Hector

@GeniusGTX Normal people ruin everything?

Marc Andreessen says AOL killed the early internet on a single day in September 1993. Before that day, the internet had maybe two million users. They were the smartest two million people in the world. Andreessen says it felt like Athens in 500 BC. "The most pure, clean, intellectual, vibrant space" since the Greeks. No advertising. No commerce. No spam. Just the smartest engineers, scientists, and academics talking to each other. Then America Online bought a connection to it. In September 1993, AOL pumped two million normal people directly onto the internet. It became known as **Eternal September**. Andreessen, who was building Mosaic at the time, watched it happen. "That's the day the internet changed." Pre-1993 internet veterans had a phrase. Every September, when the new freshmen got their college email accounts, the discussion forums would briefly drop in quality before stabilizing. After AOL connected, the September never ended. The smartest two million were swallowed by the next two million, then twenty million, then five billion. Andreessen, looking back: "I'm pro that. I'm glad that happened. But the pro and the con of that is that took the internet from this ivory tower kind of thing to this basically mainstream consumer ordinary people thing." Was AOL right to open the gates? If you're new here, @GeniusGTX is a gallery for the greatest minds in economics, psychology, and history. Follow along for more similar content. P.S. I made a free toolkit breaking down 100+ mental models used by history's greatest thinkers. 5,000+ downloads. 113 five-star reviews. Grab your free copy here: besuperhuman.gumroad.com/l/mentalmodels — Marc Andreessen ( @pmarca ), co-founder of a16z, on David Senra's ( @davidsenra ) podcast

@MaryBowdenMD @Tesla I love my model 3 But would recommend the Y. More space, SUV like space and storage Dual motors is the way to go

I was planning on leasing a @Tesla S. I ordered it March 18 and have been waiting for the car to arrive…. But I just got a call that the car I reserved no longer exists?! What car should I get instead?

@RepSaraJacobs “One time in band camp…” Same energy

I asked Secretary Hegseth a straightforward, yes or no question today: Is Donald Trump mentally stable enough to be Commander in Chief? He didn't say yes. And that speaks volumes.

@lovetocook12345 “Am at a protest, I don’t have to know anything!” Lol

Democrats really are crazy! And whay are this fat ladies lips blue? Is she still alive?

U.S. Farm Bankruptcies Surge +46% as Fertilizer Costs Squeeze Farmers: The American Farm Bureau Federation reported 315 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in 2025, up from 216 in 2024 and the third consecutive annual increase. The Midwest got hit hardest with 121 filings, a +70% jump. The Southeast followed with 105, up +69%. Together, those two regions accounted for more than two-thirds of every farm bankruptcy in the country. Fertilizer prices are pouring gasoline on the fire. Urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer on the planet, has ripped +87% year-to-date and trades near $720 a tonne. For corn growers who depend on nitrogen, this is a dire situation. Many farmers are reporting they will cut the amount of fertilizer they use, shift from corn toward less nitrogen-dependent soybeans, or just take the yield loss. Farms are under pressure.

@RepThomasMassie @Cernovich Republicats

Automobile kill-switches are coming soon to car dealerships near you. I teamed up w/ Scott Perry & Chip Roy to defund this Orwellian mandate, but too many colleagues (Republican & Democrat) voted against us, so the federal mandate for every new car after 2026 is still in place.

@omgsidewalks Meat. Actual chicken or beef.

For those who didn't grow up privileged, name something you thought was luxury when you were a kid

@FBIDirectorKash Now do Epstein Pedos, Congressional Corruption, heck look into Trumps kid winning a defense contract

The last 24 hours at this FBI: • FBI Scam Center Takedown: 503 fraud websites dismantled, over $700 million in stolen crypto restrained, and thousands of trafficking victims freed from forced-labor compounds in Burma and Cambodia. Chinese nationals charged with running the operations. • Operation Gangsta's Paradise: 37 Mexican Mafia members and associates arrested in pre-dawn raids across Orange County. Drug trafficking, racketeering, and murder charges. 10 more indictments handed down to La Eme members already in state prison. • Houston synagogue plot disrupted: 18-year-old arrested in North Carolina and a 16-year-old in Texas charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder at Congregation Beth Israel, Texas's oldest Jewish congregation. Tip came in Tuesday. Plot stopped. • Maduro raid insider-trading case: Active-duty Green Beret Gannon Ken Van Dyke charged with using classified information to bet $33,000 on the Maduro capture operation, netting over $409,000 on Polymarket. Charges include commodities fraud, wire fraud, and theft of nonpublic government information. • Denton County hostage rescue: FBI Hostage Rescue Team breached a home in Aubrey, Texas at 1 a.m. after a multi-day standoff. A young girl released safely the night before. The adult female victim rescued with only minor injuries. Suspect Michael Miller, 57, in custody on kidnapping, aggravated assault, and unlawful restraint.

They are all disgusting and are all to serve themselves and their friends I am out. No voting, no donations. Keep this shit up and I will sell everything move to a 3rd world country and live like a king As a vet, will tell my grandkids to never enlist. What the fuck for? Country is gone to shit

What do Dems have planned if they win the Midterm Elections? Lower your taxes? Make America safer? Energy security? No, none of that. They will wage "maximum warfare" on Republicans & impeach President Trump on DAY ONE. This is not an election to "sit out."

@BernieSanders I am sure everyone of your book deals will stand the test of an audit

The Trump family has made $4 billion off the presidency. Crypto: $3.02B Persian Gulf deals: $425.8M Qatari jet: $150M Legal fees/merch: $127.7M Mar-a-Lago: $125M Corporate deals: $91M Hanoi hotel: $40M Truth Social: $25M Don Jr: $19.6M Unprecedented kleptocracy.

@FBIDirectorKash @TheJusticeDept Kash, No one prosecuted for Benghazi, stolen elections, Epstein pedos, congressional insider trading, Somalian learing centers, etc etc but you pick on a soldier who bet on his own ability What happened to you?

This involved a U.S. soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation. Thank you to our agents, Intel teams, and great partners @TheJusticeDept who protected our war fighters. Investigation ongoing.

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late. The right stack is always taller. On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN. I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS. The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881. He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts." I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes. The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200. I waived it. I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness. Let me show you what I processed this year. January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%. February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed. March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file. I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again. In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not. I want to tell you about the soldier again. He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in. In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on: Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee. Defense appropriations they voted on. Trade policy they negotiated. Pandemic response measures they drafted. Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public. None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012. Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases. My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that. The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop. She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed. I want to tell you about the fine. $200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk. Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself. On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office. The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year. The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one. The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million. The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write. He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million. The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised. In my field, we call this self-regulation. The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate. Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return. I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process. As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations. My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

@Schwalm5132 @TBack40 Epstein Pedos - hoax Somalian Learing Center - months USAID NGOs - nothing Here is what this corrupt govt is eventually risking: - tax payers, no more. Tea Party - enlistment, dropping to Biden era levels

Look how little time it took for the FBI/DOJ to prosecute the soldier who bet on Venezuela. Remember that amount of time when the DOJ/FBI tells you to "be patient" when it comes to EVERY OTHER PROSECUTION we have been screaming about over the past 10 years. Sodier = Yes Politicians and Bureaucrats = No

@RepLuna @DC_Draino What she said.

If members of Congress are caught insider trading, it’s a small, couple-hundred-dollar fine. If you’re caught doing it in the military, like in MSgt Dykes’s case, you could be facing up to 50 years in prison. Anyone who cannot see that members of Congress are insider trading is either low IQ or willfully ignorant. Let’s take Nancy Pelosi, for example, it is statistically not possible for her to make a 17,000% return and outperform Warren Buffett without insider information. 🤡

The U.S. MILITARY is the most accountable of any of the government Time after time, we hold them to a way higher standard than the bureaucracy Which Congress person has been investigated, prosecuted like this? Nancy? Some of the Republicans? All have traded with insider knowledge None investigated, non indicted Yes - hold him accountable but for God’s sake - go after the real corrupt players

CASE UPDATE from @NewYorkFBI: The Justice Department announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Army soldier, with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction. Read more: justice.gov/opa/pr/us-sold…

@TeamCornyn @JohnCornyn Thank you for your service. I’d like to see change now. Will be voting for Option B, which ever that is. Including if necessary a 3rd Party or Libertarian

I’m strong on border security, and the National Border Patrol Council knows it. As your Senator, I will keep fighting for the safety of Texas families across our state.

@lacinkc @AlecMacGillis @grok Omg! 57 and on maternity leave? 57 must be the new 30. Perhaps they adopted.

@Hector49844223 @AlecMacGillis @grok Maternity leave?

"Sheryl Cowan, 57, was making $272,000 a year as a senior VP at a U.S.A.I.D.-funded nonprofit when she was let go at the end of March 2025. Last month she had an online interview for a $19-an-hour job managing a Penzeys Spices store in Falls Church, Va." nytimes.com/2026/04/21/us/…

@libsoftiktok Keeps getting in bed w the same big pharma that convinced him the jabs were safe and effective.

BREAKING: Trump announces Regeneron will be giving away a new drug that cures deafness through a partnership with the Trump administration "Even the fake news has to be impressed by that" -Trump

@AlecMacGillis @grok can you search this attachment and find which NGO these folks worked for or ran? What did it do? Can you scrub through any financial reports of said NGO and see the ratio of how much it spend in expenses cs actually helping the cause it supported

Fwiw, photo above is not of Ms. Cowan, but of this person:

@LeaderJohnThune I came here for the comments. @LeaderJohnThune, Pass the Save Act.

Republicans are moving forward with a budget resolution that will allow us to fund the critical functions that Democrats refuse to support. Law enforcement. Drug interdiction. Border security. Protecting children – both our own and the unaccompanied minors who suffer human trafficking and worse under Democrats’ open-border policies.