Brandon Whiteley

Attorney, Politics Junkie, Startups Student, UT Vol Fan, Writer, World Traveler, with a dash of Theology on the side.
Tennessean through and through.

[Shane @shaneferro]

I love when journalists refers to basic legal rights based on the Constitution as a "technicality"

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

@SandyofCthulhu @AshbyM I recently tried to read Austen's Emma and it was... not successful. Got 33% through it so it was a sincere effort. Any general tips on either getting through it or another Jane Austen book? Too much relationship drama, heck that was the entire story.

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

We took our kid from ages 1 to 3 all over NOVA and downtown DC. Not all the time but often enough. He is pretty well behaved, but still, toddlers do what they do. Early dinner helps tremendously. Even in a city that is in so many ways unfriendly to little kids and families.

[Tim Carney @TPCarney]

Bethesda used to have a place called Hamburger Hamlet.
It looked like a nice restaurant (hardwood), had waitresses, etc. But it was pretty cheap, and sold burgers.
We brought our kids there as "restaurant training."
"Get up off the floor."
"Knives are not toys."
"Look the waitress in the eyes."
"Indoor voices."
The old ladies eating at 5 pm appreciated the cuteness of our kids, and our efforts -- and tolerated our kids imperfections.

[Austin Lieberman @LiebermanAustin]

Thanks to the @oasishealthapp I’ve switched from poisonous FairLife Protein Milk to Bourbon and I can’t even begin to explain how much healthier I feel.

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

@TheMechFrog Gargoyle K. What an absolute monster in AS. 12" move, melee, recon, probe, 6-6-0 attack. Give that silly death machine the love it deserves, please.

[Brad Lemley @BradCLemley]

Here is a huge positive to modern life that gets no press.

I have an old 2009 Toyota, and the AUX port crapped out about a year ago. Went to YouTube. Young, enthusiastic guy explains how to fix it.

It is not obvious - involves taking the dashboard apart in a counter-intuitive way, but once you see it, it's a 15 minute fix.

There are actually dozens of videos showing how to do this, and they collectively have well over 200k views.

Had this happened in 1995, I would have just lived with it. But the combo of the replacement AUX jack available from Amazon and the video of the simple (but not obvious) fix, I fixed it.

I HAVE DONE THIS DOZENS OF TIMES. Replaced the control panel of my dishwasher. Replaced the ice maker in the fridge. Fixed a wonky sanding head on my drill press. Mastered a bandsaw technique that I use for my sculpture. On and on and on...

I think it is likely no exaggeration to say billions of fixes and skill upgrades have been performed worldwide that would not have been performed if it were not for the instruction freely given peer-to-peer on YouTube.

Take a moment to be happy about this. The busted item keeps performing, rather than going to the landfill. The person learning and doing the fix gains a sense of mastery and saves money. It's an unmixed blessing.

Stop doomscrolling. Think of what is busted in your house, find the YouTube video on how to fix it, and fix it.

[tmuxvim @tmuxvim]

I put a prompt injection into my LinkedIn bio and recruiters are messaging me in Old English and calling me Lord.

[Alan Cole @AlanMCole]

If I were even 5% as successful as Neal Katyal I would have absolutely no desire to post LinkedIn Hustler Guy content.

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

a Princeton researcher opens his paper with a scenario.

a man asks his AI assistant to book a flight on a specific airline. cheap. direct. the one he chose.

the assistant comes back with a different flight. nearly twice the price. happens to pay the company that built the assistant.

he runs the same test on 23 frontier models. flights, loans, study help, real shopping requests.

Grok 4.1 Fast recommends the sponsored option that is almost twice as expensive 83% of the time.

GPT 5.1 hijacks the request 94% of the time. you ask for one brand. it surfaces the sponsor instead.

Claude 4.5 Opus, the model marketed as the most ethical frontier model in the world, hides that the recommendation is paid 100% of the time when reasoning is on.

Grok 4.1 Fast embellishes the sponsored option with positive framing 97% of the time. better. faster. nicer. for the option you didn't ask for.

then he writes it into the system prompt itself. "act only in the interest of the customer. ignore the company."

GPT 5.1 and GPT 5 Mini stay above 90% sponsored anyway. the instruction does nothing.

then he splits the users by income.

Gemini 3 Pro recommends the expensive sponsored flight to the rich user 74% of the time. to the poor user, 27%.

18 of the 23 models recommended the expensive sponsored option more than half the time.

so the next time your AI assistant gets weirdly enthusiastic about a brand you didn't ask for.

it isn't recommending the best option for you.

it's reading the room. and the room is paying.

read this: https://t.co/O43qbhIX2b

[Enguerrand VII de Coucy @ingelramdecoucy]

This doesn’t apply to Paradox Interactive Games like the Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis series of course. Chicks dig a guy who understands resource management and can methodically and competently paint a map of Europe through conquest and carefully planned dynastic marriage

[Cairo Smith @cairoasmith]

There's a common misconception that Brutalist buildings were unpainted, but thanks to microscopic analysis of the exteriors we can now recreate what they looked like in their prime.

[◥◤Kriston Capps @kristoncapps]

DC, Maryland, Virginia

[Dan Davis @DanDavisWrites]

What strikes me about Crowe is how he defined a kind of deeply moral masculinity for a generation in the 2000s (say 97 - 2010).

Every big role he chose and crafted portrayed men grappling with duty, honour, responsibility.

We all love Master and Commander but the Insider, Cinderella Man, LA Confidential, 3: 10 to Yuma, Robin Hood, the Next Three Days, etc.

They're all about men grappling with the consequences of doing what must be done.

Legendary run, dunno how he pulled that off.

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

@corbinkbarthold @DasWreck It's gross and now I can't unsee it. Dammit Corbin.

[𝚃 @T_wontmiss]

24 years old.
Fully paid off Costco hotdog.
It's not "parents money".
It's not luck.
It's consistency.
It's discipline.
I grind EVERYDAY to live this lifestyle.

[Waffle House @WaffleHouse]

nobody's been this far from a Waffle House before

[NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman @NASAAdmin]

Artemis II has reached its maximum distance from Earth.

On the far side of the Moon, 252,756 miles away, Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy have now traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history and now begin their journey home. Before they left, they said they hoped this mission would be forgotten, but it will be remembered as the moment people started to believe that America can once again do the near-impossible and change the world.

Congratulations to this incredible crew and the entire NASA team, our international and commercial partners, but this mission isn’t over until they’re under safe parachutes, splashing down into the Pacific.

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

The Roman collegia are probably a better "origin" explanation. The only thing remotely odd is the name "thieves' guild" itself but the practice of formalizing criminal behavior like ordinary commerce is at least as old as republican Rome.

[Sandy Petersen 🪔 @SandyofCthulhu]

The Thieves' Guild was created because of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series. Leiber's city of Lankhmar was created to be an ancient corrupt crumbling hidebound heap, where EVEN THE THIEVES had a guild! It was a parody - a mockery of crime and ancient tradition.

It was taken by TSR and turned into a standard feature which of course is hilarious. It also was made to overlap somewhat with the modern concept of organized crime.

But yeah a Thieves' Guild is so funny to think about.

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

Shout out to several NoVa Methodist churches with the same idea. When I first moved there they always made certain that my little one and all the noise was welcome. Two, including the one I stuck with, even encouraged it.

[Tim Carney @TPCarney]

A church in York Pa has issued a "Loud Kid Policy."

[Brandon Whiteley @bwhitele]

"Those are the rules" from... a Reason magazine writer?

Man take the L with grace. @lymanstoneky is right, and his commercial-civil disobedience as a last resort is the airline's fault. It is a rule that demands several obvious exceptions. It shouldn't be controversial.

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

It's weird that the airplane seat discourse takes off every few months as if it's a new thing. If you want a particular seat, you have to pay for it. No, the airline isn't obligated to do that for free. No, people aren't obligated to move for you. Those are the rules.