Optimistic Steve retweeted
First-time home buyer wonders why his realtor made $10k for the transaction
Optimistic Steve retweeted
PSA on tipping:
For anyone visiting the US right now, we do tip at restaurants. It is customary to do so, but it does vary depending on the place.
The only places that you should expect to tip fully on is at full service dine in locations.
If they seat you, take your order, serve you, etc the standard tip is 15%. It's not 18%, it's not 20%, it's 15%
That being said, that is for average service. If they go above and beyond, I will tip far more than 15%. 20-30% is not out of the ordinary for me, if they are giving amazing service.
If they give me bad service, I will tip less than 15%. Rarely less than 10% but I have left a $2 tip on a $90 meal because the waitress was genuinely rude and caused us to have a less than stellar dinner.
Now if you order at a kiosk or front service desk, get your own drinks, etc, 15% is grossly overkill. Do not feel obligated to do so. Generally speaking, I leave a few bucks for bringing my food and cleaning, but that's all they are doing.
Coffee shops, ice cream shops, etc do not necessitate tips, even though the staff will ask for them, sometimes very passive aggressively. Only tip if you want to there, generally because the staff proved they deserve it.
Optimistic Steve retweeted
Kevin O’Leary says people in credit card debt shouldn’t be buying coffee
“If you have a credit card balance that goes into the next month and you’re spending $5 on a coffee, you’re crazy”
“I’ll give you permission to buy a coffee for $5 if you have no balance on your credit card at the end of the month”
“The reason I own all the credit card companies is people are paying 23% interest”
“Why would you do that to yourself? I can’t make 23% in the market every year. Why would you let someone do that to you?”
“So no, no coffees for you except the one you make at home for 19 cents unless you pay off your credit card”
Optimistic Steve retweeted
I don’t understand why I have to subsidize that companies ability to have employees!
Optimistic Steve retweeted
That “paper” Starbucks cup you drink hot coffee from? It’s secretly lined with plastic.
Joe Rogan went off on this: When you pour hot liquid into those cups, you’re basically drinking out of a plastic-lined condom. Paul Saladino literally dissolved one on camera and showed the plastic residue left behind.
The lining contains PFAS (“forever chemicals”) that leach into hot liquids, linked to hormone disruption, increased cancer risk, and metabolic issues.
Joe’s simple fix: Switch to glass or stainless steel. Stop cooking your drinks in plastic.
Have you ditched paper cups for hot drinks yet, or are you still using them? What’s one small swap like this you’ve made that actually stuck?
Optimistic Steve retweeted
🚨 Clearing your cookies does nothing.
That is not how they track you anymore.
Texas A&M and Johns Hopkins just published the first peer-reviewed proof.
It is called browser fingerprinting.
Here is what they found and what actually stops it:
Optimistic Steve retweeted
Mark Zuckerberg just described the death of human connection on the internet and no one flinched.
One sentence. Fifteen years of erosion in twelve words.
Mark Zuckerberg: “Social media started out as people primarily interacting with their friends. And now… at least half of the content is basically people interacting with creators.”
You used to open your phone to see what your friends were doing.
Now you open it to watch strangers.
You did not choose this. The algorithm chose it for you.
It tested your friends against optimized strangers.
Your friends lost. Every time.
A stranger with better lighting, better timing, and a better hook held your attention three seconds longer than someone who loves you.
So the algorithm buried your best friend’s wedding photos under a cooking video from someone in Dubai you have never met.
And you watched the cooking video.
That was the first replacement. Friends for strangers. You barely noticed.
The second one is already underway.
If the algorithm already proved strangers outperform your real relationships, and AI can now build a stranger more engaging than any human alive, the math finishes itself.
The AI does not have a bad week. It does not post something careless and lose the algorithm’s favor. It does not burn out.
Every word calibrated.
Every frame tuned.
Every pause placed at the exact interval that keeps your thumb from moving.
A human creator competing against that is carving stone tablets in a world that just built the printing press.
The economics are not even close.
A person needs rent, sleep, and motivation.
The machine needs electricity.
When the cost of generating perfect content hits zero, the feed fills with faces that do not exist.
Voices that feel familiar.
Opinions that mirror yours just enough to feel like trust.
Personalities built from scratch to feel like someone you have known for years.
You will not know when the switch happens.
That is the point.
The feed does not care whether the thing holding your attention has a pulse. It cares whether you stay.
And a machine that knows your patterns better than you know yourself will always keep you longer than a person ever could.
This is not a warning. Half of it already happened.
You lost your friends to strangers and did not notice.
You will lose the strangers to machines and call them friends.
Somewhere in a different app, in a different tab, in a room you are sitting in right now, someone who actually knows you is living a moment you will never see.
Not because they stopped sharing it.
Because you stopped being where it was.
Optimistic Steve retweeted
I've been in real estate for over 35 years.
I've survived the S&L crisis. The dot-com bust. 2008. The pandemic.
And I have never, not once in three and a half decades, seen what I'm seeing right now in the rental market.
Downtown Phoenix: four months free rent on a 12-month lease.
Let that register. A landlord is giving away a third of the year for free just to get someone in the door.
West side of Phoenix near the Cardinals stadium? Two to three months free.
You can call it a "concession." You can call it a "move-in special." You can package it however you want.
But at the end of the day, this is a massive rent reduction. And it's happening because the market is drowning in supply with no way to absorb it.
Here's what happened.
When interest rates were low, everybody started building. Home builders. Condo developers. Multifamily guys. Office projects. Shovels went in the ground everywhere.
Then rates spiked.
But here's the thing about construction, once you break ground, you have to finish. You can't stop a two-year build halfway through because the Fed raised rates.
So every project that started in 2021 and 2022 kept going.
Almost 500,000 new apartment units hit the market in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
All at the same time. All are competing for the same renters.
More choices for renters means lower rents. It's that simple.
Now layer the expense side on top of that.
Our insurance across the portfolio went from $3 million to $4 million. One year. A million-dollar increase. And we're not in Florida or California where some operators can't even GET insurance
Rents don't go up by a million dollars. That reset came straight out of our cash flow.
Property taxes? Cities that gutted themselves with bad policies, defunding police, letting crime run wild, watching their downtowns empty out, they're not cutting their budgets.
They're raising property taxes to backfill the hole. We're seeing it everywhere.
Utilities are up. Payroll is up. The cost of a refrigerator is up. A five-gallon bucket of paint is up. Getting someone to come fix a gate or patch a roof? Up.
So let me paint the picture for you:
Revenue is flat or going backwards. In some markets, you're literally giving away months of free rent.
Expenses are climbing 3, 4, 5% every year with no signs of slowing down.
And if you're one of the operators sitting on floating rate debt that's maturing? Your mortgage payment just doubled.
It's a perfect storm.
I sat my entire company down, all 400 people, at the end of last year and said: "I don't expect any rent growth in 2026. Possibly not in 2027 either. Strap in."
its also the single best buying opportunity since 2010-2012
That's why I put together a FREE one-day virtual event with the sharpest minds I know.
you can sign up here web.thelimitlessexpo.com/hom…
Optimistic Steve retweeted
29% of all accidents are caused by speeding.
That means 71% are caused by driving the speed limit.
Statistically it's safer to speed...
Optimistic Steve retweeted
BREAKING: The U.S. Government has officially announced that @Tesla and LG Energy have signed an agreement to build a $4.3 billion lithium iron phosphate (LFP) prismatic battery cell manufacturing factory in Lansing, Michigan, with a 2027 start of production.
"American-made cells will power Tesla's Megapack 3 energy storage systems produced in Houston, creating a robust domestic battery supply chain," the U.S. Department of the Interior said in a statement.
Here's everything you need to know about Tesla's new Megablock, the latest in the company's industrial storage product lineup, which includes the new Megapack version 3:
Megablock:
• 23% faster to install with up to 40% lower construction costs
• Plug and play platform (hardware, software and services) delivered as one all from Tesla. It's a pre-engineered medium-voltage block that integrates next-gen Megapack 3
• Eliminated above ground cabling between the transformer and the megapacks using new flexible busbar assembly
• 91% MV round trip efficiency
• 20 MWh of usable AC energy
• Operates in temps of -40°C (-40°F) to 60°C (140°F)
• 248 MWh per acre
• 25-year life & >10,000 cycles
• With Megablock, Tesla is targeting to commission 1GWh in 20 business days, equivalent to bringing power to 400,000 homes in less than month
Megapack 3:
• Will be manufactured in Tesla's upcoming Houston Megafactory starting in late 2026. 50 GWh annual manufacturing capacity when fully ramped.
• 5 MWh of usable AC energy
• Weight: 86,000 lbs
• 28 foot long enclosure that can be shipped globally
• Optimized for up to 8-hour applications
• New drastically simplified thermal bay. Uses Model Y heat pump, but on steroids. 78% fewer connections, which minimizes failure points
• Larger battery module and larger battery cell
• 2.8 liter battery cell, co-engineered with Tesla's cell team
• LFP battery
• Operates in -40°C to 60°
• Went from 24 cable connections in Megapack version 2XL, down to 3 simple busbar connections
• 75% of the mass of Megapack 3 is battery cells.
• A single module in it weighs as much as a Cybertruck
• Tesla has enabled easier front access service, so there are no roof penetrations
• Drastically simplified bussing system
Optimistic Steve retweeted
Just wait until conspiracy theorists discover they’re part of a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation via conspiracy theories.
