MarcCurtis.com

I'm a Military Brat. Cinematographer.
DuPont-Columbia Best Documentary 1986.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@miles_commodore Birds of a feather

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX It still bothers me in China. Oh, and the elevators...people push their way inside and don't make room for others to exit.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

We're from the government, and we're here to help...

[Sovey @SoveyX]

Everything the government touches gets more expensive.
Everything it leaves alone gets cheaper.

Since January 2000, overall prices are up 93%. Wages are up 131%. Now look at what happened sector by sector.

Prices that exploded:
- Hospital services: +240%
- College tuition: +180%
- College textbooks: +150%
- Medical care: +140%
- Childcare: +122%
- Housing: +111%

Prices that collapsed:
- Cellphone service: -45%
- Computer software: -70%
- Toys: -73%
- Televisions: -97%

That is not a coincidence.
It is a mechanism.

Every sector in the first list runs on subsidized demand and somebody else's money. Student loans pay the tuition bill. Insurance and Medicare pay the hospital bill. Subsidy programs pay the childcare bill. When the buyer never sees the real price, the price stops behaving.

Every sector in the second list makes you pay directly, against global competition. There is no federal television loan program. So TVs got 97% cheaper over the same 25 years tuition nearly tripled.

None of this is new. In 1987, Reagan's education secretary Bill Bennett predicted that every increase in federal student aid would simply be swallowed by tuition hikes. Economists call it the Bennett hypothesis. Four decades of data have called it correct.

And yes, new cars sit on the market side at +25%. Someone will bring up the bailout, which is fair. Washington spent about 80 billion dollars on the auto rescue and taxpayers ate roughly 10 billion of it. But a one-time rescue of two companies is not a standing subsidy to every buyer. You still pay for your own car, and Toyota still exists. Even with bailouts, mandates, and tariffs, cars rose 25% while inflation ran 93%.

So the next time someone tells you healthcare and college are expensive because of market failure, show them the chart. The market is the part that worked.

Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI, Jan 2000 to Dec 2025, via Mark J. Perry, AEI.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX You're allowed

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX I'm sure you can do better. MUCH better!

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX Nailed it again.

[Sovey @SoveyX]

I want to hear from black Democrats, what would motivate you to vote Democrat?

I seriously don’t understand.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@Real_Turley AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@BiologicalWoma2 Never

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX BTW, Sovey the Podtress is much more natural now. So well done!

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX @Bmorg_ Darn. I posted about the Pittsburgh Pirates before reading all the comments. I'll go back to my room now.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX I think he was commenting on the Pittsburgh Pirates. Sports fans do have opinions, even when out of context.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX If she/he/it replies to you by saying, "Why you don't reply me?" you know you've found a Nigerian whose native language is Yarubo. They're easy to spot.

[Sovey @SoveyX]

Until Monday, the X algorithm didn’t factor in who your mutuals were.
That data was missing from the model.

I give credit to X for saying it out loud and then shipping the fix the same day. Transparency matters. A lot.

Now that we’re openly talking about improving the algorithm, I have a suggestion that moves us further in the same direction.

I’m not a hater.
I’m here every day.
I want this place to win.

I brought a use case for consideration:

THE USE CASE
• Same account (mine)
• Two posts
• Same followers
• Hours apart
• One got 7,700 reposts
• The other got 136

A controlled experiment nobody designed.

You voted 57 to 1 on which post you preferred.
Lines of code vetoed you.

THE DATA
7,700 to 136 is 57 to 1.
Adjust for impressions and it’s still 29 to 1 (See chart below)

THE PRICE
Not all engagement is equal. A like is free, and nobody sees you cast it. A repost staples my words to your name, in front of your followers. It’s the most expensive vote on this platform, and 7,700 people paid it. X wasn’t listening.

THE MACHINE
The ranker is Phoenix, a transformer built from Grok. It reads your post and predicts how likely people are to like, reply, or repost. Distribution flows from that prediction, made before a single human sees the post. A machine guesses what we want. Then it decides what we get.

That machine learned our taste by watching us. It’s a copy of us. Now the copy outvotes the original, and when it gets us wrong, nothing tells it.

That loop isn’t broken.
It was never built.

This is the design, and a design is a choice.
Respectfully, I think the design should be revisited.

THE OBJECTION
Maybe the first post just found its ceiling. Maybe 198,000 views was all the audience it had. Except 7,700 reposts isn’t a ceiling, it’s a battering ram. Those views weren’t Phoenix being generous. They were 7,700 people carrying the post by hand. I watched it climb minute by minute. No algo push. A crowd.

THE SUGGESTION
Monday worked because someone inside noticed the gap. Engineers see the code. Users see what it does to us. Each side holds half the picture. This post is my half.

Elon already said it: “We need a complete overhaul of the algorithm.” Start here. Stop letting a robot predict what we’ll like. Use what we already told you we like. One is a guess. The other is actual humans.

PS: Supporting data is in the comments. Please don’t throttle my account. I’m an active user and content creator, and I’m trying to be helpful.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX That was great! I appreciate your math-mind.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX 😄😁😆

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

Hello New Yorkers.

[Sovey @SoveyX]

Listen to North Korean defector Yeonmi Park explain how her grandparents were promised much of what Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America are promising today:
- Free healthcare
- Free housing
- Free education
- A government that will take care of everyone

In return, they surrendered their freedom.

Tyranny rarely arrives looking cruel. It arrives smiling, speaking softly and promising compassion.

Liberals, I beg of you, don’t listen to conservatives if you don’t want to.

Listen to the North Korean defector.

It will not be different this time.

This is how it begins.

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@ChefGruel I had just taken two burgers out of the freezer and was going to thaw them, but saw this video. Tried it... delicious! Probably could have gone 2 minutes on the second side. They came out almost medium rare, but tasty, juicy! Thanks Chef!

[MarcCurtis.com @Marc_Curtis]

@SoveyX And history!