I actually do think missile defense is worth developing and fielding. It has been very widely used in Israel against Palestine / Iran proxies lately and in Ukraine.

But would I ever push the button secure in the knowledge that I am invulnerable - can't imagine it. Imagine if missile defense worked really well and only 15% of the US population were wiped out and the radiation over the rest of the country were "usually" survivable. It's unimaginable.

Condolences in advance to the families of the developers who take that offer due to their unfortunate suicide in a month or two

This is "insightful"? Good lord. Maybe wait until there's some shadow of evidence to your conspiracy theory?

I thought you were going to say they would be offered stock options etc. that probably wouldn't actually amount to that much because AI is crap. I don't universally agree with that either, but it's not ridiculous.

What I do think is likely is that Sam Altman is exaggerating.

No, it's quite real:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/c...

+1

What makes this one so funny is they respond SO guiltily. It's hilarious. But I don't need some over-reaching attempt to wordplay it into being a big new social issue.

You beat me to it. This guy is the modern John Henry!

The problem is the man of MAGA himself has made so many pro-putin and pro-russia statements. People try to shame MAGA into remembering their Republican predecessors, to get them to support Ukraine, to stop trusting Putin over US intelligence, to stop brushing off Putin's murder of reporters, etc. etc.

It does seem like Trump is turning a corner now. But many lives have already been lost and it's confusing and threatening that Trump has acted this way.

There was a theory of a "cyclic universe" in which everything started at a point and then expanded outward in the big bang, until gravity draws it all back to a point in the "big crunch" and the cycle repeats perpetually. But that fell out of favor when it was discovered that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. It's a pity since intuitively it made sense. Now, we're thought to be part of a process that only happens once, ever, in the universe?

As for individual solar systems, according to what I just looked up, stars fizzle out and become either a white dwarf, or (for massive stars) a neutron star or black hole - but not again a star in any case.

So far I think Cyber Warfare has not been as important as many thought it would be. And these two countries are both good at it. Signal jamming is widespread, but "hacking" per se doesn't seem to have had a huge impact. I would guess this factory will be making drones within a couple weeks, or a small number even sooner for symbolic effect.

I think Russia started the Nazi talk and Ukraine is bouncing it back at them - because as you said it's the biggest insult they could hurl at each other. They are justly proud of the high price paid to defeat Hitler. But it also turns into propaganda.

It's a good post. Almost all analysis of this topic looks at resources "per student" instead of "per capita" (i.e. the whole population of the nation). These tell a different story, but it is very difficult to find per capita statistics, and per student statistics are warped by greatly increased enrollment over time.

Trump's proposed budget for FY26 does include slashing the national cancer institute by 37%, which is huge. But that hasn't passed yet.

In contrast the "big beautiful bill" that did pass didn't cut cancer funding. (It did include the Orphan Cures Act, which cuts regulation and eases reimbursement for some diseases including cancer, but doesn't directly increase funding for them).

So, it's premature to declare drastic cancer cuts as a done deal, although it's a big threat, although it's not "zeroing out" federal funding.

Also how much of cancer research is funding by the federal govt vs private industry I'm not sure - but private research certainly won't be discontinued, since it's profitable. One of the cancer medicines I'm on is $23,000 per little IV baggie. Not sure how much of that goes straight into dividends and buybacks vs research.

Yes, this isn't a very pure test of whether IP can be used to train AI without special royalties, if the books came from piratebay for free. I'd say the companies that scanned the books themselves after buying them are in somewhat better shape, although whether that's OK is the real core question.

Well, same here. I'm being forced into early retirement by health problems right now and it's financially OK (un-intentional FIRE) due mostly to contributing the max to my 401k from day 1. So, that's great. Sometimes I worry about the value of the market going forward because so many people are in it now, and everybody has such total faith in its long-term stability that bad news hardly effects it. What will happen to the demand for stocks as the boomers cash out? What if something happens so dramatic that it shakes the commonly-held unshakable faith that drives up such large P/E ratios and keeps them there? But, it's still the best option, almost the only option for preserving and increasing long-term value.

The rationale here is that the shareholders are shooting themselves in the foot by not looking far ahead enough, because most of them see it simply as a hen that does or does not lay golden eggs, and that in fact they'd make a lot more money long term if they had more patience and understood the company better. It would make them more willing to make the longer-term investments in quality that are needed for a lasting business. And that perhaps the big market for get-rich-quick schemes get over-funded by investors, drawing away funding from the competing strategy of long-term quality. (E.g. "why does Boeing suck nowadays?")

None of this presumes that a company should go renegade against its owners, only that they should be more wise.

Is that true? I don't know, it must be true sometimes. Very rarely do you get irrefutable answers with this kind of thing.

Yeah. There's a big difference between meeting payroll in a couple of weeks vs hoping to hire a bunch of people real soon now any time you'll see.