happy birthday america. the greatest place ever invented. i’ll spare the cliche immigrant story or whatever but one thing i think about a lot is when i moved to london ppl would basically always tell me to tone it down (cuz i used words like awesome all the time) or ppl told me i was too optimistic or that would always be enthusiastic about something working. i had hard time doing this cuz i never learned any of this behavior, it was sorta just built into me. i found that to be strange & it took me a long time to realize they they were correcting all of my priors instead of simply correcting my vocab. that’s kinda the thing that is hard to explain until you leave. what makes this place so damn unique is ppl here are unusually willing to have an absurd dream & then attempt to make it real. it’s the greatest concentration of individuals on the planet who actually try to make stuff *real*. that instinct feels almost pre programmed into americans. “why not me?” is prolly the macro that separates this country from anywhere else. ppl love comparing here to other places using metrics like healthcare, trains, safety, etc. those things matter. but they are the outputs not inputs. the inputs matter way more. kinda like sports leagues trying to create the next generation of stars by investing in little league. the macro inputs of america are the belief that the future is not something that happens to you, but something you are allowed to build or change. & here, far more than anywhere else on earth requires almost zero permission to attempt it all.. without asking for any sort of cultural consent. that’s why all of the shit you see around the world is basically invented in america. what an astonishingly ridiculous beautiful country.

Train AI models as much as you like, but they still can’t address a crowd after a tragedy or bear witness to the joys of raising a child. To do that takes humans able to express themselves without reaching for the nearest cliché, writes @RichardDooling

🚨SOUND THE KAZOO🚨 Synergies. Moving forward. Touching base. All corporate cliches, but so is “we’re thrilled to announce.” Yet we’re thrilled to announce @benthecarman’s big reveal at @TheBitcoinConf’s Open Source Stage at 2:15 PT. You’ve got an hour and 15. Go touch base.

If my hair is any indication… you might be blown away 🤸🏻‍♀️ by this season’s talent, I know it sounds like a cliche but most cliches are true ok just watch 🫵🏻#IDOL🫵🏻#

When Christopher Nolan initially approached Sir Michael Caine to play Alfred Pennyworth in Batman Begins (2005), Caine was actually highly skeptical. He joked to Nolan that he was far too old to play Batman and asked, “Do you want me to play the butler? What would my dialogues be? ‘Would you like another beverage or more custard?’” To avoid playing a cliché, passive servant, Caine invented an incredibly thorough and specific military backstory for Alfred: Caine decided that Alfred was not a traditionally trained butler who went to service school. Instead, he imagined him as a former Special Air Service (SAS) soldier who had been severely wounded in battle and could no longer fight on the front lines. Because this tough sergeant didn't want to return to civilian life, he took over managing the Sergeants' Mess. Caine explained, “So what that is is you have this very tough ex-S.A.S. guy who knows all about drinks and service and getting sandwiches and coffee, because he had to learn it for the sergeants mess.” In Caine’s backstory, Thomas Wayne visited the SAS headquarters in Herefordshire to see an officer friend. While in the mess, he met this fiercely disciplined, highly capable sergeant and hired him right there to be his personal keeper and protector. When Caine pitched this entire character outline to Christopher Nolan on set, the director absolutely loved it. Nolan looked at him and said, “Oh, I should have written it.” This exact backstory Michael Caine invented was so popular and rich that DC Comics later leaned heavily into Alfred's active military history, and it eventually became the primary foundation for the standalone prequel TV series Pennyworth on Epix.