Texas Turd Cutter

Texas

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Bill Maher: “Did you know that a black fourth grader in Mississippi is two and a half times as likely to be proficient in math and reading as one in California? Mississippi is kicking our ass in education and for way less money.”

[Breaking911 @Breaking911]

ATC audio reportedly details an attempted hijacking aboard a United Airlines 737 over Wisconsin, where a passenger allegedly tried multiple times to breach the cockpit before being restrained and taken into custody after landing in Madison.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Andrew Huberman’s sleep cocktail is a game changer.

Magnesium threonate + Apigenin + Theanine.
He says this combo shuts down racing thoughts, calms anxiety, and helps you fall asleep fast, all backed by solid science.

I’ve been using it myself and it actually works. Deeper sleep, no grogginess the next day.

When you’re wired from screens and stress, a simple, effective tool like this can seriously improve your recovery and energy.

Tried this stack yet, or what’s your go-to for better sleep?

[Mason Home Builder @bankertobuilder]

This is my wife’s hometown, population less than 75,000. There's a beautiful Holiday Inn we stay at when we visit. Over 5 unique Starbucks locations. Has 9 strip malls you can visit and get pretty much anything you want. Has a Chili's and a Mexican restaurant. No walkable areas at all. You need a car here. Walmart on the edge of town.

Small towns like this are the backbone of America.

[Philosophy Sage @philosophysage]

You’re bored because you don’t do side quests, bro.

Life is more than just work and bed rotting.

Here are 50 side quests to complete:

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The research behind this is wild. Your kitchen sponge has the same density of bacteria as human stool. German scientists found 54 billion bacterial cells per cubic centimeter inside used sponges in 2017. Yours is sitting right next to your sink.

Sponges are the perfect home for bacteria. They are wet, warm, full of food bits, and never fully dry between washes. Across all 14 sponges, the team found 362 different types of bacteria. The most common species include strains that can make people sick.

In 2011, the public health group NSF International swabbed 30 things in 22 American homes. The dirtiest object in the entire house was the kitchen sponge. It was dirtier than the toilet seat. 75% of the sponges tested positive for the kind of bacteria that includes Salmonella and E. coli.

Microwaving does not clean the sponge. The 2017 study found microwaved sponges had higher amounts of the smelliest, most harmful bacteria. Heat kills the weak strains. The strong ones survive and refill the sponge with no competition for space.

A 2021 Norwegian study compared kitchen sponges to dish brushes. In brushes, Salmonella was wiped out within three days because the bristles dry out between uses. In sponges, bacteria climbed to about a billion cells per sponge. The lead researcher told CNN that one kitchen sponge can hold more bacteria than there are people on Earth.

Three things actually work. Switch to a dish brush, because brushes dry fully between uses while sponges stay wet for hours. Replace your sponge every one to two weeks. Never leave it sitting wet in the sink. Norway and Denmark already do this by default, but most other countries don't.

The detergent is fine. Your sponge is the problem.

[Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA @DrDiGiorgio]

This is the ultimate midwit healthcare take.

No, 32 countries have not “figured out” universal healthcare.

The UK has “free” healthcare, and roughly 1 in 3 cancer patients in England still fail to start treatment within 62 days of urgent referral.

Canada has “free” healthcare, and the median wait for neurosurgical treatment is around a year.

Australia has “free” healthcare, and over half the country still buys private insurance despite paying for a public universal system with their taxes.

Switzerland has universal coverage, because residents are required to buy private insurance. There is no government system where benevolent bureaucrats tuck you in at night with a warm blanket and an MRI appointment.

The actual lesson from other wealthy countries is not “they figured it out.”

America’s system has huge problems. Our prices are insane, insurance markets are distorted, and hospital systems are cartelized. Our regulations make care more expensive than it needs to be.

Yet we still guarantee access to even the 8% who don’t have coverage. We give easy routes to qualify for medicaid for those with disabilities.

Pretending the rest of the world solved healthcare because they slapped the word “universal” on a rationing scheme is not analysis.

It is bumper sticker policy for people who think access means having a card in your wallet while you wait a year to see the doctor you need.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Scott Galloway said something quietly profound:

Men need relationships and marriage far more than women do. Widows are often happier after their husbands die. Widowers? Not so much.

Single men in their 30s have a one-in-three chance of becoming substance abusers. When men lack that anchor, they often spiral into online rage, nationalism, and blame. Women tend to pour that energy into friends and careers.

Galloway himself resisted marriage and kids for years — chasing more money, more relevance, more everything. Then he had kids with his partner and said for the first time in his life he felt sated. Enough. Like he could go now, even though he doesn’t want to.

In a culture that downplays marriage and family for men, this is a reminder that the guardrails and purpose they provide might be one of the most powerful (and unexpected) sources of meaning we have.

I’ve seen this pattern in friends and family — the ones with strong family lives often seem more grounded, even when life gets hard.

What do you think — do men need marriage and family more than society currently admits?

[Milk Road AI @MilkRoadAI]

Someone asked Jensen Huang about a wealth tax that could cost him $8 billion.

His response was one of the most disarming things you'll hear from a man worth nearly $180 billion.

"I prefer lower taxes. However, I also don't mind paying taxes. I love this country. We don't exercise that many tax loopholes. Once a year we get a bill, we pay it and it's big and I don't mind it. Lori and I never one time think about it. In a way that's our way of giving back."

California's proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act is a one-time 5% levy on the net worth of every California resident with over $1 billion targeting roughly 200 people, projected to raise $100 billion for healthcare and education.

It has already qualified for the November ballot with over 1.5 million voter signatures. At Jensen's net worth, the tab lands around $8 billion.

While Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, and Peter Thiel have already announced they are leaving California over the proposal, Jensen's answer went the other direction entirely.

"I would love California to be better. I would love the United States to be better. I would love that they would apply $10,000 of the taxes I paid to fix that one pothole on the 101 but if they let me, I'll do it myself."

This is the character of the man leading the most important company in the AI revolution and he didn't come to California chasing the lowest tax rate.

He came because he loved Stanford, loved the culture, loved the companies being built here and he's staying.

What an incredible CEO.

[Ninja Wisdom | Self Improvement @Ninja__Wisdom]

The presence of hair on your toes is, ironically, an excellent sign.

For hair to grow on the farthest extremities of the body, your blood flow must be optimal. Hair follicles are extremely sensitive to a lack of oxygen and nutrients.

If there's hair, there's strong blood flow reaching all the way to the end.

[RedWave Press @RedWavePress]

NAILED IT: Shermichael Singleton on Socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “1.6% of the wealthiest people in this city pay nearly half of the taxes. If those folks leave, to Ana's point, you're going to have a financial crisis of magnitude of which Mamdani does not understand.”

“You think about everyday things that people utilize, public transit, safety, education, all of the taxes that go to provide for all of those things for poor people in this city, what in the h*ll are they going to do if 44% of those dollars all of a sudden disappear overnight?”

“And this is a shortsighted nature of this very progressive or socialist mayor that doesn’t make any sense.”

[Stephen Moore @StephenMoore]

The biggest wealth transfer in American history isn’t happening on Wall Street. It’s happening on U-Hauls.

Over $2 trillion in income fled high-tax blue states for low-tax red states in just 11 years.

And blue states’ solution? Raise taxes again.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Scott Galloway just said the quiet part out loud at The 92nd Street Y:

Marriage is now a luxury good.
80% of top earners get married.
Only 1 in 5 bottom-quintile men ever do.

Historically? 80% of women reproduced… only 40% of men. Left alone, we get “Porsche polygamy” — a few winners take most of the mates, the rest get nothing. That recipe creates volatile, angry young men, and we’re overproducing them.

We’re actively making it worse: pumping money from young to old while young men get judged ruthlessly on their ability to provide. Under-40s are 24% poorer than a generation ago. Boomers? 72% richer.

This isn’t just a dating problem. It’s breaking household formation, robbing men of purpose, and quietly making society more unstable.

I’ve felt echoes of this pressure in my own life — watching how economic headwinds make building anything lasting feel harder than it should. The data is loud if we’re willing to listen.

What’s your take — do you see this growing divide in marriage and opportunity playing out in your circle, and what do you think we should actually do about it?

[Ramez Naam @ramez]

Everyone who cares about climate should understand this. Texas, with no pro-climate policies, has blown passed California in clean energy. In large part because Texas has less red tape and makes it easier to build.

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

🚨 WOW! California Gubernatorial Candidate Steve Hilton (R) just CALLED OUT Democrat candidates to their FACES for blaming CA's high cost of living on TRUMP

"Donald Trump is the president in ALL the other states of America, where the cost of living is WAY LOWER than in California."

"It's not Donald Trump who's given us gas prices $2 higher than the REST of the country! It's Democrat policies, which ALL the Democrats here support.

It's NOT Donald Trump that's given us the highest housing costs in the country. It's Democrat policies that all these Democrats support!"

"Obviously, it is way past time for change in California and endlessly going on about Donald Trump doesn't serve the needs of the struggling families and small businesses."

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Harvard scientists ran a simple test. They put adults under blue light for 6 hours one night, then under green light at the same brightness the next. Blue light pushed their bedtimes back by 3 hours. Green pushed them back by 1.5. And in kids, the same lights hit about twice as hard.

The reason comes down to a tiny patch of cells at the back of every human eye. These cells have one job. They tell your brain whether it is day or night. They wake up most when light hits a very specific shade of blue, the same shade phone screens and modern bulbs are loaded with. When those cells fire after dark, the brain stops making melatonin, the chemical that pulls you toward sleep.

Red light barely sets off those cells at all. A 2025 study from the University of Zaragoza put people under red lamps and blue lamps for three hours at night. Under blue, their melatonin stayed scraped to the floor. Under red, it climbed back up to more than three times higher. Same brightness. The color did all the work.

Children get this worse than adults. Two reasons. Their pupils are bigger, so more light gets in. And the lens inside a kid's eye is still glass-clear, where adult lenses slowly yellow with age and filter blue out naturally. A 10-year-old's body clock is roughly twice as sensitive to evening light as a 45-year-old's. A bedside lamp that feels harmless to a parent can be wrecking a kid's sleep clock at the same time.

Then there is the lag. Once the brain catches a dose of blue light, the wake-up signal it sends out keeps echoing for 3 to 4 hours after the lights go off. So a kid on an iPad at 9pm can still be wired at midnight even if you took the iPad away at 9:01.

Modern LED bulbs and screens are tuned to roughly 6500 Kelvin. That is sunlight at noon. Old incandescent bulbs sit around 2700, mostly red and yellow with almost nothing in the blue range. To a human eye, a red-lit room is just about as close to no light at all as you can get. The brain reads it as nighttime.

The fix is boring. Use warm bulbs at 2700 Kelvin or lower in any room a kid spends evenings in, switch off phones and tablets two hours before bed, and if a night light is needed for bathroom trips, make it red or amber. The science was pinned down to the exact color of light back in 2001.

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

Poor Americans who attend church regularly are happier than rich Americans who never go.

Behavioral scientist William von Hippel thought he'd made a coding error. He hadn't.

"Regularly attending services has a bigger impact on your happiness than wealth," he writes. "Money buys a fair bit of happiness but connection gives you more bang for the buck."

What's happening? Rich people already have most of what money buys. What they lack is what churches provide for free: weekly, repeated contact with people who know your name.

Von Hippel is direct about the cost: "I suspect that wealthy, educated urbanites are paying a steeper price for their lifestyle than they realize. Many of us have paid too great a price in connection for our increased autonomy."

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Chris Williamson dropped a hard truth on Joe Rogan:

If you actually change your life for the better, you might have to let go of your friends.

And if you keep growing… you’ll probably have to do it multiple times.

You finally find your people after the lonely phase, then realize you’ve outgrown them too. That repeated loneliness is exactly why most people stay stuck — the comfort of old friends is a powerful anchor.

Real growth isn’t just about discipline or goals. It’s often about relationships. The circle around you either lifts you or holds you back.

This one stings because I’ve lived it. Those seasons of walking away are painful, but staying the same is worse.

Have you ever had to leave behind a friend group because you were growing in a different direction?

[Amy Nixon @texasrunnerDFW]

Often, these people are NOT breaking even on their homes, especially anyone who bought in 2022-2023 and is selling now (there are surprisingly MANY in this boat)

People who bought in 2020-2021 are walking away with some profit after transaction fees but losing a low rate

[Visual Capitalist @VisualCap]

Mapped: The Salary Needed to Live Comfortably in U.S. Cities 💼

https://t.co/3ryCHVsiPf