There are several breakthroughs on the near horizon that will help.

First up is Commonwealth Fusion, based on a technology breakthrough in 2011 is planning to have net gain sometime in 2027 (delayed from "latter part of 2026"), and is so certain of the results that they are building a commercial fusion plant in Virginia... and have already purchased (IIRC) the land and are in the permitting stage. (More info.

Second up is Tesla Robotics, which is putting the transformer model into a physical robot, so that it can do physically what the LLM chatbot can do with words. For all the discussion about AI and whether it's intelligent or any good or whatnot, it's obvious that AI systems are *useful* at glueing words together. Robots will give us access to lots of cheap labor, and part of that will be robots that to cleanup work for humans. Picking up garbage on roadways, going through landfills and sorting, grabbing bits of rope and plastic from shorelines comes to mind(*).

And finally, Verdox, has figured out a way to capture CO2 from the atmosphere electrochemically. Their system works in the manner of an oxygen concentrator that you may have seen people wheeling around (except it's electrochemical and not physical). They claim their system is efficient at extracting CO2 at atmospheric pressure, which is wildly more efficient than distillation, which is our current method.

I figure in about 50 years we should be well on our way to fixing these civilizational problems. Robots powered by AI and cheap energy, running around doing all the cleanup work that humans don't want to do.

(Cue the climate alarmists who run around and screech about "it's not enough!" and "it'll be too late by then".)

(Note that Tesla has designed its own AI processor chip and is building a semiconductor fab plant that will be able to make them in bulk. Their combination of robotics and AI processing chip will be wildly valuable in the future.)

What he (Dolgov) is saying is a belief that stems from rationalization. It *seems* like it's a proof because that's how he's phrasing it, but in the final analysis he's a biased observer expressing an opinion and bolstering it with a rationalization.

It's what we get every time we ask an expert for advice about something they don't directly know. Ask a physicist about dark energy, or a doctor about your unusual symptom, or a nutritionist about what you eat, or an economist about whether the Fed should lower rates... you'll get a reasonable sounding answer backed by rationalization.

We don't have proof that a computer can self-drive using only cameras (and not "computer can do what a brain does", which is a much wider problem set), but we have abundant statistical evidence that it can.

Tesla claims claims (mid 2026) that self driving has about 1/7 of the collisions of human driving. Fully deployed FSD would reduce driving fatalities by 90%.

While not a proof in the inductive-logic sense, it's probably good enough to become general consensus. Given the enormous amount of data they train on (10 billion miles driven?), I suspect the p-value is astronomically small.

And of note, I recently purchased a Tesla with self driving. The system requires you to be attentive while it's active, but I can say with complete honesty that full self driving is here now.

And it works. It'll go into a crowded parking lot and back itself into a parking space, it'll correctly navigate lane closures and safety cone situations, and just yesterday it correctly stopped for a road worker holding a stop sign, waited, and then proceeded when he turned the sign to "slow".

The reason I got the car is because a friend kept badgering me about... of all things... getting old. Our population is aging, and old people driving is a constant source of problems. Having a way for them to get around without being a danger to others seems like a good thing.

Oh, and coming off a day hike or a day of physical labor or something and being really tired it's nice to be able to hit the "start self driving" and have the thing take me completely home because I'm really beat and not very attentive.

This would be a good time to point out that every political argument has two sides and two points of view.

I've seen the arguments for both sides of this issue, and have come to the conclusion that there is merit for both. People should really look at the specific charges being made, with examples, before coming to any conclusion.

Every time someone tries to rein in the news media, it's received by shouts of first amendment, freedom of speech, chilling effects, and so on; and yet, this leads to insane situations. Google most egregious US media failures in the last 10 years for a list of incidents, and note how many of these affected major political events such as a presidential election or national policy.

Should a journalist be able to walk into a church during service and interrupt the proceedings, and not be held accountable because he's a journalist? Should a major news outlet be able to report something without at least a cursory check to see if it's accurate? Should an interview answer be swapped with the answer from a different question?

I've come to the conclusion that knee-jerk framing is on purpose, everyone wants to get "ahead" of an issue, and if an erroneous/misleading/false statement is made they will simply say "oops... I made a mistake" and there's no repurcussions... except that the lie went out to the audience and a small percentage got outraged in the right direction, regardless of whether the statement is true or not.

A "straw-man" argument is where you put your opponent's viewpoint in the most absurd terms and then attack the absurdity. A "strong-man" argument is where you put your opponent's viewpoint in the strongest possible terms and then try to attack it.

Choose the "strong-man" argument here. Find out what the administration is complaining about, and see if you can fault their logic.

Had a look at the criminal complaint just to find out where the perpetrators had gone wrong.

Sending anonymous tweets and E-mails, they purchased pre-paid debit cards to send packages to their home, various harassment techniques such as ordering a pizza "pay on delivery" at 4:30 AM, and so on and so on... how on Earth did the NPD ever figure this out?

Turns out the perpetrators flew from California to Boston area (Natick) to put a GPS on the Steiners' car, which they couldn't do because it was kept in a locked garage, so they rented vehicles to surveil the Steiners, their license plates were noted and given to Natick Police Department (NPD), and the rental agency was contacted.

Once the eBay operatives were identified, they tried various misdirects and obfustication techniques, but NPD a) verified their statements, and so figured out they were lying, and b) contacted eBay directly, which had a security team respond in good faith, and the whole plan unravelled.

One, single mistake is all that stood between a long campaign of harassment and getting found out. One good local police department who took the trouble to look deeply into the problem and figure out the truth despite a torrent of misdirection and obfustication.

I wonder how many more campaigns of harassment are ongoing, led by people who know how to conduct vehicle-based surveillance, or encouraged by ineffective or lazy policing.

I have the "New Tab Override" extension installed, it allows me to load my own local .html file for the new tab page.

My personal page has a 4x3 grid of links to my most often needed pages, and I like this a lot.

I hope they haven't removed this functionality, it might be the last straw that pushes me away from Firefox. I'm really starting to hate their "do it our way and no other" mentality.

In the hopes of clarifying some concepts and descriptive words:

The US army runs under fascism. Management is top-down, everyone has to do what their superior says to do, and if you don't do it there are grave consequences.

All militaries across the globe run under fascism. All militaries throughout history have run under fascism.

Almost all businesses are run under a similar system: there is one person at the top, usually with a vision of what he wants to happen, and everyone from there down what their immediate superior says to do. There is some leeway in the case of business: you can disagree with your superior and perhaps have a discussion, doing the right thing against orders is OK if it works out, and the penalties for disobeying aren't as severe (getting fired versus getting sent to Leavenworth, or being shot).

The fascist model of governance is one of a handful of governing types we know about, and is useful in situations where decisions need to be made quickly based on experience (military planning) or based on vision (business planning). Military actions fall squarely within those situations. It's not the best model for an economic system, where divergent opinions and "try it and see" is more efficient, or a political system where individual corruption can lead to violations in human rights or reasonable policy.

The US military is not capitalistic, but it is not "anti-capitalism" system in the sense that it works against capitalism in any way.

The US military isn't socialist, except that it tries to provide for it's members in compensation for the risks they take. It's similar to businesses providing health insurance or stock options or reimbursement for college courses - we don't normally think of employment perks as "socialism", and in the same manner we shouldn't think of military benefits as socialism either. Socialism is a foundational principle, not a system of perks.

I don't know that using AI is a weakness of the system. The military is famous for actually studying the effects that certain decisions have. You can look up the government's studies on whether and how much coffee improves performance, whether sleep learning is of any use, and the minimum IQ to allow before it takes more resources to manage an individual than the resources the individual brings by enlisting.

Looking into new technologies and their application to warfare is something the US military does very well.

And apropos of nothing, it's completely obvious that drones are a tectonic shift in military technology, this came as a complete surprise from the Ukraine war, and we totally should be pivoting away from expensive missiles and more towards swarms of cheap drones.

I don't know why you're characterizing drones as trendy and popular, either.

A simpler explanation is that this is a biased news report intended to stir up outrage. ... and you and the grandparent post fell for it, and are adding to the overall outrage level.

Take a moment to look at the arguments against.

It looks a whole lot like manufacturers are *not* trying to lie about packaging or content, it's the complete opposite of that. The manufacturers want the labels on based on the product material, and not based on whether there are recycling program within the state. The stamp should describe the product, not the availability of recycling to the end consumer.

If the bag your product came in has a polypropylene triangle on it (a "5"), it means the bag *can* be recycled. If California doesn't have facilities for doing that, it doesn't make the bag non-recyclable. California only manages to recycle 2% of this type, manufacturers want to put the stamp there to inform the consumer, the language of the bill would force them to remove the stamp because California doesn't recycle this type of plastic, and of course the manufacturers wouldn't do that for just California they would do it for everyone.

That's what this is about, not lying.

Furthermore, the plaintiffs the Pack act, which would install one standard country-wide, eliminating the maze of state-wide regulations.

Stop adding to the outrage, look at both sides of an issue before commenting.

Try this: go outside away from the city during a full moon.

I think you'll be surprised.

In the middle ages, when it was too hot during the day, farmers used to till and plant fields at night under the full moon. It allowed them to get more work done during the planting season.

Also try this: go outside between the hours of 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM in Spain right now (July).

I think you'll be surprised.

For senator, most states allow the governor to appoint a replacement until a special election is held. In 5 states, there is no appointment and a special election will be held immediately.

For representative there is no appointment, the US constitution requires a special election.

I believe that the appointment can be anyone, traditionally it's someone from the same party. I seem to remember in one case the wife of the senator was appointed, his term was almost up and she knew what his position would be so it made sense at the time.

Is that the only reason?

A simpler explanation is that they predicted in good faith but the evidence doesn't bear out the prediction.

The mushrooms are almost certainly not making an invisible aspect of reality visible.

That being said, this report is very interesting from an anthropological point of view: ancestor worship.

The report doesn't say whether the tiny people were recognized by the viewer (and I couldn't find any references), but this effect might have been the source of ancestor worship among the people of southeast Asia, where the mushroom grows.

Ancestor worship and animism (belief that the spirits of things hang around after death) might have its roots in this sort of psychedelic experience.

That's not really the point.

The point is the upcoming revolution in autonomous labor, which will turn our current financial system upside down.

For reference, you might want to check out Manna, by Marshall Brain (his actual name). It's an easy read, it's short, and it outlines the impact that robot labor will have on our current model of capitalism.

It's no secret that ChatGPT is useful, and a force multiplier for productive output. If that type of breakthrough can be achieved with physical processing, then much of the labor force can be replaced by robots.

The current economic structure assumes infinite consumption, that there will always be more people (rising population), and that they will always want more things. We've found out that the first part isn't true, and it seems that the second part isn't true either: once you have "enough" stuff to have a comfortable life, many people stop consuming and turn their efforts to other things. People aged 45 to 55 spend the most money (per household), but once they have accrued a level of comfort they stop and enjoy life.

If robots can do manual labor, then that will put most people out of a job. A robot factory 20 miles on a side out in the southwest US (a thought problem for discussion) could supply the material wealth of the entire nation, but only require 100,000 human workers for management, direction, and maintenance. That figure, 100,000, is negligible compared to our current population.

How do we support the remaining 300 million population?

One way is to create an AI soverign wealth fund. Some portion of the factory output is given to the population in the form of factory currency. Each month every person would get, say, $1000 of factory currency to spend, with online ordering, and the items would be delivered.

To the article's point, we know with certainty that our current economic system will transition into the factory robot model. The problem facing economists is how to transition us into that model without going through a catastrophic financial failure.

An AI soverign wealth fund could be the first step towards making that transition.

Older EVs don't "die" like the cells in your flashlight, they lose charge capacity over time.

Specifically, once the battery goes down to below 80% of initial capacity, it's better for the company to swap them out for newer batteries.

However, 80% capacity is still a lot of energy storage, it's just that the energy density per weight (or volume) isn't as good for EVs. If your energy storage doesn't care so much about weight or size (concrete floor in an industrial building), then these things still store a *lot* of energy.

Also note: capacity degrades with "cycles", and grid storage does not cycle the batteries very much or very low. Taking the Australian Hornsdale grid storage installation for reference, they found that the grid battery would step in and smooth over what we would consider very short and very slight voltage drops, which meant that their peaker plants didn't have to spin up and down as frequently, which ultimately saved them $150 million (*) over the first two years, against an installation cost of $66 million (USD).

Since then there have been a number of other installations, so we have good data on what the expected outcome will be.

The term "schmucks" in your post is perhaps unwarranted...

* Can't tell whether this is CAD or USD from their website.

The big critique about capitalism is wealth inequality - it invariably leads to some people getting most of the money, and everyone else getting very little money.

The problem with that critique is that wealth inequality is mathematically more fundamental than any economic system. In other words, any time there is trade in value, you will get wealth inequality regardless of the system.

You can see this in numerous simulations online, such as this one.

Wealth inequality follows a Boltzman distribution or a Pareto distribution, depending on the type of investments allowed, and this can be proven mathematically.

About 2.5 million books are published in the US each year, about the square root of that number (1500) break even in sales, and about the square root of *that* number (35) are best sellers. Lebron James scores 43,000 points in his career, Kobe Bryant scores 34,000 points, and there are a zillion players that score lesser values.

Wealth inequality happens any time you have trade in value, this can be proven mathematically, and it applies to any value in any system.

And as a side note, once you realize wealth inequality is inevitable, the main selling point of Communism disappears. Wealth inequality happens under Communism as well, and we have numerous examples of this in recent history.

To be fair, this wasn't known when Marx was writing his thesis. At that time (1850's), economics hadn't progressed as far as it has today. Marx himself had a degree in law and philosophy, and not economics or psychology.

Capitalism has a bunch of bad characteristics, but we try to modify it to reduce the damage. For example, you can't sell patent medicines any more, you can't sell fake stock shares, and so on.

We use a modified version of capitalism that tries to avoid the bad characteristics.

The Culex quinquefasciatus (from Google's EPA request) is not native to N. America, it likely originated in Africa and came across due to human activity.

There are over 200 species of mosquito in N. America (worldwide about 3500). Taking one out will have negligible effect on the food chain.

Bats, specifically, will eat mosquitos but prefer larger insects. Mosquitos are small relative to the effort the bat takes to catch therm.

The specific mosquito mentioned is available in lots of places around the world (not native - see first point above), so we could repopulate if we notice a problem.

Google is breeding these mosquitos, so we have breeding populations and we could repopulate if needed.

It's the primary vector for West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis virus, Avian malaria, and Wuchereria bancrofti (a parasitic worm).

I've been following the progress of these sorts of activities for many years. With proper care and monitoring, it's possible we could fix a lot of invasive species problem such as Cane Toads in Australia, Mongooses (mongeese?) in Hawaii, and Aedes aegypti. A. aegypti strongly prefers to bite humans and is carrier to disease, and is also not native to N. America.

The US used to have screw worms. The screw worm would lay eggs in an open wound on mammals (usually domestic animals such as livestock, but sometimes humans) and the larvae would develop under the skin by eating healthy tissue.

The US government began a program of releasing irradiated screw worm males, which are sterile, into the environment to compete with healthy males. This reduced the population, eventually down to zero, and now the US is largely screw worm free. This only took about 10 years.

Good riddance.

Now do ticks.

The full explanation is Sterile Insect Technique.