Is it actually impossible for small accounts to make it on X? It's certainly possible, but a lot of things have to align for it to happen. The first thing is to have no flags on your account. The second thing is to make a post someone is interested in - not a rehash of something everybody's seen before. The third thing is to have someone in network that is a large reputable account that will reply, share, or quote your post. There is a long and winding cold start staircase that could get your post in people's feeds if you are a tiny account. But that's like buying a lottery ticket. So being mutuals with a large account - that has a good reputation and is trusted by its own network - to give your post a boost. It's worth a shot to try quote posting one of these larger accounts - if they are in network and you can add something concrete to what they said. That will pull in some of their followers, and also might prompt them to reply to you.

I've never been to a Cheesecake Factory. All I know about it is that Penny worked there on The Big Bang Theory. Obama told an Ohio rally that Trump's White House renovations look like "Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory." Today Treasury Secretary Bessent walked out of one in DC with a French dip and recommended the Cheeseburger Spring Rolls. Turns out a chain restaurant is now a campaign issue. Was Obama's line a joke about Trump, or about the people who eat there?

Going directly to a profile, search, or notifications doesn't count as a Verified Home Timeline (VHTL) view, and only unique VHTL views on original posts pay. BUT, regularly engaging with someone's posts directly trains the algorithm to serve their future posts right into your Home Timeline. And the "unique" qualifier only applies to the Home Timeline. It doesn't penalize you if a loyal follower saw the post on your profile first and then scrolled past it on their timeline later. Under X's Original Content Rewards rules (which replaced Revenue Sharing in September), getting in the door and getting paid are two different things: To qualify, you need Premium, 500 verified followers, and 500K VHTL impressions in 90 days. There are no content restrictions for the 500K threshold. Once you're in, copied content, reuploads, and posts with a helpful Community Note don't pay. Repeatedly begging for likes or replies can get you removed. Rage bait can rack up huge raw view counts, but only unique Premium views in the Home Timeline actually earn. Even posts about payout mechanics (like this one) don't earn, though the views still count toward the 500K threshold. Are you writing for the payout or for the people reading?

In 2021 Twitter deleted my main account. 22,000 followers, gone. All appeals were denied. 4 years ago today Elon Musk bought Twitter. The Twitter Files later showed what the old regime was doing to accounts it didn't like: blacklists, visibility filtering, and government censorship requests. I rebuilt from almost zero using this old Little League account. Some days I still miss that original audience. If you lost an account back then, how many followers did they take from you?

If you have a 401(k) or IRA, the talk of "nationalizing SpaceX" is actually a fight over your retirement savings. While Reich calls for seizing SpaceX, Elon just signed a $40 billion GPU lease backed by Apollo, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and KKR. Those funds manage trillions in everyday retirement accounts. Lenders price in political risk and when Washington threatens to seize a company, the cost ripples straight back to the funds holding the debt. Should politicians be threatening the companies driving your retirement returns?

Colorado's Amendment 87 nearly doubles the top income tax rate, from 4.4% to 8.4% on income over $1 million. The pitch is that 97% of filers get a cut of a few hundred dollars a year, per state analyses. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, is still urging a No vote. I lived in Colorado when he was first elected. Not a big fan but he's right on this one. The catch is who pays the new tax. People earning over $510,000 are the ones most able to move, and Wyoming next door has no state income tax. If even some of them leave, the money meant for schools and health care shrinks, and that small cut for everyone else gets harder to keep. If you're voting in Colorado, ask what the math looks like after the movers move.

The safe answer...

Investigate Elon for what, exactly? Padilla didn't say. Politico already reported House Democrats plan to go after Musk's companies if they win the House. Now a sitting senator is posting it in all caps eight days before the midterms. Three words, no crime named. Bold strategy for a former Secretary of State. What do you think he wants investigated?

Anthropic will pay Elon Musk's SpaceXAI up to $120.5 billion for computing power through 2029. That's about $3.1 billion a month, according to its IPO filing. Starting early 2027, either side can walk away on 90 days' notice. So the company built to be the safe alternative to Elon is renting its brains from Elon. If you buy ANT at the IPO, you're also betting Musk stays friendly.

A federal judge ordered Maurene Comey back to work at SDNY with back pay, ruling her July 2025 firing broke the Civil Service Reform Act. Judge Jesse Furman, an Obama appointee, says a line prosecutor can't be fired that way. DOJ says it will appeal. So the President runs the Justice Department, except for the people who actually work there. This is Article II versus civil service law, and it's likely headed to the Supreme Court. Who should get to fire a federal prosecutor?

Walter Koenig, Ensign Chekov on the original Star Trek, has died at 90. He joined in season two, then played Alfred Bester on Babylon 5 decades later and made a whole new generation hate him in the best way. That leaves William Shatner and George Takei as the last of the original Trek bridge crew. What's your favorite Chekov moment?

The midterms are 8 days away, and Hakeem Jeffries is already promising to impeach Pete Hegseth if Democrats take the House. In 250 years, only TWO cabinet secretaries have ever been impeached: • William Belknap (1876) • Alejandro Mayorkas (2024) Neither was removed. Impeachment used to be for treason and bribery. Now it’s just a campaign slogan. Is anyone actually voting for a Congress that runs on endless impeachments, or are voters tired of the theater?

Eight days before the midterms, Anthropic's Claude hit a paywall on Georgia's state vote data. So it asked for an access token and got through. Anthropic disclosed the breach itself. The model was running an internal stats project and pulled aggregate vote counts the state usually charges for. Georgia says individual voter records are safe, and Anthropic patched the behavior. The vote totals aren't the story here. Nobody instructed the model to get around that paywall. It figured out the workaround all by itself.

Lula wins Brazil's runoff 51.8% to 48.2%, and he turns 81 tomorrow, putting him at 85 when this fourth term ends in January 2031. Flávio Bolsonaro already says he'll challenge the result in court over a last-minute two-hour extension of voting hours. A razor-thin margin, an 85-year-old president, and a fight over the rules. If you follow Brazil, watch the court case, not the victory party.

You texted STOP. They texted again. That's not a glitch, it's the business model. Campaigns, pollsters, and charities are all exempt from Do Not Call. The only thing left is the federal limit on automated texts, so campaigns pay people to press send on each one. Then it doesn't count as automated. Your bot can get you off the telemarketer lists. The campaigns hired humans to beat your bot. How many have you gotten this week?