John Legg

Get the Back To The Freakin' Moon T-Shirt -

[𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 🇺🇸 @creation247]

Germany bans homeschooling outright.

Parents who tried it faced fines, prison sentences, and in some cases had their children removed from their custody.

Sweden. Greece. Croatia. France. All restrict or ban it too.

In America? Legal in all 50 states. 4 million kids educated at home.

This is not a small thing.

The ability to control what your children are taught, to center their earliest years on faith, on truth, on YOUR values instead of the state's narrative...

That is not a given anywhere else on Earth.

Freedom isn't just about what you can build.

It's about what you can PROTECT.

And America is still the only country that trusts you with both.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

Since 2023, I have kept the same pinned post because I feel that post (the one discussing "my side of history") is the most important sentiment I have ever posted on this platform.

For the short-term future, however, I am changing that pinned post to this one, because it is of such crucial importance to our nation's survival.

Here goes.

The Democrat Party is in the process of being taken over by the Democrat Socialists of America (the "DSA").

The DSA is an explicitly Marxist organization.

Marxism has impoverished more people and genocidally murdered more of humanity than all other ideologies ever to exist in human history combined.

It is a grotesque form of evil that is wholly incompatible with the Constitution of the United States of America.

Marxism in all its forms must be reviled and publicly treated with the same disdain with which intelligent adults view Naziism, pedophilia, serial murderers and cannibalism.

Do not back down. Each and every time you encounter Marxism in any of its forms, please call it out for the evil that it is. It is a rapidly metastasizing cancer that can only be defeated by public awareness.

Thank you.

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

On this date in 1911, nearly 60% of the U.S. was ≥90°F and 15% was ≥100°F. This weekend's heatwave is only unprecedented if you think history began 30 years ago.

[John Legg @hblegg]

We live in Huntington Beach CA where the average temps are perfect but it can get a little warm at night. We finally added AC about 8 years ago. We mainly use it at night to have perfect sleeping temperatures. Best thing we ever did!

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Perfect sleep today at 16°C/61°F

I might start the AC to precool the bedroom a bit earlier cause it takes awhile to get there

Even though it's 19°C/66°F outside at night in Portugal, without AC our bedroom would be 30°C/86°F with 2 people in it

Why? Well when we travel and we don't cool it, our bedroom at night is about 24°C/75°F, so that's the base temp

And that's because it's a well insulated modern house (aka the blessing and curse of modern houses), modern walls delay the heat from the sun in the day so it heats up your house at night, essentially to save energy but it results in extremely hot bedrooms that are terrible for your sleep

On top of that two people sleeping increases a bedroom temperature by another 3°C!/5°F. Especially if you work out and have some muscle mass which radiates even more heat!

So without AC running we'd end up in a 27°C/81°F bedroom!

Add a blanket to that and you add another 3°C, so you're sleeping at 30°C/86°F. Terrible sleep!

If you ever slept in an old house you know how nice it is, it's barely insulated and feels breezy and cold at night, how it should be

Overheating at night due to modern insulated homes is a well documented problem in energy efficient housing research

So yes most of us need AC at night!

[John Legg @hblegg]

Too many taxes!!

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

The best gift the Donald Trump Administration could give Americans for America’s 250th Celebration is setting Americans free by Abolishing the Income Tax

The American Revolution started over a 2% tax. Here are all the taxes you are required to pay in the United States:

- Air Transportation Taxes
- Biodiesel Fuel Taxes
- Building Permit Taxes
- Business Registration Fees
- Capital Gains Taxes
- Cigarette Taxes
- Court Fines
- Disposal Fees
- Dog License Taxes
- Drivers License Fees
- Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax
- Employer Medicare Taxes
- Employer Social Security Taxes
- Environmental Fees
- Estate Taxes
- Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans
- Federal Corporate Taxes
- Federal Income Taxes
- Federal Unemployment Taxes
- Fishing License Taxes
- Flush Taxes
- Food And Beverage License Fees
- Franchise Business Taxes
- Garbage Taxes
- Gasoline Taxes
- Gift Taxes
- Gun Ownership Permits
- Hazardous Material Disposal Fees
- Highway Access Fees
- Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas)
- Hunting License Taxes
- Import Taxes
- Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes
- Inheritance Taxes
- Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses
- Inspection Fees
- Insurance Premium Taxes
- Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes
- Inventory Taxes
- IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes
- IRS Interest Charges
- IRS Penalties
- Library Taxes
- License Plate Fees
- Liquor Taxes
- Local Corporate Taxes
- Local Income Taxes
- Local School Taxes
- Local Unemployment Taxes
- Luxury Taxes
- Marriage License Taxes
- Medicare Taxes
- Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
- Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax
- Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income
- Parking Meters
- Passport Fees
- Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation)
- Property Taxes
- Real Estate Taxes
- Recreational Vehicle Taxes
- Registration Fees For New Businesses
- Toll Booth Taxes
- Sales Taxes
- Self-Employment Taxes
- Sewer & Water Taxes
- School Taxes
- Septic Permit Taxes
- Service Charge Taxes
- Social Security Taxes
- Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction
- Sports Stadium Taxes
- State Corporate Taxes
- State Income Taxes
- State Park Entrance Fees
- State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
- Tanning Taxes
- Telephone 911 Service Taxes
- Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
- Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
- Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
- Telephone State And Local Taxes
- Telephone Universal Access Taxes
- The Alternative Minimum Tax
- Tire Recycling Fees
- Tire Taxes
- Tolls
- Traffic Fines
- Use Taxes
- Utility Taxes
- Vehicle Registration Taxes
- Waste Management Taxes
- Water Rights Fees
- Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees
- Well Permit Fees
- Workers Compensation Taxes
- Zoning Permit Fees

Abolish The IRS
You are a free range human on a tax farm

And let’s not forget the income tax just in 2025 stole $2.66 trillion dollars from the American People

This is money that you work for, gets taxes and then you have to again pay taxes on everything you buy with it

[Peter Schweizer @peterschweizer]

There have been 4 major revolutions in the past 250 years: American, French, Russian, and Chinese. Only one led to individual rights and prosperity. The others led to mass death and tyranny. The US revolution was unique because it said two things: 1. Our rights come from God not from the govt. 2. Humans are power -hungry so we need to limit govt power. So the next time someone attacks the nation of one revolution that succeeded and recycles the the idea of those that miserably failed, you can ask them: are you ignorant, or malicious?

[Peter Clack @PeterDClack]

Today, NASA satellites confirm Earth is greening dramatically. CO₂ fertilisation has added biomass equivalent to two continents of new forest in recent decades, boosting crop yields and ecosystems alike.

Oceans, holding around 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere, continue their ancient dance of absorption, circulation and outgassing under Henry’s Law.

The natural world keeps working its wonders. The real question isn’t whether CO₂ is 'pollution', but how we pursue genuine abundance and resilience while staying humble before these vast systems.

[Andrew Wilkinson @awilkinson]

My friend Ben Wilson got diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and has 4 young children.

He's fighting hard, and has an amazing attitude, but if any of you have enjoyed his podcasts or are fans of My First Million (he was the OG producer), please consider donating to his GoFundMe.

Also, if any of you know how to get him access to clinical trials for neuroendocrine cancer, please reach out to him.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

I’m convinced that the most underrated trait in life is the willingness to change your mind. Certainty isn't strength. The most impressive people change their minds often in response to new information. It’s a software update. The goal isn't to be right. It's to find the truth.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

The big fallacy here (and believed by many Europeans) is implying we need degrowth to fix climate change

But degrowth is likely just masked foreign sabotage of our societies to make us poor and dumb

You can install AC + fix climate change + avoid tens of thousands of Europeans every year dying from heat in other ways like:
- changing to clean energy sources: solar, wind, batteries and nuclear (yes nuclear!), so the AC you use comes from clean energy
- carbon sequestration or similar tech to remove the emissions already out there
- improved production technologies so you emit less or no emissions

None of that means you do not need AC, and none of that means you need less GDP growth, that's a psyop!

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[Riley Gaines @Riley_Gaines_]

If Will Thomas didn't swim against the women, he still would have come in 462nd place, and nobody would know his name.

See how that works?

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

🔥 HELL YEAH! A pilot just used his airplane to draw a USA 250th banner using his flight path

It took him over FIVE HOURS of flying time to do this.

What a PATRIOT! 🇺🇸

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Asra Nomani @AsraNomani]

EXCLUSIVE 🧵Inside the Mamdani Machine
How did a 34-year-old political novice climb to the edge of running America’s biggest city?

For days, I've buried myself in 990s, social media posts and insider reports to investigate for @FoxNews how Mamdani's rise was engineered, funded by a ethno-religious network funded in part by @GeorgeSoros @FordFoundation @macfound and propelled by socialists, radical imams and political operatives, including Palestinian American Linda Sarsour, accused for years of deeply-held anti-semitism.

I've been following these organizations and activists for 23 years, and their orchestrated coordination is not an accident. It's politically engineered.

🔗Please read the article here: https://t.co/WTjBXWnfOU

🔗And here is our public @DPearlProject database of the 110 organizations in the Mamdani Machine, following the money: https://t.co/MvmnJIRwMZ

@DataRepublican @SamAntar: some of the groups get city funding. That will likely increase as a flow of money to these groups if Mamdani wins.

In my book #WokeArmy, I wrote about the alliance of socialists (red) with Muslims (green) and now we can see in the Mamdani Machine how they are entrenched with the Democratic Party (blue).

110 Organizations in the Mamdani Machine
This graphic of the 110 organizations in the Mamdani Machine is messy and busy and breaks every rule of design but I hope it will get the point across to you about the Mamdani Machine:
🔴 4 Socialist and socialist-aligned groups including @DemSocialists
🟢 30 Muslim and South Asian groups including the @CAIRNational @ICNA @EmgageUSA @EmgageAction @MAS_National Linda Sarsour's @MPower_Change, the imam, Siraj Wahhaj, who served as a character witness for the "Blind Sheikh" convicted in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.
🔵 76 Democratic and Dem-aligned groups including 21 affialiates of the @DNC, 22 unions including @AFLCIO unions and 33 Dem-aligned groups, including @MoveOn @thenation and @sunrisemvmt

🧵I'll walk you through the timeline for the development of the Mamdani Machine.

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

On today's date in 1901, over half of the U.S. was at or above 90°F and nearly 9% of the land area was at least 100°F. The same weather occurring this week occurred exactly 125 years ago, but according to most climate alarmists, it was just weather in 1901, but this week's three-day event is undeniable proof that we are facing a climate catastrophe.

[Forest Park Pharmacy @ForestParkPharm]

My wife and I own a pharmacy. Last month we spent days trying to pry one prescription loose from a company that did everything it could to hold onto it.

The drug was everolimus. A generic. It treats cancer and protects transplant patients from rejecting their new organ. Not exotic. Not rare. A pill.

The patient wanted it filled with us because we're cash-pay and cost-plus. No insurance. No PBM. No secret markups, no games. Our price was $318. That's not cheap by our standards — most of what we fill runs under $20 — but it was honest.

Here's what that same prescription looked like on the other side of the counter.

In 2023, Medicare was paying about $6,645 for it. That's roughly 21 times our price for the identical medication. Medicare spent around $240 million on everolimus alone that year. If they'd paid our price, they'd have saved roughly $230 million. On one generic drug.

So how does an insurance company profit off a drug that expensive? Don't they pay for it?

No. You pay for it. In your premiums. Their job isn't to spend less — it's to keep your healthcare dollars circulating inside their own companies. And the tool they use is called spread pricing.

Spread pricing works like this: the middleman bills the health plan one price, pays the pharmacy a lower one, and keeps the difference. You never see it. On TRICARE, they pay an independent pharmacy like mine about $311 to fill everolimus. That barely covers our cost of the drug. Meanwhile the plan gets billed thousands. That gap — north of $6,000 on a single fill — is pure margin the middleman pockets.

Now here's the part they'd rather you not think about.

The pharmacy we were fighting was Accredo. Accredo is owned by Express Scripts. Express Scripts is the pharmacy benefit manager owned by Cigna. Same company, three masks. That nesting-doll structure isn't an accident — it's the whole design. When the pharmacy, the PBM, and the insurer are all one entity, they can shuffle money between their own pockets and call it whatever they want. The confusion is the product.

And this isn't a story about one weird drug. It's the business model.

The FTC has been digging into exactly this. In its January 2025 report on the three biggest PBMs — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx — staff found those companies marked up specialty generic drugs by hundreds and thousands of percent when dispensing through their own affiliated pharmacies. Just those markups generated more than $7.3 billion above what the drugs actually cost to acquire, from 2017 to 2022. One in five of the specialty generics they studied was marked up over 1,000%. Some cancer generics: over 3,000%. On top of that, the FTC pegged spread pricing on those same drugs at another $1.4 billion.

One example straight from the FTC's files: dimethyl fumarate, a multiple sclerosis drug. Costs about $177 to acquire. The PBMs paid their own pharmacies close to $4,000 for a 30-day supply. Same trick. Different drug.

And they steer the profitable ones to themselves on purpose. Pharmacies affiliated with the big three took in 68% of specialty dispensing revenue in 2023 — up from 54% in 2016. The prescriptions marked up more than $1,000 disproportionately end up at their own pharmacies, not independents like mine.

So when we called to transfer this patient's everolimus to be filled without insurance, it landed like we were asking them to set $6,000 on fire. Of course they stonewalled us.

That's why we fired them.

No insurance means no invisible $6,000 charge buried in a premium you can't itemize. It means the price you see is the price. Ours was $318. Theirs was thousands. Same pill.

[Dan Martell @danmartell]

30 brutal truths most people learn too late:

1. Don't become good at something you hate. Get great at what you love, then pay others to do what you don't.
2. You don’t need more time, you just need a deadline.
3. Stay close to people who want more FOR you, not FROM you.
4. Normalize leaving people in whatever reality they've chosen. Don't waste energy arguing.
5. Being humble isn't thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less.
6. You get tested the most when it's time to level up. Don’t break.
7. Improving yourself daily is the only addiction you need. Get hooked on being 1% better daily.
8. You teach people how to treat you. Set the standards and stand on them.
9. It's more painful to stay down. Get back up.
10. You waiting for a sign IS a sign.
11. Everything wants you when you want nothing. True power comes from not needing anything.
12. Be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. Big visions aren't understood by everyone.
13. When things get easy, go hard. don’t lose the hunger that got you started.
14. Only ask advice from people who've been where you want to go.
15. You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say “No”.
16. If you’re too much, Let them find less.
17. You become rich in your mind long before you become rich in your bank account.
18. Put your own mask on first before helping others. You can't pour from an empty cup.
19. never shy away from a (good) problem. The quality of your life = the size of problems you solve.
20. Confidence in public comes from keeping commitments you make to yourself in private.
21. Greatness takes time. Dedicate a decade, not just a day.
22. The smaller you make your cicle, the bigger your life gets.
23. Be nice. Tell people about them. Your acknowledgment could save someone's life.
24. If you keep running into bad people, you may be the problem.
25. Avoid drama and gossip at all costs. High-level people are allergic to it.
26. Fear gives bad advice. In dark moments, seek outside perspective.
27. If you're addicted to your phone, your life isn't interesting enough.
28. Take on as much responsibility as you can. Always say YES. Figure it out later.
29. Be blissfully dissatisfied. Be grateful for now, but know you're meant for more.
30. You think too much because you do too little.

-DM

[John Legg @hblegg]

Smart people doing smart work on a hard project. Software is hard!

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸