Actually those numbers are from OMB. I didn't ask AI. And, yes, they're percentages of spending.

Thanks 1977. Glad you could join us.

I understood that (we deduced) humans were generally more of a hijacker/scavenger for most of our history, only developing sophisticated cooperative hunting techniques relatively late in the process.

On a percentage basis, mostly what we get for our tax dollars is entitlements, like social security (22%), medicare (14%) and medicaid (10%), plus interest (14%).

Wow great links, thanks!

rsilvergun is a committed socialist.
If he's not blaming Trump for (whatever), he's opining about spending other people's money for stuff.

This rsilvergun is an asian pedo. Could be a coincidence.
https://www.instagram.com/rsil...

...and wouldn't it be nice to get something in return for our tax dollars? Other than billion-dollar ballrooms and pointless wars, I mean?

Do they need cover to reject anything? In my projects, I reserve the right to reject anything, for any reason, solely on the grounds that they are my projects, and if someone doesn't like it, they can fork off (their own repository).

Yeah, Musk could definitely drive the whole thing sideways. I'm afraid he might be getting increasingly detached from reality. I'm not so worried about the lack of focus on the chomper; it seems to me that the real issues facing Starship are all about how to handle re-entry heat. Also engine re-lights, but I have little concern they can solve that; it's been done many times before, including by SpaceX. If they can solve the rapid reuse after reentry problem, something no one else has done, ever, building various form factors will be a simple matter of engineering.

Yes, it was all super entertaining, especially with PJ covering all of it, and rarely missing a trick. Good times for those of us watching from the cheap seats. A huge waste of time and resources for IBM.

That's absolutely not what it means.

"Left the labor force" doesn't mean "they lost their job" it means "they aren't looking for a job". Examples of cases where people "leave the labor force" include (but aren't limited to):

* Retired.
* Had a child and decided to become a stay-at-home parent.
* Decided to spend their time caring for an elderly relative.
* Decided to go back to school.
* Gave up on working after being unable to find a job.
* Had a financial windfall and decided to stop working.

And so on. The "gave up after being unable to find a job" is not particularly likely in a job market where only 4.2% of people who want a job don't have one, though I suppose some may choose not to work rather than work in a less-desirable job than they had before.

Also, it's July 2. June employment numbers are basically worthless at this point. Give them a quarter or so to get more data and correct the numbers. The initial numbers are based on only on employer reporting data, which skews it in various ways. The government uses several other data sources including surveys, but it takes time for that data to come in, which is why these numbers are generally corrected 2-3 months after they come out.

Without a hostage there is no ransom!

Counterargument: Who would have predicted a few years ago that one private company would dominate global launch, launching more by every metric than the rest of the world combined, and -- all by itself -- triple the number of satellites in orbit in 7 years.

Sure, 200Xing the satellite count is a lot harder than tripling the satellite count, about 66 times harder. But if Starship is successful (by no means a given, also far from impossible), SpaceX will reduce per-kg launch costs by 100X, maybe more.

I'm skeptical... but I would also not just write it off as a "pack of lies". The things SpaceX is actively working on should make the launch part of it feasible. Will it be cost-effective? That's a harder question, and heat dissipation is the core thing that may make it infeasible.

Also, the final paragraph of the summary seems to be confused:

So, why are the hyperscalers hyping orbital data centers? Answer: because it's lucrative. "The Elon Musk part of it is honestly genius because he's got xAI building the data centers, SpaceX sending them to space, and Tesla building solar panels," Genkina says. "It's almost like he's paying himself."

Yes, SpaceX will be incredibly lucrative if it owns the whole vertical stack, building, launching and powering -- but only if it works. If it doesn't work, and if orbital compute isn't cheaper than planet-bound compute, then SpaceX will have no buyers.

The other possibility is that it's just a pump and dump, but that's not how Musk has ever worked in the past. Yes, he makes crazy promises, and delivers only half of them, and delivers years after the promised date, but those half-realized, years-late results are still often world-changing.

Doesn't really matter because it has to be done, unless we want to pay the much, much higher costs of just living with the hotter planet. We're all going to pay, one way or the other. It's just a question of whether we want it to be expensive or really, really expensive.

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.