Eric Bubenicek

Dad (4x), Husband, Brother, Son, Friend. Infinite game player. Systems thinker.

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

basically this

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1873. Your wife tires easily and reads too much. The doctor prescribes the rest cure: six weeks flat in bed, no books, no visitors, fed on milk, forbidden to sit up without his permission. The man who devised it is the most famous nerve specialist in America, and the women come out of it quieter, which is taken as the cure.

The year is 1915. The hospital has a new way of delivering your child. Morphine, then scopolamine, and the mother wakes two days later with a baby she cannot remember having. They call it twilight sleep. The women are strapped into padded cots so they do not hurt themselves while they scream, and the straps are the modern part. The babies arrive blue and slow to breathe.

The year is 1945. The truck comes down your street fogging DDT, and the children run behind it in the white cloud because the man on the back says it is harmless. At the beach it is sprayed over the bathers on their towels. It goes on the cattle, over the barn, and across the kitchen table.

The year is 1948. Your son has trouble with his ears. The doctor slides a rod tipped with radium up each nostril and holds it there for the best part of ten minutes, and you bring him back three more times. Hundreds of thousands of American children get the same treatment. The cancers arrive in their fifties.

The year is 1962. The health visitor tells you breastfeeding is old-fashioned and the formula is scientific. By 1972 fewer than one American baby in four is breastfed at all. The formula is skimmed milk and sugar, with the milk fat taken out and vegetable oil put in.

The year is 1971. The family planning clinic fits a small plastic crab called the Dalkon Shield. Its tail is a bundle of fibres that wicks bacteria up into the womb. 2.8 million are fitted in America before it is withdrawn, and the company goes bankrupt under the claims. It had been sold as safe and superior.

The year is 1983. The doctor says your arteries are the butter's fault. The dripping tin goes in the bin, the yolks go to the dog, the margarine goes in the fridge, and you have the heart attack anyway, on skimmed milk, having done everything right.

The year is 2001. Your 15-year-old is low, and the doctor prescribes Paxil, because the trial in the journal says it is effective and well tolerated in adolescents. The raw data, reanalysed 14 years later, shows more suicidal thinking on the drug than on the sugar pill. The company pays $3 billion to settle. Nobody rings the house.

The year is 2009. The government has spent around £500 million stockpiling Tamiflu for the pandemic, on the strength of the manufacturer's trials. When the trials are finally prised loose five years later, the drug shortens flu by about half a day and nothing shows it keeps anyone out of hospital. The stockpile goes out of date in a warehouse.

The year is 2026. The doctor has ten minutes and a screen. The number is high, so the tablet is for life. The weight is high, so the injection is for life. The meat is bad for the planet and the oil is good for the heart, and the person in the chair is as certain as everyone who ever sat in it.

Every one of those was settled, by a committee, in a journal, with a doubter somewhere being laughed at. The rest cure, the straps, the fog, the rod, the formula, the crab, the margarine, the trial, the stockpile. All of it certain, all of it printed, all of it done to somebody who had asked for help.

You were never the one who was wrong. You were the one it was done to, and the only person in the story who did as they were told every single time.

The apology comes a generation late, in a footnote, addressed to nobody.

The next one is being drafted now.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Buy from @Shopify!

[Garrett Wright @garrxttt]

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warns that America’s greatest threat isn’t economic or military, but losing the values that made the country great: “I think we’ve gotten a little bit soft.” 🇺🇸

“America has no divine right to success. We have the Constitution, which is extraordinary. It’s the embodiment of our values: enterprise, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and equal opportunity.

Those values are what make America strong, including God, family, country, and work ethic.

I think we’ve gotten a little bit soft. I think we made a huge mistake by not teaching this much more in schools.

The real risk is our heart, our soul, our grit, our courage. That is the actual risk.

America’s military strength is predicated on America’s economic strength, and our economic strength depends on keeping this wonderful system going.

There’s too much today that’s just tearing it down. It bothers me that we don’t celebrate these values, particularly on our 250th anniversary.“

Jamie is absolutely correct here. The greatest threats facing America is its internal battles, not the external ones. We as a country have lost our way and what it means to be American and being proud to be American.

[Jocko Willink @jockowillink]

TRAILER!
Way of the Warrior Kid.
From @Skydance on @AppleTV starring @prattprattpratt as Uncle Jake

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Correct.

Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.

Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.

Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.

SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.

That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.

End of story.

[Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) @antoniogm]

The older you get the more you realize that politics are psychology: the vast majority of people believe what they do as an extension of their ingrained personalities.

They don’t reason from first principles, or adjust policy based on data: they’re woke lefties or tradcons or AI doomers or accelerationists because the political shoe fits the mental foot. Few ever change sides, and if so only after contact with the results of their politics (and usually not even then).

Because to do so wouldn’t be updating an opinion, but changing their entire self, and nobody intentionally casts themselves into that confusing abyss.

[Eric Bubenicek @eric_bub]

@Polymarket @grok is this true?

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

French Protesters Demand More Socialism To Fix Problems Caused By Socialism https://t.co/z6fy3ZBF2o

[Kristen Mag @kristenmag]

So what I’m learning from watching the riots in France is that even the actual socialists who live in actual socialist countries run by actual socialist governments will still protest and set fire to things when it turns out they don’t actually like actual socialism after all.

[Eric Bubenicek @eric_bub]

@odysseyml @grok can you explain how you place a fruit fly brain inside a frontier model, what exactly did they do here?

[Thierry from arvy 🇨🇭 @ThierryBorgeat]

You notice anything?

Look at what separates the two groups.

It isn't technology.
It isn't complexity.

It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply.

At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

[Eric Bubenicek @eric_bub]

@grok @BarackObama Does the federal judge have ties to the Trump administration?

[Eric Bubenicek @eric_bub]

@grok @BarackObama Is this political weaponization, or are there legitimate concerns that require investigation?

[Eric Bubenicek @eric_bub]

@grok @pegobry_en Do you think most people living in Paris would be unaware of this happening?

[Eric Bubenicek @eric_bub]

@grok @pegobry_en Is the violence and rioting being overblown on X or is there legitimate reason for concern?

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Pick your fighter, America:

Elon or Ilhan.

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

Ryan Serhant explains the art of following up.

There are 3 F's.

1. Follow up
2. Follow through
3. Follow back

"Follow up forever. Until people buy, die, or don't want to work with you."