"But that darn Elon just went and tried it and it worked, and they cancelled our WHOLE program!" Here's an interesting story about how Elon Musk ambitiously skipped to the last step when trying to land on a barge with a rocket, proving supersonic retro-propulsion worked.

X needs a "block stuff written like this" button.

The future that Rocky Mountain Institute predicted in 2015 is now unfolding exactly as expected. Their analysis showed that the true value of batteries comes from stacking multiple services for customers and the grid. They argued that focusing only on the cost per kWh misses the

the forbidden way to order food

Theories in this thread: - Patriot missile battery testing at Fort Hood - invasion of Mexico - aliens - plague

This makes me think of Bud's cranial gun in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I wonder why...

Not so fun fact: The most advanced rocket construction and space flight facility in the world, arguably one of the US's most strategically important sights, filled with irreplicable high skilled personnel Is located RIGHT..... here

In Jean Auel's Earth's Children series, Ayla and Jondalar travel from Ukraine to France in 3 years to bring innovations like domesticated horses and wolves to the hub of ancient human civilization. 25K years later we're like "pip install wolf".

Everyone...there is no need to panic about mines. The US Navy has kept four mine countermeasure vessels in the Persian Gulf for the past 35 years. These ships and crews have trained for this very circumstance. WAIT...what is that? The minesweepers just arrived in

Your periodic reminder that "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" used to dress their lead actress up in a Xena costume confront the actual Canadian Prime Minister on the steps of parliament. It didn't seem staged at the time other than the PM knew what they were up to. They made even

This idea that USPS is the only shipper that can deliver to every house in America is false. Both UPS and FedEx deliver directly to the front door of my house in rural Duchesne County, UT. USPS does not deliver either mail or packages to my house. They will deliver to an

LA be like: We will tax restaurants into oblivion. But illegal street food is fine. We can't effectively put out forest fires. You will pay extra for the rich who lost their homes in the Pacific Pallisade fires. We banned plastic straws. The sidewalk tent meth lab, not an

Important take, well articulated. Whether you agree or not. What I think this take is missing: if change is faster than humans and existing systems can deal with, the free market mechanisms of pricing, etc., break down. Physical constraints are not evenly distributed. When parts

Elon: "if we make it past the singularity, we should do X to avoid catastrophe" Very stupid people: "prior to the singularity, X would be catastrophic. Elon is stupid. Here's the math." Sigh.

Things one might reasonably conclude from the anti-post scarcity/anti-UBI discourse here: 1. people don't understand if-then statements 2. people are completely ignorant of the historical effects technology has had on scarcity and culture throughout human history and

It's interesting watching the Tech Right deal with the cognitive dissonance of "maximum acceleration" colliding with Protestant work ethic. It basically boils down to "labor and financial precarity are good... Because reasons" When you unpack it, there is some substance.

🧵 THREAD 1/ They are coming for open source software. Not by banning it. By requiring identity verification for anyone who contributes code. No more anonymous developers. No more pseudonymous contributors. No more building tools without attaching your real name and government

SPLC is in a legal box with no clean exit. To defeat the donor fraud charges, they have to argue the informant program was legitimate intelligence work coordinated with federal law enforcement. Bryan Fair already said that on video on April 21st. But the moment that's the

Is "stochastic parrot" like "trolley problem" in that it's intriguing from a philosophical perspective but totally irrelevant IRL? If our autonomous vehicle AI is saving 10,000 lives a year, it should just flip a coin for hard decisions. It's still game changing and positive.

I know Tesla is getting pretty beat up over this, so I hate to make another post on the topic… but I just am so surprised that they released this, saw all the negative feedback initially and then thought the only change needed was to add “navigation” as an option. This needs to