Family man, Ph.D. chemist, ordinary guy. “The best Republicans are closet libertarians.” — me
California, USA
Joined April 2014
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Gabble Ratchet retweeted
If you’re right wing and you can’t admit liberals (not communists) are way better at art and design and boutique coffee shops and restaurants, you’re not living in reality.
If you’re left wing and you can’t admit conservatives are way better at running cities and businesses and police departments, you’re not living in reality.
You step inside a beautiful coffee shop in the PNW and think “man, these liberals are great at this stuff…conservatives should take notes.” Then the moment you step outside and trip over a homeless drug zombie shooting up fentanyl on the sidewalk, you think “man these liberals are terrible at this stuff…they should really take notes from conservatives”
Communists make disgusting anti-beauty art, but classical liberals aren’t like that. Put the libs in charge of the coffee shops, put the conservatives in charge of city hall. This is how you get a city that is beautiful, clean, and functional.
If you can’t accept that, you need to check your tribalism. We are never getting rid of each other, so figure out how we strike a balance or else the communists swoop in and take everything from us while we quarrel over stupid bullshit…which is exactly what’s happening now.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Stop the War?
Time to end the draft and bring our soldiers home from Iran where they are dying by the hundreds in trench warfare and house-to-house combat.
Oh wait. We are not doing any of that. The “war” is a naval blockade to get the Iranians to give up nuclear and terrorist ambitions. At its peak we also had an air campaign directed at military and leadership targets but we stopped it in exchange for fake promises.
Mostly we have been engaged in endless negotiations and memorandums of understandings while the Iranians regained their footing and kept their resolve to kill big and little Satan. The Iranians are so confident now in their success they are not negotiating at all. They killed tens of thousands of their own people to keep their iron grip. They are laughing at America that can’t take a temporary $1 increase in gasoline prices to get rid of the world’s top sponsor of terrorism and instability.
The President should set out his non negotiable demands of no nukes, no strait, no terrorist funding, no long range ballistics, and then resume bombing if they don’t agree until they do.
And democrats want to lower the cost of gasoline? Who could possibly believe that after they spent 20 years choking off the supply of domestic energy over climate change. Check the price of gas in California.
So the current fashion is to end the war with nothing, cut off Israel, and lower the cost of gasoline. That’s a strategy? Enable nuclear and other terrorism that will ultimately swallow the region, travel to Europe and then here? Or stop it now that you can when they are weak and have alienated all the gulf states and go for real stability. That’s an actual strategy that will pay us back for decades to come.
And as to affordability — suspend the gas tax, drop interest rates, suspend tariffs, provide temporary tax breaks for energy use, reform the student loan program and push for big affordable housing programs beyond the recent bill.
As to “war,” finish the job while we can. And explain why to the American people.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Bad policy is coming. That's bad, but we've survived worse. The fundamental question remains: can we save the American constitutional system from irreversible structural changes before the partisan pendulum comes back? That's the whole ballgame.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Bad news is we lost senate seats that won't be winnable for six years. Gut wrenching.
Here's the good news: in terms of electoral prospects, this is super easy to fix. Trivial, even:
1. End the tariffs now. If the Admin wants to make a case for a few targeted ones for bad actors, fine. But the broad tariffs must stop.
2. Either go balls to the wall on Iran to finish the regime, or pull out of the war. Do more limited stuff like "midnight hammer" if Iran tries to rebuild its nuclear program, but that's it.
3. Do not back off the stuff that IS going well, and a lot is. Crime at record lows. Border under control. ATF and 2nd Amendment Section doing great work. Government employment reduced. Etc. Do not learn the wrong lessons from what was an inflation-related election blowout and undermine the things that are working.
4. Finally, and this one may be the hardest for Trump: limit the stupid distractions.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Governor DeSantis BLASTS Kristi Noem for bungling mass deportations and turning it into a shit show for her own glory.
DeSantis BLASTS Congressmen like Byron Donalds for making millions on the stock market.
DeSantis BLASTS Alina Habba for getting a $10 million government contract and securing a presidential pardon for her boyfriend.
“If the people in office don't display some civic virtue about public service as a sacrifice. It's not to use the public office for private gain.
I declined the pension in Congress. I declined the health care. I didn't trade the stocks.
And I believe in congressional term limits. I mean, imagine if you went to the American people and actually tried to get that done. That's not right or left. That's something that a lot of people realize.. These guys work for themselves. They should be working for you.”
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Her family were persecuted Mongolian immigrants, and as a young girl she spoke out against oppression by the Chinese Communist Party. What you're seeing here is not tribal wars, it's the result of brainwashing in American schools.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
People who have been in research fields develop a felt sense that most "research" (in almost any field that isn't exactingly technical) is research theater, and many superstar careers enjoy star status not because of a unique connection to the truth but because of a unique connection with an audience. No one really has the time or stature to, from a position of objectivity and trust, bring popular researchers to heel. But it will get increasingly hard to hide from serious critique. The machines can do critique now, at the level of depth and rigor previously only possible for the academically deranged. We're going to have to revise a lot of what we "know" about the world that isn't really knowledge but is actually just received popular consensus - like floating voltages without grounding wires. The grounding wires are coming.
Tyler Cowen:
'I am not even sure what to say at this point. We need a radical revaluation of this work, and of the associated policy arguments. More generally, this is only a single step in the story of how AI is going to revise economic science, and indeed past research more generally. As I stress in many of my recent talks, there will be significant gains and losses in status, with the losses often outweighing the gains. I see this as one of those cases.'
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
My biggest concern is that if there is a clean sweep by Democrats of the House, Senate and Presidency in 2028, they will:
1. Make DC and Puerto Rico states to gain a strong majority in the Senate.
2. Open the borders and legalize everyone living in America illegally to cement a permanent majority.
3. Increase the size of the Supreme Court to gain an immediate majority.
This would result in America becoming a permanent one-party state and the end of democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.
All that is needed to ensure this doesn’t happen is 51 Republican senators in 2029. That is why you should vote for Republican senators this election. Other reasons are irrelevant compared to this one.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Some of us on the right were and continue to be critical of Trump because of where he falls short of our principled views and/or policy preferences. It bothers us that Trump isn't concerned about the national debt, that he supports harmful tariff policies, that he abuses pardon powers etc.
None of that prevents us from supporting his administration when they do good things that are consistent with our principles. It certainly doesn't prevent us from cheering on border enforcement, encouraging a strong national defense/counter-terrorism strategy, or supporting better tax policies.
Other people formerly on the right have made opposing Trump the central principle of their political ideology. They determine all of their policy views based on Trump's current policy preferences. Then there is another group that determines all of its views based exclusively on Israel now. Again, their guiding principle is driven exclusively by opposition/hate. Both of these groups are now increasingly allying themselves with left-wing extremists because their guiding political principle is centered on things that have nothing to do with policy outcomes or what's good for America. Even if they sometimes call themselves "America First".
You will notice that we aren't the ones who changed any of our views. We aren't the ones suddenly pretending the threat from Islamic terrorism is overblown, that communism isn't that bad, or that Democrat extremism isn't a problem. We aren't the ones coordinating messaging with the left. We aren't the ones allying ourselves with Hasan Piker, Cenk Uygur, Anna Kasparian etc., or making excuses for open bigotry on the left.
The mistake that some people have made is to assume that the group doing those things, which is now driven exclusively by hate (whether of Trump, Israel, Jews etc.) is still part of the right's coalition. They certainly aren't reliable elements of it, and there is no need to pander to them. Let them try to get power within their new coalition, while the right should focus on recruiting people who are driven by wanting competence and policy wins, not motivated exclusively by hate.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
I would like an update to civil law where anyone who makes money posting video of strangers on the internet can be sued by that stranger for every dime they made monetizing on that content (plus pain and suffering)
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
The Top 10% of earners are why you have a job, a house to live in, a car to drive, a supercomputer in your pocket and every other service and product you enjoy.
The bottom 10% are why you have locks on your doors and taxes are so high.
That’s reality.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Late-stage democracy is more descriptive than “end-stage capitalism.” What you’re seeing is a predictable failure mode of a system in which people can vote themselves more money. That’s not a failure of capitalism, that’s unrestrained democracy robbing capitalism.
I'm in my 40s. I'm a lawyer. My wife is a lawyer. We both work full time.
We cannot afford the house my parents purchased on a single electrician's income in their 30s.
We cannot afford the house my immigrant grandparents purchased on a single MTA bus driver's salary in their 30s. They had SIX CHILDREN.
For 30 years, politicians in Washington & their oligarch allies convinced regular people that this was just about avocado toast and fancy coffee.
In reality, this is end-stage capitalism. Everyone is stuck in place. It's impossible to buy a home. It's too costly to move. We work too much to have passion projects. We don't have enough savings to start our own businesses. We can't afford to go without healthcare to do it.
Thanks for writing this article @troy_closson. Would be very happy to discuss further.
nytimes.com/2026/10/25/nyreg…
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Where to start?
Tesla is a scam
SpaceX is a grift
Starlink is a fraud, it can't handle more than 500k users
Twitter will collapse because he fired the HR department
If only people listened to me, the guy smarter than Elon Musk
Do you stupid fuckers even listen to yourselves?
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
What is that supposed to prove? Not only is imperialism and concern over NATO expansion and the resulting exclusion from the post-Cold War security architecture not mutually inconsistent, as people have been pointing out for years to no avail, but Putin also complains about NATO expansion all the time to justify the invasion.
The fact that people lie and pretend he never mentions it, like when he did his interview with Carlson (philippelemoine.com/p/what-p…), doesn't change the fact that he does and consistently so, yet I don't see anyone on the NATO doesn't matter side of that debate conclude that it's why he invaded Ukraine.
We know he's held the view that Ukraine was not a real country and that large swathes of it were really Russian lands jumbled together with other lands by the Bolsheviks for decades, and we also know that such views have been widespread in the Russian foreign policy establishment for even longer (you should read what Yeltsin's press secretary was saying in August 1991), yet there is no evidence that anyone in the Russian government was seriously considering invading Ukraine until much more recently.
You can have this sort of view about Ukraine, yet think it's preferable not to revise post-1991 borders, which indeed was the position of the Russian foreign policy establishment and Putin until 2014. In fact, as I pointed out in the article I linked to above, that's a point Putin himself has explicitly made in his interview with Carlson and elsewhere. You don't have to accept his narrative to acknowledge the logical point and you don't have to distort what he said by claiming he doesn't even mention NATO expansion to criticize that narrative.
My view, to cut a long story short, is that NATO expansion and more generally the deterioration of relations with the West have made the dispute with Ukraine, which has its own dynamic, look much more threatening in Moscow and played a major role in making Putin choose a course of actions in 2014 and 2022 that he would never have seriously entertained earlier.
I think there is a strong case for that view, which I intend to make in some detail (that's obviously not a topic that can be seriously discussed in a tweet), but I'm not even asking that people agree with me. I'm just asking that people don't commit obvious fallacies like claiming that Putin's reply to Zelensky shows that NATO expansion was irrelevant or distort the record by falsely claiming that he doesn't even mention it.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Let’s be clear:
If I’m not going to sleep with you, I don’t need to know anything about your sexuality.
And children—who are not going to sleep with anyone—certainly don’t.
Your sexuality is not sacred. It’s not a personality, it’s not a protected class of performance art, and it’s not the center of anyone’s moral universe but your own. Unless we are in a relationship, I am not obligated to acknowledge, affirm, or be exposed to your private desires—especially not in public, and especially not in front of children.
This used to be understood. Now it’s called hate.
No, We Don’t Owe You an Audience
Sexuality belongs in the private realm. It is intimate by definition. If you feel compelled to wear your kink on your sleeve—or on a float, or in a first-grade classroom—you are not inviting understanding, you are demanding submission. You are violating others’ right not to participate.
Consent doesn’t vanish because your fetish is “progressive.” If anything, the burden is higher.
No one consents to being flashed on the subway. No one consents to a stranger’s arousal. No one consents to a stranger telling their child about masturbation, kink, gender identity, or pornographic categories under the guise of “inclusive sex ed.” Yet all of this is happening now—in public parks, in classrooms, in televised programming.
It is not tolerance. It is invasion.
Children Are Not Here to Validate You
Children are not queer. Children are not sexual. Children do not need to “see themselves represented” in a spectrum of adult desire. This idea—that identity is only valid if sexualized and mirrored—is narcissism, not pedagogy.
There is no legitimate reason to initiate a child into the language of sexual preference, gender identity, or alternative lifestyles. The only people who benefit from that dynamic are those looking to normalize boundary violations.
Let me state it plainly:
Children who are not going to have sex do not need to be exposed to sexuality.
Period.
Any adult who insists otherwise is not confused. They are grooming.
Public Fetishism Is Not Liberation
There is a vast difference between being gay and demanding the right to simulate sex acts in front of children. Between being transgender and insisting on teaching kindergartners about breast removal. Between being proud of who you are and insisting the whole world observe your kink play in the street.
This is not diversity. This is decay.
Men in dog masks being walked on leashes by their lovers are not brave—they are forcing strangers into their psychodrama. This is exhibitionism, and when children are present, it becomes criminal exhibitionism.
We used to know this. Peeping, flashing, voyeurism—these were considered red flags. Dangerous behaviors. Early signs of escalation. Now they’re filmed, hashtagged, and funded by public grants.
Stop Calling It Love—It’s Entitlement
This is not about who you love. It’s about how you demand to be seen. If you need the entire public to witness, applaud, and adapt to your sexuality, you’re not a pioneer—you’re an emotional colonizer.
Love does not demand a captive audience. It does not parade past toddlers. It does not demand that schools teach four-year-olds about “preferred pronouns.” Love protects children. Love guards modesty. Love waits.
And if you can’t wait—if you need to be seen, affirmed, and obeyed—you’re not talking about love. You’re talking about power.
Consent Applies to Culture, Too
We teach children that consent is sacred—so why are we failing to apply that lesson to public life?
No child consents to drag queen story hour.
No parent consents to leather harnesses on city floats.
No woman consents to being exposed to male sexuality in the ladies’ room, or in the school library, or anywhere she cannot opt out.
Consent is not just for sex. It’s for everything.
Attention. Language. Presence. Ideology. Imagery.
And we are done pretending we don’t notice when it’s violated.
The boundary is back.
And we are drawing it in bold.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
I paid a large chunk of my income to Medicare and Social Security over the last 45 years. The funny thing is that I could probably be convinced to not take as much as I was promised as a part of a larger reform that would permanently fix Social Security.
I have to tell you that when you get mad at me for being successful and then expect me to give up what I was promised just because you’re sad, that’s when I become absolutely unwilling to part with a single cent. You’re going to pay me everything you owe me, whether I need it or not – and I don’t need it.
Try not being a jerk. You might get some of what you want. But you come at me jealous because I’m successful and want to take what’s mine? Are you high? Here’s my counteroffer.
Nothing
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this doesn't happen in Poland.
🔴🇫🇷🔥 ALERTE INFO | Le clocher de la mairie de Limoges s’est effondré. nitter.cf/Xirthe_v1/status/21115…
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
Democrats discovered billionaires in politics were a threat to democracy the exact day one stopped writing them checks.
When Michael Bloomberg spent around $1 billion of his own money in the 2020 primary, then another $100M to help Biden in Florida, nobody called it an attack on democracy.
When George Soros put $125M into a single Democratic super PAC and became the largest political donor of the 2022 cycle, it was "civic engagement."
When Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskovitz, JB Pritzker and Tom Steyer wrote eight- and nine-figure checks cycle after cycle, it was "saving democracy." When Bill Gates reportedly gave around $50M to a pro-Harris group in 2024, silence.
In 2020, dark money groups spent over $500M backing Democrats, more than double what went to Republicans. In 2024, Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion in under three months. Democrats outspent Republicans and lost.
So the problem was never billionaires in politics. The problem is a billionaire who doesn't fund your side.
And here's what nobody in DC wants to say out loud: old billionaire money is quiet money. It funds the foundations, NGOs, think tanks and consultants that make up the permanent establishment. It doesn't challenge the system. It is the system. It freezes the picture: same insiders, same incumbents, same experts, every single cycle.
You can like or hate Musk's spending, but at least it's out in the open. If you really want money out of politics, start with your own party's donor list.
Gabble Ratchet retweeted
A lot of uneducated people fall into this capitalism vs public trap. So let me explain why the "public" side of this debate comes down to one thing: it doesn't work.
And it's not because the State is evil. It's because the State is made of people. Same people as everywhere else. Same incentives, same laziness, same temptations. The only difference is whose money they're spending.
Milton Friedman nailed it. There are four ways to spend money. Your money on yourself: you watch the price and the quality. Your money on someone else: you watch the price, less the quality. Someone else's money on yourself: you stop caring about the price. Someone else's money on someone else: you care about neither. Every public budget on earth lives in that fourth box.
Now let me explain it like you're 8. Picture a schoolyard. 100 kids, Pokémon cards handed out at random. Nobody plans anything. Kids trade, collectors sort, good players accumulate. Very quickly every card ends up with the kid who values it most. Then the teacher walks in, decides it's unfair, confiscates everything and redistributes it herself. Problem: she has no idea who wants what. She can't. Nobody can. Trades stop, good players quit, and somehow the kids sitting closest to her desk end up with all the rare cards.
That last part is the one everyone forgets. When money flows from a central desk instead of voluntary trade, the winners are the people who know the desk best. Lobbyists, connected contractors, consultants billing 10x. California high-speed rail: budget tripled, still no train. That's not a bug, it's what happens every single time someone spends money that isn't theirs, on people they'll never meet, with zero consequences if they fail.
And here's the irony in your take. The capitalists who love public infrastructure the most are the cronies who win the contracts. That's not the free market. That's the exact opposite of it.
The free market is the only system where bad allocators lose their money and good allocators get more to allocate. Profit is the signal. Losses are the correction. The State has neither. A failing company goes bankrupt. A failing ministry gets a bigger budget next year.
So if you actually care about the common good, you should want more free market, not less. Freedom means the freedom to build, to trade, to keep what you create. It does not mean the freedom to hand other people's money to people who've proven they don't know how to invest it.
The question was never capitalism vs public. It's who allocates the next dollar best. 200 years of data, same answer every time.
