A profile of Palmer Luckey, who sold Oculus to Facebook, was fired after donating to a pro-Trump troll group, and now imagines a new age of warfare at Anduril
The facts of Palmer Luckey's life are so uniquely bizarre—combining elements of fantasy with lunacy and also world-altering change … Threads: @anildash . X: @carnage4life , @carnage4life , @lulumeservey , @pourbrew , @blakejharrisnyc , @sriramk , @maddie_rowley_ , @mr_james_c , @lulumeservey , @aradtski , @richardhanania , @zachalberico , @stevesi , @wrmead , @bariweiss , @ktmboyle , @grady_booch , @alananewhouse , @davidu , @ktmboyle , @ktmboyle , @rubensteinadam , @vladdavidzon , @jeremysternla , @john_lam , @ktmboyle , and @wolfejosh Threads: Anil Dash / @anildash : all you need to know about this profile is I saw it because the openly white supremacist acolytes of this absolute shihead have been spamming it at me on the other site because I've been living rent-free in their heads for almost a decade since I called out their scumbag tycoon senpai. … X: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : I do give Palmer Luckey credit for a perfect execution of the best advice to B2B founders, find a business category that is hopelessly outdated in its usage of tech and overlooked by Silicon Valley because it isn't sexy. Building tech for the defense industry was a perfect choice Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : This profile of Palmer Luckey is interesting, mainly for the sort of fawning adulation of tech founder that we haven't seen since early profiles of Elon Musk and prior to that Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, he pulled off a reverse acquisition, Facebook -> Meta. https://www.tabletmag.com/... Lulu Cheng Meservey / @lulumeservey : Also often underappreciated is the respect owed to Nicole Luckey, who has endured so much undeserved bullying. She committed, as a teen, to a long distance relationship with a broke debate camp nerd who lived in a trailer. That's real love. She deserves the Helpful Fox Taylor Black / @pourbrew : “After selling Oculus to Facebook for $2.7 billion and then getting fired by Mark Zuckerberg for making a $10,000 donation to a pro-Trump troll group dedicated to “shitposting in real life,"" // wild read https://www.tabletmag.com/... Blake J. Harris / @blakejharrisnyc : This is the best thing I've read in many months: https://www.tabletmag.com/... (great job @JeremySternLA !) Sriram Krishnan / @sriramk : This profile of @PalmerLuckey in @tabletmag is self-recommending as they say. https://www.tabletmag.com/... Maddie Rowley / @maddie_rowley_ : Absolutely unreal read by @JeremySternLA. Palmer Luckey is disrupting the defense technology industry, and is doing it in ways I could have never imagined. https://www.tabletmag.com/... @mr_james_c : Wow this is one heck of a profile! It's as if Tom Wolfe came back to life and rewrote The Right Stuff, swapping Chuck Yeager as protagonist for @PalmerLuckey. https://www.tabletmag.com/... Lulu Cheng Meservey / @lulumeservey : Palmer is known as a hardware wizard, a tech visionary, an S-tier tinkerer, and a patriot. All accurate. But what's usually not appreciated is that Palmer is a family man, a devoted husband, and a loyal friend. The best thing about this profile is it highlights not just [image] @aradtski : Brilliant piece laying out the story of a brilliant man, who's banishing from Oculus will be the iconic poster-child story of 2010s-2020s frenzied crushing of speech and political dissent—a story you'll recall to your grandkids to describe this era https://www.tabletmag.com/... Richard Hanania / @richardhanania : Palmer Luckey revolutionized VR and got fired by Facebook for funding pro-Trump memes. Facebook's head of engineering explains why: “Multiple women have literally teared up in front of me in the last few days.” Meanwhile FB invented a story where a lesbian did all the VR work. [image] Zach Alberico / @zachalberico : The fb details here are wild - if even half are true what fb did to @PalmerLuckey was totally fucked. I can see why @ID_AA_Carmack felt bad for not standing up for him at the time. https://www.tabletmag.com/... Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : From virtual reality to remaking our bloated defense industry, palmer Luckey is trying to forge a new America. Will it let him? // an incredible profile of an incredible builder/innovator with an incredible story. Also @tabletmag is so very good. Please subscribe and support. Walter Russell Mead / @wrmead : This piece by my podcast co-host Jeremy Stern combines groundbreaking journalism about the founder of Anduril with stunning insights into the Death of the Sunbelt — and its possible resurrection. A Must-Read. https://www.tabletmag.com/... Bari Weiss / @bariweiss : The profile of the year was just published in @tabletmag. Written by @JeremySternLA about the singular @PalmerLuckey: https://www.tabletmag.com/... Katherine Boyle / @ktmboyle : “These days they'd probably say I had ADD...I'd say I just had boy disorder.” -@PalmerLuckey This is a funny anecdote about a serious issue. Palmer's mother homeschooled him not because the system thought him a genius. But because the system would have called him weird. This [image] Grady Booch / @grady_booch : @stevesi @tabletmag Well, that was simultaneously a fascinating and frightening read. Alana Newhouse / @alananewhouse : California is Still America, Only More So Amid the Depression, hundreds of thousands of Dust Bowl migrants fled to Southern California. They spent World War II assembling radar units and guidance controls for submarines, missiles, and fighter aircraft. (credit: Alfred [image] David Ulevitch / @davidu : @KTmBoyle @PalmerLuckey I knew reading it you'd grab that 'graph. And I agree. Katherine Boyle / @ktmboyle : @maureendowd Way too many people in the comments think eccentricity comes with wealth. For every eccentric millionaire, there are 100 basic ones. Eccentricity comes from one's nature and it's cultivated in childhood. It thrives based upon the values of the people who surround that child, and Katherine Boyle / @ktmboyle : Still can't get over the first five paragraphs. The best profile of @PalmerLuckey I've ever read, and the best tech profile of the last several years. Adam Rubenstein / @rubensteinadam : The definitive profile of Palmer Luckey from @JeremySternLA in @tabletmag https://www.tabletmag.com/... Vladislav Davidzon / @vladdavidzon : This piece by my editor and friend @JeremySternLA is one of the best pieces I have read this year... READISIMO NOW Jeremy Stern / @jeremysternla : As the official biographer of Sega, Nintendo, Oculus, and Larry David, Blake's talent and career is the stuff of Jewish kids' dreams John Lam / @john_lam : @stevesi @tabletmag THANK YOU. This is quite possibly the greatest run-on sentence that I've ever read: “...there was first the lonely figure of Palmer Luckey, the homeschooled, Jules Verne-obsessed, amateur scientist with no money, whose faith in the power of technology was so strong that he Katherine Boyle / @ktmboyle : So much of modern culture is marked by having too little of this: genuine eccentricity. Read these profiles back to back and you'll see just how hard it is to preserve this type of person: brilliant, interested, obsessive, outwardly-focused rather than inwardly-absorbed. Karp [image] Josh Wolfe / @wolfejosh : 1/ I had to contend years ago with biased & baseless rumor mongers spreading lies that Palmer was antisemetic—NO A “radical Zionist” 🇮🇱 Palmer is patriot🇺🇸, pure ally and is only anti-idiots + anti-naive illiberal identity ideologues —oh and also anti-despots + evil dictators. [image]