Ronnie Ward

Retired Computer Scientist and Software Professional

[minuteman4_19 @minuteman41776]

@elonmusk Protect the homeland.

[Magatte Wade @magattew]

Ethiopia was never colonized.

For much of its history, it was one of the poorest countries on the continent.

Meanwhile, Vietnam was colonized by the French, devastated by decades of war, and is now on its way to serious economic prosperity.

If colonialism were the answer to why Africa is poor, Ethiopia should be rich and Vietnam should be broke. Neither is true.

Can we please retire this excuse?

[Election Wizard @ElectionWiz]

The Judgment Fund isn’t a Trump invention. Congress created it in 1956. No judge sign-off required.

Obama’s DOJ used it for “discrimination” farm payouts and steered leftovers to nonprofits that filed zero claims.

DOJ paid Strzok and Page $2M from it too.

Funny how it only became a scandal once Trump tapped it.

[SaltyGoat @SaltyGoat17]

The 13th amendment (abolished slavery) was passed with 100% of Republican support

77% of Democrats voted against it!

The 14th amendment (gave blacks citizenship) was passed with 94% of Republican support

100% of Democrats voted against it!

The 15th amendment (gave slaves the right to vote) was passed with 100% of Republican support

100% of Democrats voted against it!!

This is good info to have the next time you vote...

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

The Fed expanded the money supply by nearly $9 trillion under Powell.

Inflation has averaged >4% per year over the past 6 years.

Powell's explanation? It was nearly all due to rolling “supply shocks" over which the Fed has no control.

The truth: this inflation was made in Washington as it always is - from too much government borrowing/spending and too much government creation of money.

[Gary Conway @gazcon]

Some basic scientific facts for you.

CO2 is 0.04% of our atmosphere.

Mankind's entire CO2 emissions are just 3% of that (0.0012%).

The UK's entire CO2 emissions are just 1% of that (0.0000012%).

CO2 is harmless plant food, not the planet's climate control knob.

[Art @ZarkFiles]

The E. Jean Carroll case against President Trump is one of the strangest civil cases in American history. The foundational problem is this: Carroll could not identify when the alleged incident occurred — not even the year with any precision.
That should have killed the case as dead as a skunk on the road right there.
Without a temporal anchor, no defendant — regardless of guilt or innocence — can mount an alibi defense. Trump, who has maintained detailed calendars and staff records for decades, was denied the most basic tool of self-defense: the ability to establish where he was. That is not a technicality. It is a due process violation at the constitutional level.
Then Carroll produced the one piece of physical evidence she claimed corroborated her account — the dress she wore during the alleged incident. It was subsequently established that the dress was designed after the incident could have occurred. The sole corroborating evidence falsified her timeline.
The case proceeded anyway.
The resulting verdict was then weaponized in a defamation suit — where Trump was held liable for denying the allegation, while being procedurally barred from defending against it, because it was already "proven" in another court, regardless how flawed the procedure was. He was punished, in effect, for asserting his own innocence.
Compounding everything: coordinated professional and physical threats so thoroughly intimidated the legal community that attorneys refused these cases regardless of available fees. When you systematically destroy a defendant's ability to retain counsel of choice, you forfeit the right to a legitimate verdict.
An allegation is not evidence. Process without substance is not law. And a verdict produced under these conditions carries no legitimate authority — whatever its formal status.

Not only is it the right move to investigate Carroll, but every other person involved as well. Trump is owed serious damages here, and there may be a few people who belong in prison for their roles in the case.

[Dan McLaughlin @baseballcrank]

Biden's own wife thought he was having a stroke. Two NY Times columnists insisted he'd fought Trump to a draw.

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

It's the 20th Anniversary of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

NONE of his scary predictions have come true.

Mt. Kilimanjaro still has snow and Glacier National Park still has glaciers.

Here's why we are not doomed:

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

"More capitalist countries have lower income inequality, not higher. High income inequality is caused by cronyism which goes hand in hand with highly regulated markets."

[Ramez Naam @ramez]

Everyone who cares about climate should understand this. Texas, with no pro-climate policies, has blown passed California in clean energy. In large part because Texas has less red tape and makes it easier to build.

[Ronnie Ward @ronnieward]

@pmarca Netscape browser.

[Ronnie Ward @ronnieward]

Netscape browser.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Dozen most important post-punch-card software?

AT&T/BSD/Linux Unix kernel
GNU suite/GCC
VisiCalc
WordPerfect
MacOS/iOS
GL/Doom/Quake
JavaScript
PageRank/Backrub/Google
GPT 1/2/3/4/5
GPT O1/Deepseek R1
OpenClaw/Pi

Anything missing?

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

Operation Epic Fury.

President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region.

God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel.

[Everybody is Insane @colorblindk1d]

The New York Times ran a piece on their homepage about a guy getting deported even though he had lived in the US since a teenager and had been here for 20 years, and waited until the end of the article to mention that 19 of those years were spent in prison for murder.

[Larry Cook @stopvaccinating]

Seriously? 😳

Most people only read headlines. The NYT knows exactly what they’re doing…

[Byron York @ByronYork]

In this highly amusing Globe & Mail story, Canadians are stunned to discover that Alabama is not the dirt poor hillbilly backwater they think it is. They're totally gobsmacked when they learn Alabama's per capita GDP had edged higher than Canada's. "Canadians could probably stomach having their living standards slip relative to the broader U.S., the epicentre of the world's tech revolution. But Alabama?" https://t.co/ImKeGMxcoC

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Most Americans still don’t fully understand what happened under Biden…

8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years.
8% of the entire country.

7% of Cuba.
6% of Haiti.
5% of Honduras.

[John LeFevre @JohnLeFevre]

NYT (2024): The mild winter is climate change.

NYT (2026): The cold winter is climate change.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

💯