Notloc

A few months ago, I had the privilege & honor of flying around the world & joining the first class of @balajis Network School. I'd never met such a potent concentration of inspiring free-thinkers, including @VitalikButerin & @bryan_johnson. The whole cohort was gold.

It’s all “for your safety” This is what can happen when you don’t have your indicator on & your “lane assist” keeps steers you into an oncoming truck If I die, I want it to be by my own doing. Not some “glitch” from a computer

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.

@grey4626 @imscotte @Ghostofcynthia Only pushback I would give in this day and age is that I don't want to create a fast-track to death-penalty that can be initiated with an AI deep fake by anyone against anyone. If this video is real (and in similar cases), the perp deserves eye-for-an-eye justice

@imscotte @Ghostofcynthia I know. You are absolutely right too. When we have the evidence right there in front of us there is no need for trials. None.

This is the fucking essence of it, right here...the visceral, stomach-turning proof of what Democrat soft-on-crime policies don’t just enable, but actively breed: a feral underclass of human predators who operate with the impunity of apex psychopaths in a city gutted by ideological rot. Look at this barbarian. This masked sack of predatory entitlement struts across a Manhattan crosswalk in broad fucking daylight, locks eyes on a 14-year-old girl with her backpack and her innocent path to wherever the hell she was going, and slams her to the concrete like she’s disposable refuse. Her "crime"? She refused to give him her fucking number. One second she’s navigating the crosswalk; the next she’s airborne, skull cracking pavement, body rag-dolling in that sickening thud of unchecked violence. He steps over her like she’s yesterday’s garbage and saunters off...casual as a Sunday stroll. She suffered a concussion. Could’ve been a fractured skull, spinal trauma, brain bleed, or death. He didn’t give a single fuck. That’s not a “mistake.” That’s the pathology of antisocial personality disorder weaponized by a justice system that rewards it. This isn’t random chaos. Criminology 101: when you dismantle deterrence...bail reform that recycles violent offenders before the victim’s bruises fade, progressive DAs who treat aggravated assault as a “youthful indiscretion” funneled into family court instead of adult felony charges with real teeth, and the lingering stench of “defund” idiocy that leaves streets policed by ghosts...you create a moral hazard vacuum. These predators internalize the lesson: low empathy + zero consequences = evolutionary jackpot. Forensic psychology calls it disinhibition through environmental reinforcement; street-level, it’s a barbarian who knows the system will coddle him, release him, and let him hunt again while the girl’s family deals with ER bills and nightmares. Legally, this is textbook second-degree assault under NY Penal Law §120.05...intentional injury via reckless physical force in a public place, elevated by the victim’s age and the potential lethality of the head-first impact. It flirts with reckless endangerment or even attempted assault in the first if prosecutors had the balls to argue depraved indifference. But under the current regime of Soros-backed district attorneys and Albany’s revolving-door reforms? He’ll probably plead down, get a slap, and be back on the block by next week, emboldened. That’s not justice; that’s complicity in predation. I’m done with the sanitized narratives. This is what your “compassionate” policies birth: a generation of impulse-control voids who view teenage girls as props for dominance displays. The blood and the bruises and the terror are on the hands of every politician, activist, and voter who prioritized criminal “rehabilitation” over a child’s right to exist without becoming collateral in their utopian experiment. No more excuses. No more therapy-speak for sociopaths. Demand the ferocity of real deterrence...swift, certain, merciless...or watch more girls hit the pavement while these monsters walk free. This is the war they declared on civilization. I’m declaring it right the fuck back.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 💀⚖️🗡️

As someone affiliated with a law school, I always feel like we faculty are failing when law students scream/disrupt/shout down visiting speakers they don't like (e.g., conservative judges). In their careers, our graduates will sometimes have to argue cases in front of people they don't like or agree with, and if all they can do is chant and snap and hold up signs with disrespectful slogans on them, their clients will lose (and in criminal cases, this cost will fall heavily on members of the groups that these students most want to help). When I see law students doing this, I see people who are failing in their chosen profession and as one of the people who is supposed to help them succeed, that means I am failing too.

Delayed and canceled are so different. "Delayed" could be a bullish signal (infrastructure and regulations can't keep up with the demand)

George Carlin was well ahead of his time.

High-agency people seem to have this weird immunity to embarrassment. Getting rejected? Not embarrassing, that’s just data collection. Looking naive? Not embarrassing, that’s just information asymmetry you’re fixing. Breaking minor social rules? Not embarrassing, most rules are just Schelling points anyway. What would be embarrassing to them is not trying. That’s the thing they can’t live with.

It’s going unnoticed because so much other news is happening, but the war drums are beating again in D.C. The warmongers worry this is their last chance to get the white whale they’ve been chasing for thirty years, an all-out regime change war against Iran. A new Middle East war would be a catastrophic mistake. Our military stockpiles are depleted from three years of backing Ukraine. Our effort to reshore manufacturing has only just begun and will take years to bear fruit. War would worsen our already immense deficit and national debt. Iran is larger than Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan combined. A war would not be easy and could easily become a calamity. Thanks to President Trump’s restraint during his first term, America has a golden opportunity to pull away from Middle East quagmires for good. We shouldn’t throw that opportunity away so that sone D.C. has-beens can feel tough by sending young Americans to die yet again.

Once again this graph has a hold on me

This is another one for the books. We need more teachers like her. Let them think.

- Drafted a blog post - Used an LLM to meticulously improve the argument over 4 hours. - Wow, feeling great, it’s so convincing! - Fun idea let’s ask it to argue the opposite. - LLM demolishes the entire argument and convinces me that the opposite is in fact true. - lol The LLMs may elicit an opinion when asked but are extremely competent in arguing almost any direction. This is actually super useful as a tool for forming your own opinions, just make sure to ask different directions and be careful with the sycophancy.

I have questions, but this kind of thing needs to be on more radars

@RenzTom I could see Marco Rubio taking over both of those positions

🚨 Congratulations to Susie Wiles and the RINO wing of the GOP (which includes most of Congress). Your work in convincing the President to promote America last policies while declaring war on MAHA and failing to pass anything is working. Unfortunately the collapse of the MAGA coalition and almost certain impeachment that will follow will be devastating for America. Trump is the boss and is the only one that can turn this around but he’s going to need to fire Wiles and Bondi and change direction on a bunch of things.

@nateliason @AlphaSchoolATX

Make $1m by graduation. Or get 100% of your tuition refunded. That's the promise of the new high school for entrepreneurs Cameron and I are launching this fall through @AlphaSchoolATX. We need 2-3 coaches to help make it happen. DM us or apply!

@realpeteyb123 Amen brother

I remember a powerful moment in my youth. I was tripping on LSD while the sun was rising over Manhattan. We walked for miles. Waves of people poured into subway stations, buses, even the Staten Island Ferry. The NYC day was beginning, the machine was in action. The beast and its soldiers. Didn’t look like anything I wanted and the energy was evil, everyone was worshipping consumerism. The 3-D vision was amplified. With that strange heightened vision you get in those moments, they all looked the same to me. Like sheep moving in a current. They were lost, trapped and certainly empty. Standing there watching it all, I made a promise to myself. I would never become one of them. And I never did.

Bookmark this tweet: We are at the level of “4D Chess” where Trump is going to do sufficient damage to the GOP, yet everyone knows Democrats are unelectable, such that JD Vance is going to look like the reasonable populist GOP candidate to win 2028. After Trump has done the requisite damage to the Iranian regime for the benefit of the world. In the replies, I will predict the “cope harder” bros. The “yes, it’s been 4D chess all along” bros. The “keep covering for your Epstein Pedo pres” bros. The “Israel controls the US government” bros. The “Deport the Canadian” bros. But the bottom line is, however much you disagree with what Trump is doing right now, it makes JD look even more electable in 2028. And with what is going on in New York, it confirms that Democrats are fundamentally and inherently unelectable because they are fundamentally and inherently un-American. Have at me.

@MatrixMysteries @30ACTruth Whoever gave that instruction should be tried for some form of treason

“We were told to label newly arrived ILLEGALS as ‘long-term disabled’ — even for headaches or back pain — so they’d get Social Security for LIFE.” “Once they’re classified, that’s it — they’re set FOREVER. That’s exactly what we were told to do.”

@rabcyr_alt @Empty_America ☠️

@Empty_America dude looks like he was made in a lab to get filthy rich.

Engaged to a Rhodes Scholar, BTW. The USA has been running what amounts to an IQ selection and concentration program for several generations, via the universities. You are getting kids now where all 8 great-grandparents are PhD or equivalent. Assortative mating.

@AtlasXThugged @Geiger_Capital What descendants?

@Geiger_Capital Embarassing. Deindustrialists and liberals with suicidal empathy will be viscerally hated by their descendants (rightfully so). Soon a generation will have to get their act straight. No time for virtue signalling. Gen Z/Alpha will experience this reality first.

Just 100 years ago, England was the greatest empire the world had ever seen. A few generations later, they are a deindustrialized welfare zone unable to stop third world men from invading on rubber boats. Decline happens fast. Weak leaders and suicidal empathy.

@EricSpracklen Let's go @EricSpracklen !

If you’re unvaccinated and didn’t fall for the covid psyop I want to follow you. Pure bloods stick together.