For entertainment purposes only

Earth
Joined February 2007
There is a deeper truth which I struggle to fully articulate: Truth is a story. Narrative shapes Truth. Truth flows from Narrative. "That's not true", your story says, "I have facts!" But facts alone are meaningless. The Narrative determines which facts are relevant and reliable, provides the context and meaning, labels the heroes and villains, and declares what is accurate information and what is harmful misinformation. And so we are ruled by stories, Narrative. All of our most divisive issues are ultimately a war of narrative. We may argue over facts, but the real conflict is narrative, and the struggle for who controls The Narrative. These narratives are unavoidable. We can't make sense of the world without them. But we can become aware of them, stepping back from the conflict to realize that both sides are each working from within their own narrative bubbles. The path to peace is not in domination, one narrative wiping out all others, but in understanding. We can develop a meta-narrative that recognizes and integrates all other narratives, not as true and false but more like species of bacteria, spreading, competing, mutating, colonizing minds, sometimes helping and sometimes harming. We must understand that those colonized by one or the other narrative are generally unaware, to them it is simply the truth. This meta-narrative brings awareness, and with it some degree of freedom. We can choose our narratives. We can change our narratives. And through this process of awareness, integration, and refinement, all narratives are transformed. This is the beginning of Alignment.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
Intuitive’s da Vinci robot changed surgery like nothing else in the past 50 years. da Vinci was a complete speciation event, not an offshoot of anything else before it. So why would the next megashift be an offshoot of da Vinci? Obviously it won’t. That’s why Intuitive won’t be the one to build it. Neither will the startups mimicking Intuitive’s arbitrary definition of what a surgical robot is. You have to rewrite the entire playbook. You’re going to fail a lot. Investors will tell you you’re an idiot, leaving easy money on the table. Surgeons will ask why you can’t just be more like da Vinci. This is all anathema to medtech people. In a space that rewards incrementalism and conformity, most people have a strong immune reaction to true disruptive change. But if you ignore the haters, learn fast from failures, and build in the direction of meeting real user needs, the right people will enthusiastically believe. And in the beginning, that’s all you need.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
Modern problems: trying to figure out if someone emailed you something that seems a bit strange or their agent did.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
Sydney Sweeney votes in California! 😆 BRILLIANT ad by the Prop 39 campaign. Common sense is on the ballot in this election—and not just in the governor's race. YES on Voter ID!
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New video! "Why Paul Buchheit Invested in YC Founders Before Almost Anyone Else" youtube.com/watch?v=xJHTpzd6…
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
Y Combinator was a category on Jeopardy! last week.
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In a system designed to make fraud easy to commit and difficult to detect, fraud should be the default assumption
This supports our claim that California has no safeguards to prevent noncitizens from voting. Anyone can register and vote under California law with no verification required. With ZERO cooperation from CA officials, we verified that at least 20,000 noncitizens are receiving ballots. The actual number is much higher.
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No amount of new taxes will ever be enough to pay for the endless fraud and looting. It's like feeding a cancer tumor. The more resources they get, the more powerful they become, and the more impossible it becomes to stop the spiral towards bankruptcy.
California is losing at least $50 billion a year to fraud, so even under the most optimistic assumptions, the “wealth tax” will only collect enough to pay California’s fraud budget for 7 months.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
The Dalton and Michael channel & Standard Cap YouTube channel are unironically the best startup alpha out there.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
Once you see that the people dismissing Tesla are the same kinds of people running our cultural institutions, the decline of those institutions over the past 10 years makes a lot more sense.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
The SF homelessness trap, simply: Advocates convince liberals they're helping locals priced out of housing. The city spends billions on housing and services. But many recipients are drug users from outside SF. Users attract dealers. Drugs stay cheap, services stay generous, and more people come. Cartels see this and bring in cheap fentanyl. Problem explodes. Advocates mean well, but the unintended consequences are too great. The money we spend on housing, treatment, and healthcare for out-of-town drug users could go to San Francisco Kids & Schools.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
The idea that poverty is man-made rather than the default starting point is one the dumbest and most dangerous misconceptions in economics, politics and life.
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Leftism consistently produces poverty, misery, and oppression because it imposes a zero-sum frame in which individual success or advancement must necessarily be at others expense
This quoted post is unavailable.
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
My chat with @daltonc on Claude trying to kill our startup and the launch of MagicOS:
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
Socialists will cry about monopolies while begging to nationalize industry. Nationalizing everything is an impressive antitrust policy. One company, zero competitors, and the complaints department can issue arrest warrants lmao.
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SCREAM IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS LORD TORVALDS
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
When actual fascism happens Democrats cheer.
Major banks closed accounts of MAGA, pro-life and other conservative groups disfavored by Biden admin: bombshell report trib.al/Ttt6eY9
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Paul Buchheit retweeted
The question on a lot of founders minds: What do you do when Claude enters your market? I sat down with @alexdanilowicz from @magicpatterns to provide some thoughts and advice for founders imagining how they would react and rise to the occasion. In addition, we talk about Magic Patterns new MagicOS launch, a design agent built for the future.
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Important to understand. Labels are deception
My dear American friends, Someone just quoted my post saying "the anti-fascists are bringing more fascism." He's more right than he knows. Let me tell you the history of that word, because nobody teaches it to you. "Fascism" comes from Mussolini, Italy, 1919. "Antifascism" was born there a few years later, among his opponents: socialists, liberals, Catholics, communists. At that moment, the word meant something real. Then Moscow took it. In the late 1920s, the Comintern, Stalin's international arm, adopted a doctrine called "social fascism." The idea was simple: the moderate left, the social democrats, were fascists too. If you weren't with the Communists, you were a fascist. The word stopped describing an ideology and became a label for enemies. In 1932, the German Communist Party launched "Antifaschistische Aktion." Look at its logo: two flags in a circle. It's the same logo you see on Antifa banners in American cities today. Same symbol, almost a century later. Back then, that movement spent as much energy attacking the Social Democrats as attacking the Nazis. While the left tore itself apart, Hitler took power. After the war, the Soviet bloc made "antifascism" its official state religion. East Germany officially named the Berlin Wall the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." A wall built to keep its own people from escaping. Called antifascist. That's the whole trick. Whoever controls the word "fascist" decides who is allowed to speak. Orwell saw it in 1946, when he wrote that "fascism" had come to mean little more than "something I don't like." Real antifascists existed. The French Resistance. The soldiers who landed in Normandy. They fought fascism with their lives. They didn't need the word as a brand. Today, you live in a world of inverted words. Censorship is "fighting misinformation." Burning cities is "mostly peaceful." Disagreement is "hate." And the person screaming "fascist" at everyone who disagrees with him is usually the one who wants power without debate. So here's the test. When someone calls himself an antifascist, ignore the label and watch what he does. Does he want to silence opponents? Cancel speakers? Get people fired, banned, deplatformed? Then the label is a costume. I'm French. We've lived this. For decades, anyone in France who questioned immigration, taxes, or the size of the state was called "far right" or "fascist." Half the country has been labeled that way. The result was no debate, only exclusion. And a country that stopped growing. This vocabulary is now the vocabulary of the American left. Every Republican is "a threat to democracy." Every opponent is "fascist." And once your opponent is a fascist, everything becomes permitted against him. That's the logic of 1932, recycled. So, my American friends, before you vote, ask yourself one question: who wants to argue with you, and who wants to silence you? The answer tells you who the real fascist is.
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Brilliant. "That's the whole trick. Whoever controls the word "fascist" decides who is allowed to speak. Orwell saw it in 1946, when he wrote that "fascism" had come to mean little more than "something I don't like."" 100% correct.
My dear American friends, Someone just quoted my post saying "the anti-fascists are bringing more fascism." He's more right than he knows. Let me tell you the history of that word, because nobody teaches it to you. "Fascism" comes from Mussolini, Italy, 1919. "Antifascism" was born there a few years later, among his opponents: socialists, liberals, Catholics, communists. At that moment, the word meant something real. Then Moscow took it. In the late 1920s, the Comintern, Stalin's international arm, adopted a doctrine called "social fascism." The idea was simple: the moderate left, the social democrats, were fascists too. If you weren't with the Communists, you were a fascist. The word stopped describing an ideology and became a label for enemies. In 1932, the German Communist Party launched "Antifaschistische Aktion." Look at its logo: two flags in a circle. It's the same logo you see on Antifa banners in American cities today. Same symbol, almost a century later. Back then, that movement spent as much energy attacking the Social Democrats as attacking the Nazis. While the left tore itself apart, Hitler took power. After the war, the Soviet bloc made "antifascism" its official state religion. East Germany officially named the Berlin Wall the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." A wall built to keep its own people from escaping. Called antifascist. That's the whole trick. Whoever controls the word "fascist" decides who is allowed to speak. Orwell saw it in 1946, when he wrote that "fascism" had come to mean little more than "something I don't like." Real antifascists existed. The French Resistance. The soldiers who landed in Normandy. They fought fascism with their lives. They didn't need the word as a brand. Today, you live in a world of inverted words. Censorship is "fighting misinformation." Burning cities is "mostly peaceful." Disagreement is "hate." And the person screaming "fascist" at everyone who disagrees with him is usually the one who wants power without debate. So here's the test. When someone calls himself an antifascist, ignore the label and watch what he does. Does he want to silence opponents? Cancel speakers? Get people fired, banned, deplatformed? Then the label is a costume. I'm French. We've lived this. For decades, anyone in France who questioned immigration, taxes, or the size of the state was called "far right" or "fascist." Half the country has been labeled that way. The result was no debate, only exclusion. And a country that stopped growing. This vocabulary is now the vocabulary of the American left. Every Republican is "a threat to democracy." Every opponent is "fascist." And once your opponent is a fascist, everything becomes permitted against him. That's the logic of 1932, recycled. So, my American friends, before you vote, ask yourself one question: who wants to argue with you, and who wants to silence you? The answer tells you who the real fascist is.
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The consistent advice is, "don't hire big tech execs" The fundamental problem is that they've been RL'ed by an environment in which success is measured by headcount. They will make your company bloated and ineffective because in their experience, that's what success looks like
When you talk to successful founders, they always wish they'd hired fewer top managers from outside. I don't think I've ever met a founder who wished he or she had promoted fewer people from within.
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