Doug Vining

#Futurist, strategist, writer, geek, entrepreneur, speaker, editor

[Doug Vining @dougv]

EU declares DIY illegal
Mindbullets by @Futureworld_Int
https://t.co/TmbfLbi0Ip

[Laurent @scion_x_]

Ça fait un moment que je me pose des questions sur le bilan (provisoire) de Milei en Argentine. On lit tout et son contraire. Alors j'ai arrêté de lire les commentaires et j'ai regardé les chiffres bruts.

L'Argentine, c'est l'expérience grandeur nature que les économistes attendaient depuis 50 ans. Même pays. Même peuple. Même culture. On change UNE variable : la méthode économique.

Avant : des décennies de gestion étatiste et péroniste, "redistributive". Le résultat concret ? 211% d'inflation, 42% de pauvreté, un État en déficit permanent qui finance son train de vie en faisant tourner la planche à billets.

Puis arrive Milei. Méthode inverse, brutale, assumée : on coupe, on déréglemente, on arrête d'imprimer.

Deux ans plus tard (photo à son arrivée (fin 2023) vs aujourd'hui) :

Inflation annuelle : 211% → 31%
Inflation mensuelle : 25% → ~2%
Déficit public : −5% du PIB → +1,8% (excédent)
Croissance : −1,6% → +4,4%
Pauvreté : 42% → 28%

Sans débat. Jugez par vous-mêmes.

Et le point essentiel : ces gains ne vont pas "aux riches" ou "aux marchés". Ils vont d'abord aux plus pauvres.

L'inflation est l'impôt le plus injuste qui existe — elle frappe ceux qui n'ont aucun actif pour se protéger. La diviser par 7, c'est rendre du pouvoir d'achat à ceux d'en bas. Et 14 points de pauvreté en moins, ce sont des millions de gens, pas une ligne Excel.

Pendant un siècle, on a expliqué aux Argentins que l'État les protégerait en dépensant toujours plus. Résultat : un des pays les plus riches du monde en 1910, ruiné. On vient d'inverser la méthode. Regardez le résultat.

À un moment, il faut accepter ce que les faits racontent : sur le terrain économique, la méthode libérale a livré en deux ans ce que des décennies de socialisme avaient promis sans jamais tenir. Et ça profite d'abord aux plus modestes.

On peut détester le style de Milei — la tronçonneuse, l'outrance, les sorties improbables, il n'a rien d'un homme d'État classique. Mais on ne juge pas une politique économique au style de celui qui la mène. On la juge à ce qu'elle fait à la vie des gens.

Et les chiffres ont parlé.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Robert Marks on @Tesla FSD (Supervised) after buying a Model Y:

"Its self-driving is the most impressively engineered consumer product since the smartphone. I say this as a practicing electrical and computer engineering professor with decades of experience in algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Among others, I’ve showed off my Tesla to a control theory professor, a retired Marine fighter pilot, and a retired police officer. All were agog.

Whether Tesla ultimately dominates the future of transportation or merely helps ignite it, one thing is clear: the automobile is being reinvented before our eyes. For those like me who grew up thinking of cars as engines, gears, and gas tanks, stepping into a Tesla feels less like buying a new car and more like getting a glimpse of tomorrow."

Full article: https://t.co/ZMF9QJcd45

[Apple Design @TheAppleDesign]

POV: You’re charging your new Ferrari Luce

[桂/‎( •᷄ὤ•᷅) @S_9D]

@BrianRoemmele This success is only for a ground-based wind tunnel experiment. The airplane didn't actually fly in the sky at this speed. There are still many challenges to clear before it can be used for commercial flights, and researchers are aiming to make it a reality around the 2040s.

[Handre @Handre]

The Soviet whaling fleet killed 180,000 whales between 1948 and 1973, delivering rotten carcasses that nobody wanted to eat. Soviet citizens had zero demand for whale meat. The ships hunted anyway, fulfilling quotas handed down from central planners who counted tons of dead whale as economic output.

This was bureaucratic box-checking that nearly drove multiple whale species to extinction. Soviet whalers targeted endangered right whales and humpbacks specifically because they were larger, helping them hit tonnage targets faster. The meat rotted on deck during long voyages back to port, where officials dutifully recorded the numbers and sent reports to Moscow declaring another successful harvest.

Central planners measured success in tons harvested, not consumer satisfaction or long-term sustainability. Factory managers got promoted for exceeding whale quotas, regardless of whether anyone actually wanted whale meat (they didn't). The feedback mechanism that normally connects production to human needs had been severed entirely. When bureaucrats replace market prices with administrative targets, you get mass slaughter with zero purpose.

You still see this today every time politicians promise to "create jobs" in industries that lose money year after year. When government agencies measure their success by dollars spent rather than problems solved. When university administrators chase enrollment numbers instead of student outcomes.

Remove the profit motive and price signals, and you get 180,000 dead whales rotting in the sun while commissars celebrate meeting their targets. You don't get rational planning.

Socialism is fundamentally destructive to the environment and inevitably leads to ecological disasters.

[Starship Gazer @StarshipGazer]

A close look at the Starship test flight 12 full stack in 4K.
5/20/26

[Doug Vining @dougv]

Mindbullets | News from the Future | 2034
From cognitive surplus to cognitive dependence:
The robots didn’t steal your brain, you gave it away
@Futureworld_Int @neuraltheory
https://t.co/p5mdQGv89I

[Doug Vining @dougv]

@AzJack65 @ChrisMartzWX Pansy window lickers

[Doug Vining @dougv]

Exactly my experience the first time I drove it

[Nic Cruz Patane @niccruzpatane]

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Cybertruck over the last couple of weeks.

I can confidently say this is the best Tesla ever made. FSD has a lot to do with it. It feels like an autonomous land yacht that can take on anything.

The way this truck drives, soaks up bumps, offers tons of room for humans and cargo, and drives itself is hard to wrap my head around.

I haven’t driven the truck manually for more than a mile since I’ve had it.

A pickup truck that drives itself pretty much flawlessly should not exist so soon in my lifetime, but it does. Crazy.

[Nic Cruz Patane @niccruzpatane]

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Cybertruck over the last couple of weeks.

I can confidently say this is the best Tesla ever made. FSD has a lot to do with it. It feels like an autonomous land yacht that can take on anything.

The way this truck drives, soaks up bumps, offers tons of room for humans and cargo, and drives itself is hard to wrap my head around.

I haven’t driven the truck manually for more than a mile since I’ve had it.

A pickup truck that drives itself pretty much flawlessly should not exist so soon in my lifetime, but it does. Crazy.

[Doug Vining @dougv]

@neo_baggins @Erdayastronaut @HeirTatsu Once full reusability is solved the whole game changes. Everything that was impossible suddenly becomes normal and a whole new paradigm evolves.

[Neo Baggins @neo_baggins]

Historically, betting against SpaceX isn’t the right move. Is it complicated and involved with all the launches? Yeah, but SpaceX is also making tracks to simplify/cost reduce the overall process so that complexity is less burdensome. Right now it’s 12 launches of an in development, mainly unproven booster and second stage. Right now it’s closer to launching 12 Saturn Vs just to get to the moon, but soon enough it’ll be closer to flying 12 C5 Galaxies from California to Japan. Even without full reusability, 6 boosters and 12 tanker starships, you could realistically fill the depot ship in a matter of weeks. Couple this with the original Artemis mission profile of the Orion module taking the astronauts to and from (or at least from lunar orbit) and I think this isn’t as outlandish as it seems. All about the perspective and how quickly SpaceX can shift it from Apollo/Artemis to American Airlines. As SpaceX solves problems and proves hardware, the initial, partial reuse profile can be changed. Watching them catch the Statue of Liberty with a pair of steel weldments after it free fell from the Karman line on the first attempt taught me I should trust them and their process more 🤣 Oh, and Blue Origin’s recent debacle helped remind us of the perspective that space is hard and SpaceX just makes it look easy most of the time.

[Doug Vining @dougv]

@Erdayastronaut @HeirTatsu Let us revisit this question after the V3 test on Tuesday 😎

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

I read everywhere about the 'hard right'

This the term used to describe people who are
Islamosceptic - that is, people who are doubtful about the merits of a religion that demands child marriage, the beating of women, and death to all who oppose it

Perhaps 'sensible right' would be a better description

[Jordan Taylor @Jordan_W_Taylor]

The gas turbine is the miracle machine that will save our climate. Yes, I know, it's a fossil fuel. Boo, hiss, “he's behind you!” etc. But bear with me.

Methane gas is one of the cleanest fossil fuels out there, emitting far less carbon dioxide per Megawatt-hour than coal, oil or wood and with none of the particulates and complex toxic byproducts that those villains gift to the locals. So if you're going to replace the dirty stuff, you could do worse than burn gas.

And gas turbines are far more of a standard product than bespoke and tricky nuclear power; even the aristocrat of the breed, the combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT). This is a dual loop power generator that takes the waste heat energy of a methane-burning gas turbine and uses it to boil water and rev up a steam turbine for a second swing at things. CCGTs are among the most efficient machines humanity has ever created, with thermal efficiencies of 60%-64%, and even up to 68% for the best of the best.

That's basically wizardry.

Furthermore they've been an enormous environmental gift to the world, despite their mucky fossil-fuel credentials. The advanced economies of the West have spent much of the last few decades gently flattening, and then sharply reducing their gross carbon emissions, and much of that is thanks to the replacement of coal-fired heating and generation with gas.

Is it perfect? Hardly, and the hard missile rain in the middle-East, and soaring gas prices, paints a very clear picture of what can go wrong. It's an unfortunate moral bargain that so much of civilization's fossil energy is inextricably bound-up with well armed authoritarian regimes. Is it pure chance, or is the resource curse a deadly reality?

Hard to say. But gas-fired generation and the gas turbine that enables it deserves its place on the podium of power.

[Doug Vining @dougv]

@Teslaconomics Visit Gravity park

[Doug Vining @dougv]

@chrishartZA @IvoVegter And incentives capital to go elsewhere

[Chris Hart @chrishartZA]

Capital gains is one of the most counterproductive taxes. To grow an economy and create jobs, capital is core and indispensable to achieve this. Taxing the capital gain (which is a wealth tax largely made up through inflation) helps to diminish the available capital and reduces the investment in the economy. It’s the equivalent of a farmer eating seeds and then wondering why there are harvest is much smaller. There is no emerging market in the world that can justify or afford capital gains taxes against an unemployment problem in a capital deficient economy. The wealth taxes are anti-growth unemployment perpetuators

[Doug Vining @dougv]

@NicDawes @MaxduPreez @RyanCoetzee What about TikTok WhatsApp and ChatGPT? No risk there and nothing done? So why must a potentially hugely beneficial service be singled out? Pure political ideology…