Mike Ward retweeted
My mom was a hippie. My dad was a beatnik.
I was so poor that at one point I worked two jobs and shared a bed with a friend. I got home at 8 AM from a night shift at a bakery, got into his bed, and slept while he went to his day job.
I bought my first computer with my own credit card at age 20 and taught myself HTML. At the time, I worked nights in a giant, city block-sized printing plant in Queens, NY. I took the 7 train home at 2 AM most nights and was spit on and beaten up for being Irish on that train. Like GD Gangs of New York. I got up at 7 AM and coded websites until 11 AM and went to my printing plant job until the wee hours of the morning.
My first website was featured in a book from Japan in 1997 as one of the 100 best-designed websites in the world. That opened doors and eventually brought me to San Francisco in 2004. And you know the rest of the story. It's on my website.
I never begged for money, expected handouts, or called for government intervention in markets because of my difficult existence when I was young.
I worked so hard my eyeballs fell out. And then I worked even more.
And I succeeded well beyond anyone’s expectations because THIS IS AMERICA.
So yes, I have a problem with politicians looking at what someone earns today and deciding they deserve a bigger piece of it. They see a fattened pig ready for the slaughter. I see the decades of sacrifice it took to build it. Even if it's modest.
Calling it a so-called “millionaires tax” doesn't settle the argument. They already admitted it will apply to everyone. But I want the person cleaning the bakery at 4 AM to build something worth a fortune and keep the rewards. That is what America is about.
Besides, we all pay plenty of tax as it is.
I am voting YES on Initiative 645 to repeal Washington’s new income tax.
I will never apologize for believing everyone should keep more of what they worked for and earned
Ok, I just tried Grok bots, I’m obviously behind the times, I hate subscriptions but holy crap, built 4 agents in a couple hours, ridiculous, I’m speechless.
Mike Ward retweeted
The thing that I’ll never understand is how there are so many people in America who hate what it means to be an American,
yet expect all of the freedoms & privileges that come from citizenship.
I hope the people that love America vote this November.
Mike Ward retweeted
The Left in this country today is an extended Manson Family of corrupt Robespierre wannabes without the intellect or charisma, and will keep trying to overturn the will of the voters by ANY means including targeted kinetic ones, while shouting about "Love" and yelling "Democracy"
Mike Ward retweeted
There are a few things in life you should know with 100% certainty:
• Your name.
• Your birthday.
• Whether you married your brother.
Mike Ward retweeted
The fact that France already has social healthcare, paid family leave, 35 hour work weeks, and spends more than 50% of GDP on welfare puts these riots in such a hilarious context
WTF do they even want
Mike Ward retweeted
Capitalism lets people who can’t stand each other make each other richer. Your revolution can’t survive a disagreement in the group chat.
Mike Ward retweeted
This is the funniest announcement I've seen in weeks:
"The European Union is working toward fast-track antitrust approval for a satellite joint venture between Leonardo SpA, Airbus SE, and Thales SA, which is positioned as Europe's response to SpaceX"
We know pretty much how this is going to go. With a vast wheezing and clanking of bureaucratic gears, the consortium be approved. It will provide extremely comfortable livings for a vast horde of bureaucrats, consultants, and hangers-on. White papers and bold, forward-looking plans will issue like confetti.
After approximately a decade of extremely expensive grinding, the consortium will have approximately the productive output of a wet fart.
The damage for SpaceX is massive
"The European Union is working toward fast-track antitrust approval for a satellite joint venture between Leonardo SpA, Airbus SE, and Thales SA, which is positioned as Europe's response to SpaceX"
The actions of the 🇺🇸 US administration have consequences.
Recent reports from 4 sources confirm that both Elon and Trump supported the restrictions of Starshield, which confirms my earlier posts stating that SpaceX is involved and part of it.
The Telegraph on Oct. 16 reported that it was Musk who proposed the speed cap to Trump — and Trump "agreed," one source said.
That sounds very likely to what really had happened including Elons denial to have any responsibility (half true) and Trumps lie which is just one more of the many he spreads every day. finance.yahoo.com/economy/po…
Mike Ward retweeted
Premise:
Incentives drive all human behavior.
The corollary:
How to destroy a country:
A vast social security and support system that serves as a magnet for those who would rather not work.
An open immigration policy that does not screen immigrants to determine their ability and willingness to provide for themselves and their families.
An open immigration policy that does not screen for political and/or religious ideologies that are a threat to the country.
Economic incentives large enough to incentivize immigrants on the state dole to have large numbers of children, but insufficient for educated and economically productive mothers to be able to quit to raise a family.
The declining fertility of the most educated and productive women due to their delay to begin a family as a result of their desire and/or need to advance their careers, among other reasons, to live a life they deem consistent with their educational achievements and/or to repay their student debts.
Amnesty programs that give citizenship and voting power to illegal immigrants without consideration of their economic productivity or their threat to the country due to their religious or political ideologies.
The changing demographics and increased population due to the above factors.
The state responding to protests by increasing social support.
The continued failure to punish and hold accountable violent and looting rioters.
Government managed by a massive and growing unelected bureaucracy.
Government fraud, waste, and abuse contributed to ballooning budgets.
Anti-business legislation that makes it difficult for businesses to compete in a global marketplace being disrupted by AI, including restrictions on firing even poorly performing employees.
Overly burdensome, globally uncompetitive, corporate taxation.
Continuous increases in personal taxes to raise funds to provide for the rapidly growing welfare state.
The substantial majority of the tax burden levied on a small percentage of the population.
A growing percentage of the electorate paying no taxes and receiving welfare.
The introduction or threat of a wealth tax including the taxation of unrealized gains, i.e., taxes on paper wealth.
The flight of the most productive business builders and highest taxpayers to lower tax countries with lesser security concerns.
A growing percentage of the electorate voting for candidates that support increased welfare and laws favorable to, and/or that match the cultural and ideological needs and desires of a growing unproductive immigrant population.
The rapid rise in anti-semitism and inadequate efforts to address this hatred.
Increased borrowing by the state to fund the growing social burden.
Higher sovereign interest rates due to all of the above.
The resulting need to reduce expenditures to make the math work.
Increasingly violent protests that make life less livable for the productive and law abiding citizens leading to their accelerated departure.
And so on…
Mike Ward retweeted
A car flew last night. An actual car, flipping in midair on cold gas thrusters and landing on its wheels. Elon Musk's companies built a sports car that does what science fiction promised for a century. The same man lands rockets on barges and builds the machines that carry our astronauts. That is what one free mind, and the thousands of minds he employs, can produce.
Bernie Sanders says billionaires should not exist. He looks at the man who makes cars fly and concludes the problem to solve is that such men keep too much of what they create. He has spent five decades in government producing nothing, yet he claims the moral authority to dispose of the men who produce everything. A man who seeks unearned control over the lives and property of others is corrupt in the fullest meaning of the word, and that corruption runs deeper than any bribe.
A flying car is what men do when they are free. A wealth tax is what politicians do to the men who built it. One of them needs the other to survive, and it isn't Musk.
Mike Ward retweeted
Elon n’a pas « cassé » les lois de la physique. Il les a simplement utilisées jusqu’au bout, pendant que d’autres les invoquaient pour expliquer pourquoi c’était impossible.
Hier soir, la nouvelle Tesla Roadster a roulé à l’envers, fait des tonneaux en l’air, sauté par-dessus un Semi, et passé de 0 à 100 km/h en 0,81 seconde. Les fans de la « voiture utile » ont déjà sorti la phrase rituelle : « C’est du spectacle, une voiture n’est pas faite pour ça. »
Regardons de l’autre côté du prisme.
Une voiture n’a jamais été « faite » uniquement pour aller d’un point A à un point B. La Bugatti Type 35, la Porsche 917, la McLaren F1, la Rimac Nevera n’étaient pas des outils de déplacement. C’étaient des machines destinées à explorer les limites de ce que la physique et l’ingénierie autorisaient à un instant T.
Chaque fois que quelqu’un poussait ces limites, on entendait la même rengaine. Puis dix ans plus tard, les technologies (pneus, aéro, freins, électronique, batteries) se retrouvaient dans des modèles plus accessibles.
Ici, Tesla ne fait pas autre chose, sauf qu’il mélange deux univers : l’automobile et le spatial. Le système d’aspiration (jusqu’à 2 g de force) qui colle la voiture au sol même à l’envers n’est pas un gadget de foire. C’est de l’effet de sol actif poussé à l’extrême, le genre de solution qui, une fois industrialisée et allégée, peut améliorer l’adhérence, la sécurité en virage et le freinage sur des voitures normales. Les propulseurs à air comprimé (réservoirs rechargeables) ne sont pas là pour faire des saltos quotidiens. Ils démontrent qu’on peut injecter de la force latérale et longitudinale bien au-delà de ce que les pneus seuls peuvent transmettre.
Comme le disait Musk : F = ma. Plus de force, moins de masse, et l’accélération suit. Les pneus, eux, plafonnent autour de 1,2-1,3 g. Au-delà, c’est du patinage. Là, on contourne la limite.
Ceux qui crient au spectacle oublient aussi le contexte Tesla. Depuis le Model S Plaid (déjà « limit of physics engineering » selon Musk en 2021), chaque halo car sert à prouver qu’une électrique peut être plus performante, plus rapide et plus désirable qu’une thermique. Ce n’est pas anodin. Si l’objectif est de faire basculer le marché vers l’électrique, il faut des machines qui font rêver, pas seulement des voitures qui consomment moins. La Roadster est explicitement présentée comme la dernière Tesla manuelle à long terme. C’est un point d’orgue, pas un produit de masse.
Oui, la production est annoncée pour 2028. Oui, l’homologation route des propulseurs est incertaine. Oui, le prix sera délirant et le volume faible. Mais réduire ça à « du spectacle inutile » revient à dire que les courses de Formule 1, les records de vitesse ou les avions de chasse n’ont jamais rien apporté.
Chaque fois qu’on force la physique à donner plus, on découvre des solutions, des matériaux, des algorithmes de contrôle, des architectures de batteries ou de gestion thermique qui finissent par redescendre.
La vraie question n’est pas « est-ce qu’une voiture doit voler ». C’est : jusqu’où est-on prêt à pousser les limites pour que, dans dix ans, les voitures normales freinent mieux, tiennent mieux la route et accélèrent plus fort, tout en restant électriques.
Musk a toujours traité la physique comme une contrainte, pas comme un interdit. Hier soir, il l’a rappelé de la façon la plus spectaculaire possible.
Mike Ward retweeted
Well. Mr. Smarty-Pants. Let me give you the run-down of what you just said:
You wish to build a Mega-Constellation of high-bandwidth high-density low-cost satellites with affordable, portablöe ground terminals and subscription plans.
For that you need:
- highly advanced phase-array antenna steering signal and DSP processing ASICS - you do not have them
- the largest PCB factory on the North American Continent, based in EUs population x2 - you don't have it
- a satellite manufacturing facitly that can pump out a 2-digit amount of satellite PER DAY - you do not have it
- space ports that can support launches with single-digit days of turnaround - you do not have them
- an - at least - partially resuable launch vehicle with just days of turnaround time and a corresponding manufacturing cadence for ALL components of such launch vehicle - you do not have it
- about a thousand medium to little things more to make any of this work
Let me pull you back to reality: SpaceX currently launches beyond of 90% of mass to orbit per year. Not in the US. GLOBALLY. China can't compete. No one in the US can compete. India can't. Japan can't.
SpaceX - led by Musk and Shotwell - is a global Unicorn. Europe - and the EU and particular - have no idea, no framework - no plan and NO PATH to make this happen in any reasonable amount of time that one might consider short- to mid-term.
You CANNOT copy it if you tried. You could spend half the EUs budget on it and end up with 10 satellites in orbit.
You are DELUSIONAL. If you truly wish what you say, you'd appear in front of the European Commission and Parliament tomorrow and demand deletion of 80-90% of our red tape and bureaucratic lunacy.
Until you do that, you're a useless moron.
We need a European alternative to #Starlink asap.
ioplus.nl/en/posts/these-are…
Mike Ward retweeted
Europas ledare har lyckats med ett otroligt geopolitiskt hattrick: Man gjorde sig beroende av Ryssland för energi, Kina för handel och USA för sin säkerhet, och har på något vänster lyckats bli ovän med alla tre samtidigt.
Ett rent mästerverk i självskadebeteende.
Mike Ward retweeted
I’m Polish. If France is your future, I come from the end of that road.
France shows you the slow version. We lived the full one – the version where the state doesn’t just take care of everything. It owns everything.
In Poland it arrived with Soviet bayonets. In America it would arrive by vote – slower, softer, with better slogans. But the destination is the same, and so is the mechanism.
It starts with prices. When the state decides what things should cost, prices stop telling the truth. A price is a message: this is scarce, this is wanted, make more of this. Abolish the message, and the whole economy goes deaf. So the shelves emptied – first of meat, then of almost everything.
Every Pole knew the joke. A man walks into a shop: "No meat?" The clerk: "No, sir. Here is no fish. No meat is across the street."
We queued for everything. People wrote their place in line on their palms and kept lists through the night. You waited years for a small car, and often more than a decade for an apartment. Not because Poles were lazy. Because nobody in the system had any reason to produce what we needed.
At work, we had another joke: we pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us.
And the promise of equality? It produced the most unequal system of all. The party elite had their own shops – Poles called them the shops behind the yellow curtains. Those with dollars shopped in special stores. Everyone else got the queue.
Then the system needed informers, because nobody believed in it anymore. Our neighbors were recruited to report on us. You never knew who was listening – the colleague, the friend, sometimes family. So we learned to live a double life: one language in public, another at home.
Those who spoke up got the wolf ticket: no job, no promotion, sometimes no university place for their children. Nobody needed to send them to prison. They just couldn’t live.
The newspapers reported record harvests while the shelves stood empty. Everyone knew. Nobody said it. That is what a society looks like when the lie becomes the system.
In 1950 we were about as rich as Spain. By 1989, Spain was twice as rich. That is what forty years of "fairness" cost us.
Today in America, the method is softer. Your neighbor won’t inform on you to the secret police. Someone will report your post, and you’ll be cancelled – no job, no account, no platform. Different tools, same machine.
We got out. Ten million of us joined Solidarity, and in 1989 a system that looked eternal collapsed. Since then, Poland has become one of the great success stories of Europe – because people were finally free to build.
But we still carry it. More than thirty years later, you can see it in the careful answers, the closed faces - the system leaves faster than the fear does. It takes generations to get out of it fully once you fall into that trap.
Nobody votes for the queue. Nobody votes for the informer. They come with the promise.
Trust me, you don’t want to go down that road.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Mike Ward retweeted
It’s not about the zoo tickets, it’s that at some point I looked up from my paycheck and realized OH, cool, I’m apparently funding the welfare state, Big Pharma, foreign countries, “Learing Centers,” government programs I’ve never heard of, Planned Fucking Parenthood, and seventeen layers of bureaucracy whose primary function appears to be emailing each other PDFs; meanwhile, I pay taxes when I earn money, taxes when I spend money, taxes to employ people, taxes on property I ALREADY OWN, taxes go up every year anyway, the school district discovers another $75,000,000 it absolutely cannot survive without, and if I so much as raise my hand and ask whether maybe, possibly, perhaps somebody could spend slightly less money, I am informed that I hate teachers, children, puppies and probably literacy, and NOW after financing civilization itself I’m also supposed to smile and subsidize someone’s trip to see the giraffes.
Know what I mean?
Mike Ward retweeted
This isn't crazy at all, it's just outside of most people's experience.
You just have to supply the relevant information, so people can understand.
Here, I'll do it myself.
(You should pay me more for this.)
Picture a jar. Not a special jar that I have to explain to you. Just an ordinary jar.
Put some gold in it. Just a little bit, ground to the consistency of fine sand.
Now some iron.
And some uranium. Don't worry, it's not very radioactive in this state. You can touch it with your hands. Just pour it in.
Now some tungsten. Surprisingly heavy, huh?
Some platinum.
Then just keep adding other heavy elements. Sticking to the useful ones. Should be pretty easy. They're all useful for something.
Jar about half full? Now pour in some really fine sand. Put a lid on it.
Now shake the jar for 4 billion years. Don't worry, it's just an imaginary jar, and an imaginary 4 billion years, you're not going to get bored or anything.
Now reach your fingers into the jar, and fish out a nugget of gold, or tungsten, or iron.
Oh, wait. You can't. It's all at the bottom. Under a thick layer of sand.
Can you picture it? Are you picturing it clearly? Close your eyes if it helps. Wait, no, open them again so you can read this.
That jar is Earth.
All the heavy stuff has sunk to the core. Where you can't get it.
Now smash the jar on the floor, and pick up the precious metals and the useful ones.... easy, right?
The smashed jar is asteroids.
Right now, your brain is saying "Oh, I see, he's talking about asteroid mining. He's saying we're going to go out and mine asteroids."
No.
I'm saying we already are.
When the Earth was molten, all the heavy stuff sunk to the core. We covered this. So how are we mining heavy stuff on Earth right now?
The answer is that we are mining asteroids.
We are mining asteroids that hit the Earth after it stopped being molten. So the stuff in them stayed on the surface. Pretty much every mine on Earth is an ancient asteroid strike.
Now think of all the asteroids in the solar system. Divide them into two categories.
The first category is the ones that have already hit Earth, sometime in the past.
The second category is the ones that haven't.
I'll save you the trouble of asking an AI. The first category is about .001%. The second is about 99.999%.
Everything you have, everything you own, everything you ever made, everything that your entire civilization is made out of, unless it's made of wood or entirely out of light elements.... it all comes from that .001%.
The 99.999% is out there in the rest of the solar system.
Now do you understand?
You, and I, and Elon Musk, and your sweet old granny, all of us, we grew up under conditions of grinding material poverty. We just don't see it that way because we have nothing else to compare it to.
We're used to it.
Are you starting to get the idea? Good, but we're not done yet. Now we're gonna talk about energy.
Here on Earth, we pull hydrocarbons out of the ground and burn them for energy. We could build fission reactors, but dumbass hippies made some movies, and now the retarded theater kids who run our government won't let us do that. They want us to go back to windmills, because they are retarded.
Windmills suck. Hell, even hydrocarbons suck. Fission is okayish, but the real energy source, the only one that matters in the long run, is hydrogen fusion.
On Earth, we can't really build fusion reactors that actually produce energy, despite the best efforts of engineers. That's not because the engineers are dumbasses like the theater kids. No, engineers are smart. They still can't do it because it's really really hard, unlike running a government.
Perhaps someday they'll succeed, but in the meantime, we're stuck burning hydrocarbons, until we hang all the theater kids and build fission plants instead.
But in space, there's a giant free fusion reactor waiting for us. In fact, we've been using it for millions of years. We call it the "sun".
In space, energy is free.
Oh, you have to invest in some solar panels, and they're only useful close to a star, but that's just nitpicky little details. Basic idea is that there's no power bill.
Build solar panels once, run 'em almost forever. On Earth, solar panels suck, and they're only useful for grid independence.
But in space, with nothing between you and the star but, well, space, then solar panels are awesome. And all the material and energy you need to build them is right there for the taking.
So, cheap material, free energy.
What else does a civilization need?
Computation? Well, guess what you can build a lot of with cheap material and free energy.
What this really all boils down to is that the only thing Earth has going for it is that it's a really nice place to build your house.
It's a crappy place to build a mine or factory.
The total value of everything off Earth — and I'm just talking about the solar system, not the rest of the universe — exceeds the total value of everything on the Earth by eleventy-billion percent.
In the future, most of us will continue to live on Earth, unless we really screw it up by not hanging all the theater kids. But all the mining, all the manufacturing, all the making the stuff, and all the making the stuff that makes the stuff, will happen in space.
And there will be a lot more of it.
All we have to do is get the tools we need from down here where we built them, to up there where we need them. So that we can build more tools out there, more and more and more of them, forever.
There's only one snag.
It's really hard to get things off Earth. We haven't really done much of it until very very recently.
SpaceX is the "very, very recently". SpaceX now owns about 80% of humanity's lift-to-space capacity, and no one else is even close.
That's 80% of the pipeline to infinite wealth. And first dibs on all the real estate out there, too.
In the old West, the railroads were money trees, because they didn't just own the transport, they owned the destination.
And there's about to be a frontier again, except this one's bigger, and it comes with a built-in second industrial revolution.
Make sense now?
Mike Ward retweeted
the problem with social security, like many other unstated agreements that keep a country running, is that it's based on an intergenerational contract. a bet on the future.
you pay for today's retirees and trust that there will be enough young people to pay for you when you're old.
the whole thing hinges on the assumption that there will always be enough productive young people to support the old.
that contract is now falling apart because of fertility collapse.
some had the brilliant idea to compensate for the missing babies by importing strong military-aged workers. unfortunately it turn out they cost more to a country than the retired and dying 90yo
so there are basically 4 solutions:
1. make more babies (not happening anytime soon, for reasons beyond this post)
2. increase longevity so that people can keep working until they're 150 (the tech is still too far away)
3. full-blown AI + robotics automation
4. the pillow
I understand that the social security conversation is political poison. But I’m not running for office so I don’t care about that. Taking huge chunks out of the paychecks of young working Americans in order to pay for the retirements of older Americans who have a net worth several times higher, all to prop up a system that everyone knows likely won’t be there when those younger people are retirement age themselves, is morally abhorrent and economically insane. Everyone knows it, too, but we’re held hostage by elderly politicians who refuse to surrender power, and older voters who, as a group (with exceptions, obviously), simply don’t care all that much about the financial and cultural future their grandchildren will inherit.
Mike Ward retweeted
Not sure who needs to hear this, but...
GenX are not "Boomers" AND
Most of us work full time, so yeah, we can't just drop what we're doing to babysit, even if we'd like to (and unless you're one of the little shits constantly blaming us for your woes, or cutting us off for how we vote, or talk about individual rights, we would love to help)
We've been told since we were KIDS we were paying into something we were unlikely to get when we were old.
We have paid for "boomer" retirement benefits AND millennial college loans AND "stimulus" packages AND bailouts AND Medicare Part D, and SNAP and SCHIP AND Obamacare subsidies.
AND we aren't walking around expecting our kids will take care of us when we're old (in part bc they're constantly reminding us that they can't/won't and we better have a plan) so we're trying to work as long as we can and stay as healthy as possible so they don't even have to worry about it.
We are also the generation that had kids later, couldn't afford to buy a house until our mid to late 30s, and has kids who are more likely than any prior generation to not even want kids, so worrying about grandkids we may or may not have isn't as top-of-mind as one might think.
Worrying our kids' generation will adopt MAID and make it mandatory for us once we hit 72 "to combat climate change" or some such, *is*
But tell me more about how "selfish" WE are.
Mike Ward retweeted
This whole "blame the boomers" narrative is getting old.
If the people you're complaining about are 46–61 years old, most of them aren't boomers. They're Gen X.
And honestly, Gen X is exhausted from hearing the same complaints on repeat.
We didn't get free college. Most of us never had guaranteed pensions. Housing wasn't magically cheap when adjusted for inflation, and plenty of us spent decades working, sacrificing, and starting from scratch.
Every generation faces its own challenges. Ours did too.
The difference is that we were taught that life isn't fair, nobody is coming to rescue you, and success usually comes from adapting, working, and pushing forward when things don't go your way.
You don't have to like that message, but constantly looking for someone else to blame won't improve your situation.
At some point, personal responsibility matters more than finding a new generation to be angry at.