MrChitChat

@Holy__Bible1 The spirit of god is alive.

Mark 16:6 #easterday

@HumanityChad I will never forget this day and the months after.

In 2014, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Marine Cpl. William "Kyle" Carpenter for his extraordinary heroism in Afghanistan. In 2010, at age 21, Carpenter threw his body over an enemy grenade to shield a fellow Marine from the blast. He suffered catastrophic injuries, including the loss of an eye and a shattered jaw, and underwent dozens of surgeries during a grueling years-long recovery. He is the youngest living recipient of the nation’s highest military honor for valor.

@shaunmmaguire For like a 100 time now. It is a classic dictatorship admiration paradox. It’s easier to idealize something when you’re not the one being silenced, imprisoned, or economically crushed by it.

How did we get to the point Where so many Americans are rooting against America?

@pmarca If you can't control it, let it be.

Hubermaxxing

Most rural people have them. It is the best insurance policy against all forms of tyranny. My first and last name don't have "ev," "ov," "sky," "in," etc because my great/grand fathers embraced the love for guns (centuries) and made the soviets bit the dust. But there ought to be regulation by the consent of the governed --to prevent unnecessary chaos in society.

アメリカニキって銃社会だと思うけど、実際に所持してる家庭は何割くらいなんだろ？ 日本人はおそらくほとんどの人が持っていると思ってる

@GadSaad, our morals and ethics have evolved over many centuries (challenges vs. assimilation). It is hard to blame people once you perform a “root cause” analysis of why they do what they do. I agree that, for a culture to survive (our constitutional values), it ought to establish common-sense assimilation rules… otherwise, the majority will take over regardless of the quality and moral character of its culture.

@NiohBerg I said like a few minutes ago. x.com/MrChitChat/sta…

Look at these regimi botox bimbos. It wasn't long ago that they would have been both thrown into Evin and tortured for appearing like this in public. The regime backed away slightly from their morality policing while still oppressing Iranians in every other way. As if that would absolve them of all their atrocities. Girls like Mahsa Amini, Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh did not get murdered just for these bitches to wave the flag of their murderers. Disgusting.

@WassonWatch Are you making watches or playing divisive agendas to sell watches? Bad PR team. Next, they are all the children of father Abraham. Brethren sometimes don't agree on things; they ought to engage in civil discourse.

There are people like MILO who are working hard to make the Catholic-Islamic alliance against Protestants and Jews a real thing. I don't believe the average Catholic is good with this at all. Am I right?

Dictatorship and authoritarianism admiration paradox. People who actually live inside authoritarian systems (or fled them) tend to despise them. They’ve experienced the censorship, fear, corruption, shortages, surveillance, and loss of freedom firsthand. People viewing them from the outside (especially in stable democracies) often romanticize or even praise them. They see the strongman’s “decisive leadership,” the propaganda about order, unity, or anti-Western defiance, and project their own frustrations onto it—without paying the real cost. Next time you think about admiring one of these dictators/authoritarians out there, remember this ^.

@nypost A classic dictatorship admiration paradox. It’s easier to idealize something when you’re not the one being silenced, imprisoned, or economically crushed by it.

Notorious Gen. Soleimani's sultry grandniece led lavish lifestyle touring US hotspots, as her mom promoted Iranian regime trib.al/y38evjw

@nikitabier @girdley Facebook is so ancient.

@BillAckman @X I took the time to read it. Man, you’re a tough human. Your story telling skills are amazing and I could literally imagine it. Absolutely powerful. BLUF: You worked really hard for what you have and no decent person should extort you. Fight it to the end and you will win.

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@nikitabier @dvorahfr Lmao

There is no geolocking. There have been a lot of viral posts in Japanese and other foreign languages and it organically changed the country distribution of impressions the last 2 weeks. The timeline is a living, breathing thing. Viral trends happen. Getting the same Sam Altman drama and political rage bait every day is not good for anyone.

What is the purpose of geo-locking, please? This is a genuine question. I'd like to understand why X, which is supposed to be a global exchange platform, is taking this approach. I've read so many different explanations that I'm completely lost.

@elonmusk True!

Hadamard thought in image space

Multiple channels like trade and tech link states beyond security. Globalization, in this sense, constrains war. Our persistent economic ties with some of our adversaries show interdependence at work. (Complex Interdependence IR Theory)

As I see in the news, they were destroyed, but they started to build back up. Their communist friends in China and Russia started helping them. We had to hit them again, but this time harder. Or the Ayatollah-class didn't take the hint and continued to F* around. Epic Fury helped them Find Out.

@MrChitChat So, who is lying?

Planet Earth is a very darn small village. There are 193 homes in this village, of which a few are run by suicidal and authoritarian ideologies (communists, dictators, and ayatollahs, etc). They have been accumulating extreme destructive power to ensure the survival of their extreme ways of life. Their ways of life ask for domination through force --ours is more focused winning through cooperation, development, and soft power. Our home constitution is as logical and rational to human needs as it can be. The vile neighbors in the village, and their constitutions, will eventually dominate (by force) if we don't do anything about it now. Our kids will have no say in the affairs of the village if we allow their enemies to have guns as big as ours. We will either have to fall in line with them or it will be war --a war in which they will act as suicidally as they do now --but then they will have even more destructive power. Today we will lose a few of our kids, but tomorrow, the cost is going to be extremely high. We will then have to deal with total annihilation or capitulation.

There are strategic benefits to removing the Ayatollah-class regime from the orbit of Axis Powers 2.0, first. As everyone knows, our grand strategy is focused on the communists in China and its important tentacles. Iran is one such important tentacle. China's has been grooming the Ayatollah-class for over 3 decades now. Grand strategists can readily appreciate the enormous importance of bringing Iran—both its geography and its people—onto our side....in first moves of the chess game. Iran sits atop the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves and the second-largest proven natural gas reserves, while also controlling the critical chokepoint through which approximately 40% to 50% of China’s seaborne oil imports flow via the Strait of Hormuz, according to reports from early 2026. In the grand scheme of things, the timing of Epic Fury hinders China's possible Taiwan moves.

@MrChitChat Agree, and that’s precisely why many of us question the current affinity towards North Korea, Russia, Hungary and others instead of continuing to collaborate with our longstanding allies.

@ClaremontInst @JoinFAI @nukebarbarian It was the great steal forward!

"America gave China its industrial base and manufacturing know-how; China gave America cheap goods. This deal worked until it didn't." That is @JoinFAI Senior Fellow, @nukebarbarian's verdict on the great exchange that defined the post-Cold War era that quietly unmade American power. In his latest review for the CRB, Penney traces the full arc from Apple's fateful partnership with Foxconn, which trained up China's workforce at a scale that dwarfed the Marshall Plan, to the rise of Huawei, the company that took everything the West taught it and turned it against its teachers. Penny asks the question: Why can't America build anymore? The answer, he argues, lies not in tariffs or supply chains but in what a society loses when it trades process knowledge for shareholder returns and mythology for historical nihilism. Read his latest from the Spring issue of the CRB here claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-great-leap…

@WSJopinion Well done! A good article everyone must read.

Diplomacy failed to stop North Korea from getting the bomb. Trump didn’t make the same mistake with Iran. on.wsj.com/4sfgGUj

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” We must objectively educate ourselves about our very own way of life and how good we have it. We must also compare it to authoritarian regimes to really know how good we have it. America honored us and the thought that haunts me is even a small chance of failure/dishonor of not being able to pass on to my future family an America as good as the one we found. Read @BillGertz! He knows the enemy and its nature. Read "Unrestricted Warfare" by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui; a good way to know the enemy through its own words.