THE HARD TRUTH, the hard reality;
“When God wants to make a man powerful, He doesn't crown him first; He breaks him. First, He strips away your comfort, your pride, your plans, until all that's left is what's real. That isn't punishment, that's training.”
Please be careful not to interpret this as God is going to break you to make you great for your own glory and fame.
Nigerian Resident Doctors are some of the most resilient souls you can find anywhere.
They’re Patriotic, decent family men and women.
The roughness of medical school, house job, NYSC and residency training means you will literally be writing exams for 25 to 30 years from Primary School till the end of your training to become a consultant. In addition, the larger Nigerian economic realities lay on your bed with you every step of the way.
The resident Doctor will still be on call to save lives with exhaustion, improvisation, grit, fortitude, fear of failure, work place and residency related bullying, his consultant’s ego, his patient’s mistrust, under equipped hospitals with no power, an ungrateful Government, and YES, PATRIOTISM.
His parents spend fortunes to put him/her through school. The Government spends fortunes to provide facilities for training. Naturally, that resident doctor wants to graduate and serve his country while also taking care of his parents.
Every Resident Doctor wants to achieve this by investing his youth, belief and loyalty into the Nigerian system. The only glue that keeps the resident Doctor to this dream is the glue made from PATRIOTISM.
Unfortunately, Patriotism doesn’t pay school fees or put food on the table. It doesn’t pay rent or pay examination fees. At least not in Nigeria. And it certainly won’t take care of your parents or children in their times of need.
There is no better analogy to God’s plan of preparing men and women for tasks beyond themselves like the story of the resident doctor in Nigeria.
Even when you strike, protest, give ultimatums, cry out, shout at the top of your lungs and even die, nothing is heard, nothing is done. You get paid peanuts and asked to resume back to work.
And when a resident Doctor eventually makes the ultimate sacrifice, Nigeria is certain it will produce more doctors to replace those who have now become only statistics and relegated to the annals of arguments.
After all, Nigeria Produces tons of Doctors and bleeds them unpatriotically to other countries.
Let us all remember, dear distinguished resident doctors, some of us will not be here to lead forever. Some other of us will have to step up to lead the rest of us and lead us like Lions.
“Doctors are lions, no sheep can lead them. To lead Doctors, you must be a lion. We are all lions.”
For those who choose to remain in Nigeria, let us continue to rally around the 19-Point demand of NARD.
Those who choose to JAPA, kindly do us the favor of genuinely consulting our leaders who also JAPA for medical tourism just to see your UNPATRIOTIC consulting faces abroad.
As for me, I remain committed to the struggle as directed by the National Executive Council of NARD
As Always,
P-MUS of NARD
16:10:2025
@officialABAT@officialSKSM@SenGodswill@nationalnma@mdcan_ng@Fmohnigeria@muhammadpate@SalakoIziaq@NGRPresident@NGRSenate@daily_trust@MobilePunch@GuardianNigeria@ARISEtv@channelstv@seunokin
Wrote both USMLE Steps as a student. Completed elective rotations as a student. Attended conferences as a student. Applied as a student. Interviewed as a student. Matched as a freshly minted doctor!
I’m going to be a radiologist!
All glory to God🙏🏼
#Match2025#UnilagNigeria
A true privilege to host some of our biggest music icons @wizkidayo@burnaboy at my Lagos home. Always inspiring to share ideas and celebrate the global movement that is Afrobeats 🎼 …F.Ote💲
THE NETWORK SCHOOL
We got an island.
That’s right. Through the power of Bitcoin, we now have a beautiful island near Singapore where we’re building the Network School. We’re starting with a 90-day popup that runs from Sep 23 to Dec 23, right after the Network State Conference. Rent is only $1000/month with roommates or $2000/month solo. And we have plenty of day passes for visitors.
So, go apply online at ns dot com! Then read more below.
THE DARK TALENT
As motivation, I’ve always wanted to expand equality of opportunity around the world. Because my father was born in a desperately poor country, but with the right opportunity he was able to make something of himself. Like dark matter, he was dark talent. And for more than a decade I’ve been thinking about how to give others who are similarly situated the chance to make something of themselves. That is: I’ve been thinking about how to empower the dark talent of the world.
US universities used to fill this role, even imperfectly, and I loved Stanford when I taught there years ago. But the data shows they’ve declined in recent days. And they’re just not affordable or accessible to most of the world. So, it’s time for a new approach. And thanks to Saraswati and Satoshi, I have the resources to endow a new Internet-first institution: the Network School.
The purpose of the Network School is to articulate a vision of peace, trade, internationalism, and technology…even as the rest of the world talks about war, trade war, nationalism, and statism. To revitalize democracy for the internet era, with digital polities and verifiable votes. To train the next generation to be not just leaders of companies, but inspirations for their communities. And to pursue truth, health, and wealth by leveling up our attendees personally, physically, and professionally.
Let me now describe in more detail how the Network School works, who it’s for, and how to apply.
HOW THE NETWORK SCHOOL WORKS
The Network School is for people of all ages, not just the youth. And it’s meant to be lifelong rather than one-off, with both a structured and and an unstructured component. The structured part is about continuous daily self-improvement: learning skills, burning calories, and earning currency. Meanwhile, the unstructured part is about having fun and hanging out with people of similar values.
For short: learn, burn, earn, and fun.
Learn
The first part of the Network School is about learning technologies and humanities.
As motivation, the existing model of US undergraduate education is broken. You pay $100k+ for a four year degree, and then budget nothing for maintenance over the course of your life. It’s like paying $100k+ for a new car and budgeting nothing for maintenance.
By contrast, the Network School is about continuous education. It’s for remote workers, engineers, creators and digital nomads who want to integrate learning into their lives, rather than stopping everything to be a full-time student.
Here’s how that works. We set up mini-classrooms where you can drop in to see the problem of the day.5 You solve that problem and a proctor awards you a cryptocredential, a free non-transferable NFT sent to your crypto wallet that establishes “proof-of-learn.” Often your solution will involve putting code on GitHub/Replit (to show you understand a concept), or posting content to your social media profile (to show you understand a new AI tool). And over time, these cryptocredentials actually build up a cryptoresume proving what you know.
Our initial material focuses on founding tech communities, as distinct from tech companies. As such it touches on everything from crypto, AI, and social media to history, politics, and filmmaking. It should be useful even if you’re just growing a traditional company or building a following. Over time, of course, every branch of the sciences and humanities becomes relevant when building a community. So if this initial experiment works, we can expand branch-by-branch to build a new kind of university.
But we’re intentionally starting with something simple. Our learning is about continuous education, about solving the problem-of-the-day.
Burn
The second part of the Network School is about burning calories.
Longevity is important, but 20th century communities just aren’t physically set up to maximize physical fitness. Quite the contrary: the default mode of Western society is sedentary and sugary. Those who want to escape this need to roll their own nutrition and workout program, which takes time, money, and energy.
We’re changing that. I’ve teamed up with my friend @bryan_johnson to set up Blueprint-inspired food and fitness for the entire Network School community. Bryan will be on campus to set up the program, and then his designates will maintain it on a daily basis. Like many of you, I’ve been both fit and fat at various times, so this is a product I want to use myself.
Every member of the Network School gets a daily workout slot with a semi-personal trainer, much like a group fitness class. You run and lift in the morning at your chosen time, getting a proof-of-workout from your trainer. Your group holds you accountable for showing up. Then you get a box with your Blueprint-optimized healthy meals and head to work. The whole point is to provide willpower-as-a-service, where the community6 provides the discipline.
We’re starting with the basics of running, lifting, eating, and sleeping properly. The initial goal is to hit the limits of your genetics. But if all goes well, the biotech founders that come to the Network School will eventually help us all surpass our genetic limits, to live much longer than we otherwise would.
But again, we’re starting small! And so the “burning calories” part is about lifelong health and the workout-of-the-day.
Earn
The third part of the Network School is about earning currency.
We’ll have crypto prizes of the day for open source projects, AI content creation, and microtasks. There will be $1000 bounties every day for the duration of the program, similar to the various prizes I’ve posted on Twitter and Farcaster. And community members will post their own prizes.
Next, in keeping with the overall theme of self-improvement, we’ll have office hours to help with your job, your career, your visa status, and your funding. We’re much more invested in you than a typical college career center because our interests are aligned: the more you earn, and the stronger you are financially, the more you’ll eventually have to reinvest in the community.
Finally, we’ll have visitor hours with famous visiting technologists. As my friend Sriram noticed, when investors come through Singapore I typically do a podcast with them. Many will also visit the Network School to meet attendees, invest in them, or hire them. Others will give remote talks. And you can see the quality of visitors from the speakers in our conference and podcast.
So, earning is about constant career development and the prize-of-the-day.
Fun
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, of course. So the fourth part of the Network School is about fun.
This is the unstructured component. It’s most of what you’re here for. It’s just about assembling great people in one place: positive-sum people who believe in technological progress, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s your internet friends, coming from URL to IRL. Stanford introduced the concept of residential education, but this takes it to the next level.
In fact, our initial location is very similar to Stanford. It’s beautiful and sunny, and less than an hour from a major city (Singapore) with an international airport (Changi). That means you can be heads down during the week, head into the city on the weekends for fun, and get to just about anywhere in Asia within the same day. This is convenient for the >50% of the world that lives within the Valeriepieris circle.
We’ll do some group outings too, but most of the fun will be up to you.
WHO THE NETWORK SCHOOL IS FOR
Who is the Network School for? There are four lenses on this: demographical, ideological, professional, and personal.
Demographically
As mentioned, our focus is the dark talent. The more respect you have for legacy institutions, and the more respect they have for you, the less suitable you’ll be as an applicant.
So: the Network School is for Indian engineers and African founders, for makers from the Midwest and the Middle East, for Chinese liberals and Latin American libertarians, for Southeast Asia’s rising technologists and Europe’s remaining capitalists.
It’s for everyone who doesn’t feel part of the establishment. But it’s definitely not only for tech, because a community does not run on tech alone.
Ideologically
Ideologically, the Network School is for people who admire Western values, but who also recognize that Asia is in ascendance, and that the next world order is more properly centered around the Internet — around neutral code — than around either declining Western institutions or a rising Chinese state.
For example, the Network School is for those who understand that Bitcoin succeeds the Federal Reserve, that encryption is the only true protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that AI can deliver better opinions than any Delaware magistrate, and that democracy can be rejuvenated with cryptography. It is for those who believe in technology, harmony, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s for those who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco. And for those who want to found, fund, and find not just new companies and currencies — but new cities and new communities.
Professionally
Our ideal applicant is capable of remote work, or has enough savings to support themselves while at the Network School. For our initial cohort, we’re seeking three major groups of people in particular:
- Writers, artists, influencers, and filmmakers
- Trainers, athletes, coaches, and clinicians
- Founders, engineers, designers, and investors
These are, roughly, the demographics focused on learning, burning, and earning respectively. Of course, if you fall outside those categories but still think you have something to contribute, you should still apply to the Network School.
Personally
I should mention that the Network School is a “product” that I built for the young version of myself — the aspiring young engineer. This is the community I want to live in: a technocapitalist college town, a Stanford 2.0 that’s globally affordable and genuinely meritocratic.
So, I’ll be on campus full time. Bryan Johnson and I are supervising the setup of everything from bench press to French press. And we’ll eventually be recruiting faculty in the form of content creators, fitness influencers, and angel investors for the learn, burn, and earn portions of our program respectively. But all that in due time.
APPLYING TO THE NETWORK SCHOOL
Ok, so how do you apply to the Network School?
Just go to ns dot com and click "apply." We’ve set up a simple Luma page where you can apply in a few minutes. Then, if you pass review, we’ll send a second application where you pay rent. As mentioned, our monthly rent is $1000 (with roommates) and $2000 (solo). We also have daily and weekly rates too, but short-term visitors still need to apply.
The rent gets you an air-conditioned room on a beautiful island, with internet, gym, and access to all courses and community services. You’ll still need to handle your flights and pay for your food, but we think the overall package is extremely affordable. And so the Network School could be an amazing option for individuals or small teams looking to save money, get fit, and level up while living in paradise.
I’m looking forward to seeing you there! Just fill out the application at ns dot com, also linked in the tweet below.
The Dangote Refinery is a testament to Nigeria's potential. It is the largest single investment by an individual in the nation's history. Its scale and promise for economic revitalization are unmatched. It is supposed to signal to the world that Nigeria is open for business and investors are welcome.
Supporting the refinery is a must for the nation's economic future. It will send a powerful message to both local and foreign investors that Nigeria is a viable destination for their money. The refinery's success can help the Naira and potentially address inflation.
However, recent utterances and actions by the regulator and others, favoring foreign products over local ones, lying about the comparative quality between the imported products, and the Dangote refinery products are counterproductive. Such demarketing undermines the federal government's efforts to instill confidence in the investment climate, threatening lasting repercussions that could deter future investments and hinder President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's efforts to attract capital.
The consequences are already visible, with the Dangote Group withdrawing its interest in investing in steel. How many more potential investors will move their dollars elsewhere instead of bringing them to Nigeria at a time we desperately need these dollars? Who will now dare to venture into steel the way Dangote would have? Will they move their money from Dubai and London to invest in steel? Or are we waiting for Ajaokuta to start working? Who looses is all this mess?
It's time to reevaluate our approach to economic development. We must prioritize our national interests. We must support our local businesses and businessmen and women. No country will allow its biggest businesses to fail.
I call on the government to ensure the steady supply of local crude to the Dangote refinery and to intervene in negotiations with the IOC's. I also call on the government to give all the support it can to BUA and any others that are setting up their own refineries, including modular refineries. Finally, I call on the government to ensure that the NNPC refineries with their 450,000 barrels combined capacity work!
The success of the Dangote Refinery is not just about one company; it's about the future of our economy and the prosperity of our nation. Let's rally behind this project and send a clear message to the world: Nigeria is ready for business!