bitwize retweeted
People say:
"I wish one middle-class income could support an entire family like it did in the 1950s."
Okay. Then take the entire 1950s package—not just the parts you romanticize.
• No Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, or endless subscriptions
• One small TV with 3 channels, if you're lucky
• One basic car for the whole family
• No yearly vacations or cheap flights across the country
• No smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles, or internet
• Every meal cooked at home from scratch
• Kids sharing bedrooms
• A house under 1,000 sq. ft. for a family of 4–6
• One bathroom for everyone
• Little to no air conditioning in many places
• Clothes repaired, reused, and handed down
• Eating at restaurants was an occasional luxury, not a weekly habit
The comparison isn't just income.
The average household today consumes far more space, technology, entertainment, travel, convenience, and services than the average household did 70 years ago.
That doesn't mean housing, healthcare, and education aren't more expensive today—they are.
But when people compare lifestyles across generations, they often compare a 1950s income to a 2020s standard of living.
Those aren't the same thing.
If you want the economics of the 1950s, you have to accept the lifestyle of the 1950s too.
God willing, one day people will look back at our civilization and view abortion the same way we view slavery and human sacrifice.
bitwize retweeted
This post looks like the start of a VERY sophisticated and well-funded PR operation to get support for Democrats to regulate AI into oblivion. Let me show you how it works:
1.) This guy, with minimal followers and no previous account activity, goes to the Wall Street Journal which publishes an exclusive with quotes from him on his resignation 18 minutes BEFORE this post goes up. Planning was clearly done in advance.
2.) Within hours, it has tens of thousands of reposts and the account has 100k+ followers. The post is punchy, quotable, it almost seems professionally written. The first three accounts to quote tweet it all do so within 15 minutes of the initial posting. Remember, this account had basically zero engagement beforehand, so an organic reach explanation seems unlikely.
According to Grok those accounts are @_NathanCalvin (General Counsel at Encode AI), @peterwildeford (Head of Policy at the AI Policy Network), and @DKokotajlo (Head of the AI Futures Project), all of which are up-and-coming AI-Doomer policy advocacy nonprofits.
The AI Futures Project website says it is funded “primarily” by the Survival and Flourishing Fund, which says on its own website that it has advised Jaan Tallinn, Skype creator and one of the leading investors in Anthropic, to grant over $2.5 million to the AI Futures Project since 2024.
Encode AI says on its website that it is ALSO funded by the Survival and Flourishing Fund, which in turn says that it told Anthropic investor Jaan Tallinn to grant $516,000 to Encode AI in 2025.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Survival and Flourishing Fund ALSO says it told Jaan Tallinn to grant $2 million to the AI Policy Institute, the 501(c)(3) affiliate of the AI Policy Network, as well.
What are the odds that the first three quote tweets of Coxon’s post would all be major AI-restriction policy advocates funded generously by the same donor, who also happens to be one of the leading investors in, and a board member of, Anthropic, the company Coxon was resigning from? And all within 15 minutes of posting (two within ten)?
3.) Jacob Coxon doesn’t have much of a resume, but we do know that, in 2022, he got a $20,159 scholarship for the “long term future scholarship program” from the Good Ventures Foundation, one of the philanthropic vehicles of Dustin Moskovitz, a notorious AI-doomer who has spent tens if not hundreds of millions on policy advocacy to strictly regulate AI, while also being an Anthropic Investor himself.
It also just so happens that the 14th person to quote Coxon’s post was @MaxNadeau_ (27 minutes after posting) who is the program officer for the Technical AI Safety team at Coefficient Giving, another of Moskovitz’s philanthropic spending vehicles. Max is not a frequent poster, his last posts before quoting Coxon were before Labor Day, but he was remarkably quick off the mark for this one.
4.) Basically every major Democrat politician and candidate has suddenly glommed on to this post, and conveniently, as the people cry out foe answers, Bernie Sanders already has a bill written to “ban super intelligence” and regulate AI into oblivion, and will be releasing later this week. The bill, among many other things, will create “a new cabinet-level federal agency to safeguard the public from the dangers of artificial intelligence” that will be “advised by an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board comprised of experts on artificial intelligence.” Do you think, perhaps, Anthropic and its many investors who fund AI policy advocacy might have interest in getting to place a pet “expert” on the board of an entity that dictates what AI is and isn’t allowed to do? And isn’t it fortuitous that this whistleblower came forward with his oh-so scary stories so close in proximity to the release of the most radical piece of AI legislation ever introduced?
bitwize retweeted
I see a lot of activists attacking Omarchy Linux for getting $8 Million in donations to fund its new Foundation.
“Omarchy is compromised!”, they exclaim. “It’s for billionaires… it’s not for the people! It’s Oligarchy Linux.”
This is, quite frankly, retarded.
Who funds Fedora? IBM (and their multi-billion dollar subsidiary, Red Hat).
Who funds the Linux kernel? Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, IBM, and a bunch of other Billion dollar corporations (often run by billionaires). All directly funding and controlling a quarter billion dollar per year trade organization.
If “Omarchy is compromised… it’s Oligarchy Linux!”… then so is Fedora. And absolutely every system which uses the Linux kernel. Without exception.
Yet we see this “3 generations of inbreeding” level of stupid being spouted all across Mastodon.
Yuuup. Conservatives opposing data center construction really annoy me.
bitwize retweeted
RFK Jr. sat on CNN and said something that should not have been controversial. He said the government’s first duty in any future pandemic is to protect constitutional rights. Not balance them against expert opinion. Not temporarily suspend them. Protect them.
Dana Bash reacted as if he had just committed a category error. She told him she did not want to “allow” him to say things that were not entirely true. Allow. That is the word she chose. Not “challenge.” Not “disagree.” Allow.
Watch that moment carefully and the entire posture becomes clear. This is not a journalist testing a claim. This is a gatekeeper deciding which premises are permitted on air. The substance of Kennedy’s argument ... that the last response got almost everything wrong ... barely registered. What registered was the unacceptable suggestion that rights might rank above the public-health machinery.
That is the scandal that never ended. A large part of the media and the expert class still treats constitutional rights as optional equipment that can be powered down whenever the right people declare an emergency. They do not say it in those words. They simply act as if the Bill of Rights is a set of guidelines that apply only when the experts find them convenient.
Bash’s performance was not an outlier. It was a clean demonstration of the surviving mindset. The lockdowns are over. The mandates are gone. The emergency declarations have expired. But the assumption that experts outrank rights never left the building. It just learned to speak more politely until someone like Kennedy forced the issue back into the open.
The Constitution was not written as a suggestion for calm weather. It was written to restrain power precisely when fear is highest and the people in charge are most certain they know better.
(article below)
What I’ll never understand is how leftists seem to believe that enforcing our immigration law by deporting people who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas is some crime against humanity. These self-same people will then painstakingly go through all the paperwork and visa processes to visit a foreign country because they know they’ll get deported or denied entry if they don’t. But somehow in the United States this is some grave injury.
ICE and TSA have now turned airports into a dragnet to grab immigrants who’ve committed no crime, who have work permits, who are married to citizens, or who have pending green card applications.
It’s outrageous and disgusting. It’s tearing families apart & tearing people away from their communities. We must stop them.
Woooow! Who could have guessed? The problem is these people will never admit that they were wrong.
NY sees dramatic exodus of US millionaires - causing nearly $11B loss in tax revenue: study trib.al/XRS6Ndj
bitwize retweeted
Elon Musk is now worth $1.3 Trillion dollars and he's using it to build a sustainable economy in space. What a waste. If that money was given to the government instead, we could build 4.5 miles of high speed rail 20 years from now.
bitwize retweeted
Don’t worry about Elon becoming rich with his own money.
Worry about politicians becoming rich with your money.
bitwize retweeted
I believe America should be a post-racial society where we have put our historical legacy of racism entirely behind us and we judge all men and women by the quality of the life path they choose, and not based on immutable characteristics like skin color.
Democrats hate me for that.
That's because for Democrats, racism is power. That fact has never not been true since Andrew Jackson first founded that accursed party.
