stream of johnsciousness - thinking in public • building in private
This moment
Joined October 2012
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John Stephenson retweeted
So if you need a woman, just become the man who doesn't need a woman, and then maybe you'll get the woman you no longer need.
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John Stephenson retweeted
Le mathématicien et sculpteur japonais Kokichi Sugihara a créé une flèche qui ne pointe jamais vers la gauche.
Elle est pourtant imprimée en 3D : ses formes sont conçues pour tromper notre cerveau 🧠
John Stephenson retweeted
Almost half of US unicorns were founded by first-generation immigrants.
The chart is from my earlier research on the topic (I should update it — and will), but the point stands: immigrants have an outsized impact on US innovation.
At the time, 65 countries had produced at least one US unicorn founder. I'm sure the count is higher now.
John Stephenson retweeted
Absolutely boggles my mind that 21-year-old investment bank interns are subject to stricter insider trading rules than members of Congress.
These guys have access to more material non-public information than anyone on Wall Street—legislative changes, pharmaceutical trials, classified military intel, defense contracts—and they’re using it to operate their own amateur hedge funds from the House cloakroom.
Pelosi and her serial drunk-driving husband consistently outperforming the market. Ro Khanna making thousands of trades every year. Hundreds of other examples, across both parties. It’s completely absurd.
If you want the extraordinary privilege of being one of the most powerful people in America, you—and all members of your immediate family—should be required to place your liquid assets in a trust that can only invest in the S&P 500, a bond market ETF, and a money market fund. You can change your allocation among the three choices quarterly, but that’s it.
No more call options on biotech companies that just told the FDA about a medical breakthrough. No more short-selling defense contractors that just briefed the Armed Services Committee about production delays. No more fake “blind trusts” whose rules aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
Show up, do your job, and faithfully serve the American people. If you don’t want to do that, go study for the CFA exams and test your mettle against Ken Griffin and Steve Cohen in the trading world (for some reason, I don’t expect your streak of beating the market to continue once you and your staffers are no longer getting confidential briefings).
But no more of this Capitol Hill Wolf of Wall Street bullshit. It’s corrosive to good governance, it undermines democracy and trading markets alike, and we, the American people, are done with it.
🚨BREAKING
Congressman Ro Khanna bought $MRNA back in June 30th.
Today, they announced a breakthrough cancer vaccine.
His investment is up 120% in less than 2 months.
John Stephenson retweeted
The press interest in Arday can be explained by the fact that ~40% of British journalists went to Oxbridge. It's an elite protecting its own status. If Cambridge can no longer tell the difference between fraud & excellence then the status of an entire elite class is in question.
John Stephenson retweeted
This is one of the most brilliant things I’ve seen on the web. I saw it a few years ago and then couldn’t find it. It’s such a gem.
John Stephenson retweeted
Tax the rich.
“New IRS data finds that the top 0.1% of taxpayers (roughly 154,000 returns) paid $440 billion in federal income taxes in their most recent year.
The bottom 80% paid $350 billion.
Meaning the top 0.1% paid more than the entire bottom 80% combined.” — h/t IRS, @Rothmus , @profstonge
John Stephenson retweeted
Mamdani wants to protect tax payer funded grocery store from non-NYC residents… they’ll need an ID card to enter.
You can make this up.
John Stephenson retweeted
Bill Maher Just SNAPPED on The Democrat Socialist Platform to DESTROY America
“DSA wants to get rid of our form of government, the Senate and ‘replace the President and Supreme Court’ Who could be this nuts? — The morons who are still wearing COVID masks”
John Stephenson retweeted
Omg. Jerry Seinfeld is a LEGEND.
“Pro-Palestine” nut jobs interrupted his show, take a listen to his response. I can’t stop laughing.
“You just gave money to a Jew. That cannot be a good plan for you”
H/t @HuntersOfNazis
John Stephenson retweeted
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum: “Your family came here from Peru really in the middle of the heat of the Shining Path. They were Maoist communist guerrillas in Peru. So why did your family come to America?”
New York City DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo: “The economic situation in South America and Peru was in a really bad place… much of what we could say was responsible for that actually was the imposition of capitalism and American imperialism. In many cases, it is actually what brings immigrants to the U.S. coming out of Latin America.”
Martha MacCallum: “They come here because they don’t like the imposition of American imperialism in the country that they’re in.”
Gustavo Gordillo: “Yes…”
Martha MacCallum: “That doesn’t make much sense.”
John Stephenson retweeted
PS: I'm coming for all of you. You have no idea what you have awakened. I'm a Spartan, and these are my ancestors.
John Stephenson retweeted
Elon buying Twitter and restoring free speech was unironically one of the most pivotal moments in the 21st century
Its effects will be studied for generations
John Stephenson retweeted
“Imagine in 1750, you're like, well, 98% of us work in farming, and then you come back from the future and you're like, you guys, 2% of people in the 1990s work in farming. It'd be like, so everyone's starving to death? Like, no, no, we're super fat, actually.”
Dr. Mike Israetel on the economic fallacy he says explains why AI won't cause mass unemployment:
"Once we have 4 billion robots doing labor in the world, which we're like orders of magnitude off of that currently, then we've just only doubled the human workforce."
"From 1700 to today, we've 10 or 20x'd the human labor force. And, seemingly, the economy's not like, ah, we don't need any more people, that's enough. We could just consistently have better jobs and pay people even more money."
"This idea that robots are gonna show up and all of a sudden we're all completely unemployed makes a technical fallacy in economics called lump of labor fallacy. It's the idea that all the jobs currently are the only jobs that could be."
"Imagine in 1750, you're like, well, 98% of us work in farming, and then you come back from the future and you're like, you guys, 2% of people in the 1990s work in farming. It'd be like, so everyone's starving to death? Like, no, no, we're super fat, actually."
@misraetel
John Stephenson retweeted
Nick Shirley uncovers an adult day care in Flushing, Queens with 7,000 phantom members.
Nick: “This public document says you have 7,899 members.”
Employee: “No, we don’t have 7,000 members.”
Nick: “So you’re overbilling then? You’re getting paid $1,600 per patient — that’s how you got $12.9 million in 2024.”
Employee: “Please leave.”
American taxpayer dollars at work.
John Stephenson retweeted
If you want to honestly ask yourself why millions of not-very-MAGA Americans are Republicans, or at least are open to voting GOP, watch this video and ask yourself if you really would enjoy being in the same room with Vocal Fry Guy here. Absolutely toxic for Democrats.
Graham Platner's rise happened entirely outside the Democratic Party's establishment, handpicked by a group of independent activists.
Before a woman Platner was romantically involved with publicly alleged that he sexually assaulted her, WSJ's Aaron Zitner reported on the strategy behind the activists' gamble on the Maine Democratic Senate nominee.
The sexual assault allegation, which Platner denied, has prompted top Senate Democrats and close allies to rescind their endorsements, cut off funding and call for him to drop out.
Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Tuesday that he had spoken with Platner and “in light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”
Watch more: 🎥 on.wsj.com/4fqyQPG
