Will Barbao

[Scotty Cameron @twitscotty]

I'm a connoisseur of dumb redneck shit and it's been years since something has impressed me. Don't let the flawlessness of its execution rob you of awe of its skill and danger.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

During Trump's second term:

- Jared Kushner became a billionaire
- the net worth of his 3 sons exponentially skyrocketed
- Baron Trump now worth $120m

Much if not most came from huge cash infusions from the Persian Gulf tyrannies.

[Hunter Biden got $50k/month from Burisma]

[QC @QiaochuYuan]

the exoteric understanding of karma is that god punishes evil people directly with lightning bolts from the sky. this is obvious nonsense as any cursory inspection if the world reveals. the esoteric understanding of karma is that it is literally ordinary non-supernatural causality, not in the physics sense but in the sense of how the world natively responds to goodness and evil. evil is inherently destructive of goodness, it means eating the seedcorn so you starve next winter, it means taxing the peasants into oblivion so they don’t have anything you can tax anymore. evil can gain in the short term by vampirically leeching off of goodness but this structurally never works in the long term and makes you enemies in the medium term. goodness and only goodness is what produces real flourishing. that’s karma

[braingrub 🏳️‍⚧️ @braingrub_]

So, something like this?

[🦬 Dr Red Bison, PhD @redbison.bsky ♀🏳️‍🌈🌻 @RedBison]

USFS turned over to a logging CEO, HQ moved to anti-Fed Govt Salt Lake City, all 10 regional offices closed, all research labs shuttered, all the science lost, public lands handed over to corporations for logging, mining, fracking. Our country is being raped, looted, stolen.

[Mrs Too Damn Media Literate @bobo_circus]

the roko's basilisk guys are so funny bc they correctly intuit that our lives will be controlled by a psychotic, amoral algorithm that hates humanity but they think some nerd in SF is going to build it on his macbook. it was already built, in 1602, by the Dutch

[Isaac King 🔎 @IsaacKing314]

One can shortcut to this understanding by noticing that if realism were more fun, people would just do stuff in real life rather than play games.

[The Curious Tales @thecurioustales]

🚨BREAKING: Two photons collided and an electron was born from nothing but light.

Einstein spent his final decades trying to unify the forces governing matter and energy. He never got there. But he left behind E=mc² as the clearest statement physics has ever produced: mass and energy are the same substance wearing different clothes. Every nuclear explosion, every star burning hydrogen into helium, confirms one direction of that equation where matter converts into energy. What just happened ran it in reverse. Pure energy, in the form of colliding photons, crystallized into physical matter.

The Breit Wheeler process was predicted in 1934. Two physicists sat down with Dirac’s quantum equations and concluded that colliding two photons at sufficient energy would produce an electron and a positron from pure light. No atoms. No nucleus. No raw material except electromagnetic radiation. The physics community accepted the math and then spent 90 years assuming it was experimentally unreachable.

Photons do not naturally want to interact. Light passes through light without acknowledgment. Getting two photons to collide with sufficient energy required conditions that exist naturally only inside stars and during the first seconds after the Big Bang. Recreating that in a laboratory meant generating X-ray fields of extraordinary intensity and designing collision geometries that no instrument previously existed to control.

At the right energy threshold, a particle and its antimatter twin appeared from electromagnetic nothingness.

Every electron orbiting every nucleus in the observable universe traces its origin back to an energy state dense enough to crystallize into mass. The universe did not begin with matter. It began with energy so concentrated it had no choice but to become something solid. Physicists just reproduced that moment on a table.

The line between energy and matter was never a wall.

It was always a threshold.

[Lemon Sturgis @LemonSturgis]

So far, this Iran operation is a cascade of worst‑case outcomes.

• Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, collapsing tanker traffic by 80–90% and sending oil prices from about $65 to over $110 in just over a week.

• U.S. operational costs: ~$1B per day.

• Iranian drone and missile attacks have killed 7 Americans and wounded 18.

• A likely U.S. strike on Feb 28 hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, killing ~165–175 civilians—mostly schoolgirls aged 7–12z

• Kuwait was expected to have ~18 days of storage before cuts, but began reducing oil output within 2–3 days of the blockade.

• Iraqi oil production from its main southern fields has collapsed by 70%.

• Qatar's Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi warned Gulf exporters may halt production within days, potentially spiking oil to $150 per barrel within 2-3 weeks.

• U.S. embassy evacuations collapsed into disaster: State Dept delayed approvals 1–4 days, facilities struck, thousands stranded amid closed airspace/airports, slow military/charter rollout.

• Treasury issued a 30‑day OFAC waiver allowing India to continue purchasing Russian oil, reversing years of U.S. pressure discouraging those imports.

• Iran’s Supreme Leader has been replaced by his more hardline son, Mojtaba Khamenei — and with Iran likely heavily protecting him, Trump’s likely push to remove him could take time, prolonging the crisis and its costs.

• The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimate for Q1 2026 growth plunged from 3.0% (Mar 2) to 2.1% (Mar 6) — a 0.9 pp drop in just four days.

• U.S. gas prices jumped from about $2.95 to ~$3.40/gal in a week (≈40–60¢, one of the fastest increases ever), while diesel surged ~50–75¢ to ~$4.30–$4.50.

• U.S. stocks have fallen since Feb 28: S&P 500 −2.0%, Dow −3.0%, Nasdaq −1–2%.

• Despite hopes the strikes might trigger regime collapse, protests so far are nowhere near the scale of the January 2026 nationwide uprising.

• The Fed’s ability to cut rates is constrained even with weak jobs data, as surging oil has pushed up inflation expectations.

[Sr Peters @SrPeters]

Imagine being Trump:

> Netanyahu tells you to attack Iran

> You refuse

> Mossad drops a teaser from Epstein files labeling you a pedophile

> You attack Iran

> Netanyahu pushes for a false flag against the GCC

> You refuse

> Today, files drop: You raped a 13yo girl.

[𝐫𝐞𝐏𝐫𝐨-𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 @rePro_Truth]

It is genuinely terrifying to be a reproductive aged woman knowing that there are people who believe that God wants you to die from pregnancy complications, and that it’s their God-commanded purpose to pass legislation making it happen.

[✨Wild Nimue✨ @wildnimue]

Hostias, qué pereza dais, de verdad.

Es justo lo contrario, y Tolkien lo dejó clarísimo mil veces, PESADOS. Odiaba la alegoría política y no estaba escribiendo ningún panfleto sobre civilizaciones superiores defendiéndose del bárbaro exterior. La historia no va de hombres fuertes salvando Occidente, va de gente pequeña, sin poder, sin épica y con miedo, intentando que el mundo no se vaya a la mierda. El mensaje central es que el ansia de dominación siempre corrompe, incluso cuando viene disfrazada de buenas intenciones. El poder no es la solución, es el problema, y por eso el Anillo no se usa jamás, se destruye.

Los héroes no son conquistadores ni líderes, son jardineros, amigos leales y pringaos agotados que tiran para delante a base de cooperación, cuidado mutuo y pura cabezonería.

Y sí, Tolkien era cristiano, pero la obra no es una alegoría cristiana ni pretende adoctrinar a nadie. No hay sermones, no hay salvación por obediencia, no hay jerarquías morales dictadas por dios alguno.

Así que no sé, igual antes de ir de profunda y provocadora convendría aprender a leer un texto sin proyectar cuatro ideas mal masticadas, porque alardear de nula comprensión lectora con esa seguridad tampoco es tan guay como te crees.

[WW2 The Eastern Front @ShoahUkraine]

This is just a boomer American answer and it makes me chuckle every time. But let’s seriously take a look at the economy of Nazi Germany and forget, for a moment, about the mass killings of Social Democrats and Communists. Was the economy actually " socialist " ?

Major industries and corporations such as Krupp, IG Farben, Siemens, and Thyssen remained privately owned and became enormously profitable under the regime, benefiting directly from state contracts and rearmament. Sound familiar to who gets billions in state contracts in the US today? 😉

Independent trade unions were abolished, strikes were banned, wages were tightly controlled, and workers had no say in production or management. That is the opposite of socialism’s core principle of worker control over the means of production.
The state did not act on behalf of the working class. Instead, it used its authority to guarantee profits for industrialists who supported the regime, while enforcing rigid social and economic hierarchies.

The Nazis even expanded privatization during the 1930s, selling off banks, railways, steel works, and shipyards.
In practice, the Nazi economy functioned as authoritarian capitalism, not socialism, with state power protecting private capital rather than dismantling it, much like what the US government does today for Musk’ !

[grace spelman @GraceSpelman]

i don’t think conservatives would recognize art if they fell over it. the idea that there would ever be a modern conservative art movement is just laughable

[Hyde 💨 @BreatheLesss]

The Big Flattening.

[Kevin Dahlstrom @Camp4]

Today I turn 55.

I’m the fittest, sharpest, and happiest I’ve ever been.

If I’m an outlier, it’s not because I’m built different or discovered a secret formula. The truth is far less glamorous:

It’s a million tiny choices, compounded over decades.

Here are 55 of them:

1. Walk 15+ miles a week, even if you do other exercise. Humans are uniquely made to move slowly over long distances—it’s critical to longevity.

2. Develop a writing practice. It’s the single best way to sharpen your mind. And remember, you don’t have to be a good writer to write. Start with 10 minutes a day.

3. Swap out your toothpaste, deodorant, lotions, soap, shampoo, and other personal care products for natural versions. Here’s a rule of thumb: Don’t put anything on your skin that you couldn’t safely eat.

4. If you have a positive thought about someone, don’t keep it to yourself—share it immediately. Encouragement defies the laws of physics: When you give energy, you also receive it.

5. Wear shoes with a wide forefoot (I like Topo Athletic) and wear toe spreaders around the house (search “yoga toes” on Amazon). Spine health begins with the feet.

6. Get sunlight regularly. Moderate sun exposure (without sunscreen) is hugely important for overall health.

7. Do a 3-minute deep (“ass to grass”) squat every morning. Deep squats are often called the anti-aging exercise. It’s been said that, “It’s not that you can’t do deep squats because you’re old, it’s that you’re old because you can’t do deep squats.”

8. Explore minimalism (it’s not what you think it is).

9. Set boundaries on toxic relationships. We tend to cling to relationships past their expiration date, and it takes a bigger toll on our health than we recognize.

10. Eat real food. Not too much. Don’t eat garbage. Binge occasionally. Fast occasionally. That’s the diet.

11. Learn about FIRE. It’s a great framework for financial success.

12. Don’t take antibiotics except in emergency situations. They’re massively over-prescribed and aren’t needed in most cases. Antibiotics have done untold damage to our guts, which is where health begins. Great natural alternatives are out there.

13. Get 8 hours of quality sleep each night. To optimize sleep:
—Don’t eat after 6pm
—Get blackout shades and cover LEDs with black tape
—No screens 2 hours before bed
—Try ashwagandha (an herb) to calm the nervous system

14. Stop drinking, even in moderation. People find all sorts of ways to justify drinking, but there’s no escaping the simple fact that alcohol is a toxin and it limits your potential.

15. Travel as much as possible. Nothing expands the mind like seeing the world. And travel doesn’t have to be expensive—the best experiences happen outside of fancy resorts, when you live like a local.

16. Let go of resentment. When you forgive someone, you release the prisoner, and the prisoner isn’t them… it’s you.

17. Show up on time, every time. Poor time management limits success more than most people realize. If you struggle with punctuality, stop everything else and fix that first.

18. Spend lots of time in nature and touch the earth. Humans evolved over 300k years to live in harmony with nature, and only recently have we retreated indoors. If you don’t spend time outside, you’re fighting biology (hint: You won’t win.)

19. Stop doing dumb things. As Leo Tolstoy said, “People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.”

20. Find your happy place and (eventually) move there. Most people live where they live because... that's where they live. We are products of our environment—choose yours carefully.

21. Find a hobby and pursue mastery. You can’t have a happy life without a passionate pursuit that isn’t your vocation. Your work—even if you enjoy it—isn’t enough.

22. Avoid mainstream medicine except as a last resort. The results are in—our healthcare (or more appropriately, sick care) system is badly broken and only makes people sicker.

23. Have a mindset of abundance. There is no advantage to being a pessimist—even if you’re right, it’s a miserable way to live. In a very real way… whatever you believe, you’re right!

24. Do hard things. Choose courage over comfort. Everything you want is on the other side of fear and hard work. As Jerzy Gregorik said, “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”

25. Ignore haters. Hurt people hurt people. Negative/toxic people live in a prison of their own design. Don’t join them!

26. Say no. Protect your time and energy like it’s your most precious asset… because it is.

27. Become a water snob. As an alien said on Star Trek, humans are “ugly bags of mostly water.” You are what you drink—literally! We have Mountain Valley Spring water delivered in glass 5-gallon jugs and also have whole-house water filter (Aquasana Rhino).

28. Stop drinking sodas and sugary energy drinks. After a few weeks you won’t miss them, and a few months later they’ll seem disgusting. Refined sugar causes inflammation, which is the root of most disease.

29. If you’re over 35, find a good functional/longevity medicine doctor and start tracking your hormones. Modern life is hell on the endocrine system and restoring healthy hormone levels can change your life. As we get older, we either accept a slow decline in performance or we do something about it—choose the latter!

30. Develop a morning routine and follow it faithfully. Win the morning, win the day!

31. Invest in experiences, not things. People frequently regret buying things, but rarely regret investing in great experiences (especially when shared with loved ones). Remember, there’s nothing you can buy in a mall that you’ll remember in ten years.

32. Explore spirituality. It’s arrogant and small-minded to believe there’s nothing going on in our universe that is beyond our comprehension. We know less about our universe than an ant meandering on a sidewalk understands about this planet.

33. Have a strong bias toward action—doing rather than talking. If you ask a bunch of old people about their regrets, they’ll talk about the things they *didn't* do—the shots they didn’t take—more than the things they did do (even if it went wrong). As Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Most people don’t take enough shots.

34. Stay lean. Men in particular are obsessed with muscle mass these days, but bulk doesn’t age well. The goal is to be strong but lean. The fittest guys in their 50s and beyond aren’t meatheads, they’re lean guys who are serious about a sport.

35. Curate your inner circle carefully. Surround yourself with people you admire and who challenge you to grow. Remember, we’re the average of our 5 closest relationships.

36. Be the fittest version of yourself. Your body is your only vessel for experiencing life—so treat it as such. Fitness isn’t working out a few times a week, it’s a lifestyle. The older you get, the more time you need to devote to your health.

37. Take the time to appreciate art and beauty in all its forms.

38. Think globally, but act locally. Too many people put their energy into far-away problems they don’t understand and can’t impact, while ignoring problems right under their nose. Want to change the world? Start at home.

39. Try psychedelics. It’s one of those things everyone should do at least once, and it might be the breakthrough you’ve been looking for.

40. Limit bad habits, including unhealthy thought patterns. We all have them—practice avoidance and find substitutes. Get professional help if needed.

41. Be a lifelong learner. Your brain is just like a muscle—if you don’t feed and flex it regularly, it will atrophy.

42. Find your purpose. People with a strong sense of purpose are happier and live longer. Lack of purpose sucks energy and magnifies depression.

43. Only take advice from people who embody the traits you want to have. Talk is cheap—emulate those who have DONE it.

44. The goal is not to retire and do nothing, it’s to build a great day-to-day life that you don’t need to escape. A life of leisure is a slow death. Happiness isn’t possible without a little struggle, uncertainty, and skin in the game.

45. Have fun! Do frivolous and silly things that make you smile. As George Bernard Shaw famously said, “We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

46. Whatever you want to do or achieve in life, start NOW. Don’t fall victim to “someday thinking” because someday never comes.

47. Accumulate assets—things that grow in value over time. It’s the #1 habit of rich people, and it can be done in tiny chunks. Instead of spending $100 on an impulse purchase that has no lasting value, put that money into an index fund or Bitcoin. It becomes addictive (in a good way).

48. Don’t ignore the big 3 canaries in the coal mine for health:
—Low libido (and ED)
—Frequent sinus & respiratory issues
—Depression
These usually aren’t medical conditions in themselves, they’re symptoms of an underlying problem. Find a good doc (outside of the mainstream) and figure out the root cause.

49. Have a clear vision for your future. How can you decide which direction to go if you haven’t clearly defined the destination? It sounds obvious, but 95% of people haven’t defined their “Ideal End State” in detail and in writing. (Check out my thread on this topic.)

50. Make your own decisions. We live in an era where most of what society tells us is wrong. Don’t be afraid to break from societal norms—if people say you’re crazy, it’s a sign that you’re doing something right.

51. Get hardcore about mobility exercise. As you age, it’s usually the knees, hips, and lower back that limit physical performance. 30 min a couple times a week can spare you a lifetime of pain. YouTube is a great resource.

52. Go all in on family. Get married, stay married, have kids. Burn the boats. In the end, family is all that matters.

53. Be ruthless with your time. Money comes and goes. Time only goes. Audit your calendar ruthlessly—cut the trivial, double down on the meaningful, and spend your hours like your life depends on it. (Because it does.)

54. Have a strong bias toward action. Be curious, try things, meet people—it’s how you increase your surface area for serendipity, the most powerful unseen force in our lives.

55. Reinvent yourself every decade. Over time, we slowly drift off course from our priorities, values, and true identity. Take stock and don’t be afraid to hit the reset button. Bold, calculated moves made for the right reasons almost always pay off—usually even more than you can imagine.

🎁 P.S. If you enjoyed this post, would you give me a birthday gift? Repost or comment with the item number(s) you liked best?

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

if you cut taxes for the rich, they simply save that money. if you cut taxes for me, i will use all that money to buy pants that don't fit and i'll never wear, which creates jobs for people who make pants

[Gabriel @gbrl_dick]

america is so rich that minor states are accidentally funding both sides of african civil wars almost incidentally, as a small side effect of well meaning social policy.