USMC Vet. Retired. Hobbies are history, literature, tech, and hiking. I value intelligent, civil discourse, with a touch of humor and occasional sarcasm.
Joined November 2022
- Tweets22.1K
- Following1.2K
- Followers2.4K
- Likes20.7K
Ken Cook retweeted
BOOM 🚨 In about two months, a handful of buildings in Memphis will hold around 1.2 million Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, according to Elon Musk 🤯
To understand how massive that really is, you have to see it in real-world terms.
These GPUs come in racks of 72, which works out to roughly 16,700 racks. Each rack weighs about 3,000 pounds, so the hardware alone tops 20,000 tons. That's about three Eiffel Towers' worth of iron, packed into a handful of buildings in Memphis.
Powering it takes the energy of a major city. Once you count cooling and networking, each GPU pulls about 2 kW, so the whole site needs around 2 gigawatts.
That's enough electricity for about 1.5 million American homes, which is several times the number of homes in all of Memphis.
Then there's the raw computing power, and this is where it gets wild. At the 8-bit precision used for AI training, Colossus 2 can run about 6 sextillion calculations per second.
If every person on Earth did one calculation per second, nonstop, it would take humanity more than 20,000 years to match what this machine does in a single second.
And here's the kicker: this isn't even the finish line. Elon's stated goal for xAI is 50 million H100s' worth of compute by 2030, more than fifteen times everything you just read about.
Ken Cook retweeted
BOOM 🚨 SpaceX is about to add roughly 420,000 of Nvidia's most powerful AI chips in just two months, and Elon Musk just gave us a look at how it's happening.
It's all going into Colossus 2, SpaceX's AI data center in Memphis. The site is split into halls with nicknames, and two of them, Macroharder and Minihard, are already loaded with about 220,000 GB300 chips each.
Now two more are joining them. Elon says Gun Range is on track to come online by the end of November with the same setup, and Spam should follow in December with around 200,000 chips.
That's about $25–35 billion worth of hardware switching on before the year is out.
And here's the best part: the two new halls are built for completely different jobs.
Gun Range is a training machine, where AI models learn. Training is like a massive group project, with hundreds of thousands of chips trading notes nonstop.
To keep up, every chip gets a blazing 800-gigabit network connection, and the building is wired with an enormous amount of fiber.
Spam is an inference machine, where AI answers people's questions in real time. Each question can be handled by a small group of chips on their own, so they barely need to talk to the rest of the building.
That's why Elon says Spam needs much simpler networking and less than half the fiber. Less wiring means it can be built faster and for less money.
Think of it like a classroom versus a help desk. In a classroom, everyone learns together. At a help desk, each clerk takes care of their own customer.
And yes, the names are jokes. Spam's building used to store Hormel products (Hormel makes Spam), and Macroharder and Minihard take a shot at Microsoft.
We usually follow the AI race through model launches and benchmark scores. This is a reminder that it's also a construction race, and right now SpaceX is moving like the deadline was yesterday.
Macroharder and Minihard both have 220k GB300s with 800 gig nics configured for training. Gun Range will have the same. Spam (used to house Hormel products) will have ~200k GB300s, but configured for inference, so much simpler networking and less than half the fiber.
I walked the whole Colossus 2 site around midnight and again this morning.
Good progress by the SpaceX team and contractors. Gun Range is tracking to be operational by end of November and Spam in December.
Ken Cook retweeted
If they can track every dollar you make, you should be able to track every dollar they spend.
Ken Cook retweeted
The Red Barron guy is actually an example of this. Notice how he gave the kid a warm smile in the beginning of the video before he realized he was getting pranked. That was an incredibly significant detail
Have to wonder how the world might have perceived him had he decided to be more dismissive. I mean he's doing what seems to be a thankless job, overworked, etc so it would've made sense to sigh or roll his eyes. Maybe the internet would've laughed at him had he been a dick instead
I'd like to think that he intentionally chooses to be kind and approachable regardless of the situation or circumstance he finds himself in. It paid off here. It won hearts because it showed he was a really good guy who deserves to be helped and backed
Never know what can happen. He totally got "lucky" but in a way that was completely unpredictable. Who would've thought it'd come in the form of getting humiliated on camera, and that was how he'd get his mortgage paid off
But just shows, try to express the "best you" as often as you can. Be conscious of the energy you put out. Even if you're going through the wringer, nothing is in it for you, nobody is watching, etc act in a way that would allow you to still respect and be proud of yourself. The universe will inevitably and eventually reward it
The thing about luck is that it needs a conduit. There's an infinite supply of it in the universe but if you aren't energetically attractive enough then it just continues to sit idle in the air
You're about to do some random errands. "I probably won't see anyone" so you decide to throw on the lazy fit instead of something that could be complimented on. Day off and you're in the house. "I definitely won't see anyone" so you half ass the getting ready process instead of stepping out of the bathroom clean and fresh
Ok so this insinuates that you should always try to come off a certain way. Yes but out of genuine self respect. It's simply the energy that matters. Who cares if someone sees it or not. It's the fact that you're perpetually telling your brain "I love myself so I want to express my best self. I am someone who is always open to receiving abundance. I am someone who actively wants the universe to know that I exist"
You don't discriminate in the way you show up in the world regardless of the situation. The decision to always try to embody the best version of yourself, whether that's through being intentional about your appearance, the way you walk, the facial expressions you carry as you go about your day
All vibrational signals you broadcast into the air that tell luck how to perceive and approach you. You don't go searching for it or else you scare it off. You just have to let it find you on its own by believing that you are actually deserving of it. And you create that belief through your actions
Act abundant and you will feel abundant. Feel abundant and you will want to take more abundant actions, which will give you more abundant feelings. Then before you know it your life changes. Opportunities start falling into your lap. "How did I get so lucky?"
Ken Cook retweeted
The year is 1873. Your wife tires easily and reads too much. The doctor prescribes the rest cure: six weeks flat in bed, no books, no visitors, fed on milk, forbidden to sit up without his permission. The man who devised it is the most famous nerve specialist in America, and the women come out of it quieter, which is taken as the cure.
The year is 1915. The hospital has a new way of delivering your child. Morphine, then scopolamine, and the mother wakes two days later with a baby she cannot remember having. They call it twilight sleep. The women are strapped into padded cots so they do not hurt themselves while they scream, and the straps are the modern part. The babies arrive blue and slow to breathe.
The year is 1945. The truck comes down your street fogging DDT, and the children run behind it in the white cloud because the man on the back says it is harmless. At the beach it is sprayed over the bathers on their towels. It goes on the cattle, over the barn, and across the kitchen table.
The year is 1948. Your son has trouble with his ears. The doctor slides a rod tipped with radium up each nostril and holds it there for the best part of ten minutes, and you bring him back three more times. Hundreds of thousands of American children get the same treatment. The cancers arrive in their fifties.
The year is 1962. The health visitor tells you breastfeeding is old-fashioned and the formula is scientific. By 1972 fewer than one American baby in four is breastfed at all. The formula is skimmed milk and sugar, with the milk fat taken out and vegetable oil put in.
The year is 1971. The family planning clinic fits a small plastic crab called the Dalkon Shield. Its tail is a bundle of fibres that wicks bacteria up into the womb. 2.8 million are fitted in America before it is withdrawn, and the company goes bankrupt under the claims. It had been sold as safe and superior.
The year is 1983. The doctor says your arteries are the butter's fault. The dripping tin goes in the bin, the yolks go to the dog, the margarine goes in the fridge, and you have the heart attack anyway, on skimmed milk, having done everything right.
The year is 2001. Your 15-year-old is low, and the doctor prescribes Paxil, because the trial in the journal says it is effective and well tolerated in adolescents. The raw data, reanalysed 14 years later, shows more suicidal thinking on the drug than on the sugar pill. The company pays $3 billion to settle. Nobody rings the house.
The year is 2009. The government has spent around £500 million stockpiling Tamiflu for the pandemic, on the strength of the manufacturer's trials. When the trials are finally prised loose five years later, the drug shortens flu by about half a day and nothing shows it keeps anyone out of hospital. The stockpile goes out of date in a warehouse.
The year is 2026. The doctor has ten minutes and a screen. The number is high, so the tablet is for life. The weight is high, so the injection is for life. The meat is bad for the planet and the oil is good for the heart, and the person in the chair is as certain as everyone who ever sat in it.
Every one of those was settled, by a committee, in a journal, with a doubter somewhere being laughed at. The rest cure, the straps, the fog, the rod, the formula, the crab, the margarine, the trial, the stockpile. All of it certain, all of it printed, all of it done to somebody who had asked for help.
You were never the one who was wrong. You were the one it was done to, and the only person in the story who did as they were told every single time.
The apology comes a generation late, in a footnote, addressed to nobody.
The next one is being drafted now.
Ken Cook retweeted
So, basically, 500 million Europeans expect 300 million Americans to protect them from 120 million Russians who can’t even defeat 40 million Ukrainians while those 500 million Europeans don’t even realize they are being conquered by 2 billion Muslims who claim they are being persecuted by 8 million Israelis. Is that about right?
1
Ken Cook retweeted
"Nationalize Starlink." Three words, 142K views. And the entire economic history of the 20th century screaming in the room.
Let me explain what would actually happen.
Start in 1920. Ludwig von Mises publishes an essay that will haunt every central planner: without private property, there are no market prices. Without prices, there is no way to calculate. A bureaucrat cannot know whether a ton of steel is more useful in a satellite or in a bridge. He guesses. He guesses wrong. And nobody pays when he's wrong.
In 1945, Hayek drives the point home. The knowledge needed to run an economy doesn't exist in any single brain or any ministry. It's scattered across millions of people, and prices are the only mechanism that can aggregate it in real time. Centralize the decision and you destroy the information.
This isn't theory. Look at the numbers.
In the US, from 2000 to 2025, overall inflation was about +90%. Now look at the sectors where government subsidizes, regulates, and protects the most: hospital services +271%. College tuition +194%. Textbooks +181%. Childcare +152%. Medical care +144%.
And the sectors exposed to competition? TVs: -97%. Software, toys, cell phone plans: all down in nominal terms over 25 years.
The more the state is involved, the more expensive and scarce things get. The less it's involved, the more abundant they become.
Space is the perfect example. NASA's Space Shuttle cost about $54,500 per kilo to low Earth orbit. Falcon 9: about $2,700. Twenty times cheaper. That's not my number, that's NASA's own study. A private company did in fifteen years what a government agency couldn't do in forty.
Starlink is the logical next step. Thousands of satellites launched on reusable rockets. High-speed internet for a remote village, a ship in the middle of the Pacific, a soldier on the front line. No government built that.
So you nationalize it. What happens?
First, you have to pay. SpaceX is worth somewhere around $1.75 to $2 trillion, and seizing it requires just compensation. That's more than a full year of the US defense budget, to buy something that already works.
Then the machine changes its objective function. Today it optimizes for cost, speed, iteration. Tomorrow it optimizes for budgets, procurement cycles, and subcontractors spread across as many states as possible to lock in congressional votes. We know how that ends: look at SLS, years late and billions over budget. When Starship blows up in a test, SpaceX learns and flies again. When a government agency loses a rocket, you get a commission of inquiry and years of paralysis.
And the power? The argument is "no private individual should have this much power." But nationalization doesn't eliminate power. It hands it to whoever sits in the Oval Office. And one day, that will be the person you hate most.
Here's what I deeply believe: humanity is figuring it out. The 20th century tested the state as the engine of value creation. The result: waiting lines, rents, and debt. The model that works is entrepreneurs with the people. Create value, offer it to people who are free to say no. And tear down everything that protects incumbents: rents, regulations that work as moats, patents that freeze innovation instead of rewarding it.
Elon understood this before anyone else. Tesla opened up its patents in 2014. SpaceX broke ULA's near-monopoly (Boeing + Lockheed) on launches. Starlink is making decades of telecom rents obsolete.
He isn't competing with the old system. He's setting a new standard. And when the new standard is twenty times cheaper, the old system doesn't reform. It disappears.
That's exactly why some people want to nationalize it. When you can't compete, you confiscate.
Nationalizing Starlink isn't taking back control. It's handing the future back to the system that already missed it.
Ken Cook retweeted
5 things that annoy introverts:
1. Uninvited interruptions during their cherished alone time
2. Being pressured to socialize when they need solitude to recharge
3. Overly crowded and noisy environments that overwhelm their senses
4. Constant small talk that lacks depth and authenticity
5. Being misunderstood as shy or anti-social, when they simply enjoy meaningful connections
Ken Cook retweeted
your dostoevsky reading guide, from beginner to final boss:
beginner
- white nights
- the gambler
- notes from underground
intermediate
- crime and punishment
- the idiot
- the eternal husband
advanced
- demons
- the house of the dead
- the adolescent
expert
- the brothers karamazov
- notes from a dead house
- poor folk
final boss
- the brothers karamazov (reread)
- demons (reread)
- trying to decide whether dostoevsky understood human nature or just understood suffering better than anyone else.
disclaimer: the levels are debatable. the idiot can humble you more than crime and punishment, and the brothers karamazov is a whole different commitment.
where would you place the idiot?
Ken Cook retweeted
I’m regularly amazed by the number of people I talk to that have very little knowledge, or even an inkling, of how the lives of billions will soon change with autonomous transportation, Robotaxis and robotics (namely Optimus).
Within 8-10 years, many..then most…will realize there’s no need to own a vehicle (though many will keep one for independence). Car payments, insurance payments and upkeep will largely disappear as household expenses. We’re talking massive monthly savings for most Americans.
With Optimus, households…most powerfully, the elderly…will have a friend, companion, cook, housekeeper and incredibly, the best doctor on the planet, right in their home with them.
GDP growth and productivity will absolutely skyrocket, which will allow for government debt totals to begin moving in the other direction. Slowly at first, and then, really really fast.
These are just a few examples of how the lives of average Americans will radically change for the better, inside of a decade.
When you extrapolate out the other unknown (but coming) advancements from this Innovation Revolution, I’ll just repeat what we’ve been saying for the last 4 years; we’re entering a time frame where there’s never been a better time to be an opportunistic optimist. The pessimists have this entirely wrong. Entirely.
It’s unbelievably exciting.
Ken Cook retweeted
Hopefully this post is understood and sheds light on the way I view the election landscape this year.
I don’t trust polling or media narratives and believe they are used to shape for desired outcomes. They demoralize you, you don’t vote, they win on the margins of a midterm year and its dynamics.
Midterms suck for the party in power, and they have for a century. Reagan lost seats in the House with a 63% approval rating. My skepticism doesn’t mean I see a “red wave” forming in a midterm Dems are supposed to win.
I do believe the GOP is favored to hold the Senate on the fundamentals of the races that will decide it, and believe there is a 1 in 3 shot Republicans hold the House - which is almost 3x better odds than history affords. This is due to redistricting and the fact that Dems have nominated DSA aligned candidates in seats they’d automatically win if not for that. The GOP is also short at least 6 seats they should hold this year for one reason or another.
My mind doesn’t read polling or formulas. It reads trends and sees each county as a unit on the battlefield. Every state has a blue map and red map - I only need to label a few bellwethers to give you a read on what is going on. There are simply races you CAN win (will certainly win, may win, could win in an upset) and then races you CANNOT win (take every House seat in Chicago, for example).
The Texas Senate seats falls into the fringes of that first group for Dems. In a few more years of transplants and Hispanics running right, perhaps more like Florida where there is zero shot. Dems get big vote margins from 4 counties, and modest vote margins in a few others. Those all have to be maxed out, and they need bad GOP county turnout and a full-on reversion of the Latino vote to 2016 splits.
It’s not that it CAN’T happen - it just takes a lot for it to happen and as such you should see a mind that views things at a granular level like an Army intelligence officer veteran.
There are 435 different House races, of which I think perhaps 35-40 are reasonably playable for either side, and 35 Senate seats, of which 12 are interesting this year. Everything else is noise and fluff.
Ken Cook retweeted
Map of The Journey of The Pequod from Herman Melville's epic Moby Dick.
The Pequod sails from Nantucket under Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale, working the Atlantic whaling grounds from the Azores to the Carrol Ground, round the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean, through the China seas to the Japan grounds and the Pacific Line, where the hunt comes to its ruin.
Here are the number locations:
1 - Nantucket
2- The North Atlantic Ground
3- The Azores Ground
4 - The Cape Verde Ground
5- Rio de la Plata
6 - The Carrol Ground
7- Cape of Good Hope
8 - The Crozet Grounds
9- Straits of Sunda
10 - Formosa and the Bashee Isles
11- The Japan Grounds
12 - The Line
Source: readingmaps.com/maps/moby-di…
Ken Cook retweeted
Higher ed is broken. Time to start over from scratch. It is irredeemable in its current form and it cannot be fixed....
Harvard hoards $55.7 billion while the top 10 college endowments hold $320 billion combined.
All of it tax exempt, all of them still charging six figure tuition, lobbying for more federal cash, and running as indoctrination centers.
These are wealth hoarding hedge funds that hand out degrees.
Strip the tax exemption and force them to spend it or lose it.
Ken Cook retweeted
Elon Musk believes that one of the most important abilities you can build is a commitment to lifelong learning and the courage to question what you hear.
Through companies such as Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has worked across various industries, from electric vehicles and space exploration to artificial intelligence and energy.
One notable aspect of his approach is the value he places on learning outside your main area of expertise. Rather than focusing on just one subject, he encourages exploring different fields, reading broadly, and strengthening your critical-thinking skills.
Expanding your knowledge can help you discover connections between ideas that others might miss and approach challenges from fresh perspectives.
However, learning new information is only one part of the process. You must also be willing to challenge assumptions, question traditional beliefs, and develop independent opinions.
In today's world, information is easier to access than ever before. The real advantage comes not from simply knowing more but from understanding how to apply what you learn effectively.
Continuous learning and independent thinking can help you adapt, solve problems creatively, and make better decisions in a constantly changing world.
Ken Cook retweeted
You know what's more expensive than $4 a gallon gas?
Paying student loans I never took out.
Paying for free food for someone that shouldn't even be here.
Paying healthcare for people that jumped the border.
Paying for infrastructure in a country I've never been to.
Paying for military protection for people that hate us.
Paying the salary of politicians trying to destroy this country.
Paying judge’s salary that no longer support justice.
These things are costing me a hell of a lot more than a gallon of gas…
Ken Cook retweeted
When the Falcon Heavy launched for the first time in February 2018, the payload was Elon Musk's personal midnight cherry Tesla Roadster with a mannequin in a SpaceX spacesuit sitting in the driver's seat. The car stereo was set to play David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on loop. The dashboard screen read "DON'T PANIC" in a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The car is currently orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars and will continue doing so for millions of years.
An engineer on the Falcon Heavy team described the payload decision meeting as the moment he realized his boss was fundamentally different from any CEO he had ever worked for. The standard payload for a test flight is a block of concrete or steel. Elon chose his car. When asked why, he said if the rocket blew up, "at least it would look cool." The engineer said nobody in the room laughed because nobody was sure he was joking.
The image of Starman (the mannequin) sitting in the Roadster with Earth visible through the car window became the most iconic space photograph since Earthrise (the Apollo 8 photo of Earth from the Moon). The image was not planned by a marketing team. It was planned by a man who reads Douglas Adams and listens to David Bowie and thought it would be funny to put his car in orbit around the sun.
The car carries a copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series on a storage device. Asimov's Foundation is about a man who foresees the collapse of civilization and builds a plan to shorten the dark age that follows. The book is Elon's favorite and the one he has cited most often as the intellectual foundation for his Mars colonization plan. The book is now orbiting the sun inside a car that is itself a piece of the plan the book describes.
There is a Tesla Roadster playing David Bowie, carrying Asimov's Foundation, floating past Mars every 557 days, and it will be there for millions of years after every person alive today is gone. The most expensive practical joke in human history is also a time capsule of the mind that launched it: a man who reads science fiction, listens to classic rock, drives electric cars, and builds rockets. Every object in the car is a piece of his personality launched into permanent orbit.
The Roadster will outlast every building, every company, and every human institution currently on Earth. In a million years, when everything Elon built has crumbled, a midnight cherry Tesla will still be circling the sun with David Bowie playing to no one. The longest lasting thing he ever made is a joke.
Ken Cook retweeted
Everyone needs to read this because @CynicalPublius carefully lays out how a coordinated color revolution playbook, using NGOs, narrative control, electoral triggers, and elite pressure is being run against our constitutional system right now.
Thank you for putting in the time and effort to connect the dots so clearly and educate Americans on the coup attempt unfolding in plain sight.
