Is Hegseth going to be tested? Because all this is, is him indicating that everyone a hint over 30 will be fired.

As for the testosterone replacement, that is just irony that he’s looking for gender affirming care for the military, when they just said they weren’t for that.

We can indeed use things like pump storage and gravity batteries, but we don’t really have to. The next element down on the periodic chat from lithium can be used in place of lithium at half the energy density. Which to save you time, it’s sodium, which can be found in salt, which we have quite a bit of on the planet.

Sodium ion batteries were slightly researched but lithium got the money because it has twice the energy density (amount of energy you can store per kilogram). However, for giant batteries that never have to move, sodium ion batteries are ideal for grid storage.

Very insightful. At grid scale the line between them just blurs because of how they’re ultimately used. But there are some differences and ultimately a grid scale pack would be both packed in one. With caps taking the blows to smooth into the chemical storage of the battery behind it or head right back out before a need to store in the chemical behind the cap.

I keep telling people, production isn’t the problem in most national grids. The issue is distribution. Power plants operate on-demand. That means when you flip on your light switch, some power plant somewhere has to spin just a little bit more faster to account for you turning on the light. And when you turn it off, it has to spin just a little bit slower.

There’s no buffer for the in-between. We have the same issue with water pipes. The pumps pump the water out at some fixed rate and everyone uses the water at some variable rate. The difference is that with water we have something that acts as a buffer, we call them water towers. So when someone shuts off their sink, instead of pumping a little slower, we just send the excess water to a tower. And when demand goes up, instead of pumping faster, we just empty the tower.

Electricity has something similar, they’re called batteries. And every national grid of developed countries has been in need of them since the 1970s. But we just keep doing neat little tricks with averaging to prevent investment in grid batteries. So this is going to continue to be an issue until nations start biting the bullet on this issue. More solar panels is great, but that’s not the major problem at the moment.

And don’t get me started with transmission lines.

This is that where the party starts shitting or getting off the pot. Take some stance on this issue as opposed to this trying to have cake and eat it too approach that just keeps giving the win to Republicans.

Futurama meme coming soon.

Senators aren’t impeached. They are expelled. Expulsion requires two-thirds vote in the Senate.

Thom Yorke has literally tried everything for selling music. Though it all he’s seen the music industry eventually consume it.

You can’t invent something new without it eventually turning into what was the old. We can always keep moving the tech, we can always keep inventing some new platform, but we never get to keep to ourselves forever.

The reason why this keeps happening is because people keep trying to apply a solution that doesn’t apply to the problem. We don’t need some NEW method of delivery. We just need to get rid of the OLD system of industry.

It’s rich people. AI is the current excuse. I hate this notion that if we got rid of AI we solve the issue. No, the rich people are still there and they’ll find a new thing to suck everyone’s lives with.

Oh no. Man I had no idea what you were trying to say on first read. No. It’s just this shit happens all the time in Tennessee. Our State Government gets told what the fundamental issue is, they create some cheap stop-gap solution, it fails two or three years down the road.

Like if you ever drive on Interstate 24 in Tennessee this kind of thing is in your face like all the time. Also the State prison healthcare going on here is just chef kiss perfect example of failing to understand root cause.

“Prisoners keep dying in prison because of sickness, I know! Let’s just privatize it.” Prisoners keep dying. “I don’t know where we went wrong?!” It’s hard to feel like justice is served if everything that lands someone in prison exposes them to a incredibly high rate of death by disease.

Yeah, the entire underlying problem are the pipes that lead to the pool as many have tried to tell him. The pipes leading to and from the treatment machine need to be fully replaced. When the pool was renovated in 2012, the pipes installed were for the wrong application. The land the pool sits on is formerly wetlands. So special attention is required for putting in pipes in that area. This wasn’t done and so the soil is literally crushing the pipes allowing water treatment to leak into the surrounding soil.

This is why they’ve had to have people physically go out there and manually treat the pool. The problem is that the treatment is never making to the pool in a large enough volume to make a difference. But the manual treatment requires people in large “unsightly” protective gear to wade through the pool and treat the water. Then they have to rope off the section that was treated to ensure no one tried to enter the pool until the treatment has diluted enough.

Trump keeps doing the thing Trump is known for, cutting corners that ultimately mean more money is spent long term. The problem is the pipes. They need to be replaced. But then the pool has to be closed for large construction and the short term cost goes up. So Trump keeps just putting a band-aid on it over and over and over again like the idiot he is.

He’s been told what the issue is and what the fix is. He just wants a short-term “fix” so he looks good. He’s not actually interested in fixing the pool. The pipes have to be ripped out and new ones installed. That is the only true fix.

LOL!! Good for them. Fucking grifters just grifting.

What’s the scam? Demand is insane for NAND chips. So they’re upping the price in response to that demand. 512 Gb NAND is something around $20 right about now. In 2023 you couldn’t give the chips away, prices were down to something like $1.50. When COVID came in, I remember spot pricing a reel at something like $5 a chip.

I mean the last few years I’ve seen a reel ready for pick and place go from $2,250 to $31,500 in the span of a few years. I think boom-and-bust cycles are to be expected in any industry or at least these days is feel like every industry is like this. So are you saying that the boom-and-bust cycle is the scam?

Wow who could have guessed?

The Party of Lincoln is dead

Yes, when the two parties fought tooth and nail to prevent any third voice from rising up, the people from the disassociated group decided to usurp one of the main parties, rather than try to make their own.

Literally the Republican party did this to themselves because they just couldn’t bear the thought that Trump might carve out a third party and challenge the status quo.

But the Republican party isn’t the only one this is happening too. We already see socialist entering the Democratic party. The reality should be that we have enough room to have both Democratic and Socialist party in the US. Just like we should have enough room for a Republican and Populist party.

But no, the Democrats and Republicans decided to hold onto the duopoly to the bitter end. Good riddance to both of them. It’s clear that the thing that’s eaten away the classic Republican has made the political group worse. Perhaps that which supplants the Democrats will be better than what we’ve dealt with.

Things to note.

• Gambling is a revenue stream for States.
• States up to this point have been terrible at managing revenue, gambling now gives them this glut of cash.
• Gambling has been promoted as a social activity. Know a gambling platform? Likely there’s a whole social media presence for it. And for some digital platforms that include gambling, they may even have whole social network.
• Aggressive advertising and hidden psychological factors have played a role in how people view it. “Risk-free” sign up, give the impression of harmless entertainment and some platforms deeply hide the gambling aspect.
• Low barrier to entry. Gambling usually has very little friction to get people into the platform, some even allow very low wagers, allowing “everyone” to get in.
• The escape illusion is real for the most hardcore. During periods of high inflation, stagnant wages, and high living costs, individuals look for alternative income sources, looking to escape their current situation.
• And finally, the gig market mindset where everyone feels a need to have a side hustle. Digital income streams with low entry have become popular for fulfilling this mindset.

Human beings are terrible at balancing short-term gains for long-term consequences. It’s mixed into our DNA. Our ancient ancestors, securing immediate calories or escaping a threat was a matter of life and death. Long-term planning wasn’t as critical as immediate survival. Now do note, that’s not an excuse for the people who foolish went head long into this.

This is why this struggle with the rich and powerful is eternal. It fundamentally taps on an ingrained flaw we collective fall for every single time. There is no one solution, there can never be one solution. People must forever fight themselves and the powerful from the exploitation of this fundamental flaw of humanity.

Then we are completely on the same page! I actually mentioned earlier in our thread that I hate the notion of calling these specific, highly useful operations ‘AI’ for exactly the reasons you just laid out.

My previous replies were just looking at it through a strict, literal computer science taxonomy lens. But my original comment literally points out the very things you bring up.

We’re fighting an uphill battle with the vast marketing hype and it’s good that you can understand the nuanced difference between all the things that have gotten rebranded AI. My point isn’t to try and use past technology as a way to validate what the techbros are doing but to highlight how muddy the waters have become.

I closed out my original comment with a hope that perhaps the more utility based work that’s had solid proof of usefulness doesn’t get tossed out with the bathwater so to say.

Again, I’m not apologetic of what has come from that hard work, more lamenting that everything has become the fuzzy mess it is.

By all means, head back to my original comment and let me know if there’s any part where I’ve come off indicating embracing this thing that I would say you and I agree with.

I distinctly remember the conversations about Office’s phone home system and people specifically saying “this seems problematic” and Microsoft hand waving those concerns away.