You do understand that products are "essentially fungible" and crude is semi-fungibl (most crude is pretty fungible), and the US is not an island in this marketplace?

Also, you do realize that Aframax rents from Venezuela are ~$1,5m in early 2026 to ~$3,5M? Even your "cheap case" is increasing crude prices by 5%. But to repeat: the US is not an island in this global marketplace. Products get exported from US refineries and sell at globally competitive prices, which forces US consumers to pay globally-competitive prices as well.

Thanks for clarifying. I'm sorry that I never got a chance to see the entire film, though I've seen many snippets and references over the years. I'll add yours to my watch later...

There are several senses in which free beer should not be confused with freedom. The number kept changing as I thought about different angles, but I finally settled on four as "good enough".

But Slashdot in 2026 has no way to display the not equals sign. I've tried every trick I could think of. Time to ask the AI?

No, AC. No one wants you. There is such a thing as a sock puppet too stupid.

For this story "We" is Microsoft, but really it's a broader thing, and it goes back to the math. So many people hate the criminals and would even be glad to help shut down the criminals, but Microsoft doesn't want any help on that scale. That would involve training people to be wiser and more cautious, but Microsoft prefers suckers who will obey the ads and send money. In Microsoft's case, that's for software that is so buggy and horrendous that criminals LOVE it. But Gawd save Microsoft from well educated customers!

And that's why it's a broader story. Not just Microsoft getting rich off off the mass production of dunderheads. It's also how they sell scented soap, preposterous cars, and even dunderhead politicians. A few unscrupulous and extremely greedy people at the top are raking in the wealth and the LAST thing they want is for everyone else to get smarter. Oh, and oof course that's why they LOVE their vision of AI, where most people will be completely mentally crippled by dependence on AI. (But they are sure they are too smart to waste their own "vast intellects" on trivial questions that merely elicit more AI slop. (Also why they regard "benevolent" government as such a vast threat.))

These days I'm actually inclined to see it as running backwards, but after all that is sort of how evolution works. The "pressure" for new species is largely created when overspecialized species go extinct, thereby making available large "energy pools" that are no longer being exploited "efficiently".

I think I mostly agree with your reply, though I think vestigial features can also be useful when conditions regress. I have read a book or two recently that was going more deeply into the modular part of it.

Very productive story and this is my vote for Funniest. (Never get a mod point to bestow.)

However I'm not sure I'm getting the point of the joke on this best of all possible jokes. If it's the "L", then why not Lame Intelligence or Loser Intelligence or possibly even Lost Intelligence? Or maybe I just can't see Ludicrous anymore?

I think you're making a good point, but Subjectively focusing on the karmic impact on yourself is too meta... You're taking too much credit because so many Slashdot identities have a minor reality problem these years?

So I want to tilt it to go for Funny-not-really.

There is more to education than learning how to love money harder and longer. Education is now learning to love money longer and harder.

I think the funniest part of Libertarianism as a fake philosophy is their lack of understanding of their own worship words. At least I've yet to detect any deep understanding, but maybe it's my own confusion showing after too many decades of trying to understand such things. What it seems to come down to for Libertarians is something like "I should be free to do whatever I feel like doing to get more money and the only legitimate purpose of 'government' is to make sure the victims can't complain about any of my negative externalities."

So to completely muddle the water:

[infinity symbol] << money << time << [infinity symbol]

#1^2 Freedom == (Meaningful + Truthful - Coercion^2) Choice{~5} [not equal symbol] (Beer^4+ | Speech | Trade)

Just a couple of mnemonic games to put tags on some of the complexities, not even mathematical philosophy. No units that I can figure out, let alone the measurement errors. "You're pegging my coercion-tometer, but I still say no." (Or vice versa^3 as "I'm pegging your coercion-tometer, but you still say no?")

Have you checked out tanker rates lately? You absolutely save money by having more domestic supply in this environment.

(Crude isn't exactly "cheap" either)

I just tried this for fun with Gemini (hardly the best model, but I wasn't about to spend the money having an agentic framework of high-end models go over it ;) ). It advised:

1) Working with the Iranians at the upcoming UN meeting to try to strike a deal where the US stops its blockage of Iranian oil in exchange for Iran allowing free traffic through Hormuz, without nuclear programme preconditions.

2) Adding pressure on Putin to accept the Ukrainian offer of a mutual energy industry targeting ceasefire

3) Focus freed up US naval forces on protecting convoys through the Bab-el-Mandeb

4) Launching an emergency Jones Act waiver

5) Order the EPA Administrator to issue temporary waivers easing seasonal Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) gasoline restrictions and granting flexibility on Tier 3 sulfur credit banking.

6) Convene the CEOs of the top domestic refiners into a taskforce run by the Department of Energy to coordinate autumn maintenance schedules to avoid multiple regional coker and hydrocracker units taking turnaround downtime simultaneously.

7) Formally announce that the administration will not conduct large-scale, unrefined crude releases from the SPR. Signal to the industry that physical crude in domestic storage is adequate, shifting regulatory focus to downstream bottlenecks.

8) Reprogram allocated DOE infrastructure funds ($1.4 billion) to expedite cavern repairs at Bryan Mound and Bayou Choctaw.

9) Deploy the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve (NEHHOR) strictly on an exchange/loan basis (where refiners borrow diesel barrels now and repay them with interest in refined barrels next spring) to protect national balance sheets while easing spot tightness

10) Issue an Executive Order under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to expedite pipeline compressor stations and pipeline permits connecting the Permian Basin to Gulf Coast refining hubs

11) Direct the Surface Transportation Board to prioritize crude and chemical feedstock movements on Class I railroads.

12) Use USDA Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) authorities to establish emergency fuel cost-offset credits for agricultural producers and commercial freight carriers until crack spreads retreat below $30/barrel.

13) Announce this unified security-and-energy plan publicly to provide appropriate signals to the market.

The US economy as a whole would lose more from banning exports than it would gain. If one is concerned about "ordinary people", it makes more sense to continue allowing exports, add a windfall tax on oil companies or add export duties, and then rebate the revenue from that across the US population, than to ban exports.

Had the oil industry not been so naive and spent this whole year betting on TACO and/or Iranian surrender, the US could be making even more money right now on this crisis. New shale production from an existing lease can be added in just 3-6 months, yet shale expansion rates didn't increase over baseline from spring through the summer. Refining capacity is harder to add that quickly, but probably could have been boosted several percent, which would still be a quite meaningful added value. It gets harder to improve capacity now because most types of capacity addition involve downtime and absolutely nobody wants to be shut down now while crack spreads are this high.

I'd love to see the US congress pass a bill renaming Trump ;)

Mod parent Funny, though I think it could have been funnier if "bombs" was worked into the joke somewhere. Maybe something like "The YOB should have sent smarter bombs"?

My Subject is the joke I was looking for. Low hanging fruit. Of course. I really wish I had more of a humorous imagination rather than just minor UI improvements to tell Claude to implement...

Anyway I'm sure Peter Thiel and Elon Must lose lots of sleep over killing children. Milliseconds and milliseconds. At least every couple of years. Though it's actually the bad press coverage that is annoying them.

"Meta didn't tell Amazon that Muse would access its store" - and? I didn't tell Amazon I'd be accessing its store either before I started shopping there.

This isn't models going off and browsing Amazon for giggles; they're going there because their user told them to. The user would have otherwise told their web browser to; it just would have taken far more steps.

There's no end to the scale up phase.

So demand is going to keep growing at 10x/year... forever? So Anthropic itself is a paperclip maximizer? That eventually the universe itself will be entirely comprised of Anthropic.

Man... until they harvest my atoms to build their latest zettafab, I want to be invested in THAT!

The same place it's coming from now: subscriptions / API fees. Today, mostly programmers.

then it'd need 80% of those users to be spending $2000 just to break even by 2030

So your model is that their demand suddenly stop growing at 10x per year and switch to ~0x (despite no sign of that), yet they kept building out as if their demand was growing at 10x per year? That's an... unusual hypothesis there.