SimianLiteratus

Christian, Husband, Father, Scientist.

Christ is King. Truth is constant. Family is forever.

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@dustinharding Very cool concept!

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@Geiger_Capital @Smirkley How does this table change without removing college towns?

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@GavinNewsom A trash opinion from one of the usual suspects.

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

Flock needs to go. It violates the 4th amendment by default.

https://t.co/wYxOXJpKQE

[Humble Flow @HumbleFlow]

This is the most important account on X. Well worth a follow.

Everyone should be part of a book club. This is a wonderful group of people to study with.

[LM @loyalmoses]

18 STATES! A coordinated war on manufacturing, funded by Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety, is pushing similar legislation across the country.

Those wannabe youtubers said I was fear mongering... 😅

Watch the whole video: https://t.co/57AzIFxN8J

[Dr Manhattva @Manhattva]

Incredible marketing.

Vote for @KariLisonbee

[Terence Shen @Terenceshen]

37 years ago today, the Chinese government brutally crushed peaceful protesters in and around Tiananmen Square who were demanding an end to corruption, freedom of speech, and democratic reform. The massacre revealed a truth the world should never forget: the Chinese Communist Party will do whatever it takes to preserve its grip on power. If it did not value the lives of its own citizens, why would it value the lives of others?

[Kyle Siler (@kylesiler.bsky.social) @KyleSiler]

New article in @PNASNews:

We all know that ChatGPT loves to delve, bolster, leverage, encompass, showcase, underscore, et cetera. I analyzed full text of 7.3 million journal articles published 2020-2025, hunting for 228 words that spiked after ChatGPT launched in late 2022.

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

Fairfax County intensifies its efforts to exercise tyranny upon my beloved homeland.

[Senator Saddam Azlan Salim @SalimForVA]

.@GovernorVA's signing of SB749 marks a monumental victory for public safety in the Commonwealth of Virginia, banning the sale, manufacture, and transfer of assault firearms and large capacity magazines effective July 1, 2026.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The American Revolution was bankrolled by one man. The richest in America. He died broke in debtor's prison.

Robert Morris.

In 1781, he raised $1,400,000 on his own personal credit to march George Washington's army to Yorktown. The Continental Congress had no money. The states refused to send any. France had stopped. The final $20,000 came from Haym Salomon, a Polish-Jewish broker who personally underwrote the rest. The richest man in the country put his balance sheet behind the war and ended it.

AOC said this week that "the American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time."

The math doesn't survive the source documents.

Morris signed the Declaration of Independence. He signed the Articles of Confederation. He signed the Constitution. One of only two founders to sign all three. He served as Superintendent of Finance from 1781 to 1784, ran the Continental Navy as Agent of Marine, and chartered the Bank of North America. The financial machinery of the United States was built by the merchant who had spent the prior decade running the largest shipping firm in Philadelphia.

John Hancock was the wealthiest man in Boston. George Washington owned 8,000 acres at Mount Vernon. The signers were merchants, planters, and lawyers at the top of colonial society. The complaint was taxation without representation, levied by a Crown an ocean away. The Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts hit merchants hardest. That's why merchants funded the war.

Then the math finished Morris off.

He owed nearly $3 million by 1798. He sat in Prune Street debtor's prison for three years. George Washington visited him there. Congress passed the Bankruptcy Act of 1800 in part to secure his release. Morris died in 1806 with a five-line obituary in the Philadelphia papers.

$1.4 million in personal credit. $3 million in personal debt. The richest man in America bankrupted himself funding the war AOC says was fought against him.

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@joooooody777 @defense_of_fam I speak as an acquaintance. It's not that she didn't want it. It just didn't happen. Not her fault.

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@defense_of_fam Oh she definitely did that!

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@ewarren So when you doing Disney?

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

‼️🇺🇸 Utah is about to become the first US state to legally target VPN use as part of online age verification. The law goes into effect Wednesday, May 6, 2026.

🔴 If you are physically located in Utah, you count as a Utah user, regardless of whether you use a VPN, proxy, or any other tool to disguise your location. Websites are now legally responsible for age-verifying you anyway.
🔴 Sites that handle "material harmful to minors" are banned from sharing instructions on how to use a VPN, or from offering any means to bypass geofencing.

The EFF calls this a "liability trap." Websites cannot reliably tell where a VPN user actually is, so the safest legal move is either to block every known VPN IP outright, or to force ID-based age verification on every visitor worldwide. Either path subjects millions of users to invasive identity checks, regardless of where they actually live.

The Cato Institute put it bluntly. When a policy can be defeated by a privacy tool millions of people legitimately use, the policy is the problem.

The collateral damage is, as always, the people who actually need VPNs:

🔴 Journalists protecting sources
🔴 Domestic abuse survivors hiding from stalkers
🔴 Activists in hostile environments
🔴 Remote workers tunneling into corporate networks
🔴 Travelers banking from abroad
🔴 Anyone who simply does not want their ISP, employer, or data brokers reading their traffic

This is not staying in Utah. The UK's Children's Commissioner has called VPNs a "loophole that needs closing." France's Minister Delegate for AI and Digital Affairs has named VPNs as "the next topic on my list."

The EU is rolling out age verification across all 27 member states by end of 2026, with EVP Henna Virkkunen openly admitting they have no plan for VPN bypass yet.

Utah is leading by example.

EFF: "Attacks on VPNs are, at their core, attacks on the tools that enable digital privacy."

[Kimball Call @KimballCall]

In my latest article, I offer a humble argument for why BYU should consider an annual conference for men to complement BYU Women's Conference.

I absolutely love that we give women dedicated time for their issues, and I think men could benefit from similar treatment.

[SimianLiteratus @aReadingApe]

@pnwguerrilla This explosion in ticks likely started a few years ago and is only getting noticed now. Surveillance of Lyme disease was poor during 2019 and 2020 but there was a massive increase in 2022 and 2023.

https://t.co/kyX8qZkKTt

[Athenaeum Book Club @athenaeumbc]

So it turns out that writing is thinking. It's the same process.

"Writing compels us to think — not in the chaotic, non-linear way our minds typically wander, but in a structured, intentional manner."

Outsourcing writing to LLMs is THE SAME THING as outsourcing thinking.

[Dr Manhattva @Manhattva]

This is extremely scary.