I think satellite data centers are colossally stupid, but I suspect the larger problem is the public's gullibility for big lies.

Now, which things ARE lies and which aren't has been delightfully co-opted by politics; what one puts on that list is *instantly* translated into political affiliation.

I can think of 3 big lies that would immediately get me labeled "stupid maga fuck".
I can think of 3 others that would likewise get me labeled "woke fag".
Amusingly, putting all 6 in a list would be cognitively negatively filtered; each "side" would only see and respond to the ones they DISagree with, in most cases as if the others weren't even present.

I think data centers in space will be inevitable WHEN WE LIVE THERE and some research to address the (large) physics challenges the context poses are a good idea. Anything above research trial scale today is dumb. But that's all noise compared to the bigger problems, this argument is only a symptom.

I have a home full of expensive electronics and live in a rural county in the US Midwest where weather is an issue. I'd much rather have the external feed trickle-charging batteries that steady-supply my home, than be vulnerable to the spiky local power during weather events.

I sort if wonder in a complete amateur sense if this might herald a "ac for distribution, dc microgrid in homes" evolution.

Are we doing that great with the process ourselves?

Our children are deeply despondent, increasingly suicidal, and from the latest surveys evolution seems to have decided higher thinking abilities are to some degree a waste of energy better used for other things.

So if we're declaring "sides" to issues, which one was it that emplaced govt officials in social media companies to control what people were allowed to discuss?

It's 2026.
Everything is partisan, don't you understand? That's *part* of the enshittification. :|
But thank you for trying to bring actual facts to the discussion.

I've been convinced for decades that nobody in the beltway - whether they have a (R) or (D) by their name, or a 'nonpartisan bureaucrat' (ha ahahahaah) - gives much of a shit about the 340m people outside the beltway except as farmable resources.

(slaps forehead): They should have asked AI if that was a good idea FIRST!

Did you ever notice it's the complete pussies that post as AC?

The US - within living memory - used to be a high trust society.

Of course, no, it wasn't perfect but I grew up in MN. You could leave your car running outside a Target on a bitterly cold January day and it wouldn't get stolen. In the small town I grew up in, it was pretty common to 'run a tab' at the local grocery so if you needed to stop and get stuff but turned out you forgot your wallet, etc they'd just note your name and the amount and you'd come back in (usually as soon as you could, as it was embarrassing) and pay off your tab.

Wouldn't this be a normal stage on the process of condensation from "cloud of particulates" into a solar system? If this cloud is spinning and will ultimately segregate into distinct planets, presumably at some point in that process those protoplanetary bodies are reasonably discrete but not yet condensed. What am I missing?

Fwiw Jupiter is the largest a body can be before it becomes a brown dwarf; that is, adding mass doesn't increase the diameter any longer it just increases in density due to electron degeneracy.

"From each according to his means, to each according to their need" is that ... pretty much what you're talking about?

What's your "fair share" of taxes, btw? Do you think someone earning $3/day in Mogadishu would agree that you're paying your "fair share"? Should we tax those unrealized 401k benefits you have sitting in an account somewhere? They're just as tangible 'wealth' as (most) of the $billion/$trillion class's 'wealth' you know? 20%? 25%? that should clean you out of that 'excess unjustifiable wealth' in a few years yeah?

And are we allowed to collectively decide on our priorities any more? My understanding that a fair number of things that are democratically unpopular have become law/reality "for our own good" per our betters in Washington DC? (Both GOP and Dems, to be clear)

"And as bad as the cold and flu can be, there are kids who are going into debt with their school over getting breakfast." The US govt spent something like $4.6trn on COVID. You're saying that should have been spent on school lunch programs instead? It certainly would be enough to feed those kids!

Indeed, solar and wind have taken great strides.

I'm not happy about much of that being driven by tax breaks and subsidies BUT I'd also very much like those tax breaks & subsidies to be pulled from fossil fuels as well (including the indirect subsidies they both get).
Let the systems genuinely compete.

Anyway: Solar and wind may be growing hugely but that's largely a factor of a tiny starting point. To see the IMPACT, we have to look at it the other direction:
In 1995, 77.1% of global energy was provided by fossil fuels.
The latest year I could find solid numbers for, 2024, that's down to....76.4%.

0.7 in three decades isn't meaningful; it's practically a rounding error.
I would be happy to embrace new nuke techs as it feels like it would be faster than waiting on solar/wind+batteries.

... I'm sure the executive that championed it has certainly been fired just as promptly without any sort of golden goodbye package.

Obviously?

If an LLM attorney is smart enough to actually check that the cases they reference actually exist, we can be confident than they're better than a certain percent of human lawyers.

Let's keep our focus on the people behind these projects, shall we? Not the caterers, the electricians, the plumbers, or the company that mows their lawn. They're just trying to pay the bills man.

Yes, I get it, if it's your holy mission to oppose AI datacenters sure, you go right ahead and chain yourself to the front gate. But the fact is that most people don't have the luxury to morally evaluate their job for nuances of "whatever is bothering reddit today".

"... football-field-long ovens for drying layers of material that have been dissolved in solvents..."

Hyperbolic language meant to spur some sort of emotional reaction, I guess?
This process : deposition of a dissolved solid and then the solvents being driven of by a long, gentle drying process, is pretty common in industry as a method. For example just about every self adhesive product uses this process for its release coating.