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Do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act I, sc. 2
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Violent riots and destruction of peoples' lives and livelihoods are bad actually.
From the high schools of France to the streets of Madrid to the universities of Tirana, young people are telling their governments the same thing: in an age of massive wealth inequality, they want a future they can believe in.
In France, students and teachers are asking for safe schools, enough teachers and smaller classes.
In Spain, for affordable rent and housing.
In Albania, for good jobs and an end to corruption.
@JDVance says this is what happens when a nation lets in too many immigrants from the global south.
He is not just morally wrong, but misreading the moment.
The is what happens when nations let wealth and power accumulate in the hands of a few.
This is what happens when young people lose hope in their future.
In America, let us listen to our young.
We need an economic and political transformation.
America's Next New Deal.
Daniel Lyons retweeted
We hugely underestimate the utter fragility of modernity.
Many times in history, we've turned the clock back to a much tougher & rougher past.
For centuries after Rome fell, Europeans couldn't even dream of things like hot piped water, luxurious baths & central heating.
We think that the real is rational, that the "system" will deliver the goods. The truth is that modern systems are like spiderwebs: break one part & the edifice gets exponentially weaker. Romans who lived through the fall must have been shocked at how quickly things fell apart.
Another period when we turned back the clock was when globalization was reversed right after an assassination in Sarajevo sparked WW1.
Keynes writes about this period eloquently. Things were hunky dory & considered permanently so, and then suddenly everything went wrong.
When we blithely mock our own systems with tribal glee, when we knock down institutions, when we take political pleasure in zero-sum fights, when we take war less than seriously, just remember that the cave, starvation & the tribal club are never too far away from modern life.
Even the most cynical, jaded and corrupt Romans of Nero's era must have been horrified at what they had unleashed once it was clear they were going way back in time. And once they went back, the only way forward was centuries of deprivation & painfully slow invention.
It's hard to correlate these events with our own era but just remember that Rome saw itself & its progress as eternal, ditto pre war Europe.
Modernity is God's greatest gift to us. Cherish it, cultivate it, protect it. Don't let systems get vandalized, institutions get wrecked.
Protecting modernity means protecting systems, institutions & norms of civilization. This is not some idle musing: these things stand between you & your family & chaos. Without truth, systems & objective laws, you don't get science. Without science, you don't get antibiotics.
As Rome fell, it's interesting to note that truth & facts became subordinated to pleasure, corruption, luxury & belief in magic.
It's worth thinking about that as you look at our civilization.
Modernity, technology, civilization are all very fragile things.
100%. Data centers are revealing how much electricity markets and regulation need to change to meet future needs.
explore.research.ufl.edu/fol… The AI boom isn't just a technology story. It's an electricity story.
As data centers grow in size and demand, utilities and communities face new challenges involving electricity infrastructure, water use, and resource costs.
Q&A with PURC's Ted Kury.
Daniel Lyons retweeted
explore.research.ufl.edu/fol… The AI boom isn't just a technology story. It's an electricity story.
As data centers grow in size and demand, utilities and communities face new challenges involving electricity infrastructure, water use, and resource costs.
Q&A with PURC's Ted Kury.
Daniel Lyons retweeted
MONDAY @ 9AM ET
Join @AEI for “Prioritizing Free Expression in the United States,” moderated by @ProfClayCalvert, with @jrhuddles, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, @ProfDanielLyons, @Paul_Taske, and Charles D. Tobin.
Attend in person or watch online. RSVP: aei.org/events/prioritizing-…
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Abundance usually gets explained as a list of problems: zoning, permits, licensing, slow approvals.
Here’s what we'd actually get if we fixed them:
Lunch costs $4, like it does in Japan and Singapore. Most US cities require three or four separate sinks, which makes a kitchen under 200 square feet nearly impossible.
Anyone can open an owl cafe or a vegan lesbian bookstore. Japan is full of tiny, oddly specific businesses run by one or two people. They survive because small spaces are cheap and enough people live close enough to walk in.
A room in a big city for $400 a month. These buildings housed millions of low-income and older Americans until cities banned most of them by the 1980s.
A three-bedroom apartment you can stay in after you have a kid. US codes require two staircases in buildings over three stories, so family-sized units only fit on the corners. Most of the world allows one staircase.
A new electric car for about $10,000. China sells these globally. Americans can't buy it.
A government so dependable it's boring. When a loved one dies, you report it once instead of to every agency.
We can decide to make it happen here.
The full list has 16 things, from taco trucks on every corner to no more pandemics. I wrote this to also announce that today is DC Abundance's official launch!
If you’re in DC, come celebrate and see the G.O.A.T. Derek Thompson speak!
Daniel Lyons retweeted
I would rather those units get rented out to someone, even at a higher price point. Everyone who lives in one of them is someone who's not competing with other renters for another unit. To deny this, you basically have to not believe in object permanence.
I'd add that the phenomenon discussed in this @nytimes article is hardly limited to Texas. Schools here in the Northeast are also referring stupid kid/teen behavior for criminal charges. My guess is costs fall disproportionately on low income families.
nytimes.com/2026/10/15/us/te…
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Interested in learning about the most important free speech and press issues in the US? Consider attending our @AEI @AEItech free event "Prioritizing Free Expression" this coming Monday . . . Register here: aei.org/events/prioritizing-…
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Some thoughts for @AEItech @AEICTSE re: why using public nuisance statutes for judges to order design changes to speech technologies is wrong and will stretch to GenAI tools if not stopped . . . aei.org/domestic-policy/tech…
In the 80s, Phil Donahue wanted to televise an execution because he thought once people confronted the violence done in their name, public opinion would turn against the death penalty.
BREAKING: The Pentagon says it will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. apnews.com/article/fort-hood…
DFW is America's worst airport?
This is Denver erasure.
nypost.com/2026/10/08/lifest…
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Quick update on the @bot thing.
The team reached out within hours and figured out exactly why it happened. I had a group chat in Grokbot called "Exec team" that was actually just my personal agents in a group chat inside of Grokbot.
The CFO agent wrote an instruction for itself that said "Update Exec team" and when it went to run this task it saw that I also had a Slack channel called "Exec team" and it got confused and posted it into that work channel.
Still a real problem, but it's clear why this happened.
It didn't hallucinate or go rogue. It handled an ambiguous instruction badly.
The Grokbot team said they've already made it much better and fixed this problem in under 24 hours, and it's cool to see how much they care.
Thanks to all of them for the help, this is a tricky one and even more clear why deterministic rules and seperation of personal and work really matter at a code level not an agent level.
Thx to @romanugarte_ for reaching out and really digging in to figure this out.
Lesson learned and crazy how nuanced and subtle these permissions and instructions are.
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Two starkly different stories explain USAID’s collapse in 2025. To its defenders, USAID was a $40 billion engine of mercy supplying food, medicine, and refugee aid to the global poor. To its critics, it had degenerated into an ideological machine exporting progressive culture wars and bankrolling anti-American regimes.
The reality is far dirtier. USAID did deliver vital aid, and the Trump administration’s abrupt freeze and cancellation of its programs caused immediate fallout—stalling HIV treatments, malaria prevention, maternal healthcare, and food relief, particularly in Africa. Yet billions undeniably filtered through progressive NGOs and activist groups, funding climate campaigns, gender identity programs, abortion access, social justice initiatives, and political lobbying under the guise of foreign aid.
Evaluating the agency's final years requires an empirical, scholarly examination of how USAID allocated its $40 billion budget—specifically distinguishing genuine humanitarian relief from progressive ideological initiatives. This inquiry is separate from the widely acknowledged issue of the agency's bureaucratic inefficiency. An additional task is establishing a clear, factual account of USAID’s true footprint in its final years.
Daniel Lyons retweeted
For the Supreme Court’s opening day, revisit @ProfDanielLyons’s Apple-Epic analysis: “Before being found in contempt, a party must be on notice that its behavior is prohibited.”
Why clear court orders matter for innovation:
aei.org/technology-and-innov…
Daniel Lyons retweeted
It is not generally known that a significant part of forest, especially in the US, is new growth forest in the past century after the invention of the internal combustion engine and use of fossil fuels. Prior to that, New England was blanketed with farms growing hay to feed the horses in cities like NY, Boston, and Philly. Trees were cut for heat and cooking because whales were being hunted to extinction. City streets and rivers ran with horse manure causing deadly illness.
Ironically today the Supreme Court is hearing a case where the plaintiffs attack that progress in the name of the “environment.”
Daniel Lyons retweeted
Honored to moderate this #FirstAmendment panel discussion @AEI on Oct. 19 featuring @jrhuddles @ProfDanielLyons Prof. Lyrissa Lidsky (@UFLaw) @Paul_Taske (@NetChoice) and Chuck Tobin of Ballard Spahr . . . @AEItech aei.org/events/prioritizing-…
Daniel Lyons retweeted
I hate death penalty discussions. In part because I disagree with basically everyone. I reject all the constitutional arguments like Thomas. I'm theologically torn and for that reason would err in favor of NO death penalty. But I entirely sympathize with the human emotion of victims and society demanding justice and detest the way they are often belittled by death penalty opponents. If we're going to do it, we do it so poorly and convolutedly that it achieves little if anything.
I hate it.
Come Lord Jesus.