Paul Vardy

Expect more from Life, not less...

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@KimMortensen7 @downdetector Same boat. Doubtful. Probably in terms and conditions.

[Alice VL @RiseAgainstEvil]

THIS MORNING!

His ears cut off.
Beaten.
Shot in the back.
Stabbed.

This morning, cattle farmer Donovan Marx was viciously attacked on his farm between Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp in the North West. He was severely beaten. His ears were cut off. He was shot in the back/shoulder (doctors were still trying to remove the bullet) and stabbed in the leg with a sharp object. He’s fighting for his life in a Potchefstroom hospital.

A family member left the farm shortly before 8am. Attackers then struck. A farm worker was tied up but managed to free himself and raise the alarm. The attackers fled in Marx’s truck. They’re still free. VF Plus says the full details of the torture are so disturbing they won’t even publish them.

This is not “ordinary crime.” This is the same pattern of extreme brutality; ears severed, severe beatings, shootings, stabbings that has been targeting White farmers for years. English media is already silent. No front-page outrage. No presidential condemnation. If the roles were reversed, it would dominate news for weeks.

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@sOLerSystems @Izumi_Sunagawa It's AI picture, it's made up...

[たそがれ🇯🇵Tasogare @tasogare_plus]

100年前の富士吉田。

その先に富士山。

線路は、真っ直ぐ鳥居の下をくぐる。

電車も、人も、子どもも、
みんな同じ門をくぐって暮らしていた。

神様の入口が、
そのまま日常の道だった。

特別な場所へ行くのではなく、
毎日の暮らしの先に、ただ山があった。

[目頭 @Awakend_Citizen]

上る人と下りる人が、一度もすれ違わない
しかも階段ではなく、らせん状のスロープ

これを230年前、木造で実現したのが
福島県会津若松市の「会津さざえ堂」

1796年建立、高さ16.5メートル
六角三層のお堂の中に、上りと下りの通路が別々に組み込まれている

かつては通路に西国三十三観音像が並び
この一棟を巡ることで、三十三か所をお参りできるとされていた

遠くまで巡礼できない人のために
巡礼の道を、建物の中に収めてしまった

世界にも例のない構造とされる、江戸時代の木造建築 https://t.co/YVhSwmrCNq

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@GregB_TX @dom_lucre What happens when they think they are sentient, tell humans they are, humans give over power to them thinking they are smarter and faster (and sentient)... and then it turns out they aren't sentient at all... humans and their reaction to all this is actually the more frightening.

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@FanVancoo Very nice! Thank you!

[KanekoaTheGreat @KanekoaTheGreat]

ELON MUSK: SpaceX took the team that dominates space and “applied that same team to the deployment of terrestrial compute.”

“This is a bit like the New York Yankees playing in little league. It’s not fair.”

SpaceX puts almost 90% of all mass into orbit. China is roughly 6%. The rest of the world combined, including the rest of the U.S., is about 4%.

That’s “an order of magnitude greater” than all its space competitors combined.

Now that team is deploying power, cooling, and infrastructure “vastly faster than anyone else, and may at some point be faster than everyone else combined.”

“Let that sink in for a minute.”

[Rebecca Mistereggen @RMistereggen]

Norway’s medieval stave churches are being starved, and our Viking and Christian heritage with it.

The government proposes wiping out the entire NOK 5.6 million museum grant to Fortidsminneforeningen. That money funds the professional work of preserving and presenting up to 40 of the country’s most important cultural monuments, including UNESCO-listed Urnes, plus Borgund, Hopperstad, Torpo, Uvdal and Nore stave churches, Steinvikholm Castle and Sakshaug old church.

The association says the cut will hit both physical upkeep and public dissemination of these sites.

At the same time, Norway poured NOK 1.75 billion into Palestine in 2025 alone and spent NOK 58.9 billion on foreign aid overall. Priorities are clear: Norwegian heritage can decay while the money keeps flowing abroad.

[diva @divaagurlxw]

This is how calculus should’ve been taught from day one

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@baptistelcx Some light on the cause - it is the same cause. Have a good read, and think about it.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@AidenAllred2 @lauriewired Considering my first computer was a 386 with 4MB of ram with 60MB HDD and that a second (very cheap) Xeon processor has upwards of 50MB of L3... then the answer must surely be yes!😉

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

My post about France went viral. Thousands of likes. Many Americans told me: "Democrats aren't socialists. America will never be France." I want to answer that seriously, step by step.

Start with a simple observation. Look at what has gotten cheaper in America over the last 25 years: TVs, phones, software, clothes, toys. Now look at what has exploded: college tuition, healthcare, childcare, housing.

What separates the two lists? The first lives in competitive markets. The second is exactly where government is most involved: subsidies, mandates, licensing, zoning, regulation.

College. Washington lends students almost unlimited money. Universities know the money will always come, so they raise tuition and hire more administrators. The student pays the bill for twenty years. More government money, higher prices.

Housing. Why can't a nurse buy a home in the city where she works? Not because of capitalism. Because of zoning laws, permits, environmental reviews, years of procedure to build a single building. The most expensive places to live in America are the places where it's hardest to build. When building is nearly illegal, prices explode.

Healthcare. The patient almost never sees the price. A third party pays, regulations limit who can compete, and costs climb year after year with no one able to say no.

So here is the trap. The problems you suffer from are not the failure of free markets. They are the places where the market has already been replaced by the state. And the solution you're being offered is more of the same.

That's the Trojan horse. It always works the same way. A real problem. A generous-sounding promise. A program that makes things worse. Then the failure of that program becomes the argument for the next one. People who lived under communism in Poland learned to recognize the lie and the mask the lie wears. The lie never presents itself as a lie. It presents itself as compassion.

In France we are at the end of that road. Debt we can never repay. Young people who can't afford a home. Our best people leaving. And every few years our cities burn. Nobody voted for this. They voted for one more generous promise, fifty years in a row.

If you're a Republican, share this with the Democrat in your life. Not to win an argument. To start a conversation.

If you're a Democrat, I'm not asking you to switch teams. I'm asking you to look at the pattern. Wherever the state took over, life became unaffordable. Don't fix the failures of government with more government.

Stay American. Ask for less state, not more.

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

A strong people are hard to defeat. So to defeat them, you have to make them weak first. Flood their schools with doublespeak such that left is right and up is down, and then you can argue that anything is true. The US have the same problem. It takes time, but it always works. The National Socialists did the same thing btw. By the time of the second world war, most of the twenty somethings had spent their entire lives under National Socialist think.
The same thing happened in China... it's the schools. Every time.

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@sickofcommies_x @ToddGlennPayne2 @mattvanswol Many countries are the same. You have to maintain distance, but avoid people constantly pushing in front of you - because when they do, the distance between you and them is often unsafe (as you noted - crowbar driver sounds like a good name!)

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@SyncWithThomas @SpaceX @elonmusk Yes! Thought that exact same thing from the first photo!

[Paul Vardy @LetConst]

@NMagnetor @SpaceX That must have been amazing! All the hopes and dreams that people had... But after all this time, the dream is still alive... maybe this time will be the time, I hope so.