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Xavier Damman 🌍🔅
Verified account This account is verified. Learn more@xdamman
Steward of open source organizations (@opencollect @commonshub_bxl @citizenwallet @regensunite @daobrussels)
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My agent knows me and knows what matters to me.
Build your website for my agent, not for me.
Build your website for my agent, not for me.
Attention all companies: I never want to use your AI assistant on your website. I want to use *my* AI assistant on your websiteView quoted post on X
Human slop >>> AI slop
We will all be learning in coming weeks & months, that most human-made software:View quoted post on X
▫️ Was really slow
▫️ Had many security vulnerabilities
▫️ Was under-specified and incorrect
AI will rewrite it all. Many times. It will make it fast, cost-efficient, and secure. It will think about failure modes we couldn't wrap our heads around.
It will prove, formally verify, load test, harden. It will turn memory-unsafe foundations into robust, optimized ones. If you ask, it'll thoroughly document it, teach you about it, make diagrams, animations, and slide decks.
In many ways, we are witnessing the true birth of software engineering.
"At its core, the Unix philosophy was simple: make simple, modular tools that each do one thing and one thing well, and that are designed to talk to each other through the most universal interface (text). You as a user have extremely fine-grained choice about how to make the different programs fit together. UIs, on the other hand, combine many functionalities into one single opaque tool produced by a single developer. At their apex, UIs turned into "super-apps", which greatly concentrate power in the application developer and have complex and unintelligible internal workings, magnifying security risks. With LLMs, we can go back to the Unix philosophy approach, putting the fine-grained decision-making power back into the user's hands, but without the downside of everyone needing to become a programmer"
— Digital minimalism (vitalik.eth.limo/general/2026/1…)
vitalik.eth.limo Digital minimalism — Digital minimalism (vitalik.eth.limo/general/2026/1…)
Didn’t expect such honest feedback and self criticism.
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.View quoted post on X
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
