Wubididub

[Wubididub @wubididub]

"..it turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and, therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject it, it alters us all as well"

[Caldron Pool @CaldronPool]

“The most dangerous idea in human history and philosophy remains the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead.” @ClarkeMicah

[Become A Saint @BeSaintly]

“It is better to be a Christian without saying it, than to say it without being one.”

—St. Ignatius of Antioch

[Conor McGregor @TheNotoriousMMA]

If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord! I’d rather be cancelled by society than rejected by Christ

[Trad West @trad_west_]

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” ― G.K. Chesterton

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

At midnight on February 6th, earlier this year, the doorbell to our apartment rang. The doorbell was followed by a pounding on the door. I answered the door and a security person in our building handed me his phone. It was my oldest daughter Eloise. She had found my 26-year-old daughter unconscious on the floor of her apartment and had called 911. The EMT team was already there, but they did not know what was wrong with Lucy or to which hospital they would take her.

I threw on some clothes and jumped in an Uber heading east toward Brooklyn. (Lucy lived alone in Williamsburg.) On the way, I learned that they were taking her to Elmhurst, a City trauma hospital in Queens. I arrived about five minutes after the ambulance to join Eloise, Lucy’s mom, and a friend, and waited to learn what was wrong.

After about 15 minutes, I asked a nurse where she was. I looked over his shoulder to his computer. Next to her name, it said “non-responsive.” I walked into the emergency room and wandered around looking for her until I found her unconscious on a gurney surrounded by several doctors and nurses.

By about 2:30am with the results from a CAT scan, Lucy’s doctors had determined that she had a massive brain hemorrhage and would need an emergency hemicraniectomy to release the pressure on her brain and remove the blood from the hemorrhage. I called our wonderful friend and family doctor Eddie Fisher and explained what was going on. He woke up Josh Bederson, Chairman of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai, to find out more about Zach Hickman, the neurosurgeon on call that night. Dr. Bederson said Hickman was an excellent surgeon, which was comforting as we had no choice.

The surgery to save Lucy’s life began around 3:15am and finished around 5:30am. It was successful.

The following day, I joined Lucy in an ambulance while she was being transferred to Mount Sinai on Madison Avenue. Later that day, we determined from Lucy’s Oura ring that her hemorrhage had occurred around 9am, which meant that more than 19 hours had passed from the time of the hemorrhage to the completion of the surgery to release the pressure on her brain (I only wish @ouraring had an alert for this kind of a medical event. Imagine it could call a family member if the wearer doesn’t cancel the alert).

I later learned that the standard of care is not to do surgery to save a patient with a large brain bleed if more than five hours have passed since the hemorrhage. Even when the surgery is done, I was told that the likely outcome for the patient is a few months in a nursing home and death from pneumonia.

When I met Lucy’s doctors, I did my best to inspire them: “Let’s see what can be accomplished if we give her the best care possible and we invest unlimited resources to restore her to life.” And I promised that whatever we learned we would make available to everyone.

Dr. Chris Kellner, her neurosurgeon, and Dr. David Putrino, Director of Rehabilitation Innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System have led Lucy’s care team since that day. Words cannot describe the remarkable and compassionate care that she has received beginning with the EMT team and then from nurses, doctors, therapists, and the army of people who have worked to save her and return her to life. To this day, we have a daily Zoom where we discuss her progress and make adjustments to her care. While her care and oversight have been incredible, the learnings for the Mount Sinai team have also been elucidating and will assist in the care of many others.

Lucy began in a bad place. She was in a coma for several weeks and then awoke not being able to breathe on her own, unable to walk, see or speak.

Over the last six months, she has recovered her cognition – she understands everything including her circumstance – is able to walk a hundred or more steps at a time with assistance, is making progress with sounds, vowels and consonants and the beginnings of speech, but she remains unable to see.

Each day, she makes a little progress, and daily progress compounds. Every day I tell her that she just needs to make a little progress and it won’t be long before she is back.

We remain optimistic that Lucy will return to normal function. It will likely take years, but I believe it is only a matter of time, hard work, and technological progress, along with some, and perhaps a lot, of divine intervention.

Many people have been praying for Lucy and we are incredibly grateful for the prayers and remarkable support she has received. Lucy’s friends have been with her every day since the beginning, and their presence and friendship have saved her life and helped to rebuild and maintain her spirit. And on a very positive note, Lucy’s challenge has brought together our entire modern family who have all been incredibly devoted to her care and recovery.

Lucy's vision and other faculties may require some form of brain computer interface, work that is underway at Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Science, Synchron, Nudge, and other companies in the space.

If you are going to have a devastating brain injury, now is the best time in history for that to happen. We are living in a world when you can be confident that the blind will soon see again. We are going to do everything we can to help make that happen, including by assisting existing companies in the space.

With respect to our promise to make Lucy’s care available to others, we have made good progress. In May, a real estate colleague made me aware of a 93% vacant, brand new, 400,000 square foot Class A+ purpose-built biotech facility on West End Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets that missed the market and was available for sale. The Pershing Square Foundation acquired the building 60 days later.

We also put under contract an adjoining 130,000 square foot building at 320 West 66th Street that is currently being used by Saturday Night Live for studio space. The building has 35-foot ceilings with massive column-free spaces that can be converted into superb rehabilitation facilities. We will close on the SNL building in December.

We are also acquiring an adjoining vacant lot with additional air rights. With just the existing zoning rights, we can add a 150,000 square feet for a total of 680,000 square feet, a lab footprint larger than Rockefeller University, and that’s without including the potential for an upzoning that would allow for substantially more buildable area on the site’s 3.4 acres with spectacular views of the Hudson.

Our goal is to build the world’s greatest brain research, rehabilitation, recovery, human optimization, and longevity institute. We have named it The Ackman Oxman Institute or the AOI for lack of a better name, but also to reinforce the point that Neri and I and our family are all-in on the mission.

The AOI will be patient-centric. It will not be an academic research institute that produces lots of papers, a Nobel Prize winner or two, but little if any results for patients. We will be laser-focused on cures, treatments, devices, rehabilitation and exercise equipment, and targeted and basic research with a goal of massively accelerating the time from idea to innovation to production to helping a patient.

While the AOI will be a non-profit, it will have highly commercial instincts. The AOI will have its own venture funding and will work to develop innovations to create companies that we will seed, assist, and spinout to ensure technologies, treatments, techniques, and drugs get to patients as promptly as possible.

On one 3.4 acre campus in what is still the greatest city in the world, we will do neurosurgery, neuroscience, rehabilitation, nutrition, BCI and device development, human trials, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and life extension programs, and we will mandate and incentivize collaboration among the teams with no silos, politics, bureaucracy, or any other constraint that is inconsistent with the mission.

Mount Sinai will be an important partner and deservedly so, but it won’t be our only hospital or medical school partner as we don’t believe any institution has a monopoly on the best ideas or the best talent. We don’t believe in exclusive relationships because that is not in the best interest of patients.

Five years ago, we considered launching a brain institute inspired by Neri’s mom who sadly died from Alzheimer’s. We couldn’t make the math work as the real estate was too expensive and we believed it would be too difficult to recruit the best talent from universities to our effort.

Since then, the real estate became available at a 70% discount, universities became a much less attractive place to work due to politics outweighing meritocracy, protests that disrupt learning, the curse of antisemitism, and a decline in funding. Fortunately, during the same time, I made sufficient personal economic progress to make the AOI possible.

The advance of AI in the last few years will also enable us to greatly accelerate our mission. AI still has a lot to learn about human intelligence and the brain, and the AOI should be at the forefront of the interplay between the brain and AI.

Today, I am making a public filing disclosing a gift from Neri and me of ~$400 million or 10,000,000 shares of Pershing Square Inc. (PS) to the AOI. It is very early days for Pershing Square so these shares are intended to anchor the long-term work of the AOI as the shares compound over time while generating what we expect will be a growing stream of quarterly dividends to fund the Institute.

We will also be announcing an additional gift of similar and potentially greater size which won’t be in the form of Pershing Square stock to provide the AOI with the short- and intermediate-term runway necessary to enable it to achieve its goal of becoming a self-sustaining institute, which reinvests all of its revenues, royalties, and the economic rewards of company formation to advance the fields of brain health and human longevity.

Neri and I have chosen to anchor the funding of the AOI to maintain vision alignment and limit the need for the organization to focus on fundraising. We expect the AOI to be the best-resourced brain, rehab, recovery, and longevity institute in the world.

We are grateful to have been able to form a board which includes Dean Kamen (our generation’s Thomas Edison), George Yancopoulus (CEO of Regeneron), James Rothman (Nobel Laureate), Bernardo Sabatini (neuroscientist), Chris Kellner (neurosurgeon), Olivia Flatto (CEO Pershing Square Foundation), Neri Oxman, and myself.

We have recently identified a CEO who we expect to announce by October along with other key hires, and are beginning searches for a Chief Scientific Officer, a Chief AI/Technology Officer, a Chief Operating Officer, a Chief Financial Officer, and other key leadership roles.

If you find what we are building compelling and want to be part of the leadership team that creates and builds the AOI from a standing start, please send an email to: [email protected] with a short note as to why you believe you can help. Please include your best three ideas for the AOI along with a summary of your background and your most important accomplishments.

We promise strict confidentiality to those expressing interest in working with us.

We have learned from Lucy that the brain can recover from even catastrophic injury. There is so much more work to be done as the mind is a terrible thing to waste.

For details from my Pershing Square SEC filing see:

https://t.co/gZKafCw6Ia

[essam @itsallentropy]

Keeping this one in reserve for the next drinking session with the lads

[Uche is a girl 🇻🇦 @UcheMaryOkoli]

I love how this Catholic priest explained in simple words why women can't be priests in the Catholic Church.

Give it a listen!

[Rebecca Mistereggen @RMistereggen]

Fra spøk til alvor, voldtektsmottaket i Oslo får minst en sak i måneden vedrørende seksuelle overfall i forbindelse med taxi-turer, men det er altså folk som spyr ut edder og galle på internett som er den største trusselen. Da kobler PST seg på. I mellomtiden får offentligheten sjelden vite når det går en overfallsvoldtektsmann løs i hovedstaden, og PST har «mistet oversikten over islamister i landet» fordi det er så mange av dem.

Jeg snakker sjelden om netthets, stygge kommentarer eller drapstrusler jeg mottar, rett og slett fordi jeg ikke gidder å bry meg. Livet i offerrollen må være forferdelig slitsom og et lite verdig liv, spør du meg. Har nå kommet dit at jeg ikke gidder å lese om det i andre aviser heller.

[simp 4 satoshi @iamgingertrash]

This was meant for you

[𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖊 🕯 @atlanticesque]

John Thompson has been studying the guqin—a silk string zither—and classical Chinese music since 1974.

Here he is with Hong Kong filmmaker Lau Shing Hon performing a drinking song first published 1589 and attributed to third-century poet Ruan Ji: Jiu Kuang (Wine Mad)

[Unworthy Hand @kisstheblade_]

It is a TERRIFIC bit that C. S. Lewis went "not going to go into anything doctrinal, I'm just going to stick to basic mere Christianity, just the stuff we all agree on" and proceeds to describe exactly the slightly bookish, vaguely nice evangelical Anglicanism he subscribes to.

[Pat Stedman | Dating & Relationship Coach for Men @Pat_Stedman]

Once you pass your 20s as a man - certainly your 30s (which is a transition period) - a romance where you "grow and build a life together" isn't realistically an option anymore

You've likely already built a life for yourself, and developed psychologically to the point where finding someone who will help you form an identity as a man is unlikely

You only have two types of relationships remaining:

- companionship (generally a peer-aged woman who you enjoy spending time with and can support each other's independently developed lives)

- patronage (generally a younger woman you have a polarized but role-based and paternalistic relationship with, who you take care of)

While very different in nature, both of these are fundamentally pragmatic relationships - the idealistic, wholly romantic type disappears, because it can only exist when there is no certainty of who we are and what we want in our woman

Even these marriages, when they do not fail from their own idealism, evolve as we age - at their worst into a comfortable yet dysfunctional complacency; at their best into a synthesis of the two other types. A man who commands authority emerges from the carefree boy, and the girl who once fell simply for his fun and charisma now also comes to respect him as a leader. Yet this girl is also a resilient woman now who's earned her own stature through her wisdom and time in the trenches with you

Almost ironically, this marriage, as it loses its own idealism, ends up emerging as a kind of amour others idealize as time goes on - a foundation of foolish puppy love, blooming into a "king and queen" type partnership, with mutual trust and respect for each others' place within it

Be grateful if you are one of the lucky ones who found someone at a young enough age where you could experience an innocent love worthy of maturation like this

Getting rarer and rarer to find as time
goes on, and people delude themselves into thinking they can wait forever to find it. Because they can't. The trend is towards transactional relationships for a reason: the ship has sailed on the rest

[John Kim @PremiumGoblin]

Hi, I’m John! I’m a L7 Senior Staff software engineer at Meta.

My weird hobby is making AI Tech content on YouTube and Substack and I wanted to start sharing more here.

In the past I’ve worked on Reels, Meta AI on Msgr and currently working on Threads.

I also teach Agentic Coding with @bytebytego for fun on the side.

Doing an AMA here to share and meet new people. 👋

[Allie ✞ @allie__voss]

By far the most likable part about Bryan Johnson is that he fully embraces his ridiculousness

[Brett Caughran @FundamentEdge]

One of *the most critical* personal finance skills you can learn in the 18-35 window is how to underwrite rent vs. buy for primary real estate decisions. For most people, a few real estate decisions will dwarf almost all other investment decisions they make (other than to invest in stocks, index if you have no selection skill, and hold for the long term)

The dogma, on both sides, around home ownership misses a critical nuance. And may certainly be true to the writer, but should be dismissed as blanket advice.

Is it better to rent or to buy? The obvious answer is, it depends.

If you top-ticked Austin in 2022 or Tribeca in 2015, I agree. Those were horrible decisions that led to large losses and could have become a financial albatross.

But also, if you purchased a nice home in Miami or Scottsdale (or other similarly growing metros) 7-10 years ago with 10% down, you probably earned a 10-15x on your equity down payment, a life changing investment decision. And had windows along the way to lock in a 2-3% 30-year fixed, effectively securing a long-term home for your family at a few thousand dollars a month vs. market rent of $10-15 thousand +.

Fortunes can be made and lost in well-timed real estate investments. But timing is critical. And unlike stock markets where timing is difficult, it is much easier to time the buy vs. rent spread.

For Wall Street professionals, a hack that helped me along the way was reading Buck Horne's research from Raymond James (if you have access to it...I don't so i'm not sure he's still publishing the same analyses). He systematically tracks history of series like rent vs. buy by MSA, etc as part of his SFR REIT coverage, and I learned a lot of the components that I teach to my students from reading his research.

In this tweet from September, I share a few slides from my ASU lecture on real-estate, the Excel file and the NY Times rent vs. buy calculator in Excel. It would be super frictionless to turn this into an AI agent now (I'm sure someone has done it).

TLDR: buying a primary residence (or not), is the biggest financial decision you will likely make. There is no blanket advice that applies. It all depends.

https://t.co/dAw5zlW3bz

[🇺🇸 The American Culturist 🇺🇸 @MericaCulture]

He's obviously never seen William Howard Taft riding a water buffalo.

[Mariam • @unfmariam]

نوعي المفضَّل من الحب هو استلقاء الرجال في حضن نسائهم.

[Megha @megha_lilly]

I co-slept with both my babies and the loveliest thing was to wake up in the middle of the night and briefly see the little baby face fast asleep inches from mine. The little nose, the puckered rosebud lips, the eyes, the rounded cheeks. Little baby breaths warm against my face. And then I’d smile as I fell asleep again, feeling blessed and at peace like no other peace I’ve ever known.

[Girardism @Girardism]

“Christians are excessively impressed by the propaganda against biblical ideas.”

— ‘Satan and the Gospels,’ an address given by René Girard at the American Academy of Religion conference held in San Francisco in 1992.