Nicolas Johnson

Be Free — Follow Your Bliss — Happiness is a choice, not a chase. — Unreasonable + Unpredictable + Inauthentic = Unstoppable.

[Nicolas Johnson @CyberNico]

#Media #Journalism #StopFakeNews @Matthew_Winkler

[@levelsio @levelsio]

I believe nation states will keep becoming less and less relevant and that in the future everyone will be a nomad

Most nation states (and well governments) barely function anymore through 100+ years of democratic baggage from laws and regulation that can't be reversed

People can't save their countries or governments anymore through people's initiatives or getting into politics, because the systems are so old and in full gridlock

Globalism has deservedly gotten a really bad rep the last 5 years though as we were too naive about it, but I think we should keep the good parts from it

We should not take our identity from or defer our individual power to nation states ran by a political mafia class that's just perpetual robbing us and has no intention (or ability!) to actually improve society

Nation states are a relatively new invention and barely 150 years old, before we had empires, kingdoms, smaller city states (kinda like municipalities) and tribes or local communities

Over the years I've been increasingly red-pilled by @oskarth that nation states simply do not work and you need smaller sizes of government for things to work efficiently. Once it gets too big you get too much regulation and Kafka-esque bureaucracy and you end up with gridlock

Which is Europe's entire problem right now!

There's some exceptions, US and China seem to operate at large scale and are doing relatively well considering their size

Anyway to get back to my point, I think it's preferable people think of themselves as global citizens, because it gives them stronger negotiation power in relation to nation states and governments as they're able to pack up and leave to where they're treated better

And having people be mobile then also incentivizes other nation states (or smaller types of governance) to compete with them to attract the best people, and in response the other states will improve to attract people back

Now with geopolitical tensions (like the stuff about Russia and Europe this week), it shows even more the benefit to be able to pack your bag and leave to a better place quickly is an extreme benefit now and in the future, possibly even for survival

[Ethan Kam @ethank_6]

I had Jev predict every nfl game this sunday and walked away with a 44% profit

It found 5 bets with an edge. 4 won
$67.14 risked → $97 payout

We gave it fresh context through @p0 search, compared its win estimates on robinhood, and used the kelly criterion to size bets

[Richard Brennan @RichB118]

THE MARKET IS NOT A MACHINE

Market participants are not standing outside the system. Their beliefs and actions help create the future they are trying to predict.

El Farol, reflexivity, increasing returns and what they mean for trend following.

https://t.co/VjPEyHNKw3

#TrendFollowing #OutlierHunting #ComplexAdaptiveSystems #MarketReflexivity

[JOEY @JoeyTweeets]

lol years later the COVID era just keeps producing banger after banger

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

This is Trust & Safety 2.0.

The last time we had media-generated panics like this (with Russiagate and Covid), social media companies created “trust & safety” teams to censor conservative and dissident voices. Those hires worked with left-wing NGOs like the SPLC to police public discourse and do an end-run around the First Amendment. It almost worked, until Elon bought Twitter and exposed the whole game in the Twitter Files.

This time the plan is to embed unfireable EA minders inside every AI company as the new trust-and-safety layer. The censorship and control will be far more comprehensive, but also more subtle. Anytime they don’t get what they want, this unaccountable NGO layer (with the veneer of “trust the experts” pseudoscience) will shriek to the press that the AI company is risking humanity, and they will be celebrated as “whistleblowers.”

These groups haven’t earned our trust, and their agenda is not our safety.

https://t.co/3eIsHxaC7h

[Nicolas Johnson @CyberNico]

@timhodgsonmt @grok Fact check, list main investments in this $320 billion total.

[Every 📧 @every]

📣 We’re hiring for a staff writer 📣

Join our editorial team to write a must-read daily newsletter about what Every thinks matters in AI.

The writer will cover new models, products, research, company news, and how people are putting AI to work.

And yes, we’ll cover your token bill.

https://t.co/06QFfAiqS7

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government https://t.co/qe16k9ucsf

[@levelsio @levelsio]

I am so confused why people don't understand this, I keep getting these replies

Don't you get it?

Normies don't vibe code, they just ask something like "do my bookkeeping" or "file my tax" or "organize a movie night and send invites" or "generate a flyer for movie night" or "edit my video"

They don't ever see code, vibe code, or do anything with code, their AI chat app just does it for them

Most of the software layer has already disappeared or will completely disappear for normies

Just like building personal homepages permanently disappeared for normies when Facebook launched ~2005

A lot like this picture where functions of individual devices all got replaced with a single device

Same happening with apps now

[Wes Gray 🇺🇸 @alphaarchitect]

Warning. terrible dad joke inbound...but it did make me laugh

Kid: "Hey Dad, Alice said I was only average..."
Dad: "Wow. That sounds pretty mean."

[Matt Paulson @MediaKing]

"Just hit reply if you don't want to hear from me again"

Cold emailers put this in to generate replies (which are a positive engagement signal).

Instead, click report spam and block sender.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

🎒After a decade, I have made https://t.co/HGCLKS5BD6 free for everyone now!

Well almost free, it's $1 to sign up to avoid getting lots of spam

The reason is
1) I have made enough money (from it)
2) charging for a community artificially limits the size, if you put the price at $299 you get 50 new members per month, at $99 you get 200 people, at $29 you get 400 people, etc.

And this always annoyed me, I don't want to put a limit but I had to, to be able to make money from it, so it's free now

I want it to be it the biggest community for digital nomads, world travelers, sovereign thinkers and network state type people

For years it has has a great sponsor with @SafetyWing and I think that's maybe a better model for the future, get much more people in and then just add more sponsors

Right now for the record it has 43,252 paid members (so about 300/mo for 12 years!), so it will be interesting to see what it can grow too

I think now that AGI is on the horizon (or some say already here), online and offline (IRL) communities will become really important. People are talking more to AI now than to humans, and there was already a loneliness epidemic before AI

Making new friends and dating is not so easy for people now. And with remote work and entrepreneurship, people lack a space like an office where people would usually make friends or meet partners

I made most of the friends I have now through traveling and living around the world for the last 10+ years (and many via my site too), and I also met my girlfriend through those friends! So I think communities can have a real role in that post-AGI

Post-AGI business wise, communities also have a moat where many of my SaaS apps do not. So there is some urgency I feel to make Nomads in to the best community there is for those people. But that's why I have to remove any limitations to its growth now

So in a way after 12 years I am switching to the subsidized VC model a bit, but still 100% bootstrapped, kinda like "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

Having enough money now I can afford to do these things and figure out the business model later, which I think will be more sponsors

Enjoy and please sign up and tell me what to improve!!! 😊

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

A Hero That Trusted His Intuition.

The problem wasn’t that Morgan Stanley didn’t believe him.

Rick Rescorla had already been right once. After the 1993 basement bombing of the World Trade Center, the firm’s security chief walked the towers, studied the site, and reached a conclusion most people preferred not to hear: the World Trade Center was still a target. Next time, he said, it would not be a truck. It would be an airplane.

An airplane. In a 1993 report.

Executives listened. Then they looked at the lease.

Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the complex—twenty-two floors of the South Tower, thousands of brokers, and a trading infrastructure that could not be packed into boxes and wheeled across the Hudson.

They literally made it a trading center.

The contract with the Port Authority ran until 2006. Walking away from premium Manhattan space of that scale would have meant penalties measured in the hundreds of millions, plus the operational chaos of relocating an entire downtown machine. So the company stayed.

Rescorla adjusted. If they could not leave the building, they would learn to escape it.

He built a protocol and treated it like doctrine. Unannounced drills. No exemptions. Brokers who billed by the minute were pulled off their desks and sent into the stairwells two by two, starting from the top floors, leaving a lane for firefighters coming the other way.

People complained. He did not care. Practice, he believed, was the only thing that would beat panic.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. From the 44th floor of the South Tower, Rescorla could see the fire. Then the Port Authority came over the speakers: the South Tower was secure. Stay at your desks.

Rescorla grabbed a bullhorn and ignored them.

He started the drill his people already knew by heart. Floor by floor, two by two, down the stairs. He sang as he moved—Cornish songs from childhood, then “God Bless America”—keeping the line moving, refusing to let the stairwell become a stampede. Seventeen minutes later, the second plane struck the South Tower.

By then, most of Morgan Stanley was already on the way out.

Of the 2,687 employees in the building that morning, all but 13 survived.

It was stunning.

Rescorla could have been outside with them. He went back up instead. Colleagues told him to leave. He said he would, as soon as he was sure no one was left behind.

He was last seen around the 10th floor, heading higher.

The South Tower fell at 9:59 a.m. They never found him.

He was one of the 13.

He was a hero in every sense of the word.

Remember Rick Rescorla, he remembered for us.

[Nicolas Johnson @CyberNico]

I like simple, (mostly) static web pages for displaying text.

Easy to scan. Easy to read. Low effort.

I dislike animated text, with moving words. High effort.

If you let me read your website, I might.

If you don't, I won't.

[Nina Schick @NinaDSchick]

‘AI will kill us,’ seems to be getting a lot more attention than ‘AI solves hardest challenges in maths and science’ in the media today.

And that’s why the public is not in favour: pretty simple, non?

[Nicolas Johnson @CyberNico]

@ExnerPirot @grok What does the streamlining of regulations targeting oil and gas projects signal for mining projects? Could it signal that the Carney government will simplify mining projects next? Soon? Contain your response to what the Carney government has said in its communiques.

[Heather Exner-Pirot @ExnerPirot]

For the 🤓: great news this morning as the government is removing certain projects like oil sands facilities and natural gas generation from federal IAA assessment, leaving it up to provincial jurisdiction.
Many people call for “repeal of C-69”, or Impact Assessment Act. That is rarely the request of industry associations, because you have to have federal environmental impact legislation and starting from scratch would introduce tons of uncertainty and disruption. The preference has been to have a much narrower scope of what projects the federal government says it will assess. Today they made moves to streamline exactly that.
It does not mean these projects will not have environmental assessment - it means the IAA will not DUPLICATE some types of projects the provincial governments or the Canadian Energy Regulator (pipelines and transmission) are already assessing! “One project, one review”.
Franky I’m delighted.
https://t.co/orAvC5tVzq

[McFarlane Lake Mining @McFarLakeMining]

Visible gold at Juby.

This core photo is a close-up reminder of the mineralization being defined across McFarlane’s flagship gold project in Ontario’s Abitibi Belt.

Juby’s latest NI 43-101 MRE: 5.06 Moz Inferred + 1.14 Moz Indicated. Drilling continues.

#MLM #JubyGoldProject

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

While presenting his Musk documentary, Alex Gibney said Elon Musk is extremely dangerous.

He’s not wrong.

Yes, Elon Musk is dangerous.

- Elon Musk is dangerous to the woke machine.
- Elon Musk is dangerous for bureaucrats.
- Elon Musk is dangerous for fraudsters.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to censorship.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to media gatekeepers.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to political propagandists.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to elites who think ordinary people should stay quiet.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to corruption.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to legacy media.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to the EU censorship regime.
- Elon Musk is dangerous to people who want to criminalize memes.

Elon Musk is not dangerous to democracy.

He is dangerous to the people who think they own it.

[Evan Hubinger @EvanHub]

Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.