Bert Almond

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@hashjenni Did you know the federal budget EVERY YEAR for healthcare is $1.9 trillion already? Even if took ten percent of Elon’s wealth one time you’d increase the budget by ~5%, for one year. If that’s really all it would take to have perfect healthcare, we should already be there.

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@CAgovernor What’s your net worth? Where do you fit into the problem?

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

The fact that the Democrats are so hateful toward a guy who’s a modern day mix of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison is baffling to me. Because you can’t call him yours he must be evil? That’s nuts.

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@grahamformaine That’s really stupid. It would be like someone complaining about the first person to reach 10K, 100K, 1M, or 1B over the centuries. The standard of living for the average person rises in lock step with this creation of wealth.

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@SenWarren I’d be in favor of whatever wealth tax is passed as long as all elected officials who voted for it have to pay the same rate on their own wealth. Elected office should be a service and sacrifice for the people, shouldn’t it?

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@GavinNewsom What about when the state government is for sale? That’s prob what you should focus on. That’s what you were elected to do, after all.

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@AOC Federal Medicare spending is already $1.1 trillion PER YEAR! If people are going bankrupt because of inhalers, that’s a moment for you all in Congress to reassess how you’re doing.

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@GovPressOffice Show the high speed rail! That’ll get him!

[Kevin Carpenter @kejca]

Warren Buffett: "The bottom 2% in terms of income in the United States, the bottom 5%, and for sure the top 1% all live better than John D. Rockefeller was living when I was six years old."

"John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world and, today, you can get better medicine, better education, better entertainment, better transportation. You can do everything better than he could."

"When I was born, the dentist didn't use novocaine!"

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear.

The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day.

After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this.

Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017.

The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around.

Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Never been more true

[Kyle 🚄 @KyleTrainEmoji]

PICARD: Data, shields up

DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy.

[camera shakes]

WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS

DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@chamath Too busy working to have more kids to take care of. Makes sense. An earlier generation would have said too busy working *not* to have more kids.

[dante @dantefofante]

You dont want a yacht. You dont want a big house. You dont want a super car, a $40,000 watch, or shoes you worry about getting dirty. You want free will.

You want to wake up naturally on a Tuesday and you want to go to bed when you’re done having fun. You want to say yes to everything that excites you without having to request time off. You want to go to the the gym at noon, in absolutely no hurry. You want to spend 18 hours a day doing what you love. You want to be exactly where you desire being, always. You want to spend as much time with the people you care about as possible.

You’re saying you wanna be rich? In what?

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

This Minecraft player had enough of a zombie bothering him and built the most elaborate solution imaginable.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

I have paid over $10B in taxes in a single year, more than anyone in history.

If I exercise and sell stock options, the combined federal and state income tax is ~45% (I still pay California taxes for every day I spend there).

Then there is another 40% tax paid on my estate when I die.

Overall, I will probably end up paying trillions in taxes.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

The laws of physics don't apply to mountain goats.

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@BarackObama Best solution is to be against gerrymandering across the board. You successfully campaigned FOR it in California!

[Bert Almond @almond_bert]

@JeffBezos @WClemente What did that poor fishing boat ever do to you?

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

The physics of a pendulum wave