Rob

Double Hoo

[Mark Budde 🦕🏆 @markwbudde]

Am I the only one who doesn’t understand why we need data centers?

I spent all morning searching Google and Wikipedia and couldn’t find a single good reason. Then I watched a 45-minute YouTube explainer in 4K, but it was mostly about AI, and I’m just waiting for that bubble to pop.

I opened 200 browser tabs, downloaded a few hundred research papers, translated three from Chinese, and uploaded 2TB of sequencing data so colleagues in eight countries could analyze it with me. Then we discussed the results on Zoom while Slack transcribed the meeting and emailed everyone a summary.

Around lunch, my phone backed up 14,000 family photos, synchronized my contacts and calendar across six devices, routed me around traffic, checked the weather using live satellite data, booked a doctor’s appointment, refilled a prescription, paid a bill, transferred money between banks, approved payroll for hundreds of employees, and ordered groceries.

Later, I read about hospitals retrieving patient records and medical scans in seconds, emergency services coordinating disaster responses, scientists designing protein therapies and sharing enormous datasets, utilities balancing the electrical grid, and airlines continuously rerouting thousands of flights.

But these all felt like pretty niche edge cases.

So I asked an AI agent to turn everything I had done that day into a Twitter post, make it increasingly insane and obvious, and optimize it for maximum engagement.

[Peter J. Hasson @peterjhasson]

"How could the boomers have been so stupid as to reject nuclear energy?"

"We need to reject data centers that will fund our schools, cut our taxes, keep China from world domination, and employ our neighbors"

- same people

[Rob @RobD2020]

I need someone to teach me how to get my newborn to sleep in her bassinet. She’s either in bed with mom (meaning I’m on the couch) or on my chest (meaning im awake and on the couch) so mom can get some real sleep between feedings

[Casey Mattox @CaseyMattox_]

It's happening!

[Rob @RobD2020]

Just thinking about Wickard makes me apoplectic

[Joshua J. Prince @JoshuaJPrince]

Me reading Wickard v. Filburn

[litquidity @litcapital]

“It’s called RAGE BAIT, father. Hit send on the tweet”

[Kevin | Large Fam Dad @LargeFamDad]

My boss's boss is like 42, never married, no kids. Earns $275-300K per year. Goes on a minimum of two international vacations a year w/ his girlfriend. 10+ days, all out.

Eats the best food, stays in top notch accomodations. Excursions, tours, nicest beaches, etc.

Great guy, I'm happy for him.

But what I've realized is that without kids, you end up chasing a lifestyle that has to continually be topped in order for you to be satisfied and find happiness.

What he and others like him don't understand is that when you have children, seeing THEM experience life's most basic things and watching their eyes light up at all the "firsts", brings greater pleasure and joy than any vacation or travel experience ever could.

Seeing THEM try blueberries for the first time is greater than dining at the best 5 star restaurant in Europe.

Seeing THEM learn how to walk is greater than walking the Great Wall of China or strolling along the most picturesque beach.

Watching THEM giggle uncontrollably at "peek-a-boo" tops any A-list comedian act.

Seeing THEIR excitement when building a fort out of cardboard boxes and making a door big enough for daddy is superior to staying at 5-star resorts.

Flying kites with THEM far outweighs excursions like parasailing or helicopter rides.

Seeing THEM perform a recital on stage for the first time is more rewarding than watching a Broadway show or top notch symphony orchestra.

-----------------

When you have children, all of a sudden you realize that life's greatest joys are not in the pursuit of things or pleasure or travel, but rather in the LOVE and bond you share with your very own image bearers.

Seeing the beauty and magnificence and wonder of life all over again for the first time through THEIR eyes and expressions gives you something the world simply cannot offer, nor even come close.

[Troy Frasier AKA Revived Studios @RevivedThoughts]

The amount of self-hate Americans have towards their own history is truly unreal.

They defeated slavery by fighting against their own family.
They shut Europe out of the western hemisphere so that nations wouldn't live under colonization forever.
They had the ability to stay out of world war 1 but they went and died to help Europeans.
They had the ultimate power in the nuclear bomb. They also had access to all of Europe's colonies that were in shambles. But instead they promoted freedom. They rebuilt Japan and Germany after defeating them in war. They stood down the Soviet Union, even as the world jeered them.
They sent soldiers to places like Vietnam and Afghanistan that died TRYING to create a better world (even if you disagree with those wars, the intentions were fairly good)
And they sent more missionaries to the world than maybe any other country in history. Translated more Bibles into indigenous languages than any other country in history. Ran bigger charities than any other country in history. Created more Christian resources than any other country in history.

Whether it was stopping the Dutch from reconquering Indonesia to the Berlin Airlift to giving Cuba its freedom in the Spanish-American war to saving China from the Japanese America has at least ATTEMPTED to do good with its power.

Yes yes, America has problems. People are imperfect. But goodness gracious does the world have a lot to be grateful for in America. And when we could have taken SO much from the world we have often chosen not to. Rome, Britain, Mongols, Assyrians, Soviets, Chinese, no other group has ever shown the restraint America has consistently shown with such vast power at its fingertips.

We didn't even get into the GIGANTIC technological advances, consumer advances, convenient lifestyle changes America has pioneered. From electricity to space to the light bulb to the smart phone to many cures in medicine and agriculture to the airplane the world has been enormously blessed by America.

[thucksgiving @TylerHuckabee]

“Pope Leo is WEAK on crime” You bolt awake in the University of Wittenberg. You are not online. It is 1517. You are Professor Martin Luther and you have changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. The Church must remain.

[James West @James_West_PhD]

Gorsuch is a G*d-d*mned genius:

"For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing. All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason.

Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.

There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future.

For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is."

[Rob @RobD2020]

Drippy

[cassie 🇻🇦 @CatholicCassie]

Pope Leo wearing a new vestment

[Rob @RobD2020]

It’s disgusting how hard ESPN is pushing sports betting. They aren’t just comparing it to stock-picking, they’re outright offering advice

[mads campbell @martyrdison]

i have a theory about God i talk about all the time

He knows He can’t reach everyone through the same methods, so He meets you in a way you can understand

if you’re naturally funny, He puts you in situations that, in hindsight, are so absurd you can’t help but laugh

if you’re analytical, He shows up as patterns. coincidences that line up too cleanly to ignore

if you’re emotional, He reaches you through love and loss. through people who break you open and show you what mattered

if you’re a skeptic, He lives in the questions that won’t leave you alone

God isn’t broadcasting on one frequency and blaming people for not tuning in

He’s speaking the language you already understand

and if you ever stop long enough to listen, you realize He’s been talking to you the entire time

[Adrian Vermeule @Vermeullarmine]

FWIW, repeating my take on Game of Thrones vs Lord of the Rings, which I gave some years ago: Both are great in different ways. The merit of the latter is obvious; the former is valuable because it offers an extremely bleak vision of a fallen world in which the Incarnation never occurred, a world never redeemed. It is thus no accident that Martin can’t finish the story. A world without the Incarnation has no providential arc, in a sense no history, and thus can have no resolution; it’s just one damned thing after another.

[Rob @RobD2020]

My office has a fancy water machine, so I’ve been electrolyte-maxxing like an extra in Idiocracy

They were onto something

[Rob @RobD2020]

Every now and then I steal a little bit of my wife’s skin care serums like a teen sneaking sips from the liquor cabinet. My face hasn’t looked this youthful since before law school

[Rob @RobD2020]

In short, married men

[Raq @raqisright]

Green Flags in a Man’s Apartment:

1. Expensive candles
2. Nice hand soap
3 Actual toilet paper, not a single-ply situation (recession indicator
4. No clothes on the floor
5. No dishes in the sink
6. Uses face wash (bonus points if it’s not 3-in-1)
7. Owns a hairbrush
8. Plants that are alive
9. Wine glasses that aren’t stolen from a bar
10. Clean sheets (that smell like detergent, not “boy”)
11. More than two things in the fridge -and none of them are expired

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

If you woke up today and

> have a job
> can call both your parents
> not physically ill
> have somewhere to go back home to

it is a good day regardless of what else is going on in the world or what you might be stressed about

easy to take these things for granted

[markets arereallyus @tao_te_chaching]

when someone jumps onto tracks, 5,000 people are delayed across the network. each of these 5,000 people would have paid $1 to avoid 20 minutes of delay and the jumper might not have jumped if they had an extra $5k. thats where new my ai startup, JumpPay, comes into the picture.