There is a rule that says never travel to places where you are not at the top of the food chain. In China, that's currently Xi and your money that ends up there is forfeit to his whims. (And so is your person if you go there yourself.)

I take lots of pics with my iPhone, for sure, but nothing where I would care overmuch if a complete stranger were looking at them without my knowledge. Are you sure you turned off that automatic cloud storage thing? Are you sure the phone's not hacked? Are you sure no other snoopy person didn't just copy everything on it?

" . . . it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights . . ."

Possible? This is China. It is a certainty.

For forty years I was certain that games would someday be big business, like the movies or music. A lot of people (including all my relatives) thought that was plain silly. Sadly, I never figured out a good way to monetize that knowledge without having my name on the title or owning the studio. On the other hand, I've played a lot of good games . . .

I'll gladly pay 59.99 for a game that I know will keep me playing for 100 hours or more. The problem is finding those 100 hours, especially with all the other games I snagged (usually on Steam) waiting and waiting and waiting for me to get to them (or back to them).

Sure, the observer's consciousness extends to many worldlines, some in which the cat is dead, and some in which it is alive. Then the observer's state of awareness is changed by opening the box. This effectively creates two states of awareness (states of consciousness), each across fewer worldlines, where only one previously existed across more worldlines. It's not the universes splitting, just your sense of awareness or, as some prefer to call it, consciousness.

Where it starts to get weird is when you have two cat boxes, and two observers, both of which can see and even speak with each other, but, neither of which can see inside the other's cat box when it is opened, nor do their poker faces reveal to the other what they see when they open their own box. Then each opens their own box, first one does, then the other, and only afterwards do they tell each other, again, one at a time, what they see. Try to keep track of all the splitting going on.

Fortunately, there is a near infinite number of worldlines. It's kind of like asking how many squares are in a box. It might be limited by the Planck length or something, but that's about it. In a sense, the cat box is the same experiment as the dual-slit experiment, just leaning towards being focused on what we think of as time, rather than what we think of as space.

Spooky that there is even some thought that a supernova might have destroyed it 6,000 years ago, yet because it is around 7,000 light years away, we just haven't gotten the word yet.

Well then, the RoP podcast needs to counter an interview with Martin with an interview with Tolkien -- oh, wait.

Heh, it was looking that way for awhile. But if any Ferengi leader had done to their economy and its leaders what Xi did to his, the Ferengi would have skinned him alive--and then sold futures on the hide while it was still being tanned.

They also have a lot of land that is unsuitable for agriculture and what they do have is, on average, not nearly as good. US cropland is about 50% better, all other things being equal--but all other things are not equal. Heck, a lot of the farms there are still under collectives and government control.

They do have a lot of farmland, roughly comparable to the US and Canada put together, which is why they traditionally exported the stuff, but yields in Russia are tiny. The average Russian grain yield is 1.85 tons a hectare as compared with 6.36 tons a hectare in the United States.

Me: "I can see you, you are 3D alright. That's really cool! Can you see me?"

Them: "Ew, no! Of course not. Why would I want do that?"

I read the article and it says, given the distribution, there is a good chance of a neutron stars or a black hole whizzing by within 65 ly of us right now. We might have been in the middle of a cosmic firing range for over 4 billion years--and we still would be.

They don't even have to hit us. If the likelihood of one passing near us in any given period of time is high enough, then we could have yet another explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Release a large number of blind rabbits on the expressway at rush hour and, after awhile, that last rabbit is wondering why he can't hear any other rabbits calling out to him -- as any number of stars, er cars, are still silently whizzing past him . . . and he himself is still at as much risk as ever.

And as for all these folks telling us to buy art to preserve our savings (even when others are buying canned goods and emergency rations), keep in mind that the US gov't doesn't really want you doing that. This is why the capital gains tax on collectibles (Picassos and baseball cards, both) is 28% -- considerably higher than most folks marginal tax rate unless you are filing income over 170k as an individual or twice that as a couple filing jointly.

Which is why the folks who invest in art as an investment are pretty much the one percenters, who already have a marginal tax rate well in excess of 30%.

Foxconn has a "fully automated" factory in Chengdu. Since that city is closed for COVID one wonders what a fully automated factory does when it can't get resources delivered, or products picked up, or repair personnel to do maintenance?

Also, the automation in China is almost uniformly coastal, or along the dried up Yangtze river. Wonder how that's going for getting resources delivered or picked up? Water transport is about 13 times cheaper than rail, providing you already have the rail in the right places).

They have to go at automation full-bore to even begin to hope to stay competitive, everyone does, but fully automated production is more of a threat to China, than an opportunity.

The concentration of automation in specific areas means if anyone is successful (or allowed to be successful), the wealth inequality is going to go from huge to phenomenal when compared with the rest of China. All that manufacturing capability is a positive only if you have a demand for the products. A real problem when the bulk of the workers get laid off and there is a huge reduction in people with the money to buy the factory products.

It eliminates any remaining advantages of labor cost and encourages migration of production closer to resources or consumption. The newly built production facilities are more efficient that aging facilities in China and will NOT be in places where autocrats can blithely shut them down on a whim, or nationalize them.

Also, recall that China is a land where, despite decades of incredible intellectual theft, they still can't make advanced computer chips, so the serious automation is based on imports (as is food and energy). High tech is also a dubious goal for a rapidly shrinking work force, more than 70% of which does not have a high school education (they came too far too fast for it to catch up, and now it is too late).

Yep, no one is relocating the bulk of the human race anytime soon, it just would be cool to have options. But this isn't one. The gravity might not be too bad at all. But anything that close to the star is going to almost certainly be tidally locked (one side always facing the star). This means any atmosphere is going to freeze on the dark side. Also, any solar flares at that range are going to cook the planet, and they won't be restrained much by the star's gravity.

Also, the amount of light received will not be enough to support any kind of vegetation as we know it. I know, someone will say "Well maybe it's life as we don't know it," and that's fine. But then the burden is on them to prove it's possible, whether we have any examples of it or not.