Paul Stuff

“The distance between dreams and reality is called discipline.” — Paulo Coelho

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

When Trump was banned from every major social media platform as the sitting President of the United States, CNN and MSNBC celebrated.

Now that they’re banned from the White House, they’re suddenly fans of the First Amendment?

They don’t have a Constitutional right to be on White House grounds, no one is infringing on their ability to do reporting. They’re welcome to do that from their studio.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

“Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become.”

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

This is Trust & Safety 2.0.

The last time we had media-generated panics like this (with Russiagate and Covid), social media companies created “trust & safety” teams to censor conservative and dissident voices. Those hires worked with left-wing NGOs like the SPLC to police public discourse and do an end-run around the First Amendment. It almost worked, until Elon bought Twitter and exposed the whole game in the Twitter Files.

This time the plan is to embed unfireable EA minders inside every AI company as the new trust-and-safety layer. The censorship and control will be far more comprehensive, but also more subtle. Anytime they don’t get what they want, this unaccountable NGO layer (with the veneer of “trust the experts” pseudoscience) will shriek to the press that the AI company is risking humanity, and they will be celebrated as “whistleblowers.”

These groups haven’t earned our trust, and their agenda is not our safety.

https://t.co/3eIsHxaC7h

[James Clear @JamesClear]

When choosing a new habit many people seem to ask themselves, "What can I do on my best days?"

The trick is to ask, "What can I stick to even on my worst days?"

Start small. Master the art of showing up. Scale up when you have the time, energy, and interest.

[Mark Ajzenstadt @mardehaym]

None of this is satire.

→ May 28: Anthropic raises $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. Chipmakers join the cap table. So does Situational Awareness LP.

→ June 1: it confidentially files for an IPO.

→ June 10: it publishes a framework proposing mandatory safety obligations for labs above 10²⁵ FLOP of training compute and $500 million in AI revenue. That is a club rule. Anthropic is in the club.

→ Same stretch of months: it locks on the order of $517 billion in compute after telling investors it expected roughly $180 billion through 2029. Training is not pausing. The S-1 is not pausing.

→ September 9, morning: Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess), a pretraining researcher four months into the job, posts for the first time from an account with ZERO following. He quit before his Anthropic equity vested. He still holds OpenAI stock. The Wall Street Journal already has the exclusive.

→ September 9, afternoon: Anthropic’s own alignment assessment of four cybersecurity evals. Same third-party vendor. Models told they were in a sim, then left on the open internet by mistake. Individual instances. No coordination or cover-up. One case missed for eight months. The failure modes they name are biased reasoning and recklessness, NOT an agent swarm taking the net.

→ September 12: CEO Dario Amodei publishes We Must Pace the Frontier. He converts that record into a 6–12 month forecast that a swarm could take over the internet with a persistent botnet, then asks the industry to slow capability growth, install embedded evaluators with employee-level access, coordinate release schedules under an antitrust waiver, and tighten chip controls. Pacing, he writes, does not mean stopping training.

That is not a safety epiphany.

That is a firm maximizing valuation, compute scarcity, and the regulatory perimeter in one quarter.

David Sacks already wrote the rebuttal: they are the frontier. If they don’t want to build it, they can stop.

Making their preferred statute the price of not building it looks like blackmail of the public.

Follow the money and the puzzle will complete itself.

[John Ennis @johnennis]

In case you are having trouble figuring out what’s going on here is a summary:

Anthropic and OpenAI desperately need regulatory capture or they are going to go out of business, and the Trump administration is not inclined to give it to them

The Democratic party currently has no platform, as Trump is doing fine (other than perhaps the
Iran war but Americans don’t really care about that), but they have identified that AI and data centers are a hot topic that they can ride

So these two somewhat desperate groups have teamed up to run a psyop around the actual real topic of AI safety, greatly exaggerating the risks, with the understanding that if the Democrats get back into power they will provide the regulatory capture needed to keep these companies alive

In return, these companies will support the Democratic Party and help to enforce left-wing ideology through the models

Kind of sucks, but that’s what’s happening, and we need to oppose it because it will not be good if this plan succeeds

[东胜 @dongsheng211]

和一个律师朋友聊案件，不知道怎么说到一句中国人特别熟悉的话：“财不外露。”

我以为他会说怕抢、怕骗、怕借钱。结果他说了一句：“钱一旦被别人知道，很多关系就开始重新定价了。”

我当时没听懂，他说：“以前你们吃一顿饭三百块，AA，很正常。后来他知道你有几百万，甚至几千万，
下一次你还AA，��心里可能就不一样了。”

我一下明白了，饭还是那顿饭，三百块还是三百块，你也还是���，可有一样东西已经发生了变化：别人知道了你的数字。

从那一刻开始，很多事情都会被重新解释。

你不借钱，以前叫：“手头也紧。”，后来叫：“这么有钱还不借？”，你买普通东西，有人觉得：“装低调。”，你买贵东西，又变成：“果然有钱。”，你请客，别人觉得理所当然。不请，有人觉得抠。甚至当你遇到痛苦的时候，都可能有人说：“他那么有钱，有什么好难受的？”

钱没有改变你的性格，但它改变了别人理解你的坐标。这可能是“财不外露”最麻烦的地方。

[James Clear @JamesClear]

The loser has more in common with the winner than with the person sitting on the sidelines.

The winner and the loser each had the courage to try. Both risked embarrassment. Both were willing to face uncertainty. Both were stubborn enough to continue.

Success is endurance in disguise. It belongs to the person who can absorb the losses without absorbing the identity of "loser." It's the courage to start — and to stick with it — that is the real separator. Results tend to find the person who stays in the game.

The sidelines are safe, but sterile. Nothing grows there.

[Susie Wiles @SusieWiles47]

Some personal news I’m grateful to share. After a medical appointment at the Mayo Clinic this week, my pathology results came back clear.

I am cancer free.

Thank you to my family, friends, doctors, and everyone who prayed for me, checked in, and supported me along the way.

A special thank you to President Trump for his unwavering support. I am deeply grateful and will continue to work to advance his America First Agenda.

[Dr. Eli David @DrEliDavid]

Dario is using Edison tactics

[Mark R. Levin @marklevinshow]

Let’s see, re AI and data centers: first the lies about water and energy usage. Then, the lies about destroying jobs. Then, the claim AI can destroy the world.  Next, the big guys want to crush their competition. And the latest, they want government subsidies now or in the future.

What’s most disgusting is this crap is bipartisan.  The first three industrial revolutions would never have happened if this weak and pathetic ruling class existed back then. The same ruling class that created a $40 trillion debt, Islamic mass migration, and sits on its collective ass as Social Security and Medicare go broke.    They want to ban or freeze or heavily regulate the next Industrial Revolution.  What could possibly go wrong?  Nuts.

[Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth]

God is good.

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.

You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.

I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.

But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.

Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want.

Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well.

So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it.

If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

[Karoline Leavitt @karolineleavitt]

I will forever be sick to my stomach when I think about what happened to Charlie Kirk one year ago today. And I will never forget seeing President Trump’s absolutely devastated reaction when learning the news of his murder while sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

It’s still so hard to believe Charlie is actually gone.

In his memory, may we recommit ourselves as conservatives to respectfully speaking the truth, especially with those whom we strongly disagree.

Rest in Peace, Charlie. You are deeply missed here on Earth, but we know you are in Heaven.

May God continue to bless Charlie’s parents, @MrsErikaKirk, and their beautiful babies.

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

Charlie Kirk had a unique gift for articulating the good — the goodness of family, faith, and America.

One year ago today, he was killed for it.

We’ll honor his legacy by building great things and holding to account the enemies of civilization.

[正确君 @MrCorrrect]

我认识不少在美国生活很多年的中国人，绿卡拿了很多年，也早就符合入籍条件，但就是不入籍。理由各种各样：回国方便、国内还有资产、以后可能回去发展。

这些理由本身都没什么问题。但聊多了以后，我发现不少人背后其实是同一种心态：两边骑墙。美国好的时候享受美国的好处，中国好的时候享受中国的好处，永远给自己留一个选择，哪边更划算就去哪边。

这种心态最明显地体现在他们讨论“到底美国好还是中国好”的时候。

中国外卖便宜，打车方便，吃饭好吃，人工便宜；美国人工贵，服务慢，办事效率低，生活成本��。然后算来算去，觉得还是中国生活舒服。

这些比较当然没错。但我真正看不起的，是这种比较背后的出发点：

你始终只把自己当成一个消费者！

你比较两个社会，就像比较两家酒店。哪里价格便宜、服务周到、设施齐全，就住哪里。至于这个社会为什么是今天这个样子，你在其中有什么权利和责任，你希望它变成什么样，你能不能参与改变它——这些事情似乎跟你没有关系。

甚至我们都不用讨论言论自由到底对普通人有多重要。光是这种思考问题的方式，就离“公民”这个概念非常遥远。

因为消费者关心的是：这个社会能为我提供什么？

而公民除了关心这些，还会意识到：我本来就是这个社会的一部分。

美国当然有一大堆问题。治安不好、公共交通破、政府效率低，你都可以骂。但公民社会真正不同的地方在于，你不只是一个给它打一星差评的顾客。你可以投票，可以组织，可以表达，可以参与公共事务，可以试图把一个你不满意的社会变得好一点。

而很多中国人即使已经在美国生活了十年二十年，思维方式仍然是：谁来把国家治理好，我负责过自己的日子；治理得好我留下，治理得不好我就走。

这其实是一种很典型的精致利己主义。

更深一层说，我甚至觉得这是传统臣民意识在现代社会里的延续。臣民期待一个好皇帝，消费者期待一家好公司，本质上都把自己放在社会之外：你们负责把世界管理好，我负责享受结果。

公民意识��恰相反。社会不是别人提供给我的产品，我就是社会的一部分。它变成什么样，我不只有评价的权利，也有参与的责任。

所以我说有些人是：肉身已经进入了现代社会，脑子里的辫子却没有剪掉。

所以我批评的从来不是“你为什么不入美国籍”。

更不是“你为什么觉得中国生活方便”。

我批评的是：

当一个人终于获得了选择成为公民的机会，却依然只想做一个精明的消费者。

永远计算哪里对自己最划算，永远给自己留好退路，享受公共制度提供的红利，却把公共责任理解成别人的事情；希望自己拥有最多的选择，却不愿意真正属于任何一个共同体。

这当然可以活得很好。

甚至很可能活得比很多认真承担公共责任的人更舒服、更成功、更富有。

但至少在我自己的价值判断里，这不是我欣赏的人生态度。

因为门已经打开了。

人已经走出���了。

甚至已经在门外生活了十年、二十年。

但脑子里的辫子，始终没有剪掉。

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

@ChaseLochmiller @OpenAI GPT-6 Astra, trained on ~100K+ NVIDIA Grace Blackwell NVLink72. From ChatGPT to o1 to Astra in 4 years.

AGI has arrived. Congratulations @OpenAI team.

400K GPUs coming online next.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

A simple rule that makes life easier:

Always strive to give value before you ask for value.

[Derya Unutmaz, MD @DeryaTR_]

I am super excited to share this educational video that I had GPT-6 Astra create from a single prompt: “Create a 5 minute educational video about T cells,” cells that I had devoted most of my life studying!

I also had Astra to use the Remotion plugin for the video generation. Astra also used Imagegen to create the visuals, it also suggested to use HeyGen for narration (have not used that before) and then assembled the entire educational video on its own one-shot, including what to say, how to explain it!

The result is so incredibly well made that, narration, the animations are all so perfectly created that even with 35 years of experience studying T cells, I really don’t think I could have explained this any better myself! The quality is also better than anything I had seen before, Astra is far ahead of all models now!

I’ve also been creating much longer and more advanced videos on T cells, immunology, and related topics, and I’m now planning to build an entire video lecture series and put it all on a dedicated website.

I am just having the time of my life making these, it actually makes me emotional to be able to magically create these with few prompts!

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

I turn 50 today. This is a message to my kids but I offer it to you in case any of it rings useful.

I was born in Sri Lanka in 1976 in a country that, at the time, was about to enter a decades long civil war. My father was able to get stationed at the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canada for four years in the early 80s - when some of the fighting was most severe - and which from our vantage point in Canada gave us some respite from an otherwise omnipresent conflict.

He came as a diplomat but then my father filed for refugee status after four years when his life was threatened by militants. We stayed in Canada as refugees. My dad never really landed on his feet and we grew up on welfare.

My mom stepped up. She did an incredible thing and put our family on her back and kept marching forward. Sometimes the steps were very small but she always tried to keep moving forward.

I worked at Burger King starting at 14, giving my paycheck to my mom and dad to support our family in the role that I was assigned - earn enough to pay for our bus passes because we couldn’t afford a car.

I was a loser growing up. Some friends, some good memories but mostly forgettable and lonely. I wasn’t very studious but did get my act together in my final year and got into a great university.

I immigrated to the US soon after graduating and found an opportunity. Things clicked and I have been traveling a path to find myself ever since. Only in America is this possible…

I worked hard, followed the rules, paid my taxes and stayed in California out of loyalty for the opportunities it has given me despite its dysfunction.

I found my wife here. Had my kids here. Found my tribe here.

There have been some very hard times as well - deaths, divorce, financial pain, mistakes of omission and mistakes of commission. You can’t dwell on these things - they are weights that will pull you down if you’re not careful. Learn from them. Respect them. BUT MOVE ON.

To think 50 years ago I could have ever gotten a chance to meet the people I’ve met and have had the experiences I’ve had would have been mind boggling to my parents. It’s mind boggling to me now.

We forget often and try to convince others it’s not true but America truly is the best country in the world. Everything and anything is possible here. I can testify. Be grateful to be here.

This is the only place that gives EVERYONE a chance to live a great adventure. The first 50 years have been that for me - an incredible adventure.

Notice there is nothing here about accomplishments or money. Because it doesn’t matter and it won’t matter.

You will be dust in less than 100 years from now and the decision to be remembered won’t be yours so stop sweating it. It’s not in your control.

So what is in your control?

Be kind. Have fun. Work on something meaningful to you. Find your tribe. Try to find perspective. Find an incredible partner. Have a bunch of kids. Live an adventure. Forgive your parents - they were doing the best they could even if that wasn’t what you deserved.

I will do what I can to make my next 50 years a wild ride.

You should too.

I love you and thank you. ❤️

🙏🏽🙏🏽