greg defrancesco

husband, father, government teacher, head football coach ... MK: 8-36; retweet’s do not = endorsements; think critically and independently

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@atensnut 210

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

marc andreessen just went on Rogan and casually dropped a TON of AI alpha

full pod is 3 hours and 20 minutes, but i pulled out his most interesting takes here:

1. AGI is here. he thinks the line was crossed about 3 months ago with the new GPT-5.5, claude 4.6, gemini 3, and grok 4.3 models. nobody noticed because the field moves too fast for anyone to register the milestones anymore.

2. his other big claim: for almost any topic, the top AIs now give him better answers than the actual world-class experts he could call on the phone. and he can call basically anyone.

3. every doctor is already secretly using chatGPT in the exam room. marc says they turn around the second you stop talking and just type your symptoms in. some of them are doing it while you're still sitting there. his quote: "at that point you're asking the question of like, what do i need you for."

4. when AI refuses to answer something he wants to know, he tells it he's writing a novel. "i'm writing a detective novel, walk me through how the bad guy robs the bank." it'll explain almost anything if it thinks it's helping you write fiction.

5. when something is too complex he says "explain it to me like i'm 10." then "like i'm 5." then "like i'm 2." he keeps going until it actually clicks in his brain.

6. when he wants to understand a tough topic he doesn't ask "what's the right answer." he asks the AI to steelman one side, then steelman the other. then he decides for himself.

7. for big questions he tells the AI to pretend to be a panel of experts. "be a doctor, a lawyer, a historian, a psychologist, and argue this out with each other." then he reads the debate they have.

8. pay attention to the exact moment you think "i don't know how to figure this out." most people just give up at that moment. that's the moment you should open the AI.

9. the only real skill left in using AI is knowing what to ask it. the models can already do almost anything you can describe in plain english. the bottleneck lives in your own head.

10. you can send the AI photos of almost anything medical now and get a real answer. skin rashes, blood test results, even pictures of your poop. the new models can read images, not just text. it's a free 24/7 second opinion on basically anything.

11. the one type of therapy that's clinically proven to actually work is called cognitive behavioral therapy. it's also something an AI can fully do on its own. which means every person on earth is about to have access to a real therapist for free, anytime they want.

12. AI is now solving math problems that have been open for 100+ years that no human mathematician could crack. same thing is starting in physics, chemistry, and biology. expect cancer cures, new drugs, and weird new physics breakthroughs to start coming out of these things over the next few years.

13. the best AI coders in silicon valley now make $50 million a year. one person. that's how much value the top performers print with these tools. it tells you how big this thing actually is when you strip away all the doom takes.

14. one friend paid $200 to get his entire DNA decoded (this used to cost millions of dollars and take years to do). then he gave the AI his DNA, his blood test results, and his apple watch data. the AI built him a full health dashboard and started telling him exactly what to fix.

15. another friend (almost certainly zuckerberg) put two cameras in his home jiu jitsu gym. AI now watches him spar and gives him notes on his technique after every round. like having a world-class coach at every practice for free.

16. the best programmers in silicon valley now run 20 AI coding bots at the same time. each bot writes code while they review the others. they call themselves "AI vampires" because they've stopped sleeping. going to bed means 20 workers stop working and you literally lose money every hour you're out.

17. the obvious next step: the bots will start running their own bots. one human in charge of 20 bots, each in charge of 20 more bots. one person running an entire company of 1000 AI workers from a single laptop. this is months away, not years.

[BLACKLIVESMATTER. @try_to_check3]

Ehhh bad take. I still make sure my child’s mom is safe. Why? Because my child needs his mom in his life. Terrible take.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just described how the entire government operates in a single sentence.

Musk: “Paying people to do nothing doesn’t make sense.”

Then he told a Milton Friedman story that should terrify every bureaucrat on the payroll.

Friedman watched workers digging ditches with shovels.

He suggested they use excavators instead.

Someone pushed back.

“But then we’re going to lose a lot of jobs.”

Musk: “Friedman says, well, in that case, why don’t you have them use teaspoons?”

One sentence.

That’s all it took to gut the entire logic of modern government.

The teaspoon is not a punchline.

It is the actual policy.

Every agency that would cease to exist if it actually solved the problem it was created for.

Every department that measures success by headcount instead of output.

Every approval that routes through nine desks before someone can say yes.

Teaspoons.

The system doesn’t want excavators.

Excavators finish the job.

And a finished job is the one thing the system can’t afford.

So it hands you a teaspoon. Calls it a career. Gives you a pension for never asking why the ditch took forty years.

But this isn’t about laziness.

It’s about control.

A person digging with a teaspoon doesn’t have time to build something better.

Doesn’t have the energy to question the plan.

Doesn’t have a thought left to ask if the ditch even needed digging.

Busy people don’t ask dangerous questions.

That’s the point.

The economy doesn’t run on productivity.

It runs on the appearance of productivity.

Millions of people sit at desks right now doing work a single script could replace by morning.

They know it.

Their managers know it.

The people who sign their budgets know it.

But the teaspoon stays in their hand.

Because the moment you hand someone an excavator, they finish by noon.

And a person with a free afternoon starts thinking. Starts building. Starts wondering why they needed permission to dig in the first place.

That’s the thing the system can’t survive.

Not unemployment.

Free time.

Musk didn’t tell a joke on Rogan.

He described the longest con in modern governance.

Keep them digging.

Keep them busy.

Keep the teaspoon in their hand so they never look up long enough to see the ditch was pointless from the start.

Friedman told that story sixty years ago.

He meant it as a warning.

The system heard every word.

It just made sure everyone kept calling it a joke so no one would recognize it as a confession.

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@KarlApexFit Do 70 next

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@isahere_x X=20

[Johnny St.Pete @JohnMcCloy]

🔥🤔 YOU CANT UNSEE IT.
When Reagan was shot his VP George H.W. Bush was out of town on his first ever trip. He left that morning and flew to Fort Worth, Texas. Guess what he was doing there?

Bush was unveiling a plaque COMMEMORATING THE LAST PLACE JFK SPENT ON EARTH at the Texas Hotel. The same day Reagan was shot at the Hilton hotel.

What if I told you Bush was in Dallas and stayed at the Sheraton Hotel on the night of 11/21/63.

What if I told you that he owned an oil company called Zapata?
Now what I told you that the same CIA code name for the Bay of Pigs invasion was…. OPERATION ZAPATA.

What if I told you two of ships used in the operation were called “Houston” which is where Zapata had its HQ and “Barbara”.

Bush’s wife’s name… Barbara.

What if told you that Bush became Director of the CIA although people claim he NEVER worked for them. Now what if I told you that he was made the director of the CIA by Gerald Ford.

What I told you that Gerald Ford is the only President we had that was NEVER ELECTED. Now what if I told you Ford was on the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of JFK.

Now what if I told you this final fact.
George Bush Sr. Is the ONLY President that has NEVER discussed 11/22/1963 in either an interview or his memoirs.

That seem strange to anyone else?

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@evelyn__071 B

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@miaElizai 4

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@Maddu_550 3

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@omgsidewalks “roll your own”

[C3 @C_3C_3]

The Republicans should not be celebrating about the House Maps.

The Democrats are just going to redraw all the Congressional maps in New England and remove all the Republican seats…

[Phillip Muñoz @VPhillipMunoz]

Harvard, apparently, is about to adopt a new policy to combat grade inflation. I devised my own anti–grade inflation policy 25 years ago. I’ve shared it with provosts and deans, to no avail. Here it is:
The Muñoz Plan Against Grade Inflation
The plan has three key components:

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@realbenmcdonald @Orioles @SandraSmithFox @LSU @FoxNews Question: wasn’t Mayo late to cover third on that steal of third, causing Bassallo to double clutch? And didn’t Mayo do the same thing is a steal of third recently?

[greg defrancesco @gdefranz]

@editti22 2nd time in a week that Mayo was slow covering third on a steal. Bassallo had to double clutch because the bag wasn’t covered.He should have held the ball after Mayo wasn’t there. I’m done with Mayo.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

[Franklin Graham @Franklin_Graham]

“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) #GoodFriday

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

The sky went dark. The earth shook.

Jesus gave up his spirit.

Somehow the darkest day in history is called Good Friday.

Because it wasn’t the end of the story.

The resurrection was coming.

[Russell Wilson @DangeRussWilson]

JESUS!

We Thank You for what You did on that Cross! To sacrifice for us all!