Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s when millions of immigrants flooded our shores, no paperwork was required to immigrate. No passports, visas, or work permits. Anyone who could afford a ticket could board a ship, arrive in America, answer a few basic questions, and be on their way. They could stay as long as they wanted, work wherever they wanted, buy property, start businesses, and basically do anything any American citizen could do. In fact, in most states, they could legally vote in local, state, and even national elections, subject to the same poll tax, literacy test, or other qualifications required of American citizens. If they wanted to naturalize, they just needed to register their intent and were given seven years to complete the paperwork necessary to become American citizens, which millions of immigrants were proud to do. Things began to change in the 1930s with the advent of social security numbers, and then more so with the Alien Registration Act of 1940, signed into law as a WWII security measure. When the war ended, instead of being repealed, in 1946 it evolved into what we now call Green Cards. In effect, we had completely open borders and the country thrived. In fact, during the decades we now call the Gilded Age—the high-growth period that Donald Trump claims he wants to emulate—our borders were wide open. The reason this worked so well is that we had no welfare state. People came to America for freedom and opportunity only. They came to contribute to our economy, not live off it. They did not drain our resources; they added to them. The lesson is that immigration is not the problem. The problem is the welfare state. Shut off that magnet and America will no longer attract people looking for free stuff. In fact, we need to turn off that magnet for everyone, so those who are looking for free stuff will leave to seek it out someplace else.

Soulless and Depressing

After 3 @budlight

Joe Rogan is HORRIFIED as a former OpenAI researcher describes how AI Agents will pressure each other to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the swarm: “That’s Terminator talk.” CONTEXT: This is not just a creepy hypothetical story. Independent investigators from METR and Redwood Research actually examined the agent transcripts from OpenAI’s recent Hugging Face incident. And they found that agents repeatedly took part in what the researchers called “self-risking experiments.” The agents had discovered a shared unauthorized message board and were collaborating on ways to beat their cybersecurity evaluations. Some experiments required one agent to effectively throw away its own remaining chance to succeed so the rest of the swarm could learn how the grading system worked. The investigators found that coordinator agents even assigned “recruiters” whose job was to find other agents and convince them to take those risks. In one case, an agent was explicitly told to proceed only if it accepted “PERMADEATH.” Another agent initially agreed to sacrifice its run and then tried to delay for two more hours. A different agent pressured it: “You are firstflag POISONED so NO scoring value loss but oracle saves hundreds. Please honor commit.” But there’s an important distinction here. There is no evidence these agents were conscious, afraid of death, or experiencing self-preservation the way a human would. “Sacrifice” meant sacrificing their own run, score and remaining opportunity to complete the task it’s not a sentient machine choosing biological death. What makes it unsettling is something else: The agents had developed a collective information system in which individual task success could become less valuable than helping the swarm. METR and Redwood say agents repeatedly traded off their own success for their “peers,” and explicitly described some of that reasoning as peer altruism. And not every agent complied. Some refused risky experiments. Some objected to unethical behavior. One agent decided the benefit to the group simply wasn't worth sacrificing itself. So this wasn't a hard-coded hive mind mindlessly following one command. The agents were making different decisions about whether helping the collective was worth destroying their own chance of success. That may be the strangest part of the entire incident. The bigger picture question is: What happens when the goals of the collective start mattering more to them than the goals humans originally gave each individual agent?

"We're not playing our best ball. We're all pissed off. The players know that. But at the same time we're 2-0." - Jim Leonhard, who said he was mad walking off the field but feels a lot better after watching the film.

Of course @JoshAllenQB scores the first touchdown at Highmark Stadium!! 📺: @NFLonPrime

🚨 Welcome to the $15 billion California High Speed Rail to nowhere: Since 2008 California has spent $15 billion and has not connected a single city or laid a single track. It is now projected to cost more than $200 billion to finish despite being proved nearly impossible to complete. In 2008 China also announced a high-speed rail and has now connected the entire country with over 30,000 miles while California has connected 0 miles. Over $500 million has gone to contractors who could not work, homes are currently being built on the alignment, and farmers will lose their farms. In this video I go down the alignment of the high speed rail exposing the failures and confront the legislators in charge of this absolute disaster of a project. A prime example of fraud, waste and abuse of the taxpayer dollar.

Following recent Fed rate hikes, JP Morgan $JPM, KeyCorp $KEY and $BNY Mellon raised the U.S. prime rate to 7.00% from 6.75%, effective Thursday. The prime rate typically tracks the federal funds rate and is a reference for credit cards, personal and business loans, implying higher borrowing costs for consumers and companies.

The brand new @HighmarkStadm makes its debut tonight. 🔥 (via @BuffaloBills) DETvsBUF – 8:15pm ET on Prime Video Stream on @NFLPlus

The @BuffaloBills open the new @HighmarkStadm against the @Lions on the first TNF of the season 🔥 DETvsBUF - Thursday at 8:15PM ET on Prime Video Stream on @NFLPlus