Erin LaMonte

Wife, Mom, puppy raiser for Canine Companions for Independence, retired school board member, former Californian living a Texan life.

[Jennifer Van Laar @jenvanlaar]

https://t.co/LCQfoXSejn

[Steve McGuire @sfmcguire79]

Berkeley math professor:

“Today, the more successful a public high school is at preparing its students, the lower its graduates' chances of getting into top UC campuses like Berkeley and San Diego.”

Berkeley admitted 45% of applicants from a high school where nearly 94% of “students failed to meet the state standards in mathematics.”

It admitted less than 14% of applicants from a school where “nearly 100 percent of its students in AP Calculus BC pass the national exam with a perfect score of 5.”

[Ashley (TeamTrump47) @TeamTrump47]

Since California doesn’t believe in voter ID laws 🗳️, maybe we should all fly to California and vote for @spencerpratt and @SteveHiltonx 😉

Anyone wanna go? ✈️

[Alec Lace @AlecLace]

🚨 WATCH: Sec. Pete Hegseth just absolutely DISMANTLED Rep. John Garamendi

“You stain the troops… handing propaganda to our enemies. Who are you cheering for here?”

This is the best thing you’ll see on X today!

[Teslaconomics @Teslaconomics]

I might get some pushback for this, but I honestly think a lot of parents, especially in places like Silicon Valley and especially many Asian parents, are training their kids for the wrong world.

I see kids at the age of 7-8 packed with after-school math, more reading, more test prep, with the goal to make them “smarter.”

But from my perspective, living deep in the AI world every single day, I’m pretty sure raw intelligence is about to become a commodity.

Very soon, AI is going to do math better than the best mathematician, it’ll diagnose better than top doctors around the world, it’ll draft contracts better than elite lawyers, and it’ll learn faster than any PhD, instantly, endlessly, and without any fatigue.

All of that knowledge will live right in your pocket.

So think about it… if we’re raising kids to win by being “the smartest in the room,” we’re really training them for something that’s already being replaced.

In my opinion, this is a waste of time, $, and effort.

What I focus on with my kids is very different.

I care about willpower.

I care about passion.

I care about loving something enough to stick with it, especially when it feels hard.

And as a Dad, my job is to support that, whatever it is, and teach them to never give up.

I could be totally wrong though…

But when I look at where AI is headed, I don’t think the future belongs to the kid who memorized the most formulas or did the most math problems, etc.

In the future, I think the winners are going to be kids who
1/ can push through frustration
2/ can stay curious
3/ can keep going deeper into their passions than others
4/ can use AI tools to build cool things
5/ has the will power to never give up

In this day and age, school doesn’t really teach this and I don’t think after-school classes teach that either. I don’t think any of this can really be taught at school tbh, it’s something that is developed inside the home through the environment we as parents cultivate.

In a world where AI will help you build anything, create anything, and learn anything instantly, I don’t think the real edge will be intelligence anymore like the past.

The edge will come down to grit, discipline, emotional strength, and to keep going as others quit.

AI will be so deeply woven into our kids’ lives whether we like it or not.

That part is unavoidable.

However, what is avoidable is raising kids who only know how to follow instructions, chase grades, and wait for approval.

I always tell my kids, I don’t care what grade you get in a test. I care that you know what you got wrong, why you got it wrong, and what you’re doing to avoid that mistake in the future.

Because I firmly believe in the future, the kids who will thrive the most will be the ones who want something badly enough to go after it, who aren’t afraid to fail, and those who know how to leverage AI.

Just my two cents.

But if we’re serious about the future, I think it’s time parents start training for that world, NOT the one we grew up in.

[stepfanie tyler @stepfanie]

https://t.co/yWTpBWmhZG

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

Despite passing Prop 50, which just stripped power from California's nonpartisan commission, 92% of CA voters say district lines should be drawn by a nonpartisan commission.

"The irony is 9 of 10 voters said they'd like to see this done by a nonpartisan commission."

Are people really this stupid?

[Steve Loftus @LoftusSteve]

I didn't really know anything about Charlie Kirk

Until this week Kirk was a name and face I would occasionally see someone retweet on here and I would scroll past. I'd seen 2 or 3 short videos taken from Tiktok of him debating some low IQ college student but that was it.

I'm generally not interested in MAGA. I broadly believe in many of their goals, but find much of the rhetoric and policy implementation to be self defeating. To me Kirk was another Ben Shapiro or Tim Pool. All MAGA, all the time.

Immediately following his shooting my shock was political and societal. Another step down in what seems to be the never ending descent of American, and thus Western, society. Another sad day for free speech, no matter what you thought of the man's politics.

Then in the following hours my timeline was filled with videos of Kirk as a father, and my heart broke. I saw a man that was clearly devoted to his family and who loved them, and was loved in return, a great deal. I felt that love forever torn apart. I saw a daughter that would never run to her father and wrap her arms around him again.

The following day I saw more videos on here, and out of respect and curiosity I watched them all. Maybe they would make some sense of why someone felt the need to end this man's life and rob his children of a father. They did not.

Contrary to the tweets spreading through X as some kind of justification, what I found was a man who was deeply religious. I man that had a true belief system, and not one that he bent or shaped to fit to modern society. For example. he absolutely believed that homosexuality was a sin because that was what the bible told him, but he did not hate or think less of those people. Many of his close friends such as Peter Thiel and David Rubin were gay.

What I see when I watch the videos of Kirk is a fan of deep faith who put that faith above everything else. I see a man who treated everyone with compassion and civility. I see a man that was friendly and open and honest.

Honestly, I see a man that is braver and better than I. Not because he put himself in danger by wanted to talk to people, but by handing himself completely over to a belief system that I've never been able to get my head around. Like many of us, the idea is alien to me.

I can't say I don't watch his videos with a tinge of jealousy. What I see is a man who was completely happy. A man confident in his faith and who led his life accordingly. A man who not just believed, but acted on his belief.

At a time when so many people seem empty and depressed, it's hard not to be a little jealous of a person that seemed so fulfilled.

With this in mind, it's been incensing to see him slandered on here by people without any of the faith and none of the commitment. To see people take the man's faith and turn it into something twisted and hateful.

I knew nothing of the man in life, but I will try to listen to him more in death.

[David Tangipa @DavidTangipa]

These maps impact 40 million Californians—yet as an elected official, I was given less than 30 minutes to question a bill dropped on us <24 hrs ago.

If that’s not authoritarianism, what is?
If this is how the legislature treats me, how do you think they treat the people?

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done... https://t.co/vf0jKG6Xcb

[Susan Shelley @Susan_Shelley]

At 8:00 p.m. on the night before the South Coast Air Quality Management District is set to ban natural gas powered water heaters and furnaces and force their replacement with units that run on electricity, California is getting 26% of its electricity from natural gas. Idiocy.

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

Having children is holding a stake in the future.

Aligns incentives beyond one's own lifetime.

Without this, humans can become temporally greedy and overfit systems to a single generation rather than investing in the future.

[Angeleno Insights @AngelenoInsight]

LA is paying lobbyists… to lobby itself.
And you’re footing the bill.

Yes — the City and County of Los Angeles spend millions every year to hire outside firms to influence other parts of their own government.

It’s a racket. Here’s how it works:
THREAD

[Erin LaMonte @eglamonte]

@ELonMuskNewssX I would look good in that!

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

“This is NPR.” Unfortunately for National Public Radio, that proved all too true this week. The Hill just posted my column on how CEO Katherine Maher just made the conclusive case for defunding NPR. https://t.co/qe1xfJqFc2

[Susan Shelley @Susan_Shelley]

Public rage over high electricity bills in California has Democrats rushing to blame someone other than themselves.
https://t.co/0DTIklUw1i

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

It is the thing of legend, a Beltway monster described to the kids around campfires late at night: An outsider who comes to town and lays waste to government waste, firing thousands and slashing budgets. The monster now has a name, and it is Elon Musk... https://t.co/PiqvmBRK4o

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

- Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.

- All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!

- The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.

The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!

Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.

When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!!

This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.

[Susan Shelley @Susan_Shelley]

The wildfires in California became monsters after the California Air Resources Board created new "smoke regulations" in 2000. They made it difficult or impossible to do prescribed burns, once a routine practice for fire mitigation. https://t.co/J9hJyH6UKK