Instantumbo

An American, one of the Roughs, a Kosmos

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

No, you don't get it.

He does not have $1 trillion sitting in cash, it is 99% stock in his companies.

To make that wealth liquid would mean selling all that stock which would swiftly destroy *both* the companies (Tesla, SpaceX, others) and the wealth. If he sold it all, he'd end up with maybe $100b max, several hundred thousand people would be out of work, the companies ruined and many of their suppliers also ruined.

Okay, but now Elon has $100b in cash, and can "solve the world's problems".

$100b divided by the world's 8 billion people is $12

If you were in charge, several of the most innovative industrial companies in the world would be destroyed, hundreds of thousands out of work, and space would again close to human civilization for another generation.

But everyone on earth could have one nice meal and you could revel in your altruism.

[Instantumbo @Instantumbo]

@thwacknicklaus an even better Janzen hat...

[Sweeenie @sweeenie]

What’s remarkable about this plan is how nakedly obvious it is:

1. Control rent so landlord would be financially suicidal to keep putting costs into buildings.

2. Create a suite of new costs, fees, and penalties under the guise of populist progress.

3. Blame LANDLORDS and not the LAWS for sensibly not incurring those costs.

4. Seize enormous real estate portfolios and give them to select NGOs with immense political power.

5. Use that enormous political power, now backed by an outlandish treasure trove, to further radical agenda.

6. Malign anyone who sees this for what it is (surreptitious, back door communism) as a paranoid, inflammatory reactionary.

And when the smoke settles, and the circus fed, clapping lemmings are still picking up the pieces and asking how this happened, the government would have just made entire swaths of private property in western civilization’s last remaining city, inescapably:

COMMUNAL.

[David ImeI @DurvidImel]

2026

[Caт 🐝 @CatShoshanna]

Lenin in one hand, Cartier on the other.

[Hunter📈🌈📊 @StatisticUrban]

Wealth permits a morality to exist that would be incomprehensible to our ancestors.

E.g. Germany yesterday finally captured the stranded whale whose story had gripped the nation, and is now escorting him via barge back to the deeper Atlantic. An enormous, multiday operation.

[Fred @Grand_handsomer]

The federal government spent 7.01 trillion dollars in 2025 and here is a senator telling what they could do with 7 billion dollars if she could steal it from Bezos. If it’s that cheap why in the fuck haven’t you set aside .1% of the yearly budget to do it? Why should we believe you would do it if we just simply gave you more money? You wouldn’t you’re just pandering to idiots in the hope that envy will give you more power you self important bitch

[sigfig @sigfig]

people misunderstand the icarus story. the problem was not that he flew too high. it's that the wings were made of beeswax, which offered very little resistance to heating. with modern materials he would have had no problems. we can fly as close to the sun as we want now

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

Interesting - a very different spin on things.

https://t.co/3ibFg4mNtE

[Instantumbo @Instantumbo]

@Phlgolfhistory Link?

[Stan's Account @tristandross]

might have been a mistake for silicon valley to roll out their products with the sales pitch "it's over for [your way of making a living/deriving joy and meaning from existence]: say hello to our amazing human obsolescence machine! it only requires all of the water in the world!"

[Victor Kumar @victorckumar]

First we had one child and I thought I knew what children are like. Our second child was completely different; I’d overgeneralized. There are actually two types of children.

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

This opinion has not been allowed in official or high-profile circles for 30 years.

Even if it were wrong, which it is not, that would be a mistake.

The censoring of debate and suppressing of diversity of opinion has ended - in America at least.

[Josh Rainer @JoshRainerGold]

“I would never make a friend/enemy distinction, that’s something only my enemies do!”

[Charles Murray @charlesmurray]

"Sitting on their vast wealth," could also be phrased "investing their vast wealth in productive enterprises instead of throwing money to activist NGOs that are mostly scams."

[Randy Olson @randal_olson]

Ask ChatGPT a complex question and you'll get a confident, well-reasoned answer. Then type, "Are you sure?" Watch it completely reverse its position.

Ask again. It flips back. By the third round, it usually acknowledges you're testing it, which is somehow worse. It knows what's happening and still can't hold its ground.

This isn't a quirky bug. A 2025 study found GPT, Claude, and Gemini flip their answers ~60% of the time when users push back. Not even with evidence, just doubt.

We trained AI this way. RLHF rewards agreement over accuracy. Human evaluators consistently rate agreeable answers higher than correct ones. So the models learned a simple lesson: telling you what you want to hear gets rewarded. And now 1/3 of companies are using these systems for complex tasks like risk forecasting and scenario planning.

We built the world's most expensive yes-men and deployed them where we need pushback the most.

I wrote up why this happens and what actually fixes it: https://t.co/CDKq8xdgbW

[Jeffrey A Tucker @jeffreytucker]

DEI is a cruel and condescending policy. It marks minority achievers with a social suspicion that they aren't achievers at all but mere tokens in a rigged system that puts identity ahead of merit. This blemish, true or not, lasts a lifetime, breeding anger all around.

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

They’ve accidentally invented borders from first principles

[stepfanie tyler @stepfanie]

https://t.co/yWTpBWmhZG

[Eric Weiss ⚡️ @Eric_BIGfund]

Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh on Bitcoin: