Cuttlefish

[RK Turniphead @cosmic_nonsense]

@pmarca Look like the EU finally lead in something

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Automatic citizenship at birth should mean something. My amendment ensures it applies to the children of citizens and legal residents, not to those who broke our laws to get here.

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸

[Matt Devitt @MattDevittWX]

One of the most incredible storm damage pictures I’ve ever seen happened this morning in South Dakota. A 131 mph wind gust in the city of Highmore split the roof of the Catholic Church perfectly illuminating the crucifix. This is not AI, it’s been confirmed real by locals. Truly amazing. Credit: Joseph Mat @stormhour

[Cuttlefish @HeldKristina]

@w_terrence I need to buy those pancakes 🥞!!!

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

I just left the ARC conference, where so many speakers lamented the decline of the West and attributed it to spiritual causes. I agree the West has a spiritual malady. It's called ingratitude. It's feeling entitled to the miracle all around us and thus miserable and empty.

"Is this all there is?" he texts from a lie-flat seat in the front on a 787 taking him across the world in a few hours. The message gets there fast because the plane is in near-constant contact with satellites that provide high-speed Internet literally anywhere and that you can't even outrun at 0.90 Mach.

We complain about spiritual decline while absolutely nothing prevents us from pursuing whatever spiritual path we want, or inviting people to come participate in one with us. There are zero impediments except our own willingness to see that we're in a living miracle and our own ingratitude.

Not one of the overwhelming majority of us will ever face actual food insecurity. We've never wondered if we'll need to boil our shoes to feed our children. We blame a world that gives us everything instead of realizing we're so entitled we won't even look for depth. We don't even have to get off the couch to find it, though maybe we should. It's in our phones if we'd just look.

I agree that there are elements of decline in the West, and that perhaps there are spiritual causes, but I think those start with each of us being unwilling to accept and be grateful for our inheritance and our incredible bounty.

I disagree that with the diagnosis, though, ultimately. We're doing amazing things people refuse to recognize, and we've been attacked by Western Marxist darkness until we've learned only to be critical about everything we have. We're not declining. We're being poisoned, and in our cushy ingratitude, we can refuse the tainted cup.

[Ayaan Hirsi Ali @Ayaan]

Wow! 👏👏👏

[Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs]

You will never meet a person who’s more anti-socialism/communism than someone who escaped it.

Every person who’s pro socialism/communism has yet to experience it.

[Raymond Ibrahim @RaymondIbrahim5]

JD Hall appeared on Tucker Carlson saying that Muslims were "very kind" to Christians, didn't "tax churches," and even "took care of our holy sites."

In this brief video, I debunk these claims with the actual historical record:

[Cuttlefish @HeldKristina]

@VigilantFox Not if you have preexisting conditions. Crowd health does not insure you. You have to be cancer free for at least 5 years.

[Megan Basham @megbasham]

No one had to fund me to know I don’t want this for my daughters. And I don’t want rape gangs for them either.

[Mila Joy @Milajoy]

This MAJOR problem is happening in ALL 50 states.

There's only 4 million adults in the state of Wisconsin, but 7.13 million are on the voter rolls.

And people wonder why the SAVE America Act is being pushed.

And why Democrats don't want it.,

[Cuttlefish @HeldKristina]

@robbystarbuck @TuckerCarlson Good read for both of them: The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini ćuprija) by Nobel Prize-winning author Ivo Andrić.

[Allie Beth Stuckey @conservmillen]

How sweet of them! Was this before or after they started enslaving, raping and slaughtering the Christians?

[CONSTITUTION X 🇺🇸 @ConstitustionX]

🚨 DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN HIJACKED! 🚨
Senator John Fetterman just dropped a nuclear truth bomb on his own party:
“The Democratic Party is DEAD. It’s been completely hijacked by pro-Hamas, anti-Israel radicals who cheer for October 7th, push antisemitism, want to ABOLISH ICE, DEFUND the police, and throw open the borders!”
This isn’t the party of old. It’s now run by socialists and extremists winning primaries while real Americans watch in horror.
Fetterman — one of the LAST pro-Israel Democrats left — is sounding the alarm.
Trump already crippled Iran’s nuclear nightmare and terror machine. Now we MUST keep winning to save this country from the radical takeover.
The hijacking is REAL. The betrayal is complete.
Are you awake yet, America? 🇺🇸
#DemocratsHijacked #FettermanSpeaksTruth #Trump2028

[Jillian Michaels @JillianMichaels]

THEY DO NOT WANT YOU TO SEE THIS. 🛑👇

This clip completely exposes the terrifying reality behind the lies we've been fed. Former CIA covert operations officer Mike Baker pulls back the curtain on the regime's darkest secrets, revealing what a 60% enriched uranium threshold actually means for the world.

Most people are completely blind to the truth about who we are actually negotiating with. Watch this clip right now—because once you see the reality of this regime, you will never look at the news the same way again.

Watch the full episode on my YT channel! Link is in the comments ⬇️

[Anthony Bradley @drantbradley]

This is one of the best illustrations of what socialism (in any form) does to the poor. It promises a ladder of programs & benefits but can’t lift people out of poverty. No country on earth has made the poor better off under socialist governments.

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

This is the UN.
Look at the face of the UN special rapporteur who is meant to stand up for women but has refused, again and again, to speak up for Israeli women.
Look at her face when a former hostage challenges her.

[Cuttlefish @HeldKristina]

@SLOTUS I still have a great jacket I bought years ago for $4. Good job!

[The Eagle flies free @Fa21519230]

🚨🚨 Jordan Peterson revela una verdad que la mayoría de las familias modernas no quieren oír:
"La guardería para menores de tres años, especialmente durante el primer año, no es recomendable... No existe ningún tipo de cuidado que pueda reemplazar el cuidado de una madre en esos primeros años"...
"Es bastante sorprendente que hayamos creado un mundo donde quedarse en casa con niños pequeños se ha convertido en un lujo para la mayoría de las familias, como si hubiera sido intencional"...
Décadas de investigación (que aún se mantienen prácticamente sin cambios) demuestran que el período crítico de apego durante los primeros tres años de vida se ve favorecido de manera excepcional por un cuidado materno constante y receptivo. Las interrupciones en este período se correlacionan con aumentos medibles en la reactividad al estrés, problemas de comportamiento y dificultades emocionales posteriores...