Paul

[Facts @lifefacts108]

Jorge Martín’s Turn 5 shoulder-drag is insane. Hanging his body off his bike, he shifts the center of mass low & inward. This extreme posture fights a crushing ~2g lateral force, keeping the tires' tiny contact patches glued at an impossible 60° lean angle!

📹 motothusiast_

[Rip Wheeler @WheelerRipWA]

It is with a very heavy heart that we updated the NIPPON memory board as the last of our deceased friends have been recovered. This is a tremendous loss for our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, community, and the entire nation.

The volunteers at Cowlitz Regional News offers each and every person affected by that fateful day our sincere condolences.

May God be with you, and may God bless us all.

[Jim Walsh @JimWalshLD19]

Bob:
November 2028 is 29 months away.
In the meantime, I challenge you to a series of monthly debates, each focused on a single public policy topic relevant to Washington state.
One hour. Once a month, through November 2028. No notes. No staff. A different Washington-based journalist can moderate each debate. The journalist picks the single topic. No advanced notice to either of us.
Not just a one-and-run event. A steady, regular debate series about fixing what's broken in our state.
Let's give the people of Washington the chance to hear how two very different people approach issues that affect their lives.
Do you have the guts to accept?

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

Every ‘equal society’ in history ended the same way: with force.

You cannot redistribute productivity without coercion.

That’s the part radical socialism never admits.

The more 'equality' you want, the more authoritarian it must become to enforce it.

[MERICA MEMED @Mericamemed]

We're now just tamogotich for AI.

[Mooses Felix 🇺🇸 @MoosesFelix]

🤠well I would consider Texas 'Southern' for the most part. Maybe West Texas could be 'Southwestern'

Its a big state ya know

Fella makes a lot of sense. In fact nails it. Can any of my Texas pals confirm that ☺️

[Men of Purpose @Men_Of_Purpose]

He literally explained why you must keep going.

[Paul @HomeExpertsNW]

@s_mohinii send tx

[Rick Palacios Jr. @RickPalaciosJr]

In 1Q26, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) accounted for ~30% of mortgage volume at Century Communities (the 9th-largest builder in the US), up a bit from 25% in 4Q25 and up massively from less than 5% in 1Q25. $CCS

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

Jack Dorsey: "Can I get it (AI) to do something that I didn't think it was capable of.

And every single day it worked. Every single day I was surprised.

Shift your company to be ahead of it. absolutely critical right now."

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Food for thought.

Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride

For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface.

The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities.

Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed.

In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines.

In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive.

A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent.

By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right.

In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

[F. A. Hayek Quotes @FAHayekSays]

Hayek was asked to leave “a statement for the future generations.” His response is brilliant:

“Modern civilization which enables us to maintain 4 billion people was made possible by the institution of private property. It is only thanks to this institution that we achieved an extensive order far exceeding anybody’s knowledge.”

“If you destroy that moral basis, which consists in the recognition of private property, we will destroy the sources which nourish present-day mankind, and create a catastrophe of starvation beyond anything mankind has yet experienced.”

[Travis Couture @TravisSCouture]

Absolutely! Let’s go!!!! 🔥🔥🔥

[Dale Whitaker @dalewhitakerwa]

> Pass millionaires tax
> 3 State Supreme Court Justices Resign
> Fergie Packs the Court with Justices who will say millionaires tax isn't an income tax
> Tax goes in to effect
> People want to leave
> Have to pay tens of thousands in unnecessary renovation costs just to sell because of government "home energy score" requirements
> No one can afford to leave
> Lower the tax threshold
> Millionaires tax becomes everyones tax
> Makes it even harder to leave
> Democrats continue to tax you in to poverty
> You become a slave to marxism

[Nat Eliason @nateliason]

Make $1m by graduation.

Or get 100% of your tuition refunded.

That's the promise of the new high school for entrepreneurs Cameron and I are launching this fall through @AlphaSchoolATX.

We need 2-3 coaches to help make it happen.

DM us or apply!

[Rip Wheeler @WheelerRipWA]

@scott4wa

[Marc Barros @marcbarros]

After 40 years (born and raised) I left WA. Moment is leaving this month as well.

I'm not even a millionaire affected by this tax. But when you add up all the costs to run a business in WA we can't afford it. You can build a remote team and re-open in Wyoming, removing all of these costs.

WA is incredibly beautiful (especially the summers) and the people are great. Unfortunately the numbers don't lie and unless you run a super high margin software business, WA is just too expensive.

Personally...you'd never pick WA to start a company.
- Gas taxes (now some of the highest in the state)
- Sales tax (up to 10.5% in Seattle)
- Property tax (1% of your home value with a path they can take this to 3%. In total $ this tax they have increased nearly 100% over the last decade)
- Capital gains tax (new in the last three years went form 0 -> 9%. it targets business owners and not real-estate).
- Estate tax (they recently changed it to a progressive system that is up to 35% just to the state of WA)
- Housing prices are some of the highest in the country.
- Food costs are unreal, just visit a Seattle restaurant or grocery store.

Business...
- Very little capital. Great angels but almost no VC or larger funding sources.
- Super high salaries for tech talent (this has changed but amazon, microsoft, etc paid very high rates for a very long time).
- B&O Tax: paid as a % of your sales.
- Sales & Use Tax (this is the real killer)

What pushed us out was the recent change to Sales & Use Tax. It used to be you paid this tax on physical things you bought for your business, similar to sales tax. Now you pay it on 100% of the items you buy, think shopify, aws, google, etc. Even if your team is remote you pay 10% sales tax on 100% of these purchases no matter where peole are located.

But the real kicker, was they expanced this law to be a tax that applies to all digital advertising. Run FB ads in Germany? You pay WA state a 10% tax. Overnight that is a+$200K a year tax that did not exist last year. Again not even based in where your ads run or where your team is. Incorporated in WA state? You will pay this tax.

What makes this sad is all political diversity disappeared years ago. It's that debate that keeps government from taking everything. One political team has run the state for +30 years and Seattle for more than 50 years. This train has been coming for years and is now accelerating. WA government can never have enough $.

I hope there is a new generation of company builders who see this is an opportunity and can run into the burning building.

[Damian Player @damianplayer]

here’s an insanely valuable clip.

Jensen Huang on the smartest person he’s ever met and who he thinks will run the next decade:

[Paul @HomeExpertsNW]

Worth reading ..

[Isaiah L. Carter 🇺🇸 @IsaiahLCarter]

MUST-READ.

Washington State is in a LOT of trouble.