The Trout Lord

Libertarian at heart, Conservative by nature, Fisherman in spirit. Small business owner. Stock trading (not financial advice). No unsolicited DMs, thanks.

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@Mayhem4Markets "Sauces" 🤣

[Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ @gladstein]

Three months ago I wrote my first reflections on AI

I had been using OpenClaw for a few weeks, and it blew my mind

I could now simply talk to a computer, and it could orchestrate and execute complex, creative tasks of all kinds

This open-source AI harness gave me, personally, new powers of computer programming, design, and beyond that I never had before

It was a real “I know Kung Fu” moment, straight out of The Matrix

The most awesome part was that the harness itself -- the software I was using to operate the AI “brain” or model -- was open source and fully customizable

The evolution of AI had been forked away from corporate dominance to create a path of sovereignty for the user, allowing them to choose their own intelligence

It felt like we were on the brink of something big

And yet still, three months later, it feels like these times were so very long ago

In February and March, we ran a fun OpenClaw experiment at HRF with just a few people, to see what kind of impact personal agents could have on productivity and on reducing busy work and bureaucracy

By May, we had actually started to give some of the world’s leading dissidents easy-to-use, extremely powerful, freedom-oriented AI tools to help them turn their dreams into reality

We do this at “Agent Camps”: 3-day, in-person experiences with teachers who are experts in education, design AI software, AI hardware, and software engineering

We have also created beautiful, engaging AI experiences and content at massive live events ranging from Bitcoin 2026 in Vegas to the Oslo Freedom Forum, sparking curiosity in thousands of people

We began with the open-source ethos, and now have been able to add privacy, and even full sovereignty, to our toolset

The product HRF has helped bring into existence -- Finite -- now offers a “private” mode where the inference provider can’t read the user data, similar to a Signal server. This product is what our Agent Camp graduates now use, and is what we hope to scale to more and more activists as we move through the year

We are even testing a “local” mode powered by our very own cluster, that we control, that gives us the ability to control the full AI stack

What I’m still struggling to digest is how fast the AI hardware and software environment is evolving towards making “sovereign AI” a practical reality

There’s a lot of doom in the headlines around the big AI corporations and their relationships with governments -- for good reason -- but when you zoom out and consider the big picture, the undeniable reality is that open weight models are getting more powerful, easier to use, and smaller so that they fit on cheaper and more widespread devices

One year ago, open weight AI models were mostly a joke. They couldn’t really execute anything that complex

Today, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between a personal agent powered by the best open weight models versus the best frontier ones

And while the frontier model companies are struggling through massive scaling and legal and political issues, open weight models and open-source harness software sets are blazing ahead

Consider that just *3* months ago, local AI was mostly a joke

Today it actually works: HRF and Finite currently have an uncensored model running on ~ $4,500 of equipment that can serve a dozen people, and it’s extremely useful for research. No third parties involved. The cost to do this will only decrease over time until it is something that simply can be run on any phone or computer or tablet

Already there are ways where you can run an open weight model on an iPhone, completely locally, and get a decent research assistant, no internet required

The latest development is the fusion model: where harnesses can “fuse” together several model brains to nearly replicate, for certain tasks, the performance of something like Fable -- the most powerful frontier model on earth

Technology and business and culture are, surprisingly, pushing us faster and faster towards workable freedom AI that is either privacy-protecting or completely sovereign, for the average person

The evolution of AI continues to trace the evolution of the computer, which went from something you had to once rent from a university or a library to something in the 1980s that came into your home in the form of the “personal” computer

We are in the middle of a similar shift where you might now “rent” compute from a giant corporation, to a world where, quite possibly, much of, or even most of, your compute will one day be done on devices you own and control

This shift could be expedited dramatically by companies like Apple, Google, and maybe even WhatsApp or Signal getting into the local AI game, and enabling users to fire up local AI assistants or use inference through a TEE

We are already seeing companies like Apple make very positive signs in that direction

So what’s the bad news? There is plenty.

The top-end frontier models are coming under increasing pressure from governments, and will likely end up fully KYC’d and gatekept, only accessible to a tiny few trusted people and institutions

This is the nightmare scenario: a small few with superpowers, and a permanent underclass with none

But if the average person can, in the next 12-18 months, use open-source software with no KYC to privately access or locally download frontier-like intelligence… then, the expansion of freedom in the 21st century seems more realistic

So far at HRF, we have worked with Finite to focus on helping activists learn the magic of personal agents. Make no mistake, dictators and tyrants are pushing full speed ahead on AI. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines.

We give dissidents their own agent, even if running on a frontier brain, just to try it out on harmless or fun projects, to see what is possible and start building their “agent” muscle and mental framework

This step alone is hugely liberating. When you watch someone use an agent for the first time, it’s like being in the same room as someone when they first used email or the internet, but even more jaw-dropping. Some people even get so emotional that they cry, happily.

Something else we have helped organize are the “AI Hack for Freedom” events, where activist team captains collaborate with developers to make freedom tools. The first one was in January of this year, and what made it special is that the devs could actually, with coding agents, make shippable products in just 2 days.

But at the May “AI Hack for Freedom,” just a few months later, the activists now helped make the software, driving the process themselves! Developers still help of course, but the shift is remarkable

On June 2 at the Oslo Freedom Forum we debuted the "AI Lounge", a cafe-style, Apple Store-vibe experience where attendees could come in and start playing with cutting-edge personal agents powered by our customized version of Hermes. They could choose a frontier experience or a “private” mode powered by a TEE model, or they could even play with a fully local uncensored model

It was a home run. Human rights defenders who had never thought of themselves as digital creators were completely engaged, generating incredible things

So what next? Two big steps

We aim to put our harness server into the TEE, so that no one can see what activists are doing, even as they use top-of-the-line models

And we aim to finalize a mobile app where you can talk to your agent in a slick way, fully encrypted, with no third parties or KYC

At that point, we will have what we need to really take it to the next level and start to truly scale the freedom AI experience

Later this year, I expect the discussion to move beyond personal agents to organizational agents. Following in the footsteps of Block, more and more organizations will set up an “organizational brain,” where their key internal meetings, achievements, outcomes, and goals will all be uploaded live into an AI-powered database, so that complex projects can be created by individuals in minutes instead of requiring teams of people, taking months

I’ve built my own “local brain” with all of my writings, posts, interviews, etc -- and I’ve seen how powerful this is. I can’t wait to help freedom fighters build brains for themselves and their organizations, to continue to superscale their work

I plan to continue these updates -- so in September, I will come back with more

Stay tuned!

[Proton Mail @ProtonMail]

If you use Gmail, you need to read this.

Google’s AI, Gemini, can read your emails, attachments, bank statements, etc.

For many, this feature was switched on without consent.

Here's how to turn it off 🧵

1/

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@NEWSMAX 🤣🤣

[The Factor Report @PeterLBrandt]

Maybe the canary in the coal mine for the tech sector
$MSFT

[Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🚂⚓️ @FreightAlley]

Over 500,000 people have come out to see the "Big Boy" Locomotive (largest ever made) as it makes whistle stops in the East

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Wow.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

This man's daughter had been kidnapped and was being abused by a Pakistani rape gang

He tried to rescue her from the property she was being held at

British Police arrived and arrested HIM for trying to save his daughter

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@MeghanMcCain Point the fingers anywhere but at congress, promote division even...

[Right Angle News Network @Rightanglenews]

A clip of a UK refugee council using girls as young as 12 years old to encourage migrant men to come to the United Kingdom is resurfacing amid the release of the grooming gang inquiry report.

Jail isn’t enough.

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

The Mississippi river and its tributaries.

[fejau @fejau_inc]

For years now, the actual rate change announced at every FOMC meeting did not matter. By the time the meeting occurred, the move was priced into the SOFR curve weeks in advance. The only exception to this was in September 2024 when Powell surprised the rates market and cut 50bps. This was one of the only times where we went into a meeting with 50/50 odds priced into the market (either 25bps or 50bps). This meant that the market reaction was largely driven by the change in pricing once it was announced, not the future reaction function.

Before the ZIRP era, this was the common way to do things. However, under Yellen and Powell, and pioneered by Bernanke, the Fed mandate was to never surprise the rates market and ensure their move gets priced into markets well-ahead of time.

This is why for so many years casual Fed observers would be confused on days when for example we would cut rates and markets would sell off, or we held rates steady and rallied. The market reaction function was entirely dependent on forward guidance and forward expectations, not the announced change that day.

We are now going to enter a regime where what the Fed actually decides to do each meeting will be the marginal market driver again and that is by design.

In practice, I expect the next few meetings to be priced at 50/50 odds moving forward and that's by design. It is now up to rates speculators to analyze the economic data and come to their own analysis on where rates should be, the Fed will not be spelling it out for us any longer.

Overall, I think this is a good thing. Forward guidance was a tool from the ZIRP era pioneered by Bernanke as a way to ease monetary policy without going into negative rates. We are no longer in a ZIRP world and it was time to change this.

On net, expect higher rate volatility, more sensitivity to changes in SOFR in the economy, less smoothening of business cycles, and a return to a more pure Taylor rule-like reaction function.

This is a big shift and in my opinion a welcome one, despite my podcast being named Forward Guidance!

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@BasedMikeLee 🇺🇸 https://t.co/mo1NchgMuN

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@jimiuorio Based on the comments, it appears that congress is the elephant in the room.

[AI Evolution @AiEvolutio58513]

In 1995, a struggling IT worker offered his bank a deal:

'Give me £10,000 for my son's racing, or I'll lose everything.'

The bank said no.

So he worked 3 jobs for 10 years straight.

Today, his son, Lewis Hamilton is worth $285M.

Here's the untold story: 🧵

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

Partners in crime.. 😂

[Peter St Onge, Ph.D. @profstonge]

The job test is legal again.

Unleashing a world where you don't have to pay a university $150,000 to prove you can read.

Universities are already in decline.
This will -- happily -- accelerate it.

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@lynssss3125 Of course building up is more expensive, because it's less per Sq Ft, duh! 🤣

[The Trout Lord @thekitchentwit]

@EthicalSkeptic IYKYK..