Looking like the only one of my no's still on the table is the strait. Everything else will just fade away. The US' unwillingness to test the limits of the death cult is the latter's superpower.

Hard to figure whether the folks who have figured out that AI is the future think that it will benefit everyone or instead that because they "get it" they will rise above the morass and be fine without having to worry about the half of the public who are below average and thus don't "get it".

It is possible to have crashing prices and little profit, despite explosive usage growth and exponentially falling costs. New world.

Saw this just as I was watching today's Bezos Prometheus interview. Prometheus appears to be targeted at exactly this sort of work, which he claimed LLMs can't do. Interesting to see how it plays out.

My brother-in-law just proposed that restaurant and other reviews be split by generation, so that co-generationists could see reviews by their peer group. Preferences are more shared within generations than across them (although this is not universal, ofc), so this would be a win-win.

We are living in a bizarre energy timeline where the cost of new energy generation capacity has never been cheaper, yet the cost of delivered energy in the US (and most of the west) has never been more expensive. Recent project tenders in Saudi Arabia include the 1.4 GW Najran Solar PV at 1.097 cents/kWh, the 600 MW Ad Darb Solar PV at 1.36 cents/kWh and the Dawadmi Wind IPP Plant, 1.5GW at 1.34 cent/kWh. 1 cent per kWh at GW scale. This is insane. Saudi Arabia has some of the cheapest natural gas in the world. In that same country, their natural gas power plant PPAs are coming in at 4-5 cents/kWh. The Saudi's view gas as a complement to solar and storage, not competing with it, and providing grid firming and winter/nighttime power. Their target is 50% renewables by 2030. Not for climate change. For energy abundance. The US has no target. No national plan to give us cheap energy that can come anywhere close to matching these numbers. Our politicians talk about energy abundance, but other countries that we look down on actually deliver it. The US is reinvesting in coal plants, despite our abundance of cheap natural gas. We are investing in new nuclear (rightfully so), but that will have no material impact on energy in the US for over a decade - this battle is happening right now. Did I say that these costs were insane? China is installing grid scale battery storage at $65/kWh (capex). The middle east and India are building storage for slightly over $100/kWh. I don't expect that the US would ever be able to match the costs in these countries. These are centrally planned, government controlled and subsidized industries. But, it should not be 5x (or more) as expensive to build projects like this here. We are killing our dreams of energy abundance with byzantine regulatory and market structures, red tape, political culture wars, tariffs with relatively little corresponding domestic manufacturing incentives, and an unwillingness to invest in our public grid infrastructure (yes, we the US ratepayers have paid for all of it). US industrial companies are trying to do the right thing by building their factories and data centers in the US. International trade partners are trying to do the right thing by building factories here as well. But, the siren song of 1 cent electricity firmed by cheap batteries and gas will ultimately prove too strong for capital to resist, and the countries that exploit this energy abundance are going to dominate us. The last wave of offshoring took our manufacturing base with cheap labor. This wave will take it for cheap energy. There is no fundamental reason we can't be competitive on energy costs. We have abundant natural resources to do so.

Judging based on votes, there are almost no "free thinkers" who would rather be right than win in Congress. Paul, Massie, Sanders, and a few others. (Free thinkers are no more likely to agree with each other than with their party.) Parties continue to lose salience, which means that coalition building might the most important skill in Congress.

Platner is Dem’s Trump clone. Obviously unfit, but that’s ok because he’s on the right side.

It is still a crime that Curry did not make the playoffs.

Is there any reason to believe that Platner stopped at sexting?

By attacking civilians, Putin is sealing his defeat in Ukraine. Those onslaughts mostly get taken out before they do any damage, while the ones that hit have no military consequence, but do unite Ukrainians in their determination to not give him a chance to do it systematically should they surrender. Ukraine, by contrast, is using its amazing new tech to attack Russia's oil, military production, and logistics channels. How they win.

Germany has a bunch of closed nucl at power plants. Any chance that hyperscalers could get them restarted for use by data centers? Win win!

Given all of Trump's defeats at the Supreme Court this term, is the reason that Dems are so determined to "reform" the court not still abortion?

Tesla $TSLA has shown that you can build amazing self-driving tech that still has to be supervised. It has taken years to get really close. Many other vendors may have great tech that might have to spend their own multi-year crawl before they too get to go unsupervised.

If Universal Basic Capital hands shares to individuals, instead of turning into a government slush fund, that might be the best way to manage the transition to the end of work. wsj.com/opinion/newsom-wants…

Ukraine appears to be far ahead of Russia in both missile/drone targeting and defense. Russia should be dominating in both. Too much vodka?

Are these teen takeovers the kids' attempt to devise a rite of passage in a society whose elders have abandoned the concept?

"Ukraine is the arsenal of democracy."