Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️

Loving husband and entrepreneur on a mission to reinvent training and better people's lives.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

🇺🇸

[Nick Lavery @thenicklavery]

MAGICAL
🇺🇸

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Today is @elonmusk's 55th birthday.

In those 55 years, he has only:
• Founded or co-founded 7 multi-billion- or trillion-dollar companies
• Made EVs mainstream
• Pioneered reusable rockets, reducing the cost of access to space
• Created 600,000 jobs (direct+supply-chain)
• Paid out more than $100B in salaries
• Restored astronaut launches to American soil
• Built a global satellite internet constellation used by millions and that connects schools in remote areas, hospitals in isolated regions, supports emergency responders after natural disasters, and more
• Created trillions of dollars in wealth for his company's shareholders & employees
• Enabled paralyzed/disabled people to control computers using thought, bringing more independence
• Created the most productive automotive factory in the U.S. (Tesla's Fremont factory)
• Created the Model Y, which become the #1 bestselling car in the world (first EV to do so)
• Created the first private company to dock with the International Space Station and send astronauts to orbit
• Became NASA's primary commercial launch provider
• Developed the first point-to-point self-driving system (FSD), improving road safety
• Built some of the world's largest and most advanced factories
• Built the world's largest fast-charging network for EVs
• Built one of the world's largest AI supercomputers
• Built operational underground transportation tunnels under Las Vegas
• Helped build what became PayPal and transformed online payments
• Done more than any single individual to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy
• Became the world's greatest entrepreneur

Maybe one day Elon will actually accomplish something 😉 Happy Birthday!

[Bozwy 🕊️ @bozwy]

Ein junger SpaceX-Mitarbeiter fragte Elon, was passiert, wenn sie den Mars zu seinen Lebzeiten nicht erreichen. Der Raum war voller Ingenieure und die Frage landete schwerer, als irgendjemand erwartet hatte.

Es war eine einfache Frage, doch sie traf den Kern, wofür SpaceX existiert. Das gesamte Unternehmen, jede späte Nacht, jeder explodierte Prototyp, jeder Ingenieur, der den Geburtstag seines Kindes für ein Startfenster verpasst hat – alles zielt auf den Mars. Was, wenn es nicht rechtzeitig passiert?

Elon hielt inne.

Er sagte, das Ziel sei nie gewesen, persönlich auf dem Mars zu landen. Es gehe darum, die Infrastruktur aufzubauen, die unvermeidlich ist. Selbst wenn er stirbt, bevor die erste Besatzung landet, würde das System die Mission ohne ihn vorantreiben.

Die Raketen, die Fabriken, das Team, die Kultur – alles sei darauf ausgelegt, jede einzelne Person zu überdauern. Einschließlich ihm. Besonders ihn.

Dann sagte er etwas, das die Leute im Raum bewegte: Wenn er glaubte, der Erfolg hänge davon ab, dass er am Leben sei, hätte er bereits versagt. Der Punkt sei, etwas zu bauen, das seinen Gründer nicht braucht.

Er verglich es mit einer Kathedrale. Die Architekten mittelalterlicher Kathedralen wussten, dass sie sterben würden, bevor das Gebäude fertig wäre. Dennoch entwarfen sie es und gaben ihr Leben für etwas, das sie nie vollenden würden. Die Verpflichtung war der Punkt.

SpaceX ist seine Kathedrale. Er wird vielleicht nie einen Fuß auf den Mars setzen. Aber die Straße dorthin wird existieren, weil er sich weigerte zu akzeptieren, dass niemand sie baut.

Der ehrgeizigste Mann der Welt hat sich mit der Möglichkeit abgefunden, dass seine größte Leistung nach seinem Tod erfolgen könnte.

Das ist kein Misserfolg. Das ist der Glaube an etwas Größeres als sich selbst.

Happy Birthday Elon 🚀💪🔥

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Before the weekend ends and America moves on to the next headline, we need to pause and look at a story that matters more than almost any other—the collapse of Venezuela, and what it warns us about if the last democratic superpower ever falls the same way.

This didn’t happen overnight. It happened step by step, over one generation.

VENEZUELA: HOW A PROSPEROUS NATION COLLAPSED

1992
Venezuela is the 3rd richest country in the Western Hemisphere, powered by oil and a growing middle class.

1997
Venezuelans become the 2nd largest buyers of Ford F-150s—a sign of widespread prosperity.

1998
Hugo Chávez is elected, promising to “redistribute wealth” and fix inequality.

2001
The country votes again for socialism, framed as compassion and fairness.

2003
The government imposes price controls and currency controls.
Black markets appear. Shortages begin.

2004
Private healthcare is fully socialized.

2006
Inflation rises sharply as massive welfare programs expand without real economic backing.

2007
All higher education becomes “free.”

2008
Key industries—oil services, steel, cement, telecom—are nationalized.
Production drops almost immediately.

2009
Private gun ownership is banned.

2010
The currency is devalued by 50%, crushing savings and accelerating inflation.

2011
Oil production begins a steady decline due to mismanagement and lack of investment.

2012
American politicians, like Bernie Sanders, publicly praise Venezuela’s model.

2013
Chávez dies. Nicolás Maduro takes power and tightens state control.

2014
Opposition leaders are arrested or silenced.

2015
GDP collapses. Hyperinflation begins.

2016
Severe food and medical shortages spread nationwide.

2017
The constitution is suspended. Elections are no longer meaningful.

2018
Inflation exceeds 1,000,000%. Maduro “wins” a widely fraudulent election.

2019
Unarmed civilians are killed by their own government.

2020
More than 8 million people flee the country to escape hunger and repression.

2023
Minor economic improvements fail to relieve mass poverty.

2024
Disputed elections trigger protests and global isolation.

2026
Maduro is removed by force. Venezuela is liberated after decades of ruin.

THE HARD TRUTH

It took one generation of “progressive” leadership to turn one of the richest countries on Earth into a nation defined by hunger, fear, mass graves, and mass migration.

This is the lesson history keeps teaching:

You can vote your way into socialism.
But history shows people only escape it through collapse, violence, or foreign intervention.

And here is the part Americans must understand clearly:

If this happens in the United States, there will be nobody coming to save us.

No outside superpower.
No rescue force.
No second chance.

Freedom is fragile. Prosperity is not guaranteed.
And once lost, they are brutally hard to recover.

Venezuela’s people paid the price.
America cannot afford to learn this lesson the same way.

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

@ApoStructura It is a great showcase of the difference between my old home and, Europe, and my new home, the United States of America. Europe does not dream and immagine a better future. It is engaged in stagnation and degrowth. Here we can dream big and build a brighter future of abundance.

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

@FrankfurtZack @LibertyHannes Aber nur beim guten Wetter und am Tag! Atomkraftwerke laufen 24/7/365. Also auch bei Nacht und Wolken. Aber vielleicht braucht ihr dann ja keinen Strom.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

This is how an economy actually works

[Lars Kruse @Lars_Kruse_1973]

Die Washington Post, sicherlich nicht der unkritischen Miliei-Verehrung verdächtig, zieht ein bemerkenswertes Zwischenfazit zu Mileis Kurs:

- Armutsquote gon 53% auf 28% gefallen. Durch echtes Wirtschaftswachstum von +4,4% im letzten Jahr.
- erster StaatsbudgetÜBERSCHUSS IN 123 Jahren
- Inflation von 200% auf 33% gesunken (und weiter fallend)
- Abschaffung von 14000 Gesetzen und Regulierungen, um die Freiheit des Markts wirken zu lassen.

Fazit: „Argentina’s rapid transformation from nearly a century of socialism to free market capitalism continues to prove the superiority of the latter. It is rare that we get to witness such a radical experiment in real time. It is no surprise, however, that it’s working.“

https://t.co/n6qOMQkCaJ

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

German politicians have an incredible 20 year track record of misdiagnosing problems. And it’s holding strong!

[Mehdi (e/λ) @BetterCallMedhi]

I spent time in Shenzhen last year and when I saw Merz come back from China saying Germans need to work more I immediately knew what broke his brain because I lived the exact same cognitive shock

my first week in Huaqiangbei I burned through 4 prototype iterations of a motor controller board for less than a thousand bucks total, back home a friend was working on something similar and spent over 12 thousand for a single revision that took almost two months to arrive

when you live that contrast in your own hands with your own project something permanently shifts in how you see the world and it goes way deeper than speed & cost

what Shenzhen actually built is a collective learning organism, imagine 20 PCB fabs 15 injection mold shops 30 component distributors and a hundred firmware freelancers all within a 2km radius, looks insanely redundant from the outside until you realize redundancy is actually information density in disguise

I watched this firsthand with an injection mold supplier I was working with, this guy had seen a hundred founders iterate similar thermal designs over 6 months so he proactively modified his tooling before I even opened my mouth, he knew what I needed before I knew what I needed, the intelligence lives in the relationships between the nodes and it compounds daily

the west thinks about manufacturing as a cost center you optimize by centralizing…

China accidentally built a distributed neural network of manufacturing intelligence where knowledge diffuses horizontally across thousands of agents faster than any single western company can process internally

so when Merz comes back and says we need to work a bit more I think he saw the problem but COMPLETELY misdiagnosed the solution, telling Germans to work harder is like telling a horse to gallop faster when the other side built a combustion engine

the gap is ARCHITECTURAL

it’s ecosystem density, you need a custom connector in Shenzhen you walk 200 meters, in Munich you send an email and wait 3 weeks

it’s iteration speed, parallel search vs sequential optimization at the system level, it’s risk tolerance, Chinese founders ship something broken on Monday fix it Tuesday ship again Wednesday while European companies are still in the approval phase for the pilot program of the feasibility study…

and Merz only saw the surface, what he missed is the tier 2 cities like Hefei Chengdu Wuhan replicating the Shenzhen model at scale right now

BYD going from irrelevant to outselling every european automaker combined in roughly 5 years, Huawei building its own 7nm chip under maximum sanctions when every analyst said it was physically impossible & behind all of that a government that treats advanced manufacturing as an existential national priority while europe debates whether AI needs another ethics committee

I think what we’re watching is the most asymmetric economic competition in modern history and most western leaders are still framing it as a productivity problem when it’s actually an ontological one

Europe & America are optimizing variables that China stopped tracking years ago meanwhile China is compounding on dimensions the west has no framework to even measure
Merz at least had the courage to name

it out loud and I respect that genuinely but working a bit more inside a broken architecture just means you arrive at the wrong destination slightly faster

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

Great leading indicator.

[Pentagon Pizza Watch @pizzintwatch]

Pizza activity around the Pentagon is experiencing an extreme spike this afternoon. Domino's Pizza (1.4 mi) at 326%, Pizzato Pizza (2.2 mi) at 208%, and Extreme Pizza (0.5 mi) at 127%. DOUGHCON level is 4.

[Shabbos Kestenbaum @ShabbosK]

I don't think people understand how unprecedented it is for an American Secretary of State to receive a standing ovation from the European political class.

Let's all state the obvious:

President Marco Rubio 2028.

[Paul Villarreal (AKA Vince Manfeld) @AureliusStoic1]

Secretary of State Marco Rubio's full speech today at the 2026 Munich Security Conference.

Excerpt:

"At the time of that first (1963 Munich Security Conference) gathering, Soviet communism was on the march. Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance. At that time, victory was far from certain. But we were driven by a common purpose. We were unified not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we were fighting for. And together, Europe and America prevailed and a continent was rebuilt. Our people prospered. In time, the East and West blocs were reunited. A civilization was once again made whole.

"That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it an evil empire, and the East and West became one again. But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, 'the end of history;' that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world."
.

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

@Matt_Pinner Soccer, cricket, tennis, …

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

Brilliantly said! God bless the people of Iran!

[Eve Barlow @Eve_Barlow]

I do not know who she is but please spread her brilliant and brave voice.
FREE IRAN

[Mahdi @mahdi]

This can be the most powerful commercial for @Nike this year 😂

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

If you claim to support human rights yet can’t bring yourself to show solidarity with those fighting for their liberty in Iran, you’ve revealed yourself. You don’t give a damn about people being oppressed and brutalised so long as it’s being done by the enemies of your enemies.

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

For all the hobby economists out there! https://t.co/FGirY6lH22

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

This time the the UK, Germany and China are on the same side of history. Some are there repeatedly, some are new. 😔

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Prison Island

[Bjoern Woltermann 🎗️ @bwoltermann]

@lady_valor_07 Me