Rep. Lex Berezhny

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.

Where does the analogy fall apart?

The belief that AI will replace work is the same as saying in the 1920 that buying stocks will replace work. The reality is that making money compound, takes effort in management and planning; similarly, making AI produce real value, also takes effort.

Closest practical analogue to AI is money. Most people have access to money; everyone has an opportunity to invest it and become a millionaire. Some people use money in a way that compounds value, others pay the bills or fulfill their short term wants and needs. AI is like money in the sense that it's a fungible resource with great power, you can use it in a way that compounds its impact or you can use it for quick hits and convenience.

open source frameworks, libraries and tools can now make money by selling markdown files targeted at AI agents to make them efficient at understanding how to use the project correctly, how to handle edge cases and how to write good unit/integration tests. the what is open, the how/why is premium.

Yes, this! Although I don't agree that Embark necessarily benefits from grifters pushing away normies. I very much expect that in their weekly patches they will add some ways to balance the PVP. Returning to politics, how would you balance things there? How to reliable help normies overcome the propaganda and disinformation onslaught. Just as in games, there is the simple solution of just getting better at playing the game, or in this case, better at discerning the political BS from substance.

Interesting anecdote about video games, social media, and I promise I will bring this back to why it’s relevant for X (trust me) There’s a fantastic new multiplayer game I’ve been very into recently called Arc Raiders. It’s a game where you are scavenging for resources to fight back against these drone robot invaders that have driven mankind underground One of the groundbreaking things about the game is the enemy AI…getting hunted by intelligent flying drones is thrilling…it’s a challenge trying to get the resources while trying to evade, and sometimes being forced to fight these AI robot overlords But there’s a catch. While the game is cooperative, meaning you can work together to accomplish these goals, it also allows player versus player combat. This means you can choose to focus on killing the AI robot overlords or you can choose to kill other Raiders that are scavenging for resources and steal their stuff Now I will bring it back to why it is relevant for the X community For about two weeks, I’ve been really fascinated with this game and have been spending quite a few hours each day doing my duty to mankind to fight off the alien robot invaders😂 And what I mostly saw in the first two weeks was people coming together to cooperate and work together for everyone’s benefit…it was 80-90% friendly interaction and the occasional bad apple But then something interesting happened. All the video game streamers came onto the scene because it’s probably the most popular game at the moment. But unfortunately cooperating with others for communal benefit does not make for very good entertainment. And so the vast majority of their content has been about player versus player combat…and unsurprisingly that has translated into the game to the point where cooperation among strangers is now a fools errand The reason I bring this up is because I have seen in real time over days, not weeks, how social media has managed to completely alter this game in a way that will make it completely inaccessible to the average fan No casual player is going to keep playing after spending 20 minutes gathering resources, just to get ganked as they’re trying to extract 5 times in a row And really that is what social media has done to politics Politics is now a PVP sports There is no longer any room for PvE, meaning the people working the environment to create a better world for the people Ultimately, it’s game theory. Even players that want to cooperate will eventually figure out that it is better to shoot first than to assume the goodwill of other players As it launched, Arc Raiders actually brought out the best in people…I would say the Normies…who did not think that stealing other people’s work was okay…and the game thrived because it was fun for the casual gamer But then came the streamers that made it virtuous to gank the normies…the hard-core gamers loved it…and the normies started leaving enmass That is what politics has become Everything is tailored to the hard-core constituency, while the majority of voters are ignored This is where the comparison breaks down because the developers of this game may actually make more money off of the hard-core players that want player vs player combat as opposed to the normies that like to cooperate I’m not criticizing the developers of this game so much as I am observing a phenomenon of human nature Social media has no incentive to report on politics in a fair and balanced way Everything social media does is geared towards engagement and thus conflict Left alone, most people want to cooperation, not conflict. But if you were in the business of getting eyeballs then you need conflict Social media is about conflict and outrage And long-term that it’s not sustainable for any society

Analysis: Trump’s First 50 Days Today marks the halfway point of Trump’s critical first 100 days On the whole it’s a net positive, but it’s been a mixed bag…it feels worse now than it did a couple of weeks ago because of the stock market Important to note: Trump’s current administration isn’t leaking The Good: Executive Actions, DOGE, Border, Deregulation, Anti-woke agenda (DEI, antisemitism, college funding), $1 trillion investments announced The Bad: Foreign Affairs (tensions w/allies), Ukraine, Tarrifs, Stock Market, Economic prospects Risks: Legal challenges to executive orders, lofty expectations for DOGE, internal self-inflicted chaos, economic downturn I think there’s room for optimism, but there’s also a lot of concern over tarrifs and foreign affairs even within his own coalition The next 50 days will be critical for defining this ever important first milestone

Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can’t give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin. Let me tell you about my trip and why it’s important we stand with Ukraine.🧵

We want a just peace. Blaming the victim does not accomplish a just peace. Moral clarity and honesty are needed. foxnews.com/politics/pro-u…

I am having a hard time understanding how withholding intelligence and early warning from Ukraine advances our strategic interests or helps make America great.

When you consider that you could run a fleet of 100,000 Twitter accounts with blue checks for less than $10 million a year, a foreign power that wanted to influence US politics would be pretty slack if they didn't try to create one.

"The security system of a strong state is not only its own weapons, army, etc. It is also every citizen. Who knows how to use weapons, provide first aid, fly a drone. But has, first of all, the moral readiness to apply these skills if necessary. Attacking such a country will be much more dangerous." -Maksym Zhorin, Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade

I see a lot of confusion today about NATO's Article 5, bottom line: the US cannot be forced by others into fighting a war. Article 5 states that an attack on one member state is an attack on all. Essentially collective defense. However, the alliance built in a few steps that are often overlooked in today's media. Article 5 isn't automatic, to be invoked it required unanimous consent by all 32 member states. I'm not sure all 32 could agree on a color change in the HQ right now, let alone going to war together. Even then, if all 32 are on board, it's up to each member state to determine how they are going to support. This isn't limited to combat troops on the ground in a war. It could be a training mission, medical support, overflight rights, or any number of other items that go into large scale military operations. So what good is Article 5? That's actually a more valid debate right now than it's been in a long time. Historically it was the threat of a unified response to Russian aggression against a member state. Today there's some concern that the alliance is too fractured for this to carry the weight it once did.

Europe needs change…and fast Like him or not, at least America has leadership under Trump. Europe has zero leadership where it matters and what leadership they have had, built a burdensome continental bureaucracy, under-invested in defense, crushed free speech and opened up the continent to millions of muslim migrants that can’t be assimilated or integrated Maybe Trump’s message is “shape up, and come with us or we’ll leave you to your own fate with Russia and the invading migrant hordes”. And even if it isn’t, and he just DGAF, that’s the conclusion Europeans should draw anyway I’ve been very hard on Trump et al for how they’ve managed things in the past weeks, because I think they’re being heavy handed, arrogant, and short sighted. But that doesn’t mean he’s not fundamentally right about his main criticisms. Europe needs a strong, but politically moderate leader/leadership that can pragmatically bring the continent together. Extremism in other directions is not the solution, but they have to understand that at least those people are promising strength, not weakness. So long as they continue with weak leadership, they will only embolden the extremes because people will feel they have no other choice. And some of these changes will be unpopular but they are necessary. One way to overcome political pressure to not do the unpopular is for left and right parties to unify as moderates vs extremist parties. But “moderate” as in non-ideological…“moderate” as in pragmatically looking to fix those problems mentioned earlier. Not moderate in terms of let’s continue the status quo In other words: Europe, it’s time to change or that change will be imposed upon you in ways you can’t control and will certainly not like And screw your green policies or you’re not going to last long enough to realize you weren’t accomplishing anything anyway

So long as Russia has the FSB and China has the MSS, the US still needs a CIA The people saying burn it all down are either naive, dumb, or working under the guidance of some other country’s 3-letter agency We need reforms, but be measured…you don’t know what you don’t know

To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following: - Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible. - All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING! - The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily. The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already! Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious. When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.

Prediction: Most of the participants in the worst woke excesses of the 2010s will forget they were participants. Not because they're deliberately lying, but because when people join mobs they're not themselves, and such things are easy to forget.

@elonmusk I wish more people understood this very simple concept Money is just the grease that oils the clockwork mechanism which is the economy of goods and services The clockwork needs grease to function up to a point, but beyond that grease is superfluous and only the gears matter

@gummibear737 @here_not17066 Part of the solution to reducing the volume of propaganda is some kind of KYI, Know Your Interlocutor. A decentralized web-of-trust / reputation system, where people can be held to what they say.

@here_not17066 The only thing I want is for both sides to accept that this is legitimate problem I don’t want censorship I just want a bipartisan public debate on this issue

I tend to see things long before others do Be very worried about how foreign actors influence internal politics in the west via social media I That’s where the left/right woke phenomenon come from They have deeper roots, but foreign actors are amplifying it to prominence

What should we call the movement of people that reject both the woke left and woke right?