Captive Mind

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@lufthansa Your frontline customer service is a masterclass in anti-consumer bureaucracy and systemic incompetence. Hours ricocheting between call centers in South Africa and the Philippines, fed conflicting nonsense by multiple agents, only to be stonewalled by your prehistoric “system” - despite an agent explicitly confirming my date changes yesterday and promising a “married segment release. Condescending staff, ghosted callbacks, distracted chats agents, and a 90-minute call that accomplished nothing except blaming “the system.” If your legacy tech can’t handle basic routing requests, stop letting agents make promises they can’t keep. A case study in how to thoroughly destroy customer good will.

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@SemiAnalysis_ The skeptical reading: it’s a competitive moat dressed up as safety. “Don’t use our best model to catch up to us”

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

Who is going to drop $1,200 on a new iPhone in Europe knowing it’s missing the biggest software features on earth? Nobody. People will just switch to a Samsung Galaxy or a Pixel that actually has full AI capabilities. The EU thinks they’re punishing Apple, but they’re just destroying market competition. At worst, this inadvertently leads to a Google monopoly. At best, it leaves far fewer players in the EU market, the exact opposite of what the DMA was intended to do: more competition, more choice.

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@BreitbartNews Two clowns, zero prep. Painful to watch.

[Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy]

These numbers are eye-popping. Under-enrollment is now a crisis in both K-12 and higher education. It’s causing per-student costs to spiral while results continue to decline. State politicians who wax eloquent while ignoring the problem don’t actually care about our kids.

[Danielle Jurinsky @DaniJurinsky]

Yesterday, the Colorado Chamber Foundation released a new report tracking companies that have relocated or chosen to grow outside our state, offering a data-driven look at business competitiveness in our state.

📊 Since 2019, Colorado has seen:
• 98 company relocations or missed opportunities
• 13,600+ lost jobs tied to those decisions
• 27 companies choosing to grow elsewhere in just the past year

Colorado has many strengths, but this data shows we are at a critical moment. The Chamber Foundation is focused on strengthening our business climate to keep Colorado competitive, support job growth, and ensure a healthy economy long-term.

Read the full report: https://t.co/NdWnFXpBGB
#ColoradoBusiness #EconomicGrowth #Competitiveness #Jobs

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@BoSnerdley Let’s be honest. Macaroni never had it.

[Catturd ™ @catturd2]

Check out this nut. 😂

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@Matt_Pinner Jussie Smollet

[Critical Meme Theory @crtclmemetheory]

Disingenuous. No socialist/communist ever thought the bread would bake itself.

What they do actually believe is that you can kill the evil capitalist bakers and seize their means of production - the bakery, ovens, tools, and ingredients - and distribute them to people who are wholly ignorant about baking and using or maintaining the equipment, and who do not and never did and never will care about baking bread or maintaining the equipment and that they will suddenly and magically bake more bread better and cheaper than the evil capitalist bakers did.

[Critical Meme Theory @crtclmemetheory]

Your hatred and jealousy and bad ideas do not feed people. They do not build and maintain things. They do not work. Socialism and communism have failed - exactly as I have described here - over and over again and across all industries. This is exactly how it has been implemented and exactly how it has failed. You idiots don't even bother to come up with new ideas or new strategies, you just try it again with the same ignorant failed ideas and strategies.

[Fascinating @fasc1nate]

This gravestone is shared by twin sisters: one lived for just two days, the other for 101 years.

Unforgettable haunting images: https://t.co/MAmJ19KdIC

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@julie_kelly2 @brhodes 😂

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@KamalaHarris $1B raised. Election lost. $20M debt. Any updates?

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

In a democracy, it’s absolutely ok to define who can use the things you make and how.

But it’s also absolutely ok for the Government to lose trust in you, tell you to fuck off and find an alternative.

It’s also absolutely ok for you to nuke your own company in the process.

The timing of this is not good for Anthropic and could be a potential boon to every other model that is exceeding expectations in their upcoming version (Grok, OAI, Gemini).

More generally, I don’t see how this isn’t a slippery slope. What if a model maker updates their ToS that would block a use case that is legal but subjective? Agreeable in some states but not in others? What about in different countries with different governance or religions?

It’s a huge can of worms.

How can a government or company rely on a model that could have an ever-changing definition of what’s allowed without taking on major business/governance risk?

They won’t.

My hunch is that the company that embraces the “no holds barred” ToS will win because it’s the least risky to adopt wrt long term risk of getting rug-pulled.

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@CGasparino @netflix 🎯

[Handre @Handre]

LASIK eye surgery cost $2,200 per eye in 2000. Today it's around $1,000 per eye despite 24 years of inflation. Meanwhile, an MRI that cost $1,200 in 2000 now costs $3,000+. The difference? LASIK operates in a free market with no insurance interference and minimal regulation.

When patients pay directly, providers must compete on price and quality. LASIK clinics advertise prices, offer financing, and constantly improve technology to attract customers. Compare this to hospital procedures where prices are hidden, patients never see bills, and insurance companies negotiate opaque rates that somehow always increase faster than inflation.

Cosmetic surgery follows the same pattern. Breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, and other elective procedures have become more affordable and safer over decades. Surgeons invest in better techniques and equipment because they must satisfy paying customers, not insurance bureaucrats or hospital administrators focused on maximizing reimbursements.

The lesson is clear: remove third-party payment systems and excessive regulation, and you get Austrian economics in action. Prices fall, quality rises, and innovation accelerates. Healthcare costs aren't rising because of aging populations or new technology—they're rising because we've destroyed the price mechanism that makes markets work.

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@JonathanTurley Can’t script this level of breathtaking stupidity. Off the charts.

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

@ScottJenningsKY Words fail. The profound, almost impressive depth of this man’s idiocy is beyond comprehension. Unbelievable.

[Captive Mind @captivemind108]

I’m struggling with the binary framing of the Fed right now. We’re told any criticism of the Board is an existential threat to its independence, but meanwhile, the Eccles Building renovation has ballooned from $1.9B to over $2.5B. Trump says it’s $3B but let’s give the Fed, benefit of the doubt. If any other agency head oversaw a 30%+ budget creep on a 'luxury' HQ overhaul, they’d be under a microscope. By labeling all scrutiny as 'authoritarian,' we’re effectively giving the Fed a blank check. We should be able to support an independent central bank while still demanding they be responsible stewards of their own resources. Accountability isn't an attack; it's basic oversight.