XOutlier
Download .zipAdd to Chrome

Byrne Hobart

@ByrneHobart62k followers

The John Henry of excessive use of the em-dash. Tweets are map, not territory. Co-author: Boom (Stripe Press):

Open on X
Top outlier
421×
Best organic post
Peak views
6.3M
Single post
Bookmarks
27k
Across 87 organic posts
Last scan
Oct 16
Community cache
Posts 87 posts
#DatePost↓ OutlierViewsLikesRepostsBookmarks
1Jan 3, '24Reminds me of how the USSR figured out that the US was working on the bomb because the best physicists all stopped publishing.421×6.3M60k3.9k4.6k
2Jan 10, '24Peak performance260×3.9M30k2.6k2.4k
3Aug 31, '24It’s pretty mind-blowing that a prominent American academic is willing to say this publicly. A disturbing shift in the Overton window. (I’m genuinely taken aback—have Reich’s colle71.7×1.1M5.7k724388
4Aug 1, '25Jeez, seems a little drastic.68.5×1M60k2.2k1.4k
5Apr 11, '24The largest US company, Walmart, has annual revenue of about 2.3% of GDP. Volkswagen's revenue is 7% of German GDP, Samsung revenue is 12% of Korea's, Cenovus is 2.5% of Canada's, 68×1M5.5k380610
6Mar 26, '24I am less familiar with Huberman lore, but: by any chance did he put on a lot of muscle in his 40s right before he started making irresponsible but very energetic romantic choices?58.8×883k3.8k79765
7Oct 2, '24The longshoreman thing reminds me of my dad's story about selling health insurance to a construction company. Reviewing their payroll, he asked about four very well-paid guys with 54.2×814k9.3k314772
8Jul 7, '23It's interesting to see something so similar to classic anti-vax sentiment, but coded differently—blanket skepticism about a useful technology that directly addresses a major cause49.7×747k1.7k13990
9Nov 17, '23To put today's news in perspective, Sam Altman leaving OpenAI would be like Snoop quitting weed.47.5×712k9.1k636171
10Oct 2, '24From what I understand, Vegas used to be ~100% controlled by the mafia and the number today is a lot closer to 0%. (Could be wrong here, of course.) Who made that happen, and how'd36.6×549k2.9k45481
11Oct 24, '24This is exactly the LinkedIn you'd expect from someone who discovered the world's largest prime number.35.2×529k8k199762
12Jan 28, '244yo referred to the frame of a painting as the “crust”33.6×504k3.2k151101
14Jan 12, '25I forget who first pointed this out, but one of the funnier things about this scene is that they read the infant mortality table backwards, i.e. the US is 178th from the bottom, no33.3×500k7.5k314334
15Jun 3, '25Delighted to discover that BlackRock has a page on their site whose two key takeaways are: 1. You're thinking of Blackstone, and 2. Our lawyers refused to let us use the word "Blac31.9×478k11k5191.1k
16Feb 26, '25On DOGE canceling unused software licenses, Bear Stearns' CEO used to send out memos admonishing bankers and traders for throwing away perfectly good paperclips instead of saving t30.4×457k3.5k71383
18Apr 11, '25I had an argument with this guy about whether schools move fast enough for their best students, and he insisted that it’s so rare as to be irrelevant. Now I find out he’s strugglin28.5×428k4.5k154322
19Sep 29, '24“I get that your team has issues, so fix them and ship the app” is an all-time line.28.3×424k4.3k1511.1k
20May 2, '24Was there a specific event that caused the protests to ramp up ~6 months after the conflict started? Or is it just good weather for protesting?28.2×423k2.5k47174
21Jul 28, '24Has anyone written a good first-person account of what it was like to working in banking, accounting, or consulting during the rise of spreadsheets? Was it mandated top-down, or di25.8×388k2.4k119726
22Jan 25, '23I used to wonder why I was so viscerally opposed to fare-jumping. Eventually realized it’s a minor crime that’s trivial to get away with—so the people who do it aren’t held back by24×360k1k5567
23Oct 9, '24In 1444, the Ottoman sultan abdicated and placed his twelve year old son on the throne. The Ottomans were losing a war, and the son wrote a letter to his father: "If you are the su23.7×356k10k622974
24Apr 25, '23This is just flawless. Aside from the $100bn run-rate ad business, what has he accomplished?20.4×306k1.7k5261
25Mar 19, '24Uh, anyone else get this one?20.3×305k2.9k82117
26Mar 18, '25I don't really like it when people take phone calls on planes, but I did enjoy hearing "Don't write that part down, by the way. Discoverable."19.5×293k8.7k200374
27Jul 9, '25If you multiply what you'd pay someone on Fiverr to redraw a photo in the style of Studio Ghibli (o3 guesses $30-60) by how many people probably Ghiblified with 4o, and how many ti16.9×254k1.6k45205
28Jul 28, '25First day of English lit our professor said "What's the most famous opening line of a novel?" and I immediately blurted out “The sky above the port was the color of television, tun16.3×245k3.6k77460
29Aug 5, '24Someone is running numbers on Polymarket liquidity and the cost of ordering five UberXLs.16.1×242k2.3k6386
30Mar 26, '25View post on X15.5×232k7.1k519704
31Nov 19, '25View post on X14.4×217k2.1k105514
32Jan 16, '24This article on smart appliances was written 24 years ago and I think about it all the time.13.8×207k3.2k264235
33Jul 5, '23Independence Day is such an amazing snapshot of mid-90s ideals: - the idea of gay marriage is a gag - A white guy does a Jesse Jackson impersonation. Will Smith laughs. - Russia & 13.7×206k1.2k73124
34Apr 15, '24Given the power differential between me and the IRS, I don't think I can meaningfully consent to paying taxes.13.4×201k3.1k239112
35Apr 19, '25Rereading “In the Plex”—I knew Google used Vickey auctions to price ads, but did not know that they were unfamiliar with auction theory and had actually reinvented them from first 12.4×186k2k58644
36Nov 5, '24Throwback to that time in the summer of 2023 when Silver said he probably wouldn’t bother to publish a model because it was just going to fluctuate around 50/50 and people would fi12.3×185k4.1k73125
37Feb 13, '24View post on X12×180k2.5k165328
38Feb 15, '25People are using one weirdly-lit image to accuse Hegseth of drinking bourbon during a speech when the full video shows that it's a clear liquid, probably vodka but possibly gin.12×180k3k6959
39Aug 5, '24Buy when there's blood in the streets (S&P 500 within 10% of all-time highs with unemployment still hovering at multi-decade lows).11.9×178k2.3k8796
40Jan 27, '25A good time to remember that vandalizing Waymos demonstrates the incredible trust we all have in big tech companies: Waymo is studded with cameras and are owned by a parent company11.6×175k2.2k77125
41Jan 21, '24This was clever.11.5×173k1k77257
42May 23, '24Luxury software exists. There are plenty of people who spend $100k+ on getting Emacs, Arch Linux, etc. configured just right. But it’s less visible because the spending is opportun10.7×161k1k47137
43Apr 14, '24A parenting hack I learned recently: DALL-E does some good coloring-book pages.10.5×158k1.6k87322
44Jul 27, '24Factorio teaches refactoring, various multiplayer games are an education in managing a remote team, and of course poker is good for teaching probability and information theory. Whi10.1×151k1.1k38479
46Jul 11, '25It's amazing how you can keep doing numbers with tweets like this when the NYT did an extensively researched piece on how him over a month ago:9.7×145k1.4k44227
47Apr 26, '257yo is asking for a toy that we told her is too expensive. “If we went online and gave it a bad review, would the price go down?”9.4×140k4.5k111106
48Nov 17, '25“At 1.83 miles in height, Sam Altman towers over—“ “Are you sure about that?” “Yes, I double-checked and my source lists his height as ‘1.83m’” “…” “We can quibble about the detail9.3×140k1.6k57169
49Jun 11, '24I was reading my kids a kids' version of Beowulf, and looked into the original poem. I did not know that: 1) we have exactly one original copy, about a thousand years old, and 2) t8.4×126k99930184
50Oct 8, '24I wish they'd invent a prediction market where you could somehow signal that you believed the quoted odds were wrong. Maybe some mechanism to financially reward people who turned o7.9×119k1.1k2259
51Feb 13, '24I've been waiting for this moment for almost a decade: 8yo handed me a coded message in a Caesar cypher and I showed her how you can use a Python program to brute-force it.7.9×119k1.8k68194
54Apr 22, '24Drop the "X, (formerly " Just "Twitter." It's cleaner.6.9×104k3.3k13134
57Nov 12, '24Totally wrong; I looked at a study of people who scored in the 99th percentile of the AFQT and discovered that actually, being smart is incredibly correlated with joining the milit6.4×97k947871
58Jul 28, '25View post on X6.3×95k3.9k99172
59Oct 18, '25Hope to see all of you at the We Have Exactly As Many Kings As We Should rally.6.3×94k1.7k9750
61May 2, '20Conspiracy theories are a genre of science fiction in which most organizations are secretly run by competent people pursuing definite goals.5.8×04.6k1.3k92
62Nov 5, '25I know a lot of people disagree with Zohran’s policies, but I think it’s distasteful to ruin the excitement by saying so. He’s a 34-year-old who just got his first real job, and we5.8×87k1.2k5050
63Sep 18, '25I had never encountered the amazing backstory of tribal casinos. The Supreme Court has an absolutely amazing "and, come to think of it..." here.5.8×87k1.5k120257
64Sep 16, '25We had an electrician look at whether or not we could add a Tesla charger, and when he looked at the house's electrical setup he got a really glum look and started saying things li5.6×85k1.8k1188
65Jul 24, '24Stories like this are a sign of upward mobility. You only tell them if your parents didn’t take you to fancy places when you were young, but you could afford to them as an adult. I5.6×84k1.1k32110
66Jul 15, '24Honestly didn't even know Bronze Age Pervert was on the shortlist.5.6×84k2k11861
67Jul 9, '245yo has been home for summer break, and I got him to watch some of the documentary series "The Men Who Built America." But he calls it "The Guy Who Built America" and seems to beli5.4×81k1.9k65125
68Dec 28, '237yo has started adding nominally religious details to her art in order to get it placed on the Bibles and Icons shelf rather than the less-coveted Kid Art Wall. Thus recreating a c5.3×80k3.1k173119
69Aug 7, '25The NYT writer who doxxed Scott Alexander for no particular reason has been demoted and now writes reviews of hotels. Karma!5.2×78k1.3k1658
70May 11, '24Me to 4yo: “You know, there’s a way you can get your parents to stop asking you to do something over and over. And it works every time! Do you know what it is?” 4yo: “Killing.”5.1×77k1.2k4954
71Jun 23, '25Who taught Trump the phrase "thank you for your attention to this matter," and why does he love it so much?4.7×71k2.2k3863
72Apr 9, '25I’m reading one of those behind-the-scenes 2024 campaign books, and the run-up to Biden dropping out was wild: everyone in his party knew their leader was making a catastrophic err4.7×71k1k8961
73Mar 24, '25Sharing his deepest secrets on a Signal chat whose membership roster he doesn't 100% know—Vance is truly our first Internet-native VP.4.6×70k2k7156
74Jun 1, '25One nice thing about being in my late 30s is that I can tell Zoomer friends: “here is an ancient text with timeless wisdom about your present situation” and it’s a blog post from 24.6×69k2.2k81160
75Nov 28, '24The Economist has a great cover story today about Milei’s first visit to New Jersey.3.4×51k1.2k3781
76Nov 8, '22Publicly announcing plans to bet against a company in order to trigger a bank run allowing you to buy that company is some amazing robber baron stuff. Can’t really think of a moder3.3×03.4k187225
77Jun 15, '25Nearly-2yo walked up to my computer, said “I working!” then typed some random letters into the shell and pressed enter. Back during the ZIRP era this skill set was worth roughly $33.1×46k1.7k3948
79Jun 9, '257yo: "Do I get a dollar when I lose a tooth? [Her best friend] gets $20 when she loses a tooth." "Okay, so sell her your tooth for $15."2.9×43k1.3k3934
80May 6, '25The kids like to bring a sort of Exorcist vibe to dinner with friends.2.7×41k1.3k2026
81Aug 28, '20Congrats to whoever on the Uber SEO team got tasked with “make sure searches for ‘delete uber’ turn up something positive.”2.7×02.7k31766
83Aug 15, '21Everyone claims to have an informed opinion on Afghanistan, and yet according to Steam's statistics, only 0.5% of EU4 players have successfully completed the "True Heir of Timur" a2.3×02.3k29746
84Apr 2, '20R-squared of 0.782.2×02.1k29935
85Mar 12, '20It’s interesting that when people debate school closures, they talk about daycare and warm meals, not learning. I think we all tacitly agree on what schools are mostly for.2.2×01.9k33159
86Aug 27, '25My dad's very Dad view of flag burning was that it should be legal and the fine for beating up a flag burner should be $20.2.2×32k9982839
87Oct 11, '21Today we honor Christopher Columbus's discovery that you can raise funding based on some wildly wrong assumptions about your target market and then pivot to something totally diffe2.0×01.9k24961
88Aug 1, '21Crazy that Square is buying Afterpay for $29bn when they could do it in four easy zero-APR payments if $7.25bn apiece.1.9×02.2k11024
92Oct 30, '22Twitter laid me off today. If you know of any open positions for project managers or senior software engineers, let me know. I was the PM responsible to adding the third, fourth, a1.5×01.6k9827
93Apr 26, '20I love this story, but I have a much more plausible explanation for how a guy with his own fleet of planes could earn a lot of cash over a single weekend in the 70s.1.5×01.5k16247
94Sep 22, '22Competing with Sam Walton sounds like an absolute nightmare.1.5×01.2k84254
95Sep 1, '20If I’m only remembered for one thing, I hope it’s this.1.4×01.3k14583
96Jul 6Today's free issue of The Diff: the movie business is a go-to example of cultural stasis, but it's actually showing a rational response to peculiarities of the business. And that i1.4×21k18010
97Nov 1, '21Happy Halloween to everyone whose brain has been ruined by Twitter.1.4×01.6k7210
98Apr 10, '20Can people STOP retweeting this? When a megalopolis stops emitting huge amounts of soot and fine particles, it means the city is VERY SCARED. This is not cute or adorable.1.2×01.2k13818
100Nov 11, '21Modern airports are an incredible form of time-travel. Go through security and we're back in 2004, with temporary rules about removing shoes. But step into the plane and it's sudde1.0×01.1k10120
101Jul 6, '20What site will have the best livestream of Harvard next semester? I’m about to save $50k.1.0×01.1k5636

Scan another creator

@
@karpathy@levelsio@paulg@naval@marclou@illyism

Run this on any account.

XOutlier builds this table for every public profile you open on x.com, with live data and every post, not just the top 50.

Add to Chrome Download .zip