Aiden Barger

be a maker, not a taker | Isaiah 32:8

[Augustus Doricko @ADoricko]

Hard disagree

Time will tell whether its naive idealism of youth and I am forced to change course but:

I am a Christian and an American before I am a Rainmaker. Rainmaker’s mission to make Earth habitable is of foremost importance within the context of the company. However, in fulfilling that mission we are confronted with questions like:

- What kind of future are we building?
- How should we operate?
- What mustn’t we do?
- What character is required of we who steward this technology?
- What should the team do with the material wealth they will earn from their labor?

Answering any of these requires theological/moral and political consideration. A gag order on such discourse creates a corporate culture unconcerned with things of greater consequence than CaPiTaL EfFiCiEnCy. This hollowing out of our corporations, where people spend the majority of their waking hours, has begotten the philosophical lobotomization of our nation and a palpable lowliness in our aspirations.

Obviously, agitating politically at the expense of the company and to the discomfort of coworkers is untenable. I won’t allow it. I am sympathetic to the CEOs of the 2010s that had their enterprises perverted into spaces for vain picketing, and understand @JensenHuang and @brian_armstrong ‘s antibody response.

But, I will ensure Rainmaker is always, firstly the best atmospheric science lab in the world, and peripherally a forum for the ideas relevant to our nation, world, and souls. The widest and most diverse thought, firebrands from all ideologies, are welcome so that iron may sharpen iron and Rainmakers may embody a greatness of spirit unlike any other.

[Joanathan McIntosh @joanathanlmc]

We did $100k in revenue after realizing that our customers hate software.

Our first product was an AI accounting tool for CFOs. I did 35 sales calls and got $0.

So we switched to being a service.

The pitch became: "We're an outsourced accounting firm that's faster/cheaper with AI"

Then our calls started to convert.

As founders, we naturally obsess over features and tech because that’s what we do.

But REAL customers don't care. They only want their problem solved (bonus points if they don't have to use the tool) in a fast, simple way.

Just sell the outcome.

[Aiden Barger @BargerAiden]

love this design principle

[Matic Robots @maticrobots]

100% Privacy:

Matic works on Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano so you never have to trade your family's privacy for a clean floor.

Every data Matic collects is processed on the device and is deleted and discarded in real-time.

[Chester @chesterzelaya]

POV: you’re a first time founder seeing how much you owe in Delaware franchise taxes

[Aiden Barger @BargerAiden]

home state innovation goes hard @Grain_Weevil

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Grain silos are extremely dangerous places for farmers of all ages. The Grain Weevil was built to save lives.

The auger-style robot levels grain in the bin to help break up crusts and bridges, avoid entrapments, and improve grain quality.

[krus🪖 @krus_chiki]

Of course that’s your contention. You’re a StartUpBro industrialist. You just finished reading the ‘Reindustrialize America’ thread and now you’re gonna pivot to vertically integrated, carbon-neutral steel.

You’re gonna be convinced of that until next quarter when you discover electricity costs and realize blast furnaces don’t run on vibes and intermittent wind credits. Then you’ll pivot to ‘green hydrogen direct reduced iron’ — that’ll last right up until you price power at industrial scale.

Well, as a matter of fact, we’ll secure domestic ore and strategically source critical inputs—”

—Strategically source? You mean import the iron ore we don’t mine at scale and politely ask China and Russia for the 75% of global manganese they control? That strategic?

“No, because we’re rebuilding American industrial capacity and—”

—Rebuilding? With what institutional knowledge? The guys who knew how to actually run integrated mills retired when we offshored production in the ‘90s.

“And anyway, tariffs will protect domestic producers—”

—controlled by the same cozy domestic monopoly you call ‘healthy competition.’ That your big plan? Carbon-neutral, monopoly-priced, VC-backed rebar?

Do you have any thoughts of your own on this, or are we just speedrunning Industrial Policy Fan Fiction?”

[Augustus @AugustusDelano]

You'll never regret working out, forgiving others, going to church, studying classics, or mastering your craft -- it's impossible. In fact, you'll regret not doing so in the pursuit of fleeting temporal pleasures & distractions

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

California's Central Valley produces 80% of the world's almonds. Each almond requires 3.2 gallons of actual irrigation water to grow. Not rainfall. Actual tap water pumped from aquifers.

One gallon of almond milk requires 162 gallons of irrigation water. Compare that to dairy milk at 8 gallons of tap water per gallon, with the rest being rainfall that falls on pasture anyway.

But here's where it gets properly grim. Almonds bloom for exactly three weeks in February. During those three weeks, California needs every pollinating bee in North America transported to the Central Valley or the crop fails entirely.

Commercial beekeepers truck in 31 billion honeybees. That's two-thirds of America's entire managed bee population, all concentrated in one valley for three weeks. The bees are packed into trucks, driven across the country, dumped into almond groves drenched in pesticides, worked to exhaustion, then packed up and shipped to the next crop.

The mortality rate is catastrophic. Beekeepers report losing 30 to 50% of their hives annually. That's billions of bees dead. Not from natural causes. From being used as disposable pollination machines for your almond milk.

The pesticides don't help. Almond groves are sprayed with neonicotinoids which scramble bee navigation systems, fungicides which weaken their immune systems, and herbicides which eliminate the wildflowers they'd normally forage on between almond blooms.

Meanwhile the aquifer depletion is permanent. The Central Valley has sunk 28 feet in some areas from groundwater extraction. That water took 10,000 years to accumulate. It's being drained in decades for almond milk.

Your vegan latte killed more bees and used more water than a year's worth of dairy milk. But it's got "plant-based" on the label so you're definitely saving the planet.

[Mustafa. @oprydai]

the future belongs to generalists because the world is no longer built in silos.

problems are now multi-domain:
energy + software
biology + computation
robotics + control + materials
manufacturing + ai
security + hardware
cities + data
finance + automation

specialists go deep.
generalists integrate.

the next breakthroughs won’t happen inside a discipline.
they’ll happen at the intersections; where no one has formal maps, and only wide-angle minds can see the structure.

generalists:
> translate across fields
> combine tools that weren’t meant to interact
> spot patterns specialists miss
> build systems, not fragments
> adapt faster than the pace of technological change

the world is converging.
knowledge is cross-pollinating.
the bottleneck is not expertise but integration.

the future is built by people who can move between domains without losing coherence.

[Drewski @SeekingAnon]

Good Night X

Believe.

[Aaron Francis @aarondfrancis]

Men only want one thing

and that thing is an old industrial building to turn into a studio

[Axis Aeternum @AxisAeternum]

Those who appreciate the colder and wetter months are aligned with the necessity of cycles; the law of death, decay, renewal.

The "eternal summer" Nietzscheans are stuck in the dead end of individualism, yearning to live forever in the high noon of the self.

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

the American exceptionalism posting will continue until morale improves

[ally @missmayn]

my boyfriend wants to start a company called “just” and manufacture stuff like a refrigerator that’s just a refrigerator or a washing machine that just washes your clothes and their products have no tech and work for at least 15+ years.

[mansin @Mankaran32]

Robotics is everything you could wish for working in engineering.
Mechanical, electronics, machine learning, maths, physics, creativity, art, all coming together to form a system you can hold in your hands.

[Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11]

It’s all about Jesus.