A. Akib

I am, therefore, I think.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

In free nations, we investigate crimes to see who is guilty of them.

In communist tyrannies, they investigate men to see what they can be punished for.

[Danish Hussain @astrodanish]

the best way to understand any engineered system is to trace:

- 1 bit of information
- 1 joule of energy
- 1 newton of force

from source to destination. once you can do this, your engineering task becomes much simpler. you will probably solve 5 or 6 problems on accident as you try to trace these flows.

[Dela🖤 @Dela_oxx]

Pure Titans aren’t driven by hunger the way normal creatures are. They don’t even have a functional digestive system—anything they swallow just sits in their stomach until they eventually vomit it back up. Their energy comes from sunlight, so eating isn’t about survival. Instead, they’re running on a deep, almost subconscious instinct to consume humans specifically in the hope of stumbling across a Titan Shifter. If a Pure Titan eats a shifter (particularly their spinal fluid), it can revert to human form and inherit that power.
Animals offer none of that, so there’s no instinctual pull toward them at all.

This also lines up with how Titans perceive the world. In the Rod Reiss sequence, we see things from a Titan’s point of view: the landscape is dark and muted, but humans stand out as bright, glowing auras that draw them in like moths to a flame. Animals don’t produce that same signal, so they’re effectively invisible to the Titans’ drive. That’s why scenes like the one with the deer grazing right next to a Titan’s leg make sense within the story—the Titans simply have no reason to register or attack them.

[Object Zero @Object_Zero_]

Mask Off Moment

This is an anonymous account I use to post a bunch of deep tech content on X covering heavy industry, light industry, technology trends, industrial bottlenecks, weird explainers and esoteric insights. iykyk.

A lot of very talented people (many of whom run amazing companies) DM me saying please keep posting “this is the best content on X”. I get DMs from VCs asking about companies, and DMs from LPs asking about industrial and economic theories. This is all very flattering, and whilst I sometimes post a bit sporadically I do try and make the effort to tap out a new post most days.

The quality of people who follow @object_zero_ is frankly phenomenal, it’s a real privilege to have this channel in my pocket. 40k followers including world leaders, centi-billionaires, serial inventors and entrepreneurs, world renowned scientists, and engineers. I would say it’s a mix, but the reality is that it’s not a mix at all, it’s an extremely high mean and median.

I have posted about shipbuilding, nuclear power, the Kroll process, silicon carbide, laser interferometry, heavy steel forging, machine learning, design engineering, CFD, manufacturing methods, power transmission and HVDC. I post about energy and commodities and industry and global macroeconomics. I post about mines and prospecting, minerals on the sea bed and drilling and producing hydrocarbon basins.

Don’t worry… I’m not leaving. I’m not ill and I’m not asking for anything.

A quick apology… I would post here more often, except I don’t have the time. I am able to post with a bit more breadth and depth because I am genuinely engaged in these things. I don’t want to be presumptive, but I think the people who have reached out to talk to me about their work would attest to this.

I simplify a lot of the posts so I don’t collapse the audience, but if you reach out in the comments or DM you can get much sharper commentary.

So what is this post?

Well, it’s time that I start talking about what I am actually doing irl, who I am, what I am engaged in. Some people on X already know some loose details, some people have met me as Object Zero.

But irl, I work about 5,000 hours a year and have done so for 20 years, I believe hard work puts you in a privileged place. It changes you.

Over the years I’ve invented and developed new industrial technologies, I’ve built big things, I’ve executed major capital projects. I feel I understand what the world needs in the 2030s and where we are falling short.

If you believe you are capable of such things, then you have an obligation to society to go and do them.

I am confident I know what it’s possible to do, and what it takes to get it done.

I intend to solve our energy infrastructure, generation and transmission and the big BTM loads that are emerging.

I’ve already hired the best people in the world for this, people who have architected $6bn assets, people who have commanded $40bn fleets. I’ve hired the best research faculty from the best university.

This isn’t a game.

We’ve already built and tested the first prototypes, we are already completing the permission processes, the licences and the permits. All the elements already exist, it just needs 21st Century system integration.

Because technology has changed, the past is already obsolete, the genie is out of the bottle, the 21st century is getting built on a Western tech stack and/or an Eastern tech stack. There is no in between, there is no middle ground. Both sides have strengths and weaknesses, but if we want freedom we’re going to have to earn it again.

We are going to build the biggest products (by mass) that have ever been manufactured, we are going to build a lot of them.

They’re going to change the world, and we’re going to get more of this…

[How To Prompt @HowToPrompt__]

This paper answers why can’t you remember being a baby?

For over a century, science said you can't remember being a baby because your infant brain was just too "immature" to record anything. researchers assumed your hard drive was basically turned off for the first two years of life.

But this wild paper from Yale completely rewrites how we understand human memory..

Researchers literally put awake babies (between 4 and 25 months old) into an fMRI scanner to watch their brains process new visual experiences in real-time.

and what they found is mindblowing..

the infant hippocampus isn't turned off at all. it is actively firing, capturing, and encoding episodic memories. they proved that babies with higher hippocampal activity during a new experience formed a highly stable memory trace.

the babies are recording the data. the memory of your first birthday, your first steps, the exact layout of the room you slept in.. it was all successfully saved to your brain.

so why can't you remember it?

the paper concludes that infantile amnesia isn't an "encoding" problem.. it is a "retrieval" problem.

your brain recorded everything perfectly. but as you grew, your brain underwent massive developmental shifts, like explosive neurogenesis (the rapid birth of new neurons), which completely restructured your neural networks. the pathways to access those early files got buried or locked away.

you didn't fail to make the memories.. you just lost the encryption key to open them.

somewhere deep in your hippocampus, the exact first-person memory of being a 1-year-old might still be sitting there. you just can't access the file anymore..

the human brain is terrifyingly beautiful.

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

And even before that, you gotta ask, if the game is worth playing

[saila @sailaunderscore]

One of the most important distinctions when 'playing a game' is deciding whether you are playing for fun or to win.

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

The time will pass regardless.

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

@Mann2609 The platonic ideal of the concept existence

[jo johnson @josbjohnson]

have the audacity to look at a one in a million outcome and become personally offended that you’ve been expected to rule yourself out. there is a human being somewhere who is going to accomplish what everyone else has already decided is unreasonable. go become that human being. make them explain how the hell you did it.

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

@Mann2609 Yes. Even the concept of winning depends on those things

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

“think about how absurd it is to take the one existence you have been given and spend it negotiating the terms of your own ambition with people who will never have to live with the consequences of your surrender.”

[jo johnson @josbjohnson]

in order to win you have to be willing to become completely incomprehensible to people who have no intention of living the life you want. think about how absurd it is to take the one existence you have been given and spend it negotiating the terms of your own ambition with people who will never have to live with the consequences of your surrender. let them think you've lost your mind. there are worse things than being misunderstood. you could spend your whole life being understood perfectly and never once find out what you were capable of.

[oracle @visceralscenery]

lowkey i am a photographer

[jo johnson @josbjohnson]

you cannot keep asking life to make you stronger while refusing every experience that would require you to be strong

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

As crazy as this sounds, $1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible

[Rincón Curioso @RincnCuriosoo]

Una gatita llamada Scarlett entró cinco veces en un edificio en llamas para salvar a todas sus crías.

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

@wisdomsglow Wow! This seems like a magnificent resource.

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

I always found that trope revolting.

[aesthetix. @foreaest]

Lotus in rain 🌧️

[A. Akib @it_is_akib]

@Eudaimoniang Yes

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

'Speed' derives from the Old English 'spēd,' which referred to good fortune/success.

This sense of 'speed' lives on in 'Godspeed':

"God spede you" = "God prosper you"

We hope this brings you up to speed.