The whole global just-in-time supply chain depended on at least the illusion of the freedom of the seas guaranteed by the United States, which the US unambiguously spoiled this year. Piracy never went away altogether but a multi-polar world where regional powers sanction piracy and provide the pirates with sophisticated weapons isn't going to underpin the same kind of global economy.
Nah, it was already destroyed at the 80s during the Iran war.
The GP's comment is a well repeated piece of propaganda, but it was never true.
We have freedom of navigation because every country everywhere wants it. Change that situation and the freedom goes away, the US's position is irrelevant.
OK, those are interesting choices that are outside of the realm of stuff that I was thinking about. What I was thinking about is that the Russians have been working the American people via the media for decades.
What public state speculation about Russian interference in anything ever was substantiated?
As far as I can tell, nothing that has been said about Russian intelligence operations in the West (over the past decade or so) has ever been substantiated. That's why everybody started blaming every single problem or disagreement in the West on Russia, because you wouldn't be asked to or expected to be able to substantiate it.
I've been called Russian or Chinese more times since 2015 than I've ever been called anything else other than my name. I was usually called that by people when I was denying something that those same people now say nobody ever really believed or insisted was true.
I wrote an essay for a private journal last year about how the X-Files mainstreamed anti-scientific and anti-government conspiracy thinking and thereby led to the downfall of American democracy in the 21st century. It valorized the fringe, presaged "do your own research" and consistently told us that the skeptic is always wrong, the believer is always vindicated.
It wasn't a bubble of the 90's, it was a prescient blueprint for the 2020s.
I've heard this idea before but I think it's primarily hindsight. At the time The X Files was on, there were even more popular shows about strong institutions, like Law & Order or The West Wing. So if popular TV was influential, why didn't society evolve toward those portrayals? I think we can look back today and say "that looked like this," but it doesn't mean that caused this.
It took something far more powerful than a TV show that was mildly popular for a few years to create what we live today. It took the great flatness of the Internet. As Terry Pratchett predicted to Bill Gates back then.
The X-Files didn't presage it, the X-Files were inspired by it. Conspiratorial "do your own research" style thinking long predated the X-Files (both in existence and in popularity).
If anything, the 90s were the one era where that thinking had receded more than at any other time. Then 9/11 brought it roaring back.
I think it’s simpler than that, the internet makes it easier for conspiracy people to reinforce each others beliefs in a space where no one is going to challenge their fallacious reasoning.
It's obvious that the word productivity has been used in this discussion to mean something other than the plain meaning of the word. If AI was productive, there would be no question about whether it could be afforded. If you're asking whether you can afford it then it isn't productive by definition.
They are using it to mean a mechanism that produces prodigious amounts of toxic waste. That does not conform to the historical understanding of the word.
Silent Americans are the most fucked up generation ever. They are the ones actually responsible for most of the bullshit that people attribute to Boomers.
That is still subject to the primary energy fallacy. Those reports are in terms of primary energy, i.e. how much heat is released by combustion of fossil gas. But in order to replace fossil gas in a chemical plant, you need much less electricity than the primary energy of the fossil gas suggests.
> For all energy sources, the IEA clearly defines energy production at the point where the energy source becomes a “marketable product” (and not before).
Doesn't that mean if you are burning coal to make electricity, you wouldn't count the heat output because the generated heat is not a marketable product.
Looking at the chart for TFC, the wind and solar case looks even worse. Wind and solar supplies 2 million TJ compared to 36 million for coal.
All I was really trying to say from the outset is that I'm surprised at how important coal still is and how little we use renewables. I see articles here all the time about the massive advancements in solar (and wind to a lesser degree) and I had it in my head that renewables were a much larger part of the energy mix than they are.
There is lag created by sunk capital costs. Coal is still producing considerable electric power in the US, but the last time a new coal-fired power plant came online was more than a decade ago, and there are none under construction (although Trump was trying to get one built, to considerable skepticism and inertia). The average age of a coal-fired power plant in the US is 40+ years.
I'm no AI-hypeman (nor the opposite, I guess), and I agree that replacing AI for critical thinking and writing will only turn out bad in the long-term.
But "your dignity"? You mean like "I feel shameful over that people saw that my writing was actually AI?" or something else?
I meant the indignity of trying to have a conversation with someone who at first seems like a reasonable professional, but who at some point in the conversations insults you with something like "I asked Claude and ..."
Yeah, that'd be a terrible experience, not gonna lie. Bit like the folks that used to just quote whatever Google served them as the first hits when you're actively having a conversation.
I suppose. So I still don't understand why users of AI should feel like they've lost their dignity, does it matter where the AI runs or using AI is just shameful regardless?
Because MAX is on rails it can and does come to a complete halt for indefinite periods of time whenever some jackass in an Escalade parks it on the track. I know this firsthand and I only lived in Portland for one month.
MAX has dedicated right-of-way outside the city centers, but in the cities it shares city streets. Tourists drive / stop-at-lights in the dedicated lanes a lot.
Streetcar is more susceptible to being stopped because someone parked over the white line, but with 20 minute headways it takes longer to cause a problem.
Every town says the exact same thing when Waymo shows up, and it's never true. There's nothing unique about Portland drivers, streets, sidewalks, or pedestrians.
I feel like I've lived in enough places and they're pretty small relatively speaking but whatever, seems like we'll see how it actually plays out.
I'm not saying it's going to randomly speed up to 80mph and crash into a building and explode. Just that I'll finally have a chance to witness those hilarious videos in person
This is a false blanket statement. Portland has very short (walkable) blocks, many one way streets, and it is true that most often than not cars actively stop for pedestrians to cross the street
This feature is used extensively in safety-critical testing procedures, for example. It is also used as a side channel for instrumenting long-running processes.
See also: debuggers and profilers, which simply wouldn't work without this capability.
I've also since learned that this feature is used in applications (e.g. Firefox) which sandbox their processes, as a means of crash-reporting when some process pisses in their sandbox, crashing ...
Sure, it 'seems' dangerous to have this capability - until you need to debug, profile, or instrument something ..
reply