Drew Cranmer

☦️ Catholic 👩‍❤️‍👨 Husband 👨‍👦 Father 💻 Data Engineer 🏀 Duke Basketball Fan 📱 Tech Enthusiast ☮️ Libertarian🌻 KS-04 Congressional Candidate

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

@CarlEagan1 Do you have a source for this? I’d be very interested in investigating further.

[Drew Cranmer @DrumWithDrew]

New video! 🥁 Installing the Extreme Drums X-IR dual-zone trigger on the Ludwig Breakbeats snare. Also a look at the completed tom and kick trigger installs.

Full A2E build series in progress ➡️ https://t.co/qZR8iADdqL

#DrumWithDrew #edrums #AcousticToElectronic #drumming

[Drew Cranmer @drew4kansas]

The donation page is live. Every dollar goes directly toward taking this race — and this message — seriously.

Every little bit counts, and I'm deeply appreciative of anything you're able to contribute. 👇

https://t.co/jgitQT0X8E
#Drew4Kansas #KS04

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

@justdigita79403 @IRanMediaco And that totally wouldn't create any more terrorists or engender further hatred for the United States, would it?

[Sunflower Privacy Alliance @Privacy_KS]

May the 4th (Amendment) be with you!

[Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 @jacksonhinkle]

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 BREAKING: Former CIA officer Josephine Gillio said"In Iran, 165 innocent little girls were killed by American Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers."

"I can say this as a former officer, 'We Are The Terrorists'."

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

This is wild.

143 million people thought they were catching Pokémon. They were actually building one of the largest real-world visual datasets in AI history.

Niantic just disclosed that photos and AR scans collected through Pokémon Go have produced a dataset of over 30 billion real-world images. The company is now using that data to power visual navigation AI for delivery robots.

Players didn't just walk around with their phones. They scanned landmarks, storefronts, parks, and sidewalks from every angle, at every time of day, in lighting and weather conditions that staged photography would never capture. They documented the physical world at a scale no mapping company with a fleet of vehicles could have replicated on the same timeline or budget.

Niantic collected this systematically, data point by data point, across eight years, while users thought the only thing at stake was catching a rare Charizard.

The most valuable AI training datasets in the world aren't being assembled in data centers. They're being built by people who have no idea they're building them.

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

Flock Safety Update: KORA Response, Council Meeting, Drones, and a New Public Resource https://t.co/DSbL35paFz

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

5/This isn't left or right.
It's a question of whether your city made a major surveillance decision transparently — and whether constitutional guardrails are actually in place.
Full article: https://t.co/6VFZUPfyUZ

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

1/Wichita quietly deployed 310 Flock Safety surveillance cameras citywide.
Cost: $750,000+/year. Public vote: None that anyone can find.
A thread on what we know, what we don't, and what I'm doing about it. 🧵

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

4/This week I filed a KORA request with Wichita for the full Flock contract — costs, retention terms, sharing agreements, and Council authorization records.
I'll publish everything.
Want to file your own? Free toolkit: https://t.co/fMibtUAu7H

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

My desk lamp defaults to off when power is cut, so I wired up an ESP32 IR blaster + PIR sensor to automate it through Home Assistant. Also learned to solder for the first time to make it happen.

https://t.co/MC86WN2hEg

#HomeAssistant #ESP32 #Homelab

[StockMarket.News @_Investinq]

The Pentagon is spending $12 million to DESTROY a $50,000 drone.

And the people who build those missiles don't want you to know that.

Here's the math they're hiding.

Iran builds something called the Shahed drone.

It costs as little as $20,000.

Fits on the back of a pickup truck and can be hidden anywhere.

And it can take out an oil field, a desalination plant, or a military base.

Iran produces roughly 500 of these per day.

They have an estimated stockpile of 80,000 and are cheap, disposable, and devastatingly effective.​

Now here's how America defends against them.

A system called THAAD, one interceptor missile costs $12.7 million.

The Patriot system is cheaper but still runs $3.7 million per shot.

So a $50,000 drone flies toward a target.

The US fires a $12 million missile at it.

And it often misses so they fire two and sometimes three.

That is $25 to $36 million spent to stop a drone that cost less than a pickup truck.​​

This is a financial death spiral.

In the first few days of the Iran conflict, the UAE alone spent an estimated $1.3 to $2.6 billion on air defense.

Iran spent roughly $194 to $391 million on its attacks.​

For every $1 Iran spends on drones, Gulf states spend $15 to $35 defending against them.

That ratio is unsustainable and both sides know it.​

It gets worse.

The US only planned to acquire 25 to 37 new THAAD interceptors in all of fiscal year 2026.

At current rates of fire, that stockpile could be burned through in days.

So why hasn't the US adapted?

They actually have, sort of.

The Pentagon quietly built a copycat drone called LUCAS.

A reverse-engineered Shahed built by a company in Arizona called Spektreworks and the cost per unit is $35,000.

Iran built a drone so effective that the US military literally copied it and started using it against Iran.

The first combat deployment happened during Operation Epic Fury.​

But LUCAS production is still limited.

The US drone pipeline is brand new and meanwhile, Iran has been mass producing Shaheds for over a decade and has shared the tech with Russia, which built a $2 billion factory to produce them.

The real question nobody in Washington wants to answer:

Why did it take this long?

The US watched these drones devastate Ukraine for years.

They saw them used across the Middle East and the cost asymmetry was obvious to anyone with a calculator.​

Because the defense industry doesn't make money on $35,000 drones.

They make money on $12 million interceptors but on $360 million Patriot batteries, trillion-dollar programs like the F-35.

Defense contractors spent $148 million on lobbying in recent years.

The Big Five contractors secured $2.1 trillion in Pentagon contracts over the last two decades.

The incentive is to build expensive and not effective.

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

As a first-time iPhone user with the 17 Pro Max, I wholeheartedly agree with @AndroidPolice. It’s "meh" at best compared to my old OnePlus.

Most of the appeal is just social acceptance and blue bubbles. Technologically, it’s not the leader anymore.

https://t.co/d2CcnKyShI

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

#Claude down again? Twice in one day?

#Anthropic #ClaudeAI

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

Is anyone else having problems with #Claude this morning? Desktop apps on Mac and Windows don't appear to be working, and I can't access https://t.co/oKQKkC7zaj either.

#Anthropic #ClaudeAI

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

5/ Full piece at the link. ⬇️
https://t.co/5dNReYmE5u

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

The U.S. is now at war with Iran. Congress never voted for it. The President doesn't have constitutional authority to wage offensive war unilaterally — and this one is being fought on behalf of a foreign nation.

A thread. 🧵

[Drew Cranmer @drewbuntu42]

4/ I criticized Obama, Bush, and Biden for executive overreach. I'm criticizing Trump now for the same reason. The principle doesn't change based on who benefits.