Barackface: 8: Trump

Pope Leo XIV is infuriating MAGA Catholics Concern for the poor and the planet rubs some the wrong way ........... Pope Leo XIV, who authorised the mass, seems content to let the incense waft while taking Francis’s line on issues such as poverty, inequality and climate change. His first major text, Dilexi Te, describes protecting the climate, welcoming migrants and pursuing economic justice as sacred obligations. To admirers he is a compassionate reformer; to critics, the “commie” or “woke pope”. ........... Benjamin Harnwell, a correspondent for WarRoom, a MAGA podcast, said the traditionalists had been “bought off”. America’s conservative Catholics, many of whom voted for Donald Trump, had hoped for a pope who would keep quiet about migrants and capitalism, and lure back wealthy right-wing donors whom Francis had alienated. ......... Instead,
Leo has deplored America’s “inhuman” deportation policies.
At a meeting with American bishops in October he urged them to speak out on such issues. Shortly after Mr Trump called climate change “a con-job”, the pope berated leaders who “ridicule global warming” and proceeded to bless a chunk of ice from Greenland. Conservatives called the gesture paganism. ............ The shrillest reaction came after Leo said that supporters of the death penalty could not call themselves pro-life. Joseph Strickland, a bishop from Texas, wrote in an open letter that “the Church I love is being dismantled.” John Yep, head of Catholics for Catholics, a conservative group, noted that traditionalists were grateful Leo allowed the mass, but his stances on migrants suggest he is “not getting what is happening” in America. ....... Where Francis often acted brashly, Leo’s style is slow and careful. Leo is “more intelligent, more subtle than Francis and therefore more dangerous”, said Mr Harnwell. Although the new pope supports more input on policy and doctrine from lay people and women, he will probably disappoint progressives on abortion and gender. Yet overall, Pope Leo’s Vatican is clearly tilting further left. The conservatives got their mass, but not their man.

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It's sad how much random hate Lex gets.

He's exposed millions of people (who don't have your Twitter feed) to ideas in science/tech which they'd never have encountered otherwise.

And there's 100s of hours of recorded insights from great minds that wouldn't exist without him.
— Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp) December 7, 2025

because you are in the news
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

Yes!!!
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

xAI is xAI, but what is MacroHard? And why are you bullish?
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

The funniest tweet, ever!
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

AI + Marketing = A Solarahttps://t.co/clyBfdaqb7 #pleaseinvest
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

Nor is the current one.
— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 8, 2025

NEVER hire your friends to work at a startup, i let this happen, and i'm paying the price

it started pretty innocently

i just onboarded a new hire to build out some ai agents

well, the first ai agent worked great, but when i asked it to do marketing, it said it didn't know how…
— james hawkins (@james406) December 7, 2025

I still stand by what I said: By next December, it will be clear that Western competition is only between Google/DeepMind and xAI. Other companies will fade not for lacking good models, but because people will take sides due to subscription prices and global inflation. We'll see…
— Emily (@IamEmily2050) December 8, 2025

The AI boom is definitely real, but this may not be the best example to prove it. A lot of that increase in revenue has come directly from the pockets of investors.https://t.co/ZfNUzTq5nV
— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 7, 2025

📈 AI: Infrastructure, Abundance, and the Bubble Paradox https://t.co/S0lpb4ZdNz
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

What the Bubble Got Right September 2004 Yahoo was, in effect, the center of a Ponzi scheme. Investors looked at Yahoo's earnings and said to themselves, here is proof that Internet companies can make money. So they invested in new startups that promised to be the next Yahoo. And as soon as these startups got the money, what did they do with it? Buy millions of dollars worth of advertising on Yahoo to promote their brand. Result: a capital investment in a startup this quarter shows up as Yahoo earnings next quarter—stimulating another round of investments in startups..........

A year later the game was up. Starting in January 2000, Yahoo's stock price began to crash, ultimately losing 95% of its value.

........... you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.) ........... The Internet genuinely is a big deal. That was one reason even smart people were fooled by the Bubble. ........... Recognizing an important trend turns out to be easier than figuring out how to profit from it. The mistake investors always seem to make is to take the trend too literally. Since the Internet was the big new thing, investors supposed that the more Internettish the company, the better. Hence such parodies as Pets.Com. ............ It was not the railroads themselves that made the most money during the railroad boom, but the companies on either side, like Carnegie's steelworks, which made the rails, and Standard Oil, which used railroads to get oil to the East Coast, where it could be shipped to Europe. ........... Google doesn't have to advertise. In a business like theirs, being the best is enough. ............. There is a huge standard deviation among 26 year olds. Some are fit only for entry level jobs, but others are ready to rule the world if they can find someone to handle the paperwork for them. ........... A 26 year old may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC. Those require experience. But those are also commodities, which can be handed off to some lieutenant. The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company's future. What will they build next? And in that department, there are 26 year olds who can compete with anyone. ........... someone who doesn't expend any effort on marketing himself......... A nerd, in other words, is someone who concentrates on substance. So what's the connection between nerds and technology? Roughly that you can't fool mother nature. In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can't finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields. .......... When I was in college in the mid-1980s, "nerd" was still an insult. People who majored in computer science generally tried to conceal it. Now women ask me where they can meet nerds. (The answer that springs to mind is "Usenix," but that would be like drinking from a firehose.) ............. Equity is the fuel that drives technical innovation. ........... people work a lot harder when they have options. I've seen that first hand. ........... Our startup, Viaweb, was built to be sold. We were open with investors about that from the start. And we were careful to create something that could slot easily into a larger company. ........... The Bubble was a California phenomenon. When I showed up in Silicon Valley in 1998, I felt like an immigrant from Eastern Europe arriving in America in 1900. Everyone was so cheerful and healthy and rich. It seemed a new and improved world. .......... The future is there. (I say "there" because I moved back to the East Coast after Yahoo. I still wonder if this was a smart idea.) ............ What makes the Bay Area superior is the attitude of the people. I notice that when I come home to Boston. The first thing I see when I walk out of the airline terminal is the fat, grumpy guy in charge of the taxi line. I brace myself for rudeness: remember, you're back on the East Coast now. ............. If it hadn't already been hijacked as a new euphemism for liberal, the word to describe the atmosphere in the Bay Area would be "progressive." ............. Silicon Valley may not be the next Paris or London, but it is at least the next Chicago. For the next fifty years, that's where new wealth will come from. ............ small groups are intrinsically more productive, because the internal friction in a group grows as the square of its size. .......... I think it's a big mistake for companies to loosen their belts as revenues increase. The question is not whether you can afford the extra salaries. Can you afford the loss in productivity that comes from making the company bigger? .......... The prospect of technological leverage will of course raise the specter of unemployment. I'm surprised people still worry about this. After centuries of supposedly job-killing innovations, the number of jobs is within ten percent of the number of people who want them. This can't be a coincidence. There must be some kind of balancing mechanism. ............. in the coming century, good ideas will count for more. That 26 year olds with good ideas will increasingly have an edge over 50 year olds with powerful connections. .............
It took decades for relativity to be accepted, and the greater part of a century to establish that central planning didn't work.
............. So even a small increase in the rate at which good ideas win would be a momentous change—big enough, probably, to justify a name like the "new economy."

David Ulevitch says America must prioritize its asymmetric advantages over direct competition with China.

“I don't think we can actually win in our shipbuilding capabilities against China.

They have such a huge advantage and head start, but maybe we can build 400 hypersonic… pic.twitter.com/q9q4IKA4VR
— a16z (@a16z) December 8, 2025

Stupid thinking. They also have the hypersonics.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

Build SMART ships.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

Unironically, I think part of the reason why the ancient Greeks invented science and philosophy is because they spoke Greek. Syntax is a catalyst of semantics.
— François Chollet (@fchollet) December 8, 2025

Age of Research would be a beautiful name for an AI winter.
— John Coogan (@johncoogan) December 8, 2025

Are you expecting an AI winter?

📈 AI: Infrastructure, Abundance, and the Bubble Paradox https://t.co/S0lpb4ZLD7
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) December 8, 2025

Barackface

Pages

Monday, December 08, 2025

8: Trump

Leo has deplored America’s “inhuman” deportation policies.

A year later the game was up. Starting in January 2000, Yahoo's stock price began to crash, ultimately losing 95% of its value.

It took decades for relativity to be accepted, and the greater part of a century to establish that central planning didn't work.

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