Nick retweeted
I’ve spent a few days thinking about the Tesla Roadster reveal and landed somewhere I haven’t seen much discussion. I’m neither a Tesla fanboy nor a Tesla hater. And I couldn’t care less whether what we saw technically qualifies as a flying car. Three takeaways: (1) The risk of that live demonstration going horribly wrong was real. Almost no CEO would willingly expose their company to that kind of public humiliation for a product with so little financial upside. Elon did. (2) That willingness to attempt the seemingly impossible is what makes Tesla special. It’s also arguably Elon’s greatest contribution to America. He’s helped bring back something we’ve lost. The American spirit of chasing big scary ideas that most people think are impossible. That mindset is spreading across a new generation of founders and its long term impact on America’s future could dwarf anything Tesla ever sells. I think this is deeply underappreciated. (3) Can we just acknowledge how insanely cool that moment was? We’ve reached a strange place culturally where even extraordinary feats of human ingenuity immediately become arguments about why they don’t count. Not everything needs to be a debate. Sometimes we should just be able to stand back together and marvel at what humans are capable of. I’ve been both bullish and critical of Tesla’s ambitions over the years. But watching Elon and his team push the boundaries of what’s possible reminds me why I’m glad we have him. Whether the Roadster ever makes Tesla a dollar or impacts $TSLA stock price is almost beside the point. We need more people willing to risk failure in pursuit of things the rest of us think are impossible. Because when they succeed we all win.
Nick retweeted
I have not commented on the Shane Gillis monologue becasue I need time to process and heal.
Nick retweeted
The presumption that the Fed raising short-term rates reduces inflation is predicated on the belief that higher rates reduce demand and investment.
But what if higher rates don’t reduce demand and investment because the demand for intelligence and energy is unaffected by higher rates because winning the race for super intelligence has a near infinite ROI and the demand for compute will remain incalculable.
Why won’t higher rates at this unique moment in history therefore lead to more inflation as interest costs are embedded in everything?
And the problem is compounded as the more the Fed raises rates, the more inflation we will have and the more the Fed will need to raise rates further and so on.
But what if the old models don’t apply to the current paradigm and the Fed is wrong?
I think the Fed might have just made a mistake. Am I right or am I wrong?
If you get upset every time you get on X that says more about you than X. You can just block people that post upsetting things and the algorithm learns.
Nick retweeted
TOMMY PAUL JUST HIT THIS SHOT AGAINST CARLOS ALCARAZ AT THE US OPEN.
Around the net for the second time this tournament.
100 mph.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Nick retweeted
Tesla Robotaxi - How Many Vehicles are Needed?
If we assume each vehicle produces 150 paid miles per day, then 137 vehicles were needed last week (assuming 100% fleet utilization).
By the week of the Q3 earnings call nearly 500 vehicles will be needed (if the 17% weekly growth rate persists).
And by the end of the year the fleet would be around 2,000 vehicles.
By the way, if this 17% growth continues for another year, Tesla would need about 1 million vehicles in the Robotaxi fleet (not a prediction - just how exponential math works).
One Million Paid Autonomous Robotaxi Miles
And there we have it - two official data points from Ashok!
We can now infer a weekly growth rate from the 43 days from the Q2 earnings call to yesterday (Sept 3rd) and it's 17.06%!
My chart shows 984,969 miles. By Sept 3rd we can add another ~21,000 miles, so it would be over 1 million.
By the time we get to the Q3 earnings call, assuming the same growth rate, we'll be at about 3.5 million miles.
And by the end of the year it will be over 14 million.
My view is that the weekly growth in miles, with the introduction of the Cybercab into the Robotaxi fleet, could actually accelerate from here.
Nick retweeted
You guys are pathetic. They had plenty of USAID and UN money but spent it on “nature-based solutions” and “gender inclusion” workshops rather than sensors and sirens.
CNN is Pravda for woke malthusians
xitter.cf/shellenberger/status/2…
In January 2025, the Trump administration cut off funding for a long-running natural hazards program that aimed to identify and monitor landslide hotspots in Nepal. While the program the administration cut would not have been able to prevent the disaster that happened this past week, it represented a first step towards making those kinds of protections possible in a future where they are going to be needed more.
CLARIFICATION: This headline and story have been updated to better reflect the extent of the Project SERVIR-Hindu Kush Himalaya program. cnn.it/4qRfDLf
Nick retweeted
Climate change caused Nepal's deadly flooding, say the media. It's nonsense. In truth, climate activists diverted billions in USAID and UN climate funding from low-cost flood death prevention, mostly sensors and sirens, proven to save lives, into woke green ESG nonsense.
Obvious things are obvious
🚨 JUST IN: X has just rooted out a Chinese bot farm of 200,000 THOUSAND accounts influencing American politics, with hundreds of them running an influence operation against the construction of data centers in the US
The posts claimed that AI data centers "drive up household electricity prices" and "strain the grid"
"Others included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense."
"We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy."
Good! Purge them all! @elonmusk
Nick retweeted
Think about this for a moment.
The U.S. Navy has operated nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for over 60 years.
There are 11 big deck nuclear-powered carriers and 71 submarines currently in service that, mind you, are largely operated by 18–30-year-old men.
Yet, for some reason, the vast majority of “green” energy pundits I encounter online think nuclear fission is too dangerous to power society.
My theory is that this is because nuclear guarantees an economically prosperous future. Most climate activists, who are on the left, want economic activities to cease to “save the planet” (or in reality, redistribute wealthy. They know deep down that modern industrial economies like the U.S. and China cannot run on solar and wind power alone. That’s why China isn’t decommissioning coal despite massive solar additions in recent years.
Government-mandated solar and wind guarantees that the left achieve the economic policies they want. If they make it difficult for industries to thrive, they drive them out of business.
Nick retweeted
This is because the anti-capitalist left is not actually against people being crazy rich. They're against certain types of people being crazy rich.
Artists and athletes make sense to them because they've played music and sports and because their success can be explained by "luck" and "talent". Messi's wealth is not offensive to them because they understand Messi is much better at football than they are.
But when it comes to business, the anti-capitalist leftist has no framework for understanding why Jeff Bezos might be super rich since 99% of them have never ever created a product, business or service that was of value to other people. They've never taken entrepreneurial risk. They've never employed people and felt the burden of responsibility that comes with that. They've never pick up a business and given it a play in the way they've picked up a ball or a guitar.
They *literally* don't understand wealth creation. They think there is a fixed amount of money and the only thing a business does is split it unfairly.
It's why they rage at Elon and other successful business leaders. Because they genuinely don't understand why they're wealthy.
Also, and this is just as important, athletes and artists are disproportionately young, attractive, "diverse", left wing etc. Business leaders are "evil" middle aged white men whose success offends the average anti-capitalist leftist because they don't understand a) what it is they do and b) that Elon Musk has the same talent advantage on them as Messi does, it's just harder to measure.
To the idiots sharing the countries that are older than the USA today ...
xitter.cf/i/grok/share/71f5c93d2…
Nick retweeted
America is a combination of Greek ideas, Roman law, natural rights, consent of the governed, and Judeo-Christian morals. If you don’t accept or value those things, you don’t really believe in the American idea. But you still get to enjoy the protections of the system. And people have the right to be suspicious of you. Thats the point.
The freedom to try, to speak, to succeed AND to fail.
It’s the fail part that needs to be accepted. Failure can’t be legislated out of existence, because without the freedom to fail, American exceptionalism has no meaning.
But no matter the outcome, we can all enjoy meat, booze and Sunday football. Unless you’re a gay vegetarian, then there’s stuff on other channels. You really can’t lose with the variety capitalism has supplied. Or you can, and be a negative, miserable, victim-complex parasite.