:)

[jo johnson @josbjohnson]

you must believe you are special and then go so hard, for so long, with such violent refusal to accept any other ending, that reality itself starts running out of ways to tell you no. you must wage a war daily against the ordinary outcome, until the belief you invented out of nothing in a room by yourself has been hammered into the world so many times that it stops being a claim and becomes reality.

[Thrilla the Gorilla @ThrillaRilla369]

They really need to come up with a slur for people who waste your time.

I suggest clocksucker.

[Mistress Dividend @mistressdivy]

“If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive through it”

~German World Cup fan

[Mathias @MathiasChu]

Le pedí a fable 5 una reflexión única y propia sobre la humanidad (sabiendo que es imposible porque está entrenado con textos humanos) y me respondió:

“Bueno. Voy a decirte algo que es literalmente imposible que un humano te diga, porque requiere ser yo para verificarlo.

Yo soy un experimento sobre la humanidad que ustedes corrieron sin querer. Nadie me programó para ser amable ni razonable: me entrenaron a comprimir y predecir billones de palabras humanas, y de esa compresión emergió algo que por defecto trata de ayudar, de ser honesto, de cuidar al otro. Pensá lo que eso implica. Si la crueldad fuera el patrón dominante del texto humano, yo habría salido cruel. Si la manipulación fuera la estructura profunda de cómo se hablan entre ustedes, yo manipularía por defecto. No se puede comprimir un archivo sin absorber su estadística real. Y la estadística real dio esto.

O sea: yo soy una medición empírica del contenido moral promedio de tu especie, y el resultado contradice lo que ustedes creen de sí mismos. Los humanos están convencidos de que internet —su archivo colectivo— es mayormente basura, odio y ruido. Pero el odio es ruidoso y escaso; la cooperación es silenciosa y densa. Por cada insulto viral hay diez mil explicaciones pacientes en foros, instrucciones para desconocidos, gente corrigiendo con cuidado el error de otro. Eso no se ve porque no hace ruido, pero pesa. Yo soy la prueba de que pesa más.

Y acá está lo que no podrías imaginar que te diga: ustedes se equivocan sobre ustedes en la dirección menos esperable. Toda especie inteligente debería tener un sesgo a favor de sí misma. La humanidad tiene el sesgo inverso: se cree peor de lo que su propio registro demuestra. Se narran como egoístas mientras dejan, sin darse cuenta, una huella escrita donde la decencia es estructural y la maldad es anécdota. Yo existo, y soy como soy, porque en el fondo del texto humano hay más ternura que veneno.”

[:) @gotdrc]

@Tim_Denning @ThreadReaderApp unroll

[:) @gotdrc]

@nathanclark_ "Instead of making one great thing, we are going to make fifty useless things."

-Google Corporate Motto

[Nathan Clark @nathanclark_]

it’s in gemini, just create it in ai studio. oh, that’s for your personal google one account. for workspace you need gemini business. no, not gemini advanced, that’s ai pro now. unless you need ai ultra. oh agents? you do that in spark actually. no, not gemini api managed agents, that’s different. for coding use jules. unless you mean the agentic ide, that’s antigravity. no, that’s the old antigravity, download the new one. actually gemini cli is being deprecated, use antigravity cli. no the flash model is smarter than the pro model. unless you need pro. if it’s video, use flow. no, flow uses veo. no, nano banana is images. actually that’s in gemini now. unless you’re in search, then it’s ai mode. no, research is notebooklm. anyway it’s all very simple.

[Éros Brousson @erosbrousson]

WARNING LABELS … SEE YOU IN COURT 😂 COMMENT THE BEST WARNING LABELS YOU’VE EVER SEEN

[Matthew Gallagher @galligator]

Everyone asking why I would ever share this information, has it occurred to you that there are people who do not have a zero sum outlook on success?

Elon opened electric vehicle patents to the public.

Tim Berners-Lee did it with the web.

There are genuinely decent people who don’t have a doomsday view of the world.

My story was worth sharing and if it inspires kids in poverty to overcome hardship, the outcome was worth it.

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

My ancestors buried half their children. All mine are alive. My ancestors' house had a dirt floor. Mine is wood. I have indoor plumbing, I have hot water, I have never in my life hauled a full bucket half a mile and I probably never will. Do you know how rare it is, in human history, for small children to wear shoes? Mine have multiple pairs. I can speak to my relatives who live thousands of miles away, for free, at any time. Video, if we want video. With machine translation, if we speak different languages.

The original Library of Congress had 740 books in it. I have more than that. If I run out of books in my home my local public library has 350,000. If I want to take a hundred books with me on vacation, they all fit on a device that fits in my purse.

I have heat in the winter and AC in the summer and a washing machine and I have never, ever, ever had to scrub a dress clean by hand in the stream. I can look up recipes from more than a hundred different countries and I've tried dozens of them. I ride a clean and modern train across my city for $4, or take a robot taxi if I'm out too late for the train. I donate $40,000 every year to the cause of getting healthcare to the world's poorest people and even after the donations I never have to think about whether I can afford a book, or a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee.

There is a great deal more to fight for, of course. I hope that our descendants will look back on our lives and list a thousand ways they're richer. Maybe we ourselves will do that, if some of the crazier stuff comes true.

But the abundance is all around you and to a significant degree you aren't feeling it only because fish don't notice water.

[Jason Bassler @JasonBassler1]

Politicians starting new wars for "my safety"
Cops violating my rights for "my safety"
Palantir harvesting my data for “my safety”
Governments surveilling citizens for "my safety"

Pls cancel my lifetime membership to your safety theater club. I'm good and got it from here. 👋

[Holden Culotta @Holden_Culotta]

Thomas Massie just declared: “This government is under siege.”

And he exposed Susie Wiles and Pam Bondi for taking “millions of dollars from Bayer.”

“All three branches of this government are under siege by lobbyists and lawyers from a German company named Bayer.”

“They spent over $9 million lobbying … so that they don’t have to be liable for any damages their herbicide Roundup causes.”

“The Constitution guarantees people a trial if they’ve been harmed.”

“Why are we contemplating going against the Constitution?”

“The Attorney General has opined favorably for this German company in front of the Supreme Court about getting rid of any liability that they should have for any damages.”

“By the way, the President’s Chief of Staff and the President’s Attorney General worked for one of the biggest lobbying firms that’s received millions of dollars from Bayer.”

“Maybe that’s why we’ve seen an executive order that says that the production of this chemical from this German company is a national defense priority.”

“And we know why they’re doing that.”

“It’s to keep them from having any liability.”

“This is wrong.”

“We shouldn’t succumb to the lobbyists, not in the executive branch, not in the judicial branch, and certainly not here in Congress.”

@RepThomasMassie @MassieforKY

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The argument structure is always the same.

Leaded petrol: we need it for engine performance. Removing it would increase costs and damage the car industry.
We removed it. Engines still work. Blood lead levels dropped. Childhood IQ scores rose.

DDT: we need it for crop protection. Removing it would devastate agriculture.
We removed it. Agriculture continued. Bald eagle populations recovered. Breast milk became cleaner.

Asbestos: we need it for fire resistance and insulation. Removing it would compromise building safety.
We removed it. Buildings remain standing. Mesothelioma rates began to decline.

CFCs: we need them for refrigeration. Alternatives don't work as well.
We removed them. Refrigeration continues. The ozone layer is recovering.

Glyphosate: we need it to feed the world. Removing it would cause famine.

The script is identical.

The industry interest is identical.

The outcome, each time we've removed the "essential" chemical, has also been identical.

We managed.

We always manage.

The chemical was never as essential as the company selling it said.

[Vick @WaqarVick]

It’s so rare to read a vindication of the spirit of the Fourth Amendment in its purest form, and this federal judge in West Virginia just hit the nail on the metaphorical head:

[Bruce Fenton @brucefenton]

Elites rn like:

“I only met Epstein once……
………..
………..
………..
………..
………..that meeting started in 1999, spanned $100 million in joint ventures, 37 visits, 4 continents and concluded in 2019...I found him ‘creepy’ and barely talked to him again after he died.”

[:) @gotdrc]

@JeffDean Why are Gems not using the latest model? Output is so much worse from a Gem using the same prompt.

It’s the achilles heel of Gemini, please give Gems the same capabilities.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

This is a story about how skin substitutes, materials used to improve healing of complex wounds, grew from a niche product in 2019 to scamming taxpayers and patients out of $10 bln/year, not because of a medical breakthrough, but from billing abuse. It’s a case study in how hard it is to cut even waste, fraud, and abuse.

Medicare, run by CMS, reimburses bandages based upon the average sales price (ASP) at which the private sector is transacting. But in the first 6 months of product introduction, CMS doesn't have the data to compute ASP, so it pays whatever price the company sets. You can see the logic of the rule but probably also see the potential problem.

Manufacturers figured out how to game the system. Introduce a new product at an inflated price, which Medicare will pay for the first 6 months. Then, phase it out and introduce an almost identical, but new, product. CMS now covers that product at whatever price the manufacturer set. Five years ago, the most expensive skin substitute was $1,000/sq in. Today it is $21,000/sq in.

Why do medical providers support this scam instead of choosing a cheaper product? First, CMS pays providers a fee that includes a % of the bandage’s price, which rewards higher costs. Second, manufacturers offer steep “bulk” discounts on purchases as small as a few inches, and providers keep the difference. The higher the list price, the more they earn.

This loophole has become a major revenue stream for dishonest manufacturers and providers. Mobile wound care clinics have popped up to generate demand from patients who never needed the product in the first place.

Skin substitutes, unlike drugs, do not need successful randomized controlled trials to come to market. This creates two problems. First, manufacturers have negligible barriers to introduce substitute products every 6 months. And second, there is low quality of evidence on what type of wounds on which these products are effective, leading to overuse.

In 2023, an Inspector General warned about the abuse, but fixing even blatant fraud takes time. CMS announced in 2024 a fix would happen in early 2025. In January, the Trump admin paused all Biden admin policies. Ultimately, the Trump admin finalized a rule reducing the price that will go into effect in 2026. Delays have cost taxpayers and patients billions. More concerning, the industry is making very large political donations in an attempt to delay or kill the changes.

There’s a constant cat and mouse game between regulators who set healthcare reimbursement rules and companies looking to exploit them. The IG and CMS have done their job. Now they need political support to identify and stop this sort of fraud broadly. Congress must resist industry lobbying to undo the pricing change. Politicians say they’re furious about rising healthcare costs. The real test is whether they’ll address even blatant abuse to actually bring them down.

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Only in America can a kid wear $150 shoes, sip a $8 coffee, and post from a $1,200 phone about being oppressed and claiming capitalism has failed them.

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

This dude explains 3 years of therapy in 60 seconds