Michael Taft

🙏 Nondual meditation teacher, author, podcaster
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[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

Happy to announce that the Winter 2026 retreat with me at Mount Madonna is now open for registration.

Join us for eight days and seven nights at Mount Madonna Center in the hills outside Santa Cruz, California, meditating, learning, and practicing with me and the Deconstructing Yourself sangha.

We will focus on nondual meditation practice, with the particular theme of connecting with openness, spaciousness, and ease in meditation and in life.

Saturday, December 12 through Saturday, December 19, 2026.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@DougTataryn Yes I got a community note to that effect. The rallies were smaller.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

Almost invisible on the news in the US.

[Simon Ateba @simonateba]

No Kings Rallies as Americans express outrage over the state of the country

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@jesskovitzski Better safe than sorry!

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

Meta employees admitted the US corporation censored the Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp accounts of Brazil's left-wing President Lula da Silva in the lead-up to this month's election.

Meta also promoted the accounts of far-right pro-US candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.

Meta claimed this was supposedly because of "technical ⁠issues".

But what this really shows is how real democracy is impossible when US Big Tech corporations are used to manipulate elections around the world, to put in power right-wing US puppets who will sell out their country to US corporations and the US government (see: the recent US electoral interference in Colombia, Honduras, Peru, Argentina, etc.)

The CIA previously focused on organizing military coups to overthrow independent left-wing leaders and install right-wing pro-imperialist ones. Now it's much easier: Silicon Valley helps the US empire carry out soft coups by manipulating public opinion and interfering in elections.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

https://t.co/k0p73eOpkB

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

Almost invisible on the news in the US.

[Michael Pollan @michaelpollan]

Michael Pollan and Christof Koch Talk Psychedelics and Consciousness | Research UC Berkeley https://t.co/KkGWww9SgP

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@Noah_B_Clark Yep. Big media has all been bought up.

[The Daily Letter @dailylettertv]

POWERFUL: Americans are angry. No Kings, Boston. WATCH

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@Kalieezchild @HawkEmDownChris https://t.co/IFlT1HgJew

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@Kalieezchild @HawkEmDownChris Loved it as a small child.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

One of the best LPs of all time. (With one bad song, however.)

[Brian Eno News @dark_shark]

Brian Eno: Another Green World in ROLLING STONE May 1976 #review https://t.co/12I83cQIUP

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

Tonight should be a really fun and interesting meditation night with me at @BerkeleyAlembic with all the psychonauts in town. And the sit is part of my online retreat as well. Hope to see you there.

[David Chapman @Meaningness]

🤖 Back in 2021, I praised Nick's work on mechanistic interpretability. I was disappointed when he and most others in that field gave up, a bit later. Very exciting if there's a breakthrough now! https://t.co/11Wds9U3kW

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

Big, if true.

[Nick @nickcammarata]

interpretability might be the most important scientific problem in the world right now, as I don't think we can solve alignment if we don't know what we're building. I think I have good news about it. I co-authored early work in mechanistic interpretability at OpenAI and came away pessimistic, because neural networks appeared to fold into arbitrary tangled knots. years later, I started openai's first large-scale automated interpretability project, finding about 2% of neurons legible with the primitive tools we had

with modern agentic tools and a much closer look, the picture looks totally different. the vast majority in models up to trillions of parameters are legible, and their circuits beautiful. many famous examples of tangled neurons turned out to be misunderstood. The roadblocks I expected mostly aren't there. I now think ambitious interpretability will be solved by the time we need it most, and possibly quite soon, as automated scientists keep improving. it may be a bitter lesson for interpretability: the simple thing, at absurd scale, works

https://t.co/zHij5zwKGT

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@p_millerd Very interested. Thanks for sharing

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@richardludlow This is the way.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@Shadow_Rebbe Is recognizing the pattern the same as participating in it?

I would claim that taking people at their word about their values is simply discernment.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

When they tell you that they're fine with "doing a little evil" or that they think "empathy is a bad thing," know that they mean it all the way.

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

Trolls get the block. 🧱

[Michael Taft @OortCloudAtlas]

@dfgdsfgxcf @danielbrottman If it's an actual question, Wikipedia might be helpful.

If not, go troll elsewhere, pls.