Engineer Republican 2A believer 1A defender
New Jersey, USA
Joined November 2023
- Tweets2.4K
- Following16
- Followers126
- Likes1.5K
I genuinely believe deer are the dumbest animals on Earth. Last night, they ate our plastic porch decorations.
Here we go. Turns out it was never about the cost of living or educational reforms after all.
unavailable
Dean Sheppard retweeted
My dear American friends, in my last post I gave you a snapshot of where France stands today. Now let me show you how we got here. I want you to see the whole movie before you buy the ticket.
After the war, France was a machine. We called it the Trente Glorieuses, thirty glorious years. We built Concorde, the most beautiful aircraft ever made. We built a fleet of nuclear reactors in about fifteen years and gave ourselves some of the cleanest, cheapest electricity in the world. We built Ariane and put Europe in space. We built the TGV, the fastest train on earth. We invented the Minitel, an online network in millions of homes before most of you had heard of the internet. We were not a museum. We were builders.
Then came 1981. François Mitterrand. Think of him as our Bernie Sanders, except he actually won. At his side, in the office next to his at the Élysée, sat a 37-year-old prodigy named Jacques Attali, his special adviser for the next ten years. The brightest minds of the left, convinced they could run an economy from a ministry.
Here's what they did. They governed with Communist ministers. In 1982 they nationalized dozens of banks and the biggest industrial groups in the country: Paribas, Suez, Saint-Gobain, Thomson, Pechiney, Rhône-Poulenc. They lowered the retirement age to 60. They cut the work week to 39 hours and added a fifth week of paid vacation. They created a wealth tax. They hired massively into the public sector.
Reality hit in less than two years. Capital fled, inflation ran wild, and the franc was devalued three times. In March 1983 Mitterrand had to slam on the brakes and impose austerity just to stay in the European monetary system.
But here's the trick: the brakes never reversed anything. They just slowed the ratchet. The so-called right came back with Jacques Chirac, and nothing was undone. Under Chirac's presidency, France passed the 35-hour work week. Left or right, every government added one more program, one more rule, one more tax, and nobody ever took one away.
At the same time, the political class did something even more destructive than bad economics. It turned the youth into a political instrument. Instead of teaching young people, including millions of children of immigrants, to love the country they lived in, it taught them a story of guilt and grievance: France as the oppressor, France as the thing to resent. You cannot integrate people into a country you've taught them to despise. We are living with the consequences of that narrative today, in our schools, our suburbs, our streets.
Then forty years of slow decline, all the way to Macron. And the story has a perfect ending. In 2007, Jacques Attali chaired a commission on how to unleash French growth. Its deputy rapporteur was a young civil servant named Emmanuel Macron. The commission proposed more than 300 reforms to free the economy. Almost none were ever implemented. Even the men who built the system knew it wasn't working, and even they couldn't undo it.
No balanced budget since 1974. Public spending around 57% of GDP. Debt above 3,300 billion euros. Growth stuck under 1%.
Now the number that should keep you up at night. In 1995, GDP per person in France was about $27,000. In America, about $29,000. We were neck and neck. Today France is around $49,000. America is around $90,000. You are now nearly twice as rich per person as we are.
What changed? Not our talent. Not our engineers. Not our schools of mathematics. The only thing that changed is that we went all in on socialism. The 35 hours, the endless regulation, the taxes that chase out anyone who builds, the belief that the state should do everything and the individual should ask permission for everything.
There's a line people love to attribute to Einstein: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We tried. For forty years, we tried. Every government promised that one more program, one more tax, one more regulation would finally fix things. You just saw where it got us.
So if you choose the Democratic Party, which is literally turning socialist in front of your eyes, you will deserve what comes next.
Let me tell you exactly what will happen if you go down that road. Nobody will vote for decline. Every single measure will sound generous, compassionate, reasonable. Your builders will slowly leave or stop building. Your state will grow every year and never shrink. Your debt will compound. And in thirty years, your kids will look at a chart like the one I just described and wonder when it all went wrong.
You still have something we lost. You have Elon Musk sending rockets to orbit and landing them on their tail. You have Palmer Luckey building the defense industry of the future. You have Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, and thousands of founders nobody has heard of yet, building in garages right now.
Trust your entrepreneurs. Don't trust your politicians.
I come from your future. Don't make it yours.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
If you're planning to vote Democrat, and you're doing it sincerely, because you genuinely want a fairer country, cheaper homes, better schools, and a future for your kids, this post is for you. I'm not here to insult you. I'm here to show you something nobody inside the system will ever tell you. Give me two minutes.
Why do people keep defending a system they know doesn't work?
You've seen it a hundred times. A program fails, its budget doubles, the problem gets worse, and the people in charge ask for more. Nobody inside seems surprised. That's because, for them, the system isn't failing. It's working exactly as designed. Just not for you.
To understand it, forget ideology. Follow the incentives.
A politician's horizon is the next election. Two years, four years, six at most. His reward comes from promising: free tuition, cancelled debt, guaranteed housing, a green transition paid for by someone else. The bill arrives in ten, twenty, thirty years. By then he's retired, writing his memoir, giving paid speeches. He collects the applause today. You pay the invoice tomorrow. Any system where the person who makes the promise never pays for breaking it will produce endless broken promises. That isn't a moral failure. It's a mathematical certainty.
A bureaucrat is rewarded for the size of his budget and his team, not for solving the problem. If he solves it, his department shrinks. If it gets worse, he asks for more money, and he usually gets it. Failure is literally funded.
Then add the mega-donors. Foundations like those of Bill Gates or George Soros spend billions shaping policy: global health priorities, criminal justice, education, elections. You don't need to imagine a secret meeting. That's the point. No conspiracy is required, only incentives. The foundations fund the causes, the politicians adopt them, the agencies execute them. And when it goes wrong, who pays? Not the foundation. Not the politician. The neighborhood where the policy was tested. The billionaire never lives inside his own experiment.
The Austrian economists understood this a century ago. Mises showed that a state can't allocate capital properly because it has no prices, no profit and loss, no signal telling it when it's wrong. Hayek showed that no planner can ever know what millions of people know. When an entrepreneur misallocates capital, he goes bankrupt. When a state does, it raises taxes, prints money, or borrows from your children. Error is never punished, so it never stops.
And that's where the cycle locks in. When capital is allocated by politics instead of markets, the most profitable skill is no longer building. It's lobbying. Getting close to the money. Writing the rule that crushes your competitor. Corruption stops being a bug and becomes the business model. Every round creates more people who depend on it and will defend it. That's why the system protects itself even when everyone knows it's broken. Too many livelihoods depend on the lie.
Meanwhile, Europe's fashionable economists offer the opposite diagnosis. Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman tell us the problem is that the state doesn't take enough: more wealth taxes, more redistribution, more state. France has been running that experiment for fifty years. The result is one of the highest tax burdens in the developed world, record debt, and capital and talent leaving the country every year.
History shows how this movie ends. Debt piles up until it can no longer be repaid. Currencies get debased. Then comes the reset, and it is rarely peaceful. Rome debased its coins for generations before it collapsed. Weimar's hyperinflation came just before the darkest chapter of the 20th century. Empires that can't stop spending don't reform gently. They break.
We are approaching the end of that cycle. America now spends more on interest on its debt than on its military. Read that sentence twice.
The good news is that the ending isn't written yet. You can still choose builders over promisers. You can still demand that the people who make decisions live with their consequences. You can still ask for less state, not more.
Wake up. The people selling you the dream will never be the ones paying for it.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
Ask yourself a simple question. Why is almost every celebrity on the same side?
Actors, singers, late-night hosts, award-show presenters. Thousands of people with different backgrounds, different lives, different temperaments. And somehow, on every major issue, they land on the exact same opinion, at the exact same moment, with the exact same hashtags. Free minds don't behave like that. An ecosystem does.
Now ask a second question. Elon Musk is landing rockets on their own tails. He's bringing internet to villages that never had a phone line. He's building cars that drive themselves and implants that let paralyzed people move a cursor with their thoughts. Artists are supposed to be the ones who dream about the future. Here is a man actually building it. How many of them stand next to him? A handful. Why?
Because Hollywood is not a free market of talent. It's a royal court.
A young actor doesn't make it because he's good. Hundreds are good. He makes it because someone lets him in: an agent, a casting director, a producer, a studio, an awards committee. Every step is a gate, and every gate has a keeper. When your whole career depends on a few rooms, you learn very quickly what can be said in those rooms and what can't.
This is how it works. First you stay silent. Then you nod. Then you repeat. Then you believe. Compromise never arrives all at once. It arrives one dinner, one role, one red carpet at a time. And once you've given up enough, you need the system to stay in place, because the system is the only thing that makes the sacrifice worth it.
Want to see the whole mechanism in a single story? For decades, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood was the subject of accusations from dozens of women, and much of the industry treated it as an open secret. A host even joked about it at an Oscar nominations announcement, and the room laughed. Speaking up seriously meant losing everything. When the truth finally broke, the same industry dressed in black and applauded its own courage. Silence while it pays. Virtue once it's safe. That's the system.
And that's the real lie. Not that these people are monsters. Most aren't. The lie is calling it courage. Real courage costs you something. Saying what every room in town already applauds costs nothing. Saying the opposite is what costs. That's why so few artists stand with Elon. Not because they've studied his ideas and rejected them, but because standing there is a career risk they can't afford.
Look at what happened to him when he left the consensus. Advertisers fled. Friends disappeared. Invitations stopped. He could afford it. Almost nobody else can. That tells you exactly how free that world really is.
So wake up. Stop taking your political cues from people whose paycheck depends on agreeing. A celebrity endorsement is not an argument. It's a loyalty signal. Your vote, your convictions, your children's future: don't outsource them to people who are paid to recite lines someone else wrote.
The people who build the future rarely get applause from the people who perform it.
Think for yourself. It's the most American thing you can do.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
My post about France went viral. Thousands of likes. Many Americans told me: "Democrats aren't socialists. America will never be France." I want to answer that seriously, step by step.
Start with a simple observation. Look at what has gotten cheaper in America over the last 25 years: TVs, phones, software, clothes, toys. Now look at what has exploded: college tuition, healthcare, childcare, housing.
What separates the two lists? The first lives in competitive markets. The second is exactly where government is most involved: subsidies, mandates, licensing, zoning, regulation.
College. Washington lends students almost unlimited money. Universities know the money will always come, so they raise tuition and hire more administrators. The student pays the bill for twenty years. More government money, higher prices.
Housing. Why can't a nurse buy a home in the city where she works? Not because of capitalism. Because of zoning laws, permits, environmental reviews, years of procedure to build a single building. The most expensive places to live in America are the places where it's hardest to build. When building is nearly illegal, prices explode.
Healthcare. The patient almost never sees the price. A third party pays, regulations limit who can compete, and costs climb year after year with no one able to say no.
So here is the trap. The problems you suffer from are not the failure of free markets. They are the places where the market has already been replaced by the state. And the solution you're being offered is more of the same.
That's the Trojan horse. It always works the same way. A real problem. A generous-sounding promise. A program that makes things worse. Then the failure of that program becomes the argument for the next one. People who lived under communism in Poland learned to recognize the lie and the mask the lie wears. The lie never presents itself as a lie. It presents itself as compassion.
In France we are at the end of that road. Debt we can never repay. Young people who can't afford a home. Our best people leaving. And every few years our cities burn. Nobody voted for this. They voted for one more generous promise, fifty years in a row.
If you're a Republican, share this with the Democrat in your life. Not to win an argument. To start a conversation.
If you're a Democrat, I'm not asking you to switch teams. I'm asking you to look at the pattern. Wherever the state took over, life became unaffordable. Don't fix the failures of government with more government.
Stay American. Ask for less state, not more.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Je n'ai jamais été aussi optimiste. Pas malgré le chaos actuel, mais grâce à lui.
Je vais vous expliquer pourquoi l'empire du mensonge construit par la gauche depuis cinquante ans va s'effondrer, et pourquoi ce n'est pas une opinion mais une question de physique.
Tout commence avec un mouvement né sur X il y a quelques années : l'effective accelerationism, ou e/acc.
Au départ, c'est une idée presque thermodynamique. L'univers a une tendance de fond : la matière s'organise pour capter et dissiper l'énergie de plus en plus efficacement. Une cellule fait ça. Une forêt fait ça. Une civilisation fait ça. Le marché, la technologie et le capital sont les formes les plus avancées de ce processus. Ce sont des machines à transformer l'énergie en intelligence, en abondance, en complexité.
La thèse e/acc est simple : il ne faut pas freiner cette dynamique, il faut l'embrasser. Plus d'énergie, plus de calcul, plus d'innovation, plus de croissance. Monter sur l'échelle de Kardashev au lieu de s'excuser d'exister. En face, il y a les « décels » : ceux qui veulent ralentir, réguler, taxer, interdire, culpabiliser. Ceux qui voient le progrès comme une menace à contenir plutôt qu'une force à libérer.
Mais il y a une dimension de l'accélération dont presque personne ne parle. L'accélération n'est pas seulement un moteur. C'est un filtre.
Pensez à n'importe quel organisme. Un corps humain en bonne santé peut courir. Il accélère, son cœur pompe plus fort, ses muscles consomment plus d'oxygène, et tout fonctionne parce que le système est bien conçu. Maintenant, prenez un corps malade. Des artères bouchées, un cœur fragile, des organes qui ne communiquent plus entre eux. Faites-le courir. Il ne va pas plus vite vers la santé. Il va plus vite vers l'infarctus.
L'accélération ne corrige pas les défauts d'un système. Elle les amplifie. Un système sain qui accélère devient plus fort. Un système dysfonctionnel qui accélère meurt plus vite.
Et c'est exactement ce qui est en train d'arriver au projet que je vais appeler par son nom : le projet globalo-socialiste. Celui porté par les démocrates américains, par la technostructure de Bruxelles, par les entités supranationales qui n'ont de comptes à rendre à personne, par un réseau d'ONG financées par l'argent public pour dicter la morale aux peuples qui les financent.
Regardez ce que ce projet a produit.
Des États obèses qui prélèvent plus de la moitié de la richesse produite et qui délivrent des services publics de plus en plus dégradés. Des écoles qui n'apprennent plus à lire mais qui apprennent à culpabiliser. Des hôpitaux à bout de souffle malgré des budgets records. Une immigration massive sans aucune exigence d'assimilation, présentée comme une chance par ceux qui n'en subissent jamais les conséquences. Une désindustrialisation organisée au nom d'une écologie punitive qui délocalise la pollution en Chine et l'emploi avec. Des normes, des normes, et encore des normes, jusqu'à ce qu'il devienne plus simple de créer une entreprise à Austin qu'à Lyon. Une justice qui excuse le coupable et soupçonne la victime. Une censure qui avance masquée sous le nom de « lutte contre la désinformation ». Et une jeunesse à qui l'on a expliqué que son pays, son histoire et sa civilisation étaient des crimes à expier.
Ce n'est pas un ensemble de bugs. C'est la conception elle-même.
Maintenant, changeons d'image. Voyez ce système comme un moteur.
Un bon moteur, c'est de la précision. Des pièces qui s'emboîtent, un minimum de frottements, une énergie qui se transforme en mouvement. Le marché libre, la propriété, la responsabilité individuelle, la monnaie saine : c'est ça, un moteur bien conçu. L'information circule par les prix, chaque erreur est sanctionnée, chaque bonne idée est récompensée.
Le moteur socialiste, lui, est mal conçu dès le départ. Il ne tourne pas sur la création de valeur mais sur sa redistribution. Il ne récompense pas la performance, il la taxe. Il ne laisse pas les erreurs mourir, il les subventionne. Résultat : ça frotte partout. Ça chauffe. Ça grince. Chaque pièce use la pièce d'à côté.
Et que font ceux qui pilotent ce moteur ? Au lieu de le reconcevoir, ils changent les pièces. En permanence. Une pièce cède, on en remet une neuve. Encore une. Encore une.
Ces pièces de rechange, vous les connaissez. Elles s'appellent la dette publique et la planche à billets.
La France a dépassé les 3 300 milliards d'euros de dette et n'a pas voté un budget à l'équilibre depuis le milieu des années 70. Les États-Unis ont franchi les 37 000 milliards de dollars. Les banques centrales ont maintenu des taux à zéro pendant des années, imprimé des montants que plus personne ne sait se représenter, et quand l'inflation est arrivée, elles ont fait semblant d'être surprises. Milton Friedman l'avait pourtant dit il y a cinquante ans : l'inflation est toujours et partout un phénomène monétaire.
Chaque crise, on rachète du temps avec de l'argent qui n'existe pas. Chaque problème structurel, on l'arrose de liquidités pour masquer le bruit du moteur. Mais les frottements sont toujours là. Ils s'accumulent. Et la facture des pièces de rechange finit par coûter plus cher que le moteur lui-même : la charge de la dette devient l'un des premiers postes de dépense de l'État français.
Pendant des décennies, ce moteur mal conçu a pu tourner à 3 000 tours par minute. Lentement. Bruyamment. Mais il tournait. Le monde allait assez doucement pour que le bricolage permanent suffise à masquer l'absurdité de la conception.
Et puis l'IA est arrivée.
L'intelligence artificielle, c'est l'accélération la plus brutale de l'histoire humaine. Ce qui prenait des années prend des mois. Ce qui prenait des mois prend des jours. Des entreprises de dix personnes font ce que faisaient des entreprises de mille. Le capital, les talents et les idées se déplacent à la vitesse de la lumière vers les endroits où ils sont bien traités.
L'IA vient de faire passer le moteur de 3 000 à 20 000 tours par minute.
Posez-vous la question qu'un ingénieur se poserait. Que se passe-t-il quand on fait monter à 20 000 tours un moteur mal conçu, rafistolé de partout, qui frotte à chaque rotation ?
Il explose.
Pas parce que quelqu'un l'a saboté. Parce que la physique ne négocie pas.
Et c'est exactement ce que nous voyons en ce moment, sous nos yeux.
L'insécurité qui gagne des villes entières qui étaient paisibles il y a vingt ans. Le conflit de Gaza importé dans nos rues et instrumentalisé par une gauche qui a troqué l'ouvrier contre le clientélisme communautaire. La misère qui revient dans un pays qui a pourtant un des taux de dépense publique les plus élevés au monde. Des classes moyennes qui travaillent et n'arrivent plus à se loger. Une France fracturée, où l'on parle désormais à voix haute de risque de guerre civile.
Ce ne sont pas des accidents. Ce ne sont pas des « crises » successives sans lien entre elles. Ce sont les pièces du moteur qui commencent à voler.
C'est la conséquence logique de cinquante ans de socialisme international : un système qui a détruit la responsabilité, la frontière, la monnaie, l'école et la fierté, et qui découvre qu'à haute vitesse, tout ce qui a été détruit ne peut plus être compensé par une ligne de dette supplémentaire.
Et c'est là que je deviens profondément optimiste.
Parce qu'une fois qu'on a compris ça, on comprend aussi que leur projet a une date de fin. Pas une date politique. Une date physique. Un système qui consomme plus qu'il ne produit, qui punit ceux qui créent et récompense ceux qui détruisent, qui finance son présent en hypothéquant l'avenir de ses enfants, ne peut pas durer indéfiniment. Il n'est pas soutenable par construction. L'IA ne fait qu'avancer l'échéance.
Le mensonge a besoin de lenteur pour survivre. Il a besoin que les conséquences arrivent assez tard pour qu'on puisse accuser quelqu'un d'autre. Dans un monde à 20 000 tours, les conséquences arrivent immédiatement. Le mensonge n'a plus le temps de se cacher.
Alors, que faire quand le moteur explose ? On en construit un nouveau. Et cette fois, on le conçoit correctement.
Écoutez Elon Musk. Un homme qui a reconstruit l'industrie spatiale, la voiture électrique et l'infrastructure satellite en partant d'un principe simple : revenir aux premiers principes. Ne pas demander « comment on a toujours fait », mais « qu'est-ce qui est physiquement vrai ». C'est exactement ce dont nos États ont besoin : arrêter de rafistoler et repartir de la base.
Écoutez Javier Milei. Un homme dont tout le monde se moquait, arrivé à la tête d'un pays ravagé par un siècle de péronisme, et qui a pris la tronçonneuse au sens propre. Ministères supprimés, dépenses coupées, inflation écrasée, excédent budgétaire retrouvé. Il a prouvé une chose que la gauche jurait impossible : on peut démonter le moteur socialiste et le peuple peut le soutenir.
Écoutez Milton Friedman. Relisez-le. Tout était déjà là. La monnaie, la liberté de choisir, la responsabilité, les effets pervers de l'intervention publique. Il disait que si l'on confiait le Sahara au gouvernement fédéral, il y aurait pénurie de sable en cinq ans. On a ri. On a confié le sable. On a eu la pénurie.
Revenez à une hiérarchie et au respect du beau. Une civilisation ne tient pas que sur des chiffres. Elle tient sur l'idée qu'il existe des choses supérieures à d'autres. Que l'excellence vaut mieux que la médiocrité. Que le mérite compte. Qu'une cathédrale est plus belle qu'un parking. Que transmettre est un devoir et pas une oppression. Le relativisme a été l'arme culturelle de ce projet. Le retour du beau, du vrai et de l'exigence en sera l'antidote.
Et enfin, faites le Nuremberg du communisme. Le nazisme a été jugé, documenté, enseigné, et il est devenu moralement indéfendable. Le communisme, avec ses dizaines de millions de morts, ses goulags, ses famines organisées et ses peuples réduits en esclavage, n'a jamais eu ce procès. On peut encore porter un t-shirt du Che dans une université sans que personne ne cille. Tant que ce procès historique et moral n'aura pas eu lieu, l'idéologie continuera de muter et de revenir sous de nouveaux noms. Il faut nommer les crimes, les enseigner, honorer les victimes, et rendre cette idéologie aussi infréquentable que celle qu'elle prétendait combattre.
Le monde qui vient sera plus rapide, plus exigeant et plus impitoyable avec les systèmes mal conçus. C'est une terrible nouvelle pour ceux qui ont vécu du mensonge.
Et c'est la meilleure nouvelle de notre génération pour tous ceux qui veulent construire.
Le moteur va exploser. À nous de dessiner le suivant.
To whoever generates those “cute” AI videos: use some common sense and at least ask the AI to make the button work in a way that allows the kitty to get back.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
The view from the OCNJ boardwalk this evening was sublime.
No one was saying “boy I wish we were looking at a bunch of windmills right now.”
Dean Sheppard retweeted
ANOTHER HISTORY LESSON ON YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CARD:
Just in case some of you young ones (& some older ones) didn’t know this. It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it. Be sure and show it to your family and friends. They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are FACTS.
Up until the 1980's, Social Security cards expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.
Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" message was removed.
Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. His promises are in black, with updates in brackets.
1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary [No longer voluntary],
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program [Now 7.65% on the first $90,000, and 15% on the first $90,000 if you’re self-employed],
3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year [No longer tax deductible],
4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program [Under Johnson the money was moved to the General Fund and spent], and
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income [Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed].
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.
Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.
Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US
AND MY FAVORITE:
Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That’s right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
Now, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it! If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not, though. Some Democrats are awfully sure of what isn’t so — but it’s worth a try.
How many people can YOU send this to?
Dean Sheppard retweeted
Cat owners have a 30 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack. A study published in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Neurology analysed data from 4,435 adults followed over 20 years in the Second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study and found that people who had owned a cat at any point had significantly lower cardiovascular mortality.
The study was led by Adnan Qureshi at the University of Minnesota. He found that cat owners had a 30 percent lower risk of death from myocardial infarction and a lower risk of death from all cardiovascular diseases combined, after adjusting for age, sex, race, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, BMI, and income. The effect held across every subgroup tested.
The mechanism is likely stress reduction. Cats, unlike dogs, do not need to be walked, which removes the exercise explanation. What they do provide is companionship, tactile contact, and a calming presence that lowers the baseline stress level in the home. Studies on pet interaction have shown that stroking a cat lowers cortisol and blood pressure within minutes, and those small daily reductions compound over years.
The study could not determine whether it was the cat that produced the benefit or whether people who choose to own cats have personality traits that independently protect against heart disease. But the size of the effect, 30 percent, and the length of follow-up, 20 years, made the finding hard to dismiss as coincidence.
A cat does not exercise with you, does not cook for you, and does not remind you to take your medication. It sits on your chest and purrs, and the 20-year data says that is enough. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2251…
Dean Sheppard retweeted
With everything we are hearing right now about ticks this seems like good information to share.
“Here’s what I’ve learned after more ticks than I care to count.
First, whatever your uncle told you, forget it. No matches. No nail polish. No Vaseline. No soap on a cotton ball. All of those do the same terrible thing, they stress the tick out, and a stressed tick empties its gut back into the bite before letting go. Which, if you think about what that actually means for a second, is literally how Lyme and the rest get transmitted so you’re not speeding up its exit. You’re making it throw up into you.
Fine-tipped tweezers. Grip right where the mouthparts enter the skin, not the body, the head. Pull straight up, steady, no twisting, no jerking. It’ll feel like it’s resisting because it is, the mouthparts are barbed. Just keep the pressure on and it lets go in a few seconds. If a piece breaks off in the skin, leave it alone. Your body pushes splinters out. Digging around with a needle does more damage then the fragment ever would.
Clean it with alcohol or soap. Wash your hands.
Now here’s the part most people skip: don’t flush the tick.
Tape it to an index card. Clear packing tape right over the body, write the date and where on your body it was, and stick the card in a drawer. If you come down with anything weird in the next 30 days, rash, fever, joint pain, that flu-that-isn’t-flu feeling, that tick goes with you to the doctor. Some labs will test the tick itself, which is faster and often more reliable than waiting for antibodies to show up in your own blood. A dated tick taped to a card is one of the most useful things you can hand a doctor who’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.
The other thing worth saying out loud: if the tick was engorged when you pulled it, and you can’t swear it was off your body within 24 hours, call your doctor that same day. Don’t wait for a rash. Fewer than three out of four Lyme cases even produce the classic bullseye. A single preventive dose of doxycycline within 72 hours of a deer tick bite cuts the Lyme odds way down, and most docs in tick country will write that prescription without giving you a hard time, especially if you walk in with the tick taped to a card and a clear timeline.”
Dean Sheppard retweeted
You buy a German anvil. It contains 83 moving parts and requires winding twice a day. It's forged from excellent steel, holds tolerances across all three striking faces to within three microns, includes a beautifully indexed horn-adjustment mechanism nobody asked for, and requires a proprietary 11-point spanner should you need to replace the rebound calibration bushing. It runs flawlessly for years, but one day it starts up in limp mode because the onboard anvil-management system detects that it's overdue for its 50,000-strike inspection.
You search AliExpress for a Chinese anvil, and are presented with a multitude of offerings from such household-name brands as DUKXJYIBF, HDBTGMXI, AND UEJQIP. They're all priced to within a few pennies of each other, appear completely identical except for the nameplate, and obviously all came out of the same factory. You text your blacksmith friend to ask if they're legit. He tells you he got one like that from KIXJBU a few years ago, and that it's been great and a terrific deal. You thank him, but KIXJBU seems to have folded so you buy the one from UEJQIP. When it arrives, it feels suspiciously light. You scratch it and realize it's iron-plated aluminum.
You buy an American anvil. It's five times the price of the competition, but it comes from a brand that your great-grandfather used to love. It comes boxed with a warranty registration postcard, twenty pages of safety instructions, assay certificate, and a regulatory slip which lists its FCC certification and ITAR registration. It looks just like your friend's KIXJBU. There's a "Made In China" sticker on the bottom.
You buy a Russian anvil. It arrives coated in cosmoline, wrapped in newspaper from 1974, and weighing 40% more than advertised. The finish looks like it was machined with a shovel. The face is not flat, but somehow this does not matter. You drop it off a truck, accidentally leave it outside for six winters, and use it to straighten a bulldozer blade. It's fine.
You buy a Swedish anvil. It comes flat-packed in a long cardboard box with cheerful Neo-Grotesk lettering and a line drawing of a smiling man assembling it with an Allen key. The instructions contain no words, only pictograms showing the anvil face, horn, waist, feet, and 112 identical-looking fasteners. Halfway through assembly, you discover that the pritchel hole was installed upside down, but only because you used peg B17 where you should have used peg B71. Once assembled, it is clean, stable, and works better than it has any right to. You immediately wonder whether you should have bought two.
You buy a Japanese anvil. It arrives wrapped in rice paper inside a paulownia box, accompanied by a certificate bearing three generations of signatures and a photograph of the first production example being presented to the Emperor. The face has been hand-polished by a seventy-eight-year-old master whose family has made striking surfaces since the Muromachi period. You are given detailed instructions for oiling it with a cloth folded in a specific way. It is the most beautiful object you own. You never quite work up the nerve to strike it.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
Ever wanted an AI that sees images AND talks without filters? Meet Qwen3.6-35B-A3B uncensored. This image-text-to-text model is abliterated, meaning it drops the usual guardrails for raw, uncensored conversations. It's a heretic in the best way possible.
Dean Sheppard retweeted
This original medieval-style dance piece is in G minor, with a chord progression that alternates between Gm and Cm, incorporating variations like Gm6 and Cm6 for that hypnotic flow.
People who are far from electronics don’t realize how bad this PCB is. Look for example at the 3V+ and 3V− labels - they’re copper, and both labels are part of the circuit since they’re connected to traces! How stupid do you have to be to do something like that? Especially when you’re already using silkscreen?
