Alex Milligan

A food scientist with an interest in big ideas, good laughs, ugly mountains, great sports, and momentary wisdom.

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[Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut]

This photo from Flight 12 goes soooo hard!!!!!

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
—Douglas Adams

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

This is the lesson of capitalism.

You are not smart enough to know whether California should grow almonds or wheats or data centers or anything else.

So you allow the price system to function. On everything, including water. Then resources are used efficiently.

Disagree and you’ve learned literally nothing from the twentieth century.

[Brett Winton @wintonARK]

the annual social cost of cancer and auto accidents are very roughly equivalent

imagine a new cancer drug came out that reduced mortality by 90% across *every* cancer

And the AMA aggressively lobbied against it because of its potential suppressive impact on hospital visits and surgeries...

That is the unions wrt to autonomous robotaxis right now.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Judging by my tl there is a growing gap in understanding of AI capability.

The first issue I think is around recency and tier of use. I think a lot of people tried the free tier of ChatGPT somewhere last year and allowed it to inform their views on AI a little too much. This is a group of reactions laughing at various quirks of the models, hallucinations, etc. Yes I also saw the viral videos of OpenAI's Advanced Voice mode fumbling simple queries like "should I drive or walk to the carwash". The thing is that these free and old/deprecated models don't reflect the capability in the latest round of state of the art agentic models of this year, especially OpenAI Codex and Claude Code.

But that brings me to the second issue. Even if people paid $200/month to use the state of the art models, a lot of the capabilities are relatively "peaky" in highly technical areas. Typical queries around search, writing, advice, etc. are *not* the domain that has made the most noticeable and dramatic strides in capability. Partly, this is due to the technical details of reinforcement learning and its use of verifiable rewards. But partly, it's also because these use cases are not sufficiently prioritized by the companies in their hillclimbing because they don't lead to as much $$$ value. The goldmines are elsewhere, and the focus comes along.

So that brings me to the second group of people, who *both* 1) pay for and use the state of the art frontier agentic models (OpenAI Codex / Claude Code) and 2) do so professionally in technical domains like programming, math and research. This group of people is subject to the highest amount of "AI Psychosis" because the recent improvements in these domains as of this year have been nothing short of staggering. When you hand a computer terminal to one of these models, you can now watch them melt programming problems that you'd normally expect to take days/weeks of work. It's this second group of people that assigns a much greater gravity to the capabilities, their slope, and various cyber-related repercussions.

TLDR the people in these two groups are speaking past each other. It really is simultaneously the case that OpenAI's free and I think slightly orphaned (?) "Advanced Voice Mode" will fumble the dumbest questions in your Instagram's reels and *at the same time*, OpenAI's highest-tier and paid Codex model will go off for 1 hour to coherently restructure an entire code base, or find and exploit vulnerabilities in computer systems. This part really works and has made dramatic strides because 2 properties: 1) these domains offer explicit reward functions that are verifiable meaning they are easily amenable to reinforcement learning training (e.g. unit tests passed yes or no, in contrast to writing, which is much harder to explicitly judge), but also 2) they are a lot more valuable in b2b settings, meaning that the biggest fraction of the team is focused on improving them. So here we are.

[Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke]

If you gave away $126 billion to subsidize free flights between LA and San Francisco at current demand levels, you could fund roughly 150 to 200 years of travel before the money runs out.

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

@ankoromochuu It feels like Japan has an unrivaled hit rate of good cultural output. Strong and interesting people. Excellent style. An appreciation of good engineering and simultaneously, a sense of not taking life too seriously.

Maybe above all, a long-term approach.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

We're going back to the fucking moon, that's why.

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

@SenWarren Horrifyingly stupid

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Opinion in USA Today:

"If fighting climate change is your thing, Elon Musk is your friend ‒ no matter what you think of his politics or personal life; The whole “frak the 1%” tempest is a distraction used to manipulate the masses by politicians who want their votes and activists who want their money.

What really matters is what the rich contribute to society through their work, just like the rest of us. And Musk has given us electric vehicles that are among the world’s best, space exploration that is pushing the boundaries of where we can go and how we’ll get there, satellite internet that defies dictators and empowers the impoverished, and cutting-edge artificial intelligence that may deliver wonders that transform how we live and work. Not bad for a troll.

I can’t help but admire the companies he’s launched and the innovations he’s driven. If you have never had the privilege of watching a SpaceX rocket take off and land at Cape Canaveral, then get yourself to Florida. It’s an amazing sight.

Another of Musk’s wonders, Starlink, delivers high-speed internet access around the globe, including in places where rampant poverty or government oppression used to make online connections difficult.

And Tesla, despite liberals’ dirty looks, is still the most successful electric carmaker in the nation with the world’s largest economy. The progressive boycott of Tesla always seemed shortsighted to me for that reason."

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

@FAUXMONIKER @devpanchwagh Ioane may be the best lineman in the draft but his feet are a little slow, which is typically a sticky trait (cannot be trained out)

I'd feel much better about him if we didn't have Simpson on starter money for 3 years with few outs.

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

@devpanchwagh These traits are similarly useful in a center that is asked to combo block and climb to the second level a lot. Fano doesn't have enough straight line punch to be an elite guard but I think he's an impact center right away and a Pro Bowl LT down the line.

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

@devpanchwagh I like what I understand about Fano at 14 quite a lot. Smooth mover, great feet, and exceptional hand placement with his punch. Elite agility for his size. These are the Rare traits of an elite LT, an incredibly difficult position to draft outside of the top 10.

[Mike P @mikepat711]

I love the situation we’re in right now with Tesla. I travel all the time for work, and talk to tons of people. I have a pretty good sense of where the general public’s knowledge is with EVs and self driving.

We’re in this moment where an absolute mindfuck is happening in HW4 Tesla vehicles. The emergence of the first real world artificial intelligence is happening in the cars today, and it’s still at the point where most people aren’t even caught up enough to begin having a conversation about it. Half the time I just chat lightly about it because I know if I tell them what’s happening in my car, it isn’t even going to compute. They’re just going to think I’m some weird insane zoomer nerd until they see it.

But they are all going to experience it first-hand eventually. And they’re going to lose their shit. Every time I get to take one of these people into my car, their shit is lost. Just look at all the clips I posted yesterday. It’s coming to life right in front of us.

We’re in this epic moment where we can go outside, look in any direction, and find someone who has zero clue what is happening right now. Such an obvious and insane tech emergence and you’ve still just got skeptics everywhere who have no idea what we’re all geeking about.

But they will find out, as they do with all society-changing innovations. Things this impactful are inevitable.

Such a fun moment to be a part of.

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

@Jason @farzyness @PeterDiamandis You are too confident in this Jason

It doesn't seem like you appreciate properly the difficulty of what Tesla has done. You may want to look into what leaders of other autonomy programs say about Tesla's FSD. No one will have a comparable generally capable product for years

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

NEWS: Sendil Palani, Tesla's Vice President of Finance, has announced he is leaving the company after 17 years.

"Remember that Tesla’s mission is so ambitious and complex that any narrative about the company is naturally an oversimplification. Seek the truth about the company at all times. And support it in any way that you can! There are few higher callings/better uses of your time."

Thanks for everything you did at Tesla @sendilpalani! Good luck in the future!

[Brett Winton @wintonARK]

On this inane and harmful proposed AI bill in NYC

A close family member had fallen ill, had an elevated respiratory rate, immune suppressed due to chemo, no fever.

A registered nurse was going to administer Xanax, assessing anxiety due to agitation.

I intervened because I was cross checking against AI.

Sepsis as it turns out.

He well could have died.

People talk about the economic impact of these laws, and yes it would be economically disastrous to deny people access to these tools.

The plain fact is however, if this law passes, people will die.

Advocating for a bill that denies people access to life-saving technology because you’re trying to virtue signal to some politically favored (and contribution paying) guild is immoral and grossly negligent.

(See also, laws and rules seeking to slow adoption and scaling of autonomous robotaxis)

[Ejaaz @cryptopunk7213]

wow Anthropic just published a crazy report on AI replacing your job and er... you might want to look at this:

- #1 most at-risk jobs are computer programmers, financial analysts (rip excel bros) and customer service

- most at-risk workers are female, white, older and higher paid.

- BUT high-risk jobs *aren't* firing employees... they've STOPPED HIRING. biggest victims: college graduates (4X more likely to be fucked)

- entry-level hiring has dropped 14% since chatgpt launched (for highest risk jobs)

- SAFEST jobs are... bartenders, dishwashers and lifeguards - any manual labour that AI can't automate (yet) this accounts for 30% of the job market.

- this was the scariest part: AI models are capable of automating most work TODAY but are prevented because of law and slow company adoption. so its not even a fucking skill issue its an ADOPTION issue.

- now its important to understand that the study is based on real world data but also 'theoretical' intelligence. so take it with a pinch of salt. some jobs (manual labor) didn't even meet min. data reqs

i applaud anthropic on being so damn transparent - they're literally the company behind claude who will be responsible for these impacts

studies like this will help us figure it the hell out. LOT of change coming this year.

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

Why can’t we all agree that destroying an Iranian drone carrier aimed at Americans, Israelis and Muslims makes the region and world more safe and secure?

[Alex Milligan @TheEbinFlow]

Truly a stunning series of events in 2026. Venezuela, Mexico, and now Iran. All three missions executed without significant ground forces, or ground forces of any kind.

This is a new kind of mission profile in a cyber era. There is such an extreme requirement for exacting intelligence to execute each of these missions. It seems to me that there is a new technical assymetry being leveraged across all of these missions which involves some confluence of AI and broader ditigal capabilites -- that have in turn enabled a highly precise fusion of digital and physical surveillance, which is then operationalized with another layer of AI.

This photo of the meeting location for the vast majority of the Iranian leadership, which was reportedly extremely classified and deeply fortified with underground bunkers, very desriptively tells this tale.

There are three small holes in the building, which are consistent with the strike destruction profile of America's bunker buster class of bombs.

Regardless of opinions of the US's involvement, the US administration, or the various justifications of these engagements... if you understand these misisons at even a extraordinarily basic level, like I believe I do, it is impossible to view these missions as anything but astonishing successes operationally and the model for strike missions of a technologically superior force going forward.

For better or worse.