Eli Dourado Profile Banner
Eli Dourado Profile
Eli Dourado

@elidourado

37,940
Followers
380
Following
1,908
Media
43,479
Statuses

On a sacred quest to increase the pace of economic growth at @abundanceinst . On the side of the builders. tfp/acc 🚀

Alexandria, VA
Joined March 2007
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Pinned Tweet
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
8 days
New on elidourado dot com: Dozens of human societies have collapsed, going from a high level of sociopolitical complexity to a much lower one—rapidly, within the span of a few decades. Would we know if it was about to happen to us?
18
32
200
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
A manatee with twin calves looks like an SR-71 Blackbird.
121
1K
9K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Elon paid $11 billion in federal income taxes this year, more than any person ever. Stay classy, Senator.
@ewarren
Elizabeth Warren
2 years
Tweet media one
899
295
1K
92
420
5K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
Let’s be the America Hong Kong thinks we are. ❤️
@DailyCaller
Daily Caller
4 years
The scene in Hong Kong 🇺🇸 🇭🇰
338
2K
9K
63
888
5K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
The 2009 stimulus put $8 billion into high-speed rail, which hasn’t resulted in any high-speed rail after 13 years. It costs infinity dollars per mile to build high-speed rail in the US.
76
503
4K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
People. Bitcoin does not solve banking or bank runs. Bitcoin can handle 7 transactions per second. If 300 million Americans wanted to do one Bitcoin transaction each it would take 496 days.
1K
278
4K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 months
Agree with Balaji. Elon is singular. He also shares his engineering secrets. I think nothing would please him more than if a thousand other hardware founders rigorously followed his five-step process.
@balajis
Balaji
3 months
Hardware is hard. That’s why Elon is by far the greatest founder of all time. Remember — countless startups die just while trying to put stationary beige boxes on desktops. Very smart people get crushed by supply chain disruptions, or China tariffs, or lockdowns, or shipping…
796
4K
23K
32
387
3K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
This is a fun one. White to move. Mate in one. Watch out for pins. Can you find it?
Tweet media one
2K
210
3K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
mRNA cancer therapy works (in mice). Original paper: “Nineteen of 20 mice treated with the four-component mixture had complete tumor regression.” Human trial now recruiting:
51
589
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
In the Starlink terms of service, you have to agree that “no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.”
Tweet media one
108
555
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
9 years
Early wearable computer: Qing Dynasty abacus ring. http://t.co/QNV5A3iXCb
Tweet media one
88
3K
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
This is $820 per U.S. household. A Starlink terminal costs $499. How about we just buy a Starlink terminal for every household that wants one and doesn't have access to fixed broadband? Would save $80B.
@kellymakena
Makena Kelly
3 years
NEW: Biden’s infrastructure package includes $100 billion to connect every American to high speed broadband within the decade.
16
68
376
103
190
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
6 months
Obviously not everyone wants to live in one of these. But if we had a few of them placed in high-priced city centers, that would mean lower housing costs for everyone, including people in idyllic suburbs (if that’s where you want to live).
@Rainmaker1973
Massimo
6 months
The Regent International apartment building in Hangzhou, China, has over 20,000 people living in it. The building is 206 meters tall and has 36 to 39 floors. It has swimming pools, barber shops, nail salons, medium-sized supermarkets, and internet cafes.
2K
1K
9K
82
88
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Crazy idea you all will hate for solving ransomware: Make ransomware legal except you can only charge individuals $100 and organizations $5000. Legality induces entry into the ransomware industry so that we quickly find all the obvious security holes without catastrophic cost.
95
156
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
My son knows that the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire and that the Galactic Republic became the Galactic Empire, and now he’s worried about the Dominican Republic.
32
84
2K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
This winter is going to suck. - Russia is going to invade Ukraine - Europe is going to freeze - China’s Zero Covid policy + ineffective vaccines are going to fail against Omicron in a massive wave - Supply chain fallout from 👆 could be legit Happy solstice. Buckle up.
111
157
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
New blog post: Is the Great Stagnation ending? What technologies am I watching in the decade ahead? Are we going to get life extension treatments soon? 5700+ words on all of this. Please read and share!
58
345
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Build housing Design proteins Cure aging Occupy Mars Price carbon Mine heat Mine asteroids Fuse atoms Fly hypersonic Fly…everywhere Use robots Dig tunnels Stake crypto Farm indoors Grow meat Go faster
94
143
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
Non-space people, pay attention, this is huge. SpaceX is building a factory to churn out a Starship—the most powerful and most advanced launch vehicle in history, capable of taking 150 tons to Mars—every 72 hours. For $5M/each.
54
257
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was established in 1975. In the entire history of the agency, no license initially submitted to the NRC has yet begun operations. 🤯
30
226
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
This looks stupidly unsafe yet amazingly cool. It’s an ultralight sold as a homebuilt kit, so highly unregulated, no pilot’s license required. $92k. First deliveries in 2022.
58
158
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Any time you see a blimp, you are looking at 4% of the world’s blimps. Sad.
27
65
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
The chart that Putin doesn’t want Europe to see. Nuclear is safe.
Tweet media one
35
238
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
It is baffling to me that very few if any of you are freaked out by the likelihood of a global supply-side recession. /ht @mattparlmer
@EricMertz_KC
Lord Woodstone (Toss all MAPS out the airlock)
2 years
Holy shit, China is even more fucked than I thought...
184
1K
3K
27
129
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
Tim Cook: “We don’t have a dominant share in any market or in any product category where we do business.” Translation: “Why the fuck am I here?”
21
116
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the most destructive acts of industrial vandalism in history: the ban on supersonic flight over the US. It's why we're not flying NY-LA in 90 minutes. Congress can end the ban this year. Make America boom again.
61
152
1K
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
8 years
I’ve been paying attention to British politics for 45 minutes or so, ask me anything.
11
614
927
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
OK, folks, here it is: The absolute best place to track the election tonight is on my site. All data refresh every 2 minutes. You get an electoral map, a state-by-state Monte Carlo simulation, and lots of sortable tables. Go ahead, melt my servers.
Tweet media one
38
210
946
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 months
I had never considered before that we might solve terrorism by becoming so collectively stupid that no one can agree who perpetrated the attack. No point in terrorizing if you don’t get the credit!
11
135
943
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
11 months
I want every single person in the world who has this work ethic to move to America.
@CommonSens19282
CommonSenseAmerican🇺🇸
11 months
Communism really does destroy the human will and spirit
236
1K
5K
16
97
913
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
The SpaceX effect
Tweet media one
19
123
899
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
In most countries, if they want college-educated people, they have to grow them from scratch and pay all the K-12 expenses, etc. Here in the US they just fall into our lap fully formed. It would feel like cheating, if only we were smart enough to take full advantage.
@AlecStapp
Alec Stapp
3 years
Instead of “staple a green card to every diploma,” we should be aiming higher: Automatic citizenship upon earning a diploma.
Tweet media one
23
54
468
14
178
892
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
This is what we believe
@latestinspace
Latest in space
4 years
A colonized Moon. One day this could be our view from Earth. (📷empyreanskin)
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
145
1K
8K
24
77
877
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
Body fat has 37 kJ of energy per gram. Converting to battery units, that’s 10,278 Wh/kg. The best lithium-ion battery packs on the mass market today are around 270 Wh/kg. So human biology is still 38x as good as lithium-ion batteries. A lot of room to get better.
82
74
867
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
11 months
There’s a market for a college where the application is only an SAT score.
85
33
794
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
I'm fascinated by the fact that cargo airships get more efficient as they get bigger, forever. How far can we push it? My friends and I hired an engineer to design us the biggest flying object ever to find out.
77
117
766
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
Healthcare is 18% of GDP. Housing is 16% of GDP. Together 34%. There is no amount of protectionism or “good jobs” policy that will help the working class more than dramatically increasing productivity in these two sectors.
20
108
674
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Air pollution reduces global life expectancy by 2.2 years on average. That’s more than alcohol use, unsafe water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS, and malaria combined.
21
176
662
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Some families will be unable to heat their homes this winter because so many nuclear power plants have been shut down. Let that sink in.
24
150
635
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
7 months
Is everyone posting their ChatGPT custom instructions? Can we make that a thing? Here is my current set: I don't need caveats about safety or complexity of the topic, warnings that I should consult an expert, or other disclaimers. Please just answer the question as directly as…
39
44
642
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
The damage from scientific institutions not being 100% honest with the public is massive. Want to know why some people don’t trust science? It’s because some scientists are playing (crappy, ineffective) politics.
28
107
558
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
9 months
A lot of people think we should inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the earth. They’re wrong. We should inject calcium carbonate. It’s more reflective.
68
38
565
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 months
This is some real clown shit from the Biden administration. Complete betrayal of our allies while producing negative climate value as Europe will mine more lignite.
@JavierBlas
Javier Blas
4 months
FULL STATEMENT: And it's official. The White House announces a "temporary pause" on pending approvals of American LNG export terminals. The statement is below, and links here to the comuniqué itself: and a White House factsheet:
Tweet media one
440
631
1K
27
68
551
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
An amazing thing about Elon is that he will tell you the specifications of his product as it’s under development as well as his thought process about it. He knows none of his competitors can take that info and catch up. He is completely unafraid of that.
16
27
529
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
6 years
I haven’t blogged about cryptocurrency in a couple years, so here’s a 4200-word weekend post summarizing my current thinking. Basically, I think Ethereum is the only game in town. This is sure to make me a lot of friends.
27
147
477
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
No time zones, everyone moves to UTC.
26
35
503
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
10 years
Everything you need to know about cyberterrorism in one chart http://t.co/a4AECZgQ5a
Tweet media one
83
1K
487
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
@patrickc Great NYT quote about North Africa being less politically dysfunctional than California.
Tweet media one
15
81
495
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
8 years
Everything you need to know about aircraft colliding with drones in one chart
Tweet media one
40
577
479
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Unpopular take: I think we will come to regret doing a bunch of infrastructure subsidies (easy) before figuring out how to make it easier to build infrastructure (hard). Order matters.
19
66
484
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
14 days
One of my motivating beliefs is that a lot of people are stupid and it’s up to the smart and competent people to *actually deliver growing prosperity for everyone* so that the stupid people don’t feel the need to roll up their sleeves and get involved in policy.
@CSElmendorf
Chris Elmendorf
14 days
What do we find? The people want price controls! And demand subsidies! And restrictions on Wall. St. investors! /11
Tweet media one
18
31
319
30
42
493
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
Some charts from a recent talk I gave, enjoy! Here is TFP growth since 1947. Your income would be ~2x as high today if this hadn’t stagnated.
Tweet media one
18
100
480
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
8 years
New short paper with @raymondopolis : Turns out we are letting crazy people make airport noise policy
Tweet media one
41
311
468
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
China has 70k+ people who are now immune. Free visas for anyone who has recovered from COVID who wants to work in NYC hospitals or other surging places.
13
47
468
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
My latest: If we want to avoid possible looming stagflation, we must turn away from boomer clown policies and act now to increase the productive capacity of the economy.
18
86
461
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Omg. Article 7 requires every “economic agent” to accept bitcoin. It’s going to be interesting since the entire Bitcoin blockchain only has enough throughput to allow every Salvadoran to do one L1 transaction every 20 days (assuming no one else in the world uses it at all).
@nayibbukele
Nayib Bukele
3 years
I’ve just sent the #BitcoinLaw to Congress 🇸🇻
Tweet media one
Tweet media two
Tweet media three
610
3K
13K
207
99
438
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
The penalties for nonperformance piece of this is WILD. It’s like a dominant assurance contract between two parties @ATabarrok .
Tweet media one
@sama
Sam Altman
1 year
microsoft becomes helion's first customer, in the first commercial deal for fusion power:
267
790
6K
20
33
452
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Daughter after counting her small money stash: Daddy, money’s not the most important thing, right? Me: Right, real resources are the most important thing.
5
30
451
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
6 months
Oh, and if you think a nonprofit board can be erratic and insane, perhaps give some thought to what a new federal AI regulatory agency might do.
10
75
453
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
7 years
Venezuelans mine Bitcoin with free electricity and then use the profits to order food from Amazon Prime Pantry.
Tweet media one
10
383
435
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 months
This thing (well, a bigger version of it) is going to fly much sooner and for way less money than you think and the market size is a hell of a lot bigger than space launch.
@k2pilot
Ian Brooke
3 months
I've kept a pretty low (online) profile of what I'm building, but word's getting out. My company Astro Mechanica has invented a new kind of jet engine. Unlike any existing engine, it's efficient at every speed. Because it's efficient at every speed, we can use it in a new way:…
867
3K
27K
8
26
443
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 months
Which will cost less per mile and be completed first: California HSR or the train on the literal moon?
@NGCNews
Northrop Grumman
2 months
DARPA selected us to further develop the concept of building a moon-based railroad network that would transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures. Learn more:
118
290
2K
26
66
441
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Nice column from @ezraklein . If Democrats want a concrete supply-side agenda: Unlimited clean energy <2¢/kWh Healthcare costs <10% of GDP (w/ quality improvements) Median home price < 3x med household income All infrastructure permits issued <6 months
8
61
435
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Twitter needs to do a better job of protecting these OSINT accounts. Russian controlled accounts are reporting them for fake violations and Twitter has been algorithmically suspending them for 12 hours. Twitter is part of the battlefield now.
@Osinttechnical
OSINTtechnical
2 years
What really worries me the most (and IMO was demonstrated today) is that any Russian invasion will almost certainly include some form of mass reporting in order to disable smaller OSINT accounts.
34
234
1K
9
153
421
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
6 months
Politico: “Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change. Two years later, the program has yet to…
17
96
426
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
Want to know another totally predictable catastrophe we are underprepared for? A large solar coronal mass ejection. There would be no electricity and no Internet access for months as we tried to replace long-lead-time equipment like power transformers. Have a nice day.
23
69
407
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
New portable nuclear microreactor company from ex-SpaceX team
15
62
419
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
8 years
By popular demand, aircraft-turtle collisions over time
Tweet media one
23
311
407
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Why don’t people trust science? Maybe because political extremists invoke it to say obvious bullshit like this.
@ClimateBen
Ben See
2 years
Scientists have reached a consensus on economic growth: abolish it or face extinction. 🧵
168
1K
4K
12
32
415
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
5 years
For the first 99.9% of human history, the wealth of the wealthy was taken through plunder rather than made through meeting others’ needs. But Bezos didn’t plunder anyone. The increasingly expressed desire to cut down billionaires is a result of obsolete evolutionary conditioning.
46
68
392
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Monday: Protein folding solved Tuesday: Ethereum 2.0 launches Wednesday: SpaceX Starship hop to 50,000 feet (space gods willing) A lot of pressure on Thursday right now to be honest.
11
40
402
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
8 years
Evil corporation revenge porns a working class hero, gay vigilante ensures justice is served, and the left sides with the corporation?
20
206
367
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that in this age of deep polarization the one thing our Members of Congress can agree on is that they must punish the only industry that is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
Tweet media one
20
64
387
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
Bad way to start 2023: realize that you had $3.5M in Bitcoin stolen from you yesterday. If a Bitcoin developer can’t safely store his own keys, normal people can’t either. We are very far from scaling self-custody in crypto.
@LukeDashjr
Luke Dashjr
1 year
PSA: My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen. I have no idea how. Help please. #Bitcoin
1K
714
3K
47
55
382
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
It’s conceivable that AI will help us discover new, highly-targeted drugs at a very rapid pace. It seems very mismatched with our current drug approval regime.
@jmhorp
Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl 📈
1 year
It only took 90 minutes
13
35
222
35
37
383
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
It's weird that consciousness can result from matter, but what really makes my head explode is wondering whether the universe has other consciousness-like phenomena that we don't experience but in principle could.
29
24
380
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
The Merge is roughly equivalent to 9 nuclear power plants opening up overnight.
27
18
375
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
What is your Musk-level idea, and what is stopping you from doing it?
163
33
371
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
6 months
Without NEPA, we would have to suffer the environmental consequences of hastily approved...*checks notes*...tree planting.
@sfchronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
6 months
The National Park Service is replanting California’s burned sequoia groves. Environmentalists are suing to stop it.
6
9
45
2
52
356
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
9 months
Re-upping this. Biden’s Council on Environmental Quality is trying to amend NEPA implementing rules to give weight to Indigenous Knowledge instead of just science. Among many other changes that increase environmental review’s legal attack surface.
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
10 months
I don’t remember this being in the debt ceiling bill.
Tweet media one
1
7
35
32
66
351
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Have never seen gas fees on Ethereum this high. $70M burned in the last hour. Turns out the ape jpeg people are getting scammed into to buying fake ape land or something.
14
17
343
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Biden still hasn’t appointed a new head of the FDA. I vote for @ATabarrok . Please RT if you agree.
15
150
354
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
5 years
How to make everyone rich: 1) Clean energy too cheap to meter 2) A step change in transportation speed and quality 3) Abundant housing supply 4) Much longer life expectancy If you don't know what to do with your life, consider working on one of these.
16
52
337
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 year
NEW POST: I have a nagging worry that AI will be like smartphones. It will change our lives, but it won’t address the major bottlenecks in the economy. If we’re complacent, stagnation will continue.
33
50
329
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 months
Reading a textbook, as an adult, in a field you never studied before is both allowed and a huge source of alpha.
@pdhsu
Patrick Hsu
4 months
also underappreciated: reading actual textbooks long after you’ve left formal school I have a whole spiel about the chasm that is adult learning. Remarkably few people continue to digest structured or didactic content when they don’t “have” to
10
18
347
7
15
333
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
10 days
People should be allowed to choose their own food. This isn’t hard.
@SenFettermanPA
Senator John Fetterman
12 days
Pains me deeply to agree with Crash-and-Burn Ron, but I co-sign this. As a member of @SenateAgDems and as some dude who would never serve that slop to my kids, I stand with our American ranchers and farmers. 🇺🇸
Tweet media one
4K
2K
17K
6
16
331
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
This is amazing. @bryan_johnson is going all out to reduce his biological age and sharing his data and protocols publicly. /ht @ArtirKel
7
49
315
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Literally every part of the economy is hampered by insane rules that only rise to national consciousness when the situation reaches crisis levels. A great way to run a country. This will end well.
@scottlincicome
Scott Lincicome
2 years
1) Repeal all baby formula tariffs (tariff rate quotas) 2) Require the FDA to allow the importation of any formula approved by a competent regulator (EU, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, etc) 3) Reform WIC (eg, no more sole source contacts)
28
252
966
2
60
317
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
7 years
One thing ICOs show for sure is that for better or for worse US securities law deters a lot of investment.
18
109
310
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
2 years
Remember, kids, geothermal is a much more abundant energy source than nuclear fission, on this planet at least.
Tweet media one
26
47
319
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
12 days
Glioblastoma is a kind of brain cancer that until now has been a swift death sentence. In a trial in human patients, a therapeutic mRNA vaccine appears to work!
14
79
323
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
It was a pleasure to testify today on the need to build.
@JECRepublicans
Joint Economic Committee Republicans
3 years
. @cgousu 's Dr. @elidourado testifies before the Joint Economic Committee: “There is a slogan that represents one vision of the future: ‘Electrify everything.’ Like all slogans, it oversimplifies.”
2
21
98
20
18
314
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Why oh why is anyone skeptical of the media?
@ClayTravis
Clay Travis
3 years
This is wild. Watch Ron DeSantis’s full answer on Publix, Walgreen’s and CVS vaccine distribution and look at the edited cut 60 Minutes used:
2K
15K
51K
6
33
307
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
5 years
Libertarians: We want open borders, upzoning, occupational licensing reform, criminal justice reform, drug decriminalization, school choice, and taco trucks on every corner. FDR-worshipper (!): Clearly this is all a racist dog-whistle.
20
39
296
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
FDA says it will take three weeks to review/approve Pfizer’s EUA application, but they should just approve the application immediately and then revoke the authorization if they discover anything worrying in the paperwork in the next three weeks.
24
53
307
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
4 years
Cryptocurrency will never work because if you make a mistake sending money it’s impossible to reverse the transaction like in the legacy banking system. Oh wait.
26
84
297
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
3 years
Any energy abundance agenda is inherently low carbon. A Kardashev Type I civilization powered entirely with Earth’s fossil fuel reserves would last only 45 days.
11
52
302