Trump guts nuclear safety regulations

“The president signed a pair of orders on Friday aimed at streamlining the licensing and construction of nuclear power plants — while panning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its ‘myopic’ radiation safety standards.”

We now have industry capture of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Who here knows about Admiral Hyman RIckover? All of this is worth reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Safety_record

I would be.

The Department of Energy is selling off more than 40,000 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from the Cold War arsenal to nuclear reactor startups. All of which I’m sure will be thoroughly vetted and monitored, because this is done under the direction of a former board member. Yikes!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright

Who IS Oklo, Inc. the "private nuclear reactor builder/operator"? Oklo is Sam Altman:

Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman

We're in territory where weapons-grade plutonium is being given at fire-sale prices to billionaires who's ethical boundaries include creating their own demand for otherwise unnecessary, high-risk energy projects. Guys like Altman, who get their ideas from Wikipedia articles about Ayn Rand — because they are one rung lower than people who actually READ that garbage.

But I'm sure no inventory of hot nuke metal will ever go missing.

There really was something, that began with Jobs and Woz. It wasn't perfect, and Jobs had a way of twisting ethical stances in ends-justifying-means sophistry. But Steve Jobs would never have prostrated before Trump, proffering a solid gold token.

https://geosciences.princeton....

Abstract: We test whether Hg in marine sediments over the last 550 m.y. of the Cretaceous is a reliable proxy linking Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions to late Maastrichtian global climate warming and the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary (KPB).

From what I have seen and read about this, it is quite possible that the traps were emitting unimaginable amounts of gasses for tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of years. In this video essay from Kurzgesagt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjoQdz0nxf4) it is suggested that the traps emitted the equivalent of tens of thousands of our civilizations (!!!) for great many years. Gases that swung the climate like mad: sulfur-based "coolers" and carbon-based "warmers". Plus the mercury, where our current emissions will not even register on the scale back then (and also why the greatest source of Hg in the air today is coal and oil burning - we are re-emitting the poison that the Earth spewed in the past).

In the last several years though, there seems to be a concerted effort to bury the contribution of the traps and put all of it on the asteroid again. Could it be because the traps show that the greatest danger is beneath our feet and has nothing to do with our civilization? Compare the apocalyptic claims of irreversible this and catastrophic that, which will surely happen next year, or at the latest by 2030 or at the very, very latest by 2050 with evidence that tens of thousands of civilizations worth of emissions, going on for a lot longer than our singular civilization has existed didn't result in irreversible climate change and wholesale destruction of life. In fact, adding the asteroid as the cherry on the cake, KPB extinction event is, as far as I remember, the mildest extinction of the big 5(?). Only 75% of everything living perished...

Kurzgesagt goes on mentioning that all the big extinction events were caused by volcanic activity.

If Apple won't monetize a user panopticon and partner with governments to do it, OpenAI will be right there, to take the cash.

I will argue against strict adherence to this statement. Gnome applications written to the project guidelines have become very fine, since the introduction of GTK-4 and libadwaita. I prefer many of these to their equivalents on MacOS.

It's true that most of these fall into a general category of "utilities", and that Windows enjoys a broader ecosystem driven by commercial incentive. But Windows programs are hardly "better' for this, and the widely varied usability is generally sub-par compared to level that's become norm for Gnome/Adwaita software.

I own, but do not operate, a few IT companies that manage corporations in the $600MM-$1B receivables range.

Based on our own help desk ticket software, our clients have opened 40% fewer tickets since ChatGPT was rolled out to every desk and phone. 40%. I expect another 40% drop (total 80%) by next year as end users just manage things themselves.

I won't downsize as the tickets aren't really generating revenue as much as headaches. One of my engineers had a broken PDF file that took her 6 hours to fix, and the end user spent 6 days trying to fix it themselves with Ai.

But -- the basic stuff? Reboot your computer stuff? Email rejected because you mistyped a domain name stuff?

You don't need a human, and we would probably have outsource that stuff to India anyway next year if not for ChatGPT etc.

I spend quite a bit on Discord server services, but I'm out.

GFY, Discord and governments, for mandating this bullshit nonsense.

Talking to people in public isnâ(TM)t harassment.

Talking to people on taxpayer funded grounds also isnâ(TM)t trespass.

Tax funded?

Not private property anymore.