Jack Spray

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

AI doomerism exists, in part, because solutions to our most important problems still remain unsolved while examples of superficial process automation abound.

We’ve lost the script.

If AI wants to be celebrated, it should put solutions to some of society’s greatest problems at the front of the line.

Case in point…why hasn’t anyone focused on an AI for fixing the growing illiteracy of our children?

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln

[Jack Spray @JackSpray]

@JackMitchellLNK @I80Club

[Greg Price @greg_price11]

Liberal women: "Far right Republicans are going to turn America into the Handmaid's Tale!"

Also liberal women:

[Brian Adams @BrianAdams77]

Huskers’ average margin of victory in NCAA tournament wins is 29 points per game, which is the best of all time. #Nebrasketball

[Jack Spray @JackSpray]

The best case, Sen Meyer was a phenomenal senator last go-a-round!

[Fred Knapp @fredmknapp]

Gov. Jim Pillen appointing former and now-Sen. Fred Meyer to replace former Sen. Dan McKeon in#NELeg. Meyer previously was appointed to an unexpired term by Pillen but did not run for election in 2024.

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Hard for people to appreciate how much money Scott Adams lost. He was living the dream. Dilbert cash. VC deal flow. Cash flow like crazy for speaking gigs where big companies fly you first class, pay you big checks for a lunchtime time. He lost that, and gained being a legend.

[Owen Gregorian @OwenGregorian]

‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams, who foretold Trump’s rise and diagnosed America’s political sickness, dead at 68 | Joel Pollak, New York Post

Cartoonist, author, and political commentator Scott Adams died Tuesday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 68.

His ex-wife and caregiver, Shelly, made the announcement on Adams’ livestream Tuesday morning.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t good news,” Shelly said. “Of course, he waited ’til just before the show started, but he’s not with us anymore.”

Shelly read aloud a “final message” that Adams “wanted to say” on the livestream.

“If you’re reading this, things did not go well for me,” the message began. “I have a few things to say before I go. My body fell before my brain. I am of sound mind as i write this January 1, 2026.”

After speaking about Christianity, Adams’ message said, “For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent as a way to find meaning. That worked — but marriages don’t always last forever, and mine ended in a highly amicable way. I’m grateful for those years and the people I came to call my family.”

Adams announced he was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in May 2025.

He said he had been dealing with his condition privately for some time before his public announcement, but noted that the cancer had progressed to Stage 4 and spread to his bones.

“I talked to my radiologist yesterday, and it’s all bad news — the odds of me recovering are essentially zero,” Adams said during his “Real Coffee with Scott Adams” podcast on Jan. 1. “I’ll give you any updates if that changes, but it won’t.

“So there’s no chance that I’ll get my feeling back in my legs, and I’ve got some ongoing heart failure, which is making it difficult to breathe sometimes during the day,” the iconic artist continued. “However, you should prepare yourself that January will probably be a month of transition, one way or another.”

On Monday, Shelly confirmed Adams was in hospice at his home in Northern California and had only a few days left to live.

Adams became famous through “Dilbert,” the comic strip that poked fun at corporate culture with keen insight into the absurdity, cruelty and incompetence of management inside large organizations.

In his last decade and a half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis.

His 2013 bestseller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years.

In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.

In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice.

A trained hypnotist, Adams predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.

Adams drew ridicule for his bold claim. But he looked increasingly prescient as Trump dispensed with his opponents, the Republican establishment, and — eventually — Hillary Clinton.

Adams used what he called the “persuasion filter”: Rather than judging whether political rhetoric was true or false, he simply evaluated it based on whether it was persuasive.

What began as a simple blog post became a daily live video stream — first on the now-defunct Periscope platform, then on a variety of outlets, including anti-cancel-culture Rumble (in which he had invested).

Adams began each show by brewing fresh coffee; he eventually called his livestream “Coffee with Scott Adams,” and it became required viewing, or listening, for millions of fans, who poured their own mugs and tuned in at 10 a.m. ET for the “simultaneous sip.”

While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.

He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.

Adams emphasized that he was not a Republican: “I’m further left than Bernie Sanders,” he reminded viewers. He even endorsed Clinton in 2016 — for his own safety, he said. But he drew a conservative audience that soon included Trump’s own advisers.

In 2017, Adams published “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter,” in which he extrapolated the lessons of Trump’s unlikely victory. He followed that with “Loserthink,” using his critiques of stale thinking in the media to teach positive mental habits.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Adams added an evening “swaddle,” in which he wrapped himself in a flannel blanket, and offered advice for surviving lockdowns. One of his ideas was a concept he called “the user interface for reality.” Given that we can only see reality through our own individual filters, he explained, we can choose which filter to use.

The “Dilbert” filter, for example, predicted incompetence; the Trump filter anticipated victory. By adopting filters that guide us toward success, Adams argued, we not only convince ourselves that success is possible, but bend reality toward that outcome.

While generally pro-Trump, Adams was critical of the president on occasion, and also took unexpected political stances. When then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began “taking a knee” for the national anthem in support of the fledgling Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Adams supported him, and admired the persuasive success of his protest. He even offered advice to leaders within BLM, notably New York’s Hawk Newsome.

In 2023, he was accused of racism when he commented on a Rasmussen poll in which only 53% of black respondents agreed with the statement: “It’s OK to be white.”

Adams quipped that it would be good to move away from people who felt that degree of hostility. He immediately found himself “canceled” — his comic strip dropped, his publishing contracts terminated.

He began self-publishing his books, including “Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success.” He relaunched an edgier version of “Dilbert” on the independent Locals platform, and felt liberated to express his more controversial political views — such as that the 2020 election had likely been “rigged,” given the increasingly evident corruption of nearly every other government system.

In the last weeks of his life, he posted on X, asking readers to share personal stories about how they had been affected by his teachings and podcasts. Adams shared intimate, and often painful, details of his life — losing a stepson to a fentanyl overdose in 2018, suffering through a second divorce in 2022, and fighting cancer.

He also embraced Christianity in his final days. While he would not divulge details about his faith, he confirmed his conversion in a final message that Shelly read on Tuesday’s livestream.

He reframed death, as he had reframed life: Just one more filter — and not one to fear.

https://t.co/Bp4LZJm5jD

[Jack Spray @JackSpray]

A unabashed fuck you People. Some Communist despot dies “Misunderstood foreign visionary passes” a legitimately good person you politically disagree with “disgraced” shameful

[Jack Spray @JackSpray]

@ScottAdamsSays Scott, I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed listening to you over the years. After spending 1500 hours with you over the years I consider you a dear friend, and i cannot tell you how much I will miss you and miss getting tomorrows news today. Thank you for giving your all!

[Wilson Dittman Sports ✞ @WilsonDSports]

Marco Rubio finding out he’s now the starting QB of Nebraska Football

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Scott Adams, facing death, shows us how to live.

Someone recommended “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” by Scott Adams. I had burned out on mainstream books, but picked it up, and was hooked. He had put into words a way of living, similar to one I had found, except his approach was systemic and analytical. Better than my own slapdash notes. Outside of religious texts, Adams was and is as close to a “guide to life,” as you’ll ever find. And even if you’re religious, you still live in this world, and would be wise to learn how to navigate it.

Scott is closing in on the end of his life, and even now he is creating new beginnings.

I’d better write this now, I won’t be able to when it’s too late.

After losing Charlie Kirk, a lot of us are wondering how we can possibly write another obituary. While there’s much to complain about the internet and social media, those mediums expanded the sizes of our communities, our influences, and indeed our families. Too often we find new ways to hate people, instead of finding new people to love.

Scott Adams comes up in conversation at every social event I host. “How is Scott Adams doing? Will he make it?” We all talk about streams we watched and lessons learned. It’s a memorial except he’s still alive. Scott would love to hear that, which is why I have said so repeatedly. I’ve lost too many people, via death or fallings-out, to leave feeling unexpressed.

He’s been a surrogate father figure and mentor to millions of people.

Scott Adams is not liked, he is loved.

People don’t “like” Scott Adams, they aren’t “a fan of his.” They love this man. And I do as well. I’m still living in denial of his fate. We all are.

We’d been making a film about the meaning of life, and while Scott Adams had been in both of our other films, we hadn’t booked him for Meaning yet. Then we found out he was going to take the ride of assisted suicide. Foolishly, we had assumed he’d always be around. Nobody ever dies, right? Your dad will be there to take your call the next time you phone home. Your friends aren’t going anywhere. That’s how we too often live. We could book Scott later.

We reached out and he graciously agreed to be interviewed. We all knew it was going to be our last interview together. Scott and I are both efficient with our time. When a moment is over, it’s time to go do something else. Obligations call. The crew pushed this one as long as we could.

After the interview wrapped up and the gear was packed and it was time to go, there was an awkward pause. I broke it.

“Scott, we love you.” He said thank you. “No, Scott, we love you, I mean it, we all do. We love you.”

None of us broke down crying, not that there would have been any shame in that, but we no doubt all soon will.

Well then, what is the lesson of Scott Adams?

On a practical level, the lesson of Scott Adams is the power of showing up. Nobody works harder and on a more regular schedule. You can set your clock to Scott’s show. Too many of us wait for the muse of inspiration or the jolt of information to force us into action. Work, everyday, maybe in obscuring and without tangible benefits for years. Eventually you’ll hit your mark and go beyond.

Scott plugged away with his streams from a small account (after a huge career via Dilbert) and soon became must-watch, and then transcended his role to becoming something much more.

On a spiritual level, we might ask, why do we love Scott? It’s not because he’s so smart (he is). There are not shortage of intelligent, clever, Machiavellian, and rich people with podcasts. When one of them dies, what is lost? All of that Ego and desire for adoration, and does anybody even care? When those people fall while living, who will be there?

Scott is loved because he’s devoted his life to service to humanity. “What is the meaning of life,” is the question we ask every interviewee, and Scott’s answer, “Be useful to humanity.”

Despite pain, sickness, and inevitable death, Scott is doing his daily streams, serving his country and all of humankind until his end.

He’s a light to the world and a mirror for all of us.

What exactly are we doing with the gift of life given to us by God. (Scott believes in the Simulation, but I believe God evens this all out in the Judgment.) Are we doing enough for others? Are we doing anything for others?

Like everyone else, I’m capable of throwing myself a pity party. Sometimes when life is going too well, and I don’t have real problems, I invent some. That’s where the Ego brings you, recursively worshipping itself, and when that fails, tormenting itself, as each path leads to its own attention.

May all of us live more like Scott Adams, and may God bless his immortal soul when he passes.

P.S. I ran this article through Grok for typos. The original version had “immoral” soul where I meant it to read “immortal.” I think Scott would have had a great laugh had that typo been left in.

[Dumb Bitch Capital, LLC @dumbbitchcap]

The wildest thing about the Somali daycare scandal is that apparently the government’s goal was to subsidize daycares for random immigrants while tax paying American parents have been complaining for years they can barely afford childcare with two incomes

[Jordan Westerkamp @JordanWesty1]

A Hail Mary…Nice.

[Josh Pate @JoshPateCFB]

Never seen the Pope at The Vatican

But I’ve seen Will Compton in Lincoln & it can’t be much different

[Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling]

(Warning: long rant)

My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.

I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.

Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious.

And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.

Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.

I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.

Here are the facts:

Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.

Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.

Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.

These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.

Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:

These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.

These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.

When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.

They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.

And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety.

When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.”

They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.

And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.

When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.

And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.

For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.

In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.

In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.

> “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.)

> “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)

> “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)

> “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)

In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.

> “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)

> “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.)

All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells.

You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it.

Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do.

If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.

[Mark Halperin @MarkHalperin]

More outrageous liberal media bias: After years of cheering on the Left/Dominant Media attempts to stifle/punish conservative speech and cancel the lives of those they didn’t like, now the Washington Post and New York Times news desks are positively outraged that the Right is using the same techniques to punish those who have publicly spoken out against Kirk since his murder, often cheering.

All of a sudden, free speech rights are sacrosanct and organized efforts to get someone cancelled are unacceptable.

Amazing.

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

The Democrat Party needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.

I want a strong two-party system, not one party plus a criminal enterprise.

All the leaders need to go. We will no longer tolerate the “Hitlerization” of politics, the gross corruption, the hoaxes, and the incompetence.