went into labor off the coast of Dominica. Researchers from Project CETI, a $33 million AI initiative out of MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern that’s trying to decode whale language, happened to be there doing routine fieldwork. They had drones in the air and underwater microphones running. What they captured over the next six hours just got published in two papers, one in Science and one in Scientific Reports.

Eleven whales gathered at the surface before Rounder even started delivering. Her mother, Lady Oracle, was there. So was her daughter Accra. Three generations in the water. But the wild part: half those whales belonged to a completely separate bloodline that normally keeps its distance from Rounder’s family. On a typical day, these two family lines split off to hunt in different areas and rarely cluster together. For the birth, they all converged before labor started. The unrelated family somehow knew it was coming.

The delivery took 34 minutes. Sperm whale calves come out tail-first with their flukes still folded from the womb. They haven’t developed the oil-filled organ in their heads that helps adult whales float, so the moment they’re born, they’re dead weight in the ocean. Every adult whale in the group, related and unrelated, started taking turns pushing the calf up to breathe. They kept this rotation going for three hours. When a pod of pilot whales (known to be aggressive toward sperm whales) and a large group of Fraser’s dolphins showed up during delivery, the adults formed a wall around the newborn until the threat passed.

The underwater audio is where it gets interesting. CETI’s microphones picked up the whales changing their vocal patterns during the birth. The click-based sounds they use to talk to each other shifted at specific moments, and vowel-like structures appeared in the recordings. This builds on what CETI found in 2024 when they ran machine learning on over 8,700 recorded whale calls and discovered sperm whale communication isn’t a basic 21-sound code. It’s a system of about 300 distinct sound combinations, with the whales adjusting rhythm and timing in real time, speeding up and slowing down the way a musician does mid-performance. A 2025 follow-up from UC Berkeley found these clicks also contain vowel patterns, something scientists had assumed only humans could produce.

Sperm whales carry the largest brain of any animal on the planet. About 9 kg. Roughly six times heavier than yours. The evolutionary analysis in the new Science paper suggests this kind of cooperative birthing goes back over 36 million years, to the common ancestor of all toothed whales. The calf was spotted a year later, swimming with its family.

[Tom Ruby @bgcts]

This morning @scratchyjohnson tweeted an important factoid. Squanto, the Indian who spoke English and helped the pilgrims survive, was sold by John Smith to a Spaniards and the deed exists in the city we're in for Excursion.

Rather than rolling our eyes, Alan, Gavin & I went to the state archives in Málaga to see if we can find said recorded deed of 20 Indians sold by John Smith to Juan Bautista Reales.

We get to the Archives (see Alan's picture below), and a small genial white lab coat wearing gentleman who speaks no English says this is impossible to find. His new boss, the head archivist, Carmen, comes in and says it certainly exists but may be difficult to find. If you only had the year. We tell her it was 1614. She pulls up a list of the books from 29 notaries whose work they have from 1614. She asks who the notary was. We have no idea. They say they can't go through 29 archives to look for it. Also it's all in old Spanish which nobody speaks and it'll be hard to locate even if they know the Notary.

So Alan and Gavin get to work. Gavin finds an article in the internet archive that seems to have a partial picture of the document. Carmen and the other archivist decipher the name after 15 min. They find that name in their cross reference. Carmen goes to the vault to look while the lab coat gentleman asks for my life history, driver's licence number and a lien on my grandchildren. Totally worth it.

Carmen comes back to say she found the volume. It is tremendously delicate. Opening it may break some pages. Does it have to be today because if so the answer will be no. We ask her if this is interesting to them. Both very seriously nod their heads. We tell them this is very important to the United States and many of our friends. Carmen tells us she will find it but that it takes time. White linen gloves and patience. We tell her to take her time. She says she will take a picture and email it to me.

So here's why all this is important: after Squanto was sold by an Englishman to a Spaniard names Reales, said Spaniard brought Squanto and 19 other "inios" to Málaga. He recorded the deed in the state archives. Then a Franciscan priest ransomed Squanto. Squanto became Catholic. Was baptized and confirmed in Málaga. He then made his way to England where he worked and learned English. He paid his passage back across the ocean and found his Wampanoag tribesmen. Then when the Pilgrims landed they found a Catholic English-speaking native who helped them survive their first winter.

It is entirely possible that but for a Franciscan priest who ransomed Squanto, the Pilgrims may not have survived their first winter in New England. That's history. American history. And the record of it is in Málaga. In a book. One of 29 books kept by notaries in Málaga in 1614. That are still searchable.

This image, when it comes, belongs in the US National Archive.

This is Cultural Debris.

https://t.co/THgVYIAgcK

cc: @alancornett @gwbled @Gonnassaurius_ @wrathofgnon

[Preston Byrne @prestonjbyrne]

The UK's censorship agency, Ofcom, issued 4chan with a giant fine today.

We responded to Ofcom with a giant hamster today.

[I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 @ImMeme0]

Welcome to a taxpayer-funded Section 8 apartment in LA.

This guy just got his 8th violation notice. He’s trashed the place and is throwing drug-fueled parties with his buddies.

If you know anyone who is still confused about why people are against government handouts, show them this video.

[Nick Minock @NickMinock]

🚨🚨NEW: I just received emails in a FOIA request showing the Fairfax County Police Department WARNED Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s office in November 2025 about Abdul Jalloh, who is now charged with murdering Stephanie Minter at a bus stop last week.

DETAILS ⬇️

[Grandin Republic @GrandinRepublic]

If the people are not your enemies, as you say, then why do you need to disarm them?

[Del. Dan Helmer @DelDanHelmer]

It's been too long. Glad to move the assault weapons ban forward.

[Ian T. Lovejoy @IanTLovejoy]

Can you feel the affordability?

[A Guy on X Striving to be the VA Change Agent @VaChangeAgent]

🚨40 bills in Richmond That Will Cost Your Family $4,000-$6,000/year. I Analyzed the 2026 Virginia Legislative Session and Found a Pattern

This is exactly why I keep hammering on 2027. What’s happening right now isn’t random. It’s coordinated. Richmond sets the strategy — and Democrat-controlled localities carry it out. Politics starts locally, but the leverage starts at the state level. If you don’t watch both, you lose at both.

Any GOP committee — and the RPV — that isn’t closely tracking the counties, boards, and councils, they represent is asleep at the wheel. This isn’t optional. It’s the job, and oh yeah, share discoveries in email, post on X. Make it about awareness and not grifting. Play your cards right and the donations will follow.

Ignore the ground game, and 2027 is already decided.

👉I analyzed the 2026 Virginia legislative session and found a pattern:

➡️The trick: State Democrats "authorize" localities to raise taxes, then blame your Board of Supervisors when the bill comes due
➡️The damage: Property tax hikes, new sales taxes, forced density in your neighborhood, unfunded mandates
➡️The total: $4,100-$6,200/year for a Loudoun/Fairfax family with a $600K home
➡️The receipts: All 40 bills, who sponsored them, what they cost you, and who benefits

This is the playbook: Richmond takes credit, your county takes the blame, YOU pay the bill.

📄 Full spreadsheet includes: Bill Number, Title, Sponsor Party, District, Plain English Translation, Your Wallet Impact, Who Benefits, The Pattern, and Local Accountability - https://t.co/Z1mCmQCtf2

[Ejaaz @cryptopunk7213]

so just to recap this week (so far)

- musk industries is real (spacex, tesla, xai merger)

- clawdbot explosion leading to a bankrun on mac minis but then anthropic released their own version

- tesla dropped the bomb they’re halting production on model s and x to scale 1M optimus humanoid robots this year instead

- china dropped the mother of all open source models kimi k2.5 that turn video into production-ready apps but then google dropped a gemini update ON THE SAME DAY that does the same thing gg

- google said fuck it and also launched the worlds greatest world model genie and switched on gemini for 3.8B chrome browser users AND released alpha genome model that one-shots 1M dna base pairs for 3000 researchers across 160 countries AND teased new veo model

- microsoft crushed earnings, launched a new ai chip but stock still tanked 10% because they *only* grew rev 39%

- anthropic round 2X oversubbed raised to 20B 🏌️

- openai raising another $100B, 750B val 🏌️

- intel leaked they’re gonna help produce nvidias next gen feynman gpus - hello americas tsmc

- a robot (built by figure) washed the dishes with zero human interaction

- apple acquired stealth startup for $2B that can lip read - integrating their tech for new ai consumer airpods with cameras and mics

- demis confirms google glass 2.0 coming this summer

fckin hell

[Grandin Republic @GrandinRepublic]

Incorrect. She is not going to veto these bills; suggestions to the contrary are cope. She has two years to tack back to the center. She was just sworn in two weeks ago, her political capital is as high as it will ever be, and she is going to deliver for her base.

[Nick Freitas @NickJFreitas]

Spanberger is being groomed for a presidential run.

“But what about all the crazy bills?”

Don Scott is going to use some of these crazy bills to pressure industry to start donating, and if they do, the bill will die or get amended to include carve outs for the good little boys and girls who cooperate.

Abigail will be permitted, and I do mean permitted, by Don and Louise Locus to veto some bills in order to strengthen her “moderate” bonafides, but none of those vetos better prevent Louise from making money on pot or gambling.

[Tim Anderson @AssocAnderson]

What’s happening in Richmond right now should make every Virginian angry.

Buried in the budget process are amendments to triple the pay of members of the General Assembly — raising salaries from about $17,000 to $45,000–$55,000 per year.

Let me be clear:
When I served in the General Assembly, I donated 100% of my legislative salary to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Nobody worth serving alongside is there for a payday.

But let’s also be honest about the numbers they don’t advertise.

While the base salary is about $17,000, legislators also receive:
•$1,000 per month in office expense money — often pocketed, not audited
•A Cadillac state health insurance plan
•Retirement credit and other state benefits

When I calculated the real value of compensation and benefits, it came out to roughly $70,000 per year, even before any proposed raise.

So don’t buy the sob story.

This isn’t about “fair pay.”
It’s about millions of dollars taken out of Virginians’ pockets to line politicians’ pockets — at a time when families are struggling, taxes are high, and services are strained.

Tripling legislative pay is disgusting.
The public didn’t ask for it.
The public doesn’t need it.
And the public should revolt against it at the ballot box.

Sunlight matters.
Accountability matters.
And this deserves outrage.

[Tim Anderson @AssocAnderson]

A Tazewell County Circuit Court blocked Virginia’s proposed redistricting constitutional amendment, declaring the General Assembly’s actions void ab initio and issuing a permanent injunction.

Why the court stepped in:
• The General Assembly violated its own Special Session rules to add the amendment
• The amendment passed after the 2025 election had already begun (early voting), so there was no “ensuing general election” as required by the Constitution
• Va. Code § 30-13 notice requirements were not followed, making any 2026 vote ineffective

Important limitation:
This is a circuit court order, so it is formally binding only in Tazewell County — not statewide yet. But it squarely declares the process unconstitutional, forces an appeal, and seriously clouds the amendment’s path unless reversed or stayed.

[Andy Bitter @AndyBitterVT]

The #Hokies' 2026 schedule:

[Grandin Republic @GrandinRepublic]

@KILLTOPARTY Cloth off? Milk truck just arrive