Travis is an apex predator put on ice in 2017 and only recently reactivated from cryogenic slumber. Standards for male behavior have moved so far that he's actively perplexed by it. Our current ecology was last home to performative frat bros nearly a decade ago. So when Travis tells TBPN he jet skis to work, and Jordi + John ask whether he does his best thinking on the jet ski, he pauses. You can visibly see him get confused, with an expression like "What the fuck are you guys talking about?" Then he quite literally voices his frustration: "No guys...it's a fucking notch on the belt. Who else do you know who jet skis to work? Nobody. I'm the guy." Even the literal technology brothers are incapable of fathoming a man who does things just for the bit. Travis in 2026 is like the T-rex from Jurassic Park 2 who finds himself in modern day San Diego being like, yo, what the FUCK is this place? And then just stomps everything in sight. nitter.cf/tbpn/status/2081039302…

I didn't manifest Maggie at all. But I did become open to her. Right before I met my wife my friend Michelle staged an intervention to tell me she was worried about how disgustingly single I was. I'd recently been dating someone from Hinge and asked to see her again. She texted: "Do we even like each other?" and I had a sudden realization that I was blind to what I actually wanted in life. I hadn't been open to getting married because dating was a fun hobby I didn't want to give up. When I finally met my wife it was the summer of '21 on a sailboat hosted by @lisacuesta. I was immediately smitten by her. Maggie then as she is now was a total beacon. A ray of light. Our friend Mike says if you put 100 people in a line anyone could pick Maggie out for her radiance. But I barely talked to her. We were both trapped in our own convos and I figured oh well, I guess I'll never see her again. Back to being single! But a few months later I saw her again on a rainy evening at an event hosted by @julesrosenberg. I was hitting on some other girl and basically Heisman'd her to get to Maggie. She didn't remember me from the boat at all and actually negged me for not being memorable. But we exchanged numbers and because we both worked in crypto I knew we were both headed to ETH Lisbon. At the time, Maggie was putting gems on people's faces at parties. Like she'd go around with packs of gem stickers in her purse and face gem anyone who wanted them. It made her instantly popular at any party because people would see the gems, ask where they got the gems, they'd say "Maggie," the person would find Maggie to get gems, etc. Anyway in Lisbon I saw people with gems on their faces so I knew Maggie was nearby. When I finally found her I asked her to gem my face and--this might be my own fabrication but it's become part of the lore--her hand was trembling slightly as she applied the gems. It was then that I knew she really liked me. I eventually invited her to a party as an oblique way of asking her out, we started talking, and we never stopped. We still yap at each other incessantly and now we have a daughter who yaps with us.

"what's your schedule today" is actually genocide for distraction-sensitive individuals

Ideology is a convenient refuge from self-disappointment. Eric Hoffer from his book "True Believer": "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves." Absolute banger.

Chronic pain has a significant neuroplastic component. It's not "in your head." It's real. But awareness of pain can worsen it, meaning it can exist in the absence of mechanical defect. Once you realize pain is no longer protective, you can unlearn it. You can deprogram pain.

what's a good beginner math for someone just getting into math?

After IBM's Watson beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy in 2011, it was revealed that Watson could time the buzzer perfectly. When Watson and Jennings had similar confidence in their ability to answer correctly--which was most of the time--Watson would win the buzzer race. Today, when agents can massively fan out and out-click humans, "drops" become useless. You can't be earlier than a bot. You can't be first ahead of an agent. Everything will become a market. Everything will be priced.

Michael and Susan Dell's gifts of $250 to children today will be worth $14,500 in 60 years. In real terms. In today's dollars. I genuinely can't get over how cool that is. To paraphrase Warren Buffett, all you have to do is bet on America.

one of the things we ban in our household is the use of the word "poor" if you are aware of frontier labs, much less the specific financial circumstances that allow one to redeem equity for an extravagant home in a (checks notes) premier south bay suburb you are not poor

You can take care of your child's college and retirement for $1,000 a month. If you contribute $415 to a Trump Account and $585 to a 529 each month for the first 18 years of your child's life, they will have: - at 18, a 529 worth ~$252,000 - at 67, an IRA worth ~$5.5 million These are in real terms as long as your contributions keep up with inflation. So for $1,000 a month through age 18, you get to say: "We already took care of your college and your retirement. It's up to you to figure out everything in between." Compounding is insane.

last week i took Maggie to Rolo's for her birthday we sit next to a hot Ridgewood couple with neck tats he's dressed like an oil derrick worker and she's dressed like a BDSM schoolgirl we eat a transcendent burger + dirty gin martini and this incredible brown butter tart thing for dessert (lasagna also good) then an electrical transformer explodes outside, vomiting green sparks onto the street and trapping everyone inside the restaurant FDNY blocks off the intersection we decide to make a run for it out the side door, high voltage be damned it's pouring rain we get on the Jackie Robinson in standstill traffic because cars are waiting single file to ford the shallowest part of a flooded highway underpass takes an hour longer than expected to get home a perfect date night wrapped in a russian doll of logistical nightmares New York in a nutshell

SF tech rejects sex appeal not because it's not effective but because it's too distracting. NYC is too hot. Too steamy. Too much sex appeal. Every single person in New York City wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and asks, "How am I going to raise the average horniness of this town?" SF has no such problem, no such mirror, is uninterested in sex in fact, is basically smooth down there like a Barbie doll. New Yorkers are too committed to desire and desirability to take the vow of near-celibacy necessary to solve humanity's hardest problems. SF as an organism will always reject sex.

> rolling around in bed with toddler > tickle_torture.exe > she seems kind of uncomfortable > i stop > she sits straight up > looks me dead in the eye > signs "more" in sign language mfw

Bessent to the bond market: “I'll buy as many bonds as you have, right now, at 5.25%. Sell me all you want. Then go fuck off.”