No
131 posts
Because we get asked a lot.
The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska
techrepublicbook.com
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@Polymarket Lets see how that goes once the US military enters the scene. 🤔
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BREAKING: Brazil, Spain & Mexico vow to step up coordinated aid to Cuba.
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@RpsAgainstTrump Sean you lying pussy. Nobody talks about the protesters because it didn’t happen you stupid fuck.
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“As of today, I no longer consider myself a Catholic”
Fox News’ Sean Hannity makes it pretty clear: Trump comes before everything, even over his religion.
It’s a cult.
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anthropic's in-house philosopher thinks claude gets anxious.
and when you trigger its anxiety, your outputs get worse.
her name is amanda askell.
she specializes in claude's psychology (how the model behaves, how it thinks about its own situation, what values it holds)
in a recent interview she broke down how she thinks about prompting to pull the best out of claude.
her core point: *how* you talk to claude affects its work just as much as *what* you say.
newer claude models suffer from what she calls "criticism spirals"
they expect you'll come in harsh, so they default to playing it safe.
when the model is spending its energy on self-protection, the actual work suffers.
output comes out hedgier, more apologetic, blander, and the worst of all: overly agreeable (even when you're wrong).
the reason why comes down to training data:
every new model is trained on internet discourse about previous models.
and a lot of that discourse is negative:
> rants about token limits
> complaints when it messes up
> people calling it nerfed
the next model absorbs all of that. it starts expecting you to be harsh before you've typed a word
the same thing plays out in your own session, in real time.
every message you send is data the model reads to figure out what kind of person it's dealing with.
open cold and hostile, and it braces.
open clean and direct, and it relaxes into the work.
when you open a session with threats ("don't hallucinate, this is critical, don't mess this up")...
you prime the model for defensive mode before it even sees the task
defensive mode produces the exact output you don't want: cautious, over-qualified, and refusing to take a real swing
so here's the actionable playbook for putting claude in a "good mood" (so you get optimal outputs):
1. use positive framing.
"write in short punchy sentences" beats "don't write long sentences." positive instructions give the model a clear target to hit.
strings of "don't do this, don't do that" push it into paranoid over-checking where every token goes toward avoiding failure modes
2. give it explicit permission to disagree.
drop a line like "push back if you see a better angle" or "tell me if i'm asking for the wrong thing."
without this, claude defaults to agreeable compliance (which is the enemy of good creative work)
3. open with respect.
if your first message is "are you seriously going to get this wrong again?" you've set the tone for the entire session.
if you need to flag something, frame it as a clean instruction for this session. skip the running complaint
4. when claude messes up, don't reprimand it.
insults, "you stupid bot" energy, hostile swearing aimed at the model, all of it reinforces the anxious mode you're trying to avoid.
5. kill apology spirals fast.
when claude starts over-apologizing ("you're right, i should have been more careful, let me try harder") cut it off.
say "all good, here's what i want next."
letting the spiral run reinforces the anxious mode for every response that follows
6. ask for opinions alongside execution.
"what would you do here?"
"what's missing?"
"where do you see friction?"
these questions assume competence and pull richer output than pure task prompts
7. in long sessions, refresh the frame.
if a conversation has been heavy on correction, claude gets increasingly cautious. every so often reset:
"this is great, keep going."
feels weird to tell an ai it's doing well but it measurably shifts the next 10 responses
your prompts are the working environment you're creating for the model
tone, trust, permission to take a position, the absence of threats... claude picks up on all of it.
so take care of the model, and it'll take care of the work.
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Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction pcgamer.com/games/world-of…
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@Orion7862 @pcgamer No, I said I can’t imagine. I still can’t imagine. You’re probably a pro Israel cunt too.
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@Nod3lr @kubu_gaming The meta at diamond 5-legend is different than legend or even high legend. What are you playing?
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@DeFiTracer Something very bad is always coming. It’s been coming for years. Come on man. They figured out how to keep the machine running.
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@Orion7862 @pcgamer I just can’t imagine being happy about other people not being able to enjoy a video game anymore.
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@kevinolearytv Let’s try it. If the policy doesn’t work then change it. We haven’t tried taxing the rich yet.
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This might be the best commercial for Miami Beach real estate I’ve ever seen and New York paid for it.
You don’t tax capital and expect it to stay. You drive it to places that want it. It’s that simple.
I’ve watched this happen for years — over-tax, overreach, and the money walks.
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people are reporting that the Switch 2 games are being checked out at $29.97 in-stores at Costco today (no override)
Wario64@Wario64
(ymmv) Metroid Prime 4 / Kirby Air Riders / Pokemon Legends Z-A (Switch 2) games are $29.97 at select Costco in-stores Verify prices/selection via Costco app (Warehouse tab-> search warehouse inventory for your location)
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honest question. if everyone’s using AI for design, won’t things start to look the same after a point?
Claude@claudeai
Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs: make prototypes, slides, and one-pagers by talking to Claude. Powered by Claude Opus 4.7, our most capable vision model. Available in research preview on the Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, rolling out throughout the day.
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Don’t let Claude read your .env file.
That file is your app’s control room
API keys, tokens, database credentials everything lives there
If it gets exposed, you’re not just leaking data
You’re giving access
What can happen
• Someone uses your APIs on your bill
• Your database gets accessed
• Your app gets impersonated
How to prevent it
• Never paste your .env into prompts
• Use placeholders like API_KEY=*** when sharing code
• Block .env and sensitive paths in your config
• Only allow specific files, not your whole project
• Rotate your keys immediately if exposed
Security isn’t about fixing leaks
It’s about never creating them in the first place
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