@yishan @nihaarsinha The punchline really falls flat if you leave out this detail. I remember hearing he was valedictorian it but it slipped my mind till you said it again
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Phu
879 posts
@nihaarsinha Pete Hegseth was valedictorian of Forest Lake High School.
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All right maybe this is a time for me to tell my story about Pete Hegseth.
Peter Hegseth is close to my age. We went to high school around the same time. He's also from Minnesota (as I am), and our schools were maybe 20 miles apart.
In high school, I inadvertently became infamous for "bullying the football players."
I was on the Math Team, which is exactly as nerdy as it sounds, and our school (Mounds View High School) had a very strong math team. We habitually took either #1 or #2 in every regional competition, vying with our main rival, the nearby Irondale High School.
The math teams collected the best math students across all the grades, and you'd compete at different levels at the meet: the meet would have Algebra, Geometry, Trig, and Advanced Topics sections, and each student on the team would do two events. This made it so that freshmen could compete in Algebra+Geometry, while seniors could compete at Trig and Advanced. Sometimes people did a straddle, like Algebra and Advanced, and Geometry and Trig.
Each team was comprised of 8 students. The totals were computed from your individual score (5 problems per event; you got 1 point for each problem you solved). Since everyone did two events, you could get a total of 10 points max.
The team's score would be the total of the 8 designated scoring students (80 points max), followed by a team event to try and solve 6 problems jointly (5 points each) for a potential max of 30 more points.
The school's total was therefore the sum of the individual scores (10 * 8 individual + 30 points for the team event, for a max possible of 110 points).
We were pretty good, in my senior year I was even the top-scoring member of the team, but the problems were always quite hard, and it was very rare to actually score a full 10 points on the individual portion.
I'm going over the point system because it matters for this story.
As I mentioned, our school routinely came in either #1 or #2 at each meet, vying with our main rival Irondale. There were maybe 5-6 other schools in the region, and it was always Mounds View and Irondale neck-and-neck at the top of the leaderboard, often a nailbiting near-tie going into the Team Event.
If you're wondering why it was so tense, it's because they ratcheted up the tension using time limits: all the events were timed, and you could only get all the points if you quickly realized how to get the solution, and then did the computations super-fast without making any mistakes. This left many opportunities for lost points we'd otherwise be able to get with less time pressure.
The leaderboard was always Mounds View or Irondale at the top, with the other one right behind them and then often a 20-30+ point gap, followed by the other schools in a middling cluster.
And routinely at the bottom, one of the schools was Forest Lake High School, and they'd routinely have laughably low single-digit scores, like their entire total at the end of the night would be like... 6.
We'd laugh at them sometimes, like "Oh wow, their entire school scored less than one of our team members, hahaha Forest Lake" or like "Haha, [our teammate] Nathan Doble beat Forest Lake - good job, Doble."
So it was a bit of a joke. We never *met* anyone from Forest Lake - there were hundreds of students at the event - maybe they only sent one student, or a handful, each getting 1-2 problems right (the first of the 5 problems on each set was always "easy"). Sometimes we speculated that maybe they had one kid who was kinda good at math in the whole high school or something.
One evening, after we had returned to our school after a math team meet, we ran into some football players returning from their game, looking exhausted.
I think I said something like "Hey guys, how's it going?" and one of them (this is Minnesota, so the guy was huge) answered, "Ohhhh man, not so well. We lost to Forest Lake."
... and without thinking I just blurted out, "Forest Lake??? Pfft! MATH TEAM never loses to FOREST LAKE!" and waved him off contemptuously and turned away.
Later on my friend who witnessed this said that as I walked away, what I didn't see was that the football player got REALLY MAD and looked like he was going to come after me and beat me up.
This later turned into "Yishan was bullying football players."
(I actually feel quite bad about this - looking back on this, I feel like I should've said something supportive like, "Don't worry, you'll get 'em next time. Math Team always crushes Forest Lake, so don't worry, we got your back." But high school is kind of another world)
What's the point of this story?
Well, Pete Hegseth went to Forest Lake.
Ali@haramcart
Pete Hegseth is so spectacularly stupid that he used his insider knowledge of a strike on Iran to attempt a multimillion-dollar trade that LOST money
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@LttleGel @datingbyblaine Big difference between a stay at home wife with kids and a stay at home girlfriend
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@datingbyblaine Interesting. If he’s wealthy, why does she have to have a career? None of them want to have stay at home wives/moms?
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Dating criteria I hear often from wealthy matchmaking clients:
• Thin, pretty, natural look (e.g. no obvious facial fillers)
• Fit, healthy relationship with food & gym
• Has an actual career (specifics rarely important)
• Warm, playful, feminine energy
• No extreme political views
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@sweatystartup Models, training methods and compute all get cheaper exponentially. Go back 1 year and models now are easily 20x better than GPT 3.5. 20x improvement in efficiency/productivity is a matter of months. A breakthrough could easily 10x everything in weeks as well
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AI about to get 20x expensive.
These $200 / month claude subscriptions are burning $5,000 worth of credits.
The bubble is going to pop and it will pop soon.
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@wingnut707 @dummystupidgirl Work culture is pretty bad but if you are legit wealthy, a digital nomad or run your own business or work for a US company with mostly US employees you can escape almost all the downsides
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@dummystupidgirl mfw people overly romanticize japan (again!)
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@luke_metro Tesla will make money on insurance charging fsd subs plus a cut of the ride cost so the owner will be making 10 cents a mile once stuff like cleaning / wear and tear is factored and the fanboys will eat it up
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Trump gave the administration a way to declare victory and move on with his "We don't like Anthropic, they're fired."
Hegseth, who is much dumber, instead commits to a full-throated attempt to destroy the company by announcing that no vendor who works with the US military may do any business with them.
This was always the worst-case scenario here: that Hegseth was idiotic enough to singlehandedly sack US hegemony because he thinks it makes him look tough. Trump generally has better instincts than this, but Hegseth is remarkably incompetent.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth@SecWar
This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon. Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic. Instead, @AnthropicAI and its CEO @DarioAmodei, have chosen duplicity. Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission - a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives. The Terms of Service of Anthropic’s defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield. Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable. As President Trump stated on Truth Social, the Commander-in-Chief and the American people alone will determine the destiny of our armed forces, not unelected tech executives. Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles. Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered. In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service. America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.
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@chier578563 @neetu_arnold The problem is you can’t optimize for 2 because a lot of times the 2s look like retards and it’s only in hindsight that they are recognized for their genius
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@neetu_arnold So, to make it easier for you:
1- take a game with fixed rules and master it through practice.
2- out of the box innovation creating entirely new technologies and industries.
Asians, Jordan, Brady are good at 1-. American society as a whole rewards 2- more than 1-.
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People love when Michael Jordan and Tom Brady talk about the immense amount of hours it took to get good at their game
But when people see an Asian kid with the same level of dedication to math or piano, suddenly they “lack passion” or “aren’t well-rounded”
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@the_transit_guy We have more freight rail than any other country by far. If anything we need get rid of the Jones act to free up the need for so much freight rail which opens up capacity for HSR. Personally I think a robust metro heavy rail in the top 20 metro areas is more important than HSR
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“This country needs high speed rail. Japan has had it for 60 years and our trains see a max speed of 79 mph!”
x - Paddy@SoMammoth
Lip readers I need your help
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@climatetechkev @JesseJenkins You can’t blame it solely on this administration. Trump did the initial tariffs of 25% but Biden escalated it to 100% and now we are at like 250% (not sure what the current number is)
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@JesseJenkins The strategy appears to be stall until disaster finally hits and then beg for a bailout. Instead of a bailout maybe we should just divide up their assets between Tesla, Rivian and EV leaders of allied nations. So irresponsible scale back when this admin won’t last forever
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This is what the world is moving to. High performance, cost competitive EVs with excellent software, entertainment & comfort features. Meanwhile, US automakers are retreating behind a moat of tariffs & welcoming Trump fuel efficiency rollbacks so they can just sell large gasoline trucks & SUVs, while pulling back on EV plans. Are they giving up on competing for the future? How very un-American to just throw in the towel.
Marques Brownlee@MKBHD
I lived with a Chinese EV for a few weeks to see if the hype is real. The car costs $42K, and turns out it feels like $75K+ EASILY One of the most impressive things I've ever reviewed: youtu.be/Mb6H7trzMfI - A+ software and features. Feels like what would happen if Apple made a car - Build quality is excellent all the way around. And materials (leathers, metals, etc) are all premium - It crushes all the fundamentals to make it livable: 320 miles range, super comfortable seats, excellent air suspension, active noise cancellation, great displays and cameras, bright clear HUD, Self driving - It has a MODULAR interior design (detailed in the video) - Performance is sneaky great. This is just the "SU7 Max" spec, but 660 horsepower 0-60 in 2.8 seconds? Sheesh
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@Martlu12 @cremieuxrecueil Maybe not but the dude is acting like the women in red are slow and he could beat this women just because he is a man. They are objectively fast by any measure and are going to crush everyone but outliers (3std deviations) for men
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@hammbergler @cremieuxrecueil 11 seconds of faster would put her in the Tokyo 2025 world championships finals. She is not that fast.
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My odds are surprisingly good.
Consider:
The top female track-and-field runners are so much slower than male high school runners that they wouldn't qualify for the high school boys' competition.
Liberal Tear Creator™@LibTearCreator1
Could you outrun her?
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@michael_wiebe I don’t think any YIMBY is going to be against it unless it’s heavily subsidized. I think they would welcome stuff like SRO as long as it is supplied at market rates so the price per SQFT is reasonable that is the main issue. New and affordable don’t go hand in hand normally
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Market-rate housing is supposedly "trickle-down", because it benefits poor people through vacancy chains. But social housing also has vacancy chain effects; does that make it trickle-down too?
Michael Wiebe@michael_wiebe
Building social housing doesn't merely benefit the residents in the new units. Through vacancy chains, those residents free up their previous units for other poor people to live in. Research suggests this Burnaby project will free up 100 homes in poor neighborhoods.
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@JonGMechE @AnechoicMedia_ If this moment was imminent they have no reason to sell cars to the general public. Why sell cars that generate 200k + revenue for 40K
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You got it half right. It isn’t really that Tesla is going to flip the switch and have tons of autonomous cars on the road, it’s more that they will instantly have the manufacturing capability to produce 1 million+ autonomous vehicles per year for <$35k each.
Tesla can solve with vision only in a way no other company could because they invested in a system that has their customers collecting insane amounts of data for them all the time.
If you are paying for data (like Waymo) you need LiDAR but if you have customers paying you and collecting your data you can train an AI and solve with vision only.
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Tesla's entire story is any moment now they're going to totally solve self-driving without lidar, flip a switch on their existing car designs, and swiftly take this entire market from the competition. But it really looks like the train is leaving the station without them.
Stefan Schubert@StefanFSchubert
Waymo has quickly captured more than 10% of the SF ride-sharing market
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@cremieuxrecueil @Instacart Did the same with Uber Eats and worked out well. You give the driver a code though
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I used @Instacart to deliver some Airpods a few days ago.
I had to order them twice because the first time, the driver just picked them up and immediately drove to his house and stole them.
But Instacart support won't refund the order and won't explain why. Curious!
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@Mattlinn01 @TeslaVandalWtch Why bro? At that point just get an ICE. Not a Tesla fanboy as I have a non Tesla EV and rarely charge at a public supercharger last time I remember was march 2024.
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@TeslaVandalWtch When I drove from Texas to Maine and back? 28 times.
A faster charging curve would have cut an entire day of travel out of that trip.
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I know which one I’m picking if I’m buying between this and a Model 3.
Look at the difference in charging:
CLA - 10-80% - 18 minutes. Avg - 194.9 kw
Model 3 10-80% - 36 minutes. Avg - 95.6 kw
Cue the “My Tesla is good enough” crowd.
Sawyer Merritt@SawyerMerritt
NEWS: Mercedes has unveiled final U.S. pricing and range for its new 2026 all-electric CLA 250+. • Starting price: $47,250 (RWD) • EPA range: 374 miles (312 on AWD trim) • 85 kWh battery • 320kW peak charging speed. Can add 100 miles in 5 mins • 0-60mp: As low as 4.8s • Charges 202 miles in 10 mins • Top speed: 130 mph • 800v architecture • 10.25" driver display, 14" central display & 14" passenger display • 268 hp (RWD) and 349 hp (AWD) • 16 speaker, 850-watt sound system with Dolby Atmos • Grille with 142 individually illuminated stars • AWD trim starts at $49,800 Deliveries start in January 2026 in the U.S.
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@RyanSchuetz11 @sircalebhammer No one would tolerate this in an uber/lyft but it definitely is in a lot of transit here. I actually thing DC metro is fine as far as this but the main problem is it doesn’t cover a lot of areas and still not enough train frequency but with respect to disorder it’s pretty good
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@RyanSchuetz11 @sircalebhammer It’s not fear of violence just disorder. No one wants to be on transit with people playing music/talking on speakerphone. Train or stations that smell like piss or trash everywhere . That’s why people have no problems riding trains and buses abroad. Transit should be pleasant
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Oh look- now I’m a “conservative” because I said we should not tolerate repeat violence.
I recently took many political compass tests after being called a Fascist, and I’m as centrist as it gets- every time.
So maybe if you immediately throw someone into an ideology because your position is insane, that actually means you’re an extremist.
Mike from PA@Mike_from_PA
The US already has the highest incarceration rate in the world, what we don’t spend money on is an effective social safety net and invest in early childhood. Like most conservatives he spends his time paralyzed by fear of the other. Weak.
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cursor just made every $200/hour dev shop look like a clown
dropped composer 2.0 yesterday with agentic browser built in
what used to take 8 devs and 3 weeks now takes 8 AI agents running parallel in 30 seconds
and they TEST THEIR OWN CODE in a native browser
while coding bootcamps are charging $15K to teach you react, cursor's teaching AI to:
→ write code 4x faster than gpt-5
→ run 8 versions simultaneously to pick the best one
→ test in chrome devtools without leaving the IDE
→ iterate on bugs until they're actually fixed
→ plan with one model, build with another
the entire "hire a dev team" industry is sweating
some startup just replaced 3 junior devs ($450K/year) with cursor pro ($240/year)
that's a 99.9% cost reduction for better output
the intelligence gap between "we staffed up our eng team" and "we deployed cursor 2.0" is getting stupid
most companies still paying $150K/year for developers to do what this does for $20/month
chatgpt atlas? cooked
dia and comet? obsolete
traditional dev shops? praying you don't find out about this
comment "COMPOSER" and i'll send the full breakdown of how to replace half your dev costs with 8 parallel agents
your competition is still hiring. time to bury them.
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@rwbfitness @SarAllyce Some people literally eat 1-2 lbs of ground beef a day. I for one do not but it can easily make or break weight loss depending on how many pounds of ground beef you consume in a week
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@SarAllyce If this makes or breaks your weight loss, it’s because you have psychological issues around food that don’t allow you to make rational decisions during stress that deletes all your perfectionism the remainder of the time
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Such an easy diet hack that many overlook: check the nutrition facts of beef/cuts of meat & Opt for lean cuts of meat!!
>1 lb of 80/20 ground beef: 1120 cals
>1 lb of 93/7 ground beef: 680 cals
Not all meats are created equal. This difference could make or break ur weight loss goals.
Noah Ryan@NoahRyanCo
80/20 ground beef is a fat source, not a protein source. Almost 90g of fat per pound. 70% of calories from fat. If you're confused why eggs, butter and beef are making you fat, its the fat. Switch to 93/7. You simply don't need that much fat.
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@Trump1uknowit @NoahRyanCo Lean meat like chicken turkey sirloin or lean ground beef are all viable just opt for low fat cuts. Also stuff like nonfat cottage cheese or nonfat Greek yogurt
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@NoahRyanCo it's tough to isolate carbs from fats in the course of normal human eating. who sits down to just potatoes without meat? who eats rice with nothing? Bread with nothing. its not sustainable.
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I 5x'ed my fruit intake my metabolic markers looked like somebody in ketosis (99th percentile)
Carbs don't cause insulin resistance. Combining carbs, fats and a sedentary lifestyle does.
Noah Ryan@NoahRyanCo
Microdosing fruit throughout the day will give you smoother, steadier energy than any nootropic. Mimics the effects of fasting without the manic feeling or crash. Spares protein (muscle) breakdown too. An apple an hour gives you great power
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