domain:vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com
roystgnr
13hr ago
China seems a likely contender, but I don't know what they have going on.
In space, China's performance these days (whether measured by launches or satellites put in orbit or upmass) beats out the entire rest of the world (excepting SpaceX) combined. SpaceX outdoes them by somewhere between 200% and 900% depending on how you measure, though whether that means "the West is fine" or just "the West got really lucky" is less quantifiable. China's shooting for their first manned lunar landing around 2030, which doesn't seem likely but does seem possible; if Blue Origin continues to move glacially (though they've reached orbit now, good for them) and if Starship continues to have teething problems (the v2 ships have been tragedies so far, though catching two boosters and reusing one already was impressive) then China might beat Artemis 3 (still supposedly 2027? that is not going to happen).
China's current lunar plans are basically Apollo-style "flag and footprints" missions, vs US designs that ought to be more sustainably affordable and carry more cargo (or "much more", if Starship gets working smoothly), but China has 3 companies with Falcon-9-scale partially reusable launch vehicles currently in testing, which puts them way ahead of most of the competition. China's Starship-scale fully reusable plans are currently at the "Powerpoint slides of what we say we'll do in the 2030s" stage, so may never happen, but even that feels like a step up from e.g. the UK (current motto: "The sun will never stop setting on the British Empire") or continental Europe (also armed with 2030s-target Powerpoint slides, but for a mere Falcon 9 competitor).
I'm skeptical of making a real go at Mars colonization, especially as Elon's star has fallen so far recently.
Starlink is up to 6 million subscribers now, so even if Elon's irrevocably pissed off both parties at this point they've still got enough non-federal revenue to keep going. If he goes full Howard Hughes and starts trying to redesign Starship from birch or something then all bets are off, of course.
Their next Starship flight test (scrubbed yesterday with a ground systems issue) is going to be attempted this evening. No exciting booster catch attempt this time (this flight and the last are trying different angle-of-attack flyback trajectories, to get data and push out the envelope on that, and they don't want to come back near the tower in case they push too far), but it should still be tense. Everybody's waiting on pins and needles to see whether they've fixed the last of the new v2 ship problems or whether Turks and Caicos are about to get another unintended fireworks show.
quiet_NaN
13hr ago
For what it is worth, the government taking direct control of key industries is not a leftist-only thing. Historically, fascists were also big on dirigism. If the Fuehrer wanted German car manufacturers to build tanks, he will tell them to focus on building tanks, and they will comply, or else.
From what I can tell, Intel foundries are basically in the third place after TSMC and Samsung for 3nm processes. Also, it seems that the foundries -- the only part of any strategic importance -- are perhaps 10% of their business.
Personally, however little I trust CEOs to be aligned to the long term interests of their companies, I trust the USG a lot less. I can totally see Trump wanting the ability to fire CEOs when they report weak quarterlies for making him look bad, I just don't think that this is going to make companies more competitive or serve urgent national security needs.
georgioz
13hr ago
Britain already has history of shipping various prisoners and undesirables to inhospitable places in name of expansion. Who knows, history could repeat itself.
I got into Anno 1800 (pro tip: you can get the base game cheap and cream API the DLC for free) about a year ago and Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I haven't had a game touch my dopamine receptors like that since I was a teenager first getting into gaming.
It was un-ironically as close as I've ever gotten to wire-heading. The temptation to play at the expense of food, sleep, work performance, sex, socialization was intense.
What made it so addicting:
The production chains being complex enough to be challenging while not so complex as to shut down from overwhelm.
Ship logistics was a ton of fun, getting better at that and seeing it pay off was sweet.
The Victorian aesthetic I find really compelling, and the tense action against the other AI (who you later realize are absolutely useless at the game) makes for a really fun juggling balance and tension.
The different areas provide variety and a steady march of new challenges to wrap your brain around.
Each phase of the game has a distinct feel, and is fun on its own merits. Desperate economic balancing when you're on an island or two. Balancing wide/tall expansion with conflict in mid game. And finally hyper-optimizing and paper-clipping in end game once you've wiped out everything else.
I finally stopped playing incredibly suddenly once I was at about 150,000 investors and had just started the final production chains for the higher level skyscraper goods. The level of optimization required at that point (my goal was 1,000,000 investors) meant I was largely following templates I found on the German (lol) template sites, including their researched specialist stacks. At that point I wasn't really playing anymore, I was just following digital Lego instructions. I was also getting mildly tired of having to raze and re-design suboptimal islands repeatedly as I got better/learned how the game worked. I guess I could have continued to play blind and try to get to 1mil myself, but that would have taken so long, and required even more "raze and re-design" moments, so I got bored and stopped. Sucked a good couple hundred hours of me before I did though.
How do you feel in the midst of that mechanic:
Fucking incredible, it was the perfect level of challenge and the challenge level contributed to increase at a pace that allowed you to skill up perfectly in sync with it.
It was seriously so compelling and so fucking fun.
It was basically an instant drop into flow state on command, it was magical.
The sudden end was kind of surprising to me. I went from being so compelled to play it to basically 0 interest over night. Other games I adore (civilization, paradox games, battlefield) I have played for decades and will continue to play for decades. Anno was a whirlwind romance in comparison.
Highly recommend.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
13hr ago
Thank you; that does indeed clarify what was previously too vague.
BahRamYou
13hr ago
"At 660,000 square miles, the territory is about eight times the size of Great Britain"
Huh! That's interesting. I had no idea the UK had that much territory in Antarctica.
Still, I can't imagine them actually going through with such an ambitious plan, or that all the other countries would stand by and allow them to do it.
For your original question, it seems like Saudi Arabia is still working on the line. I'm not sure it will actually get finished, or whether it'll be any good... but there's a decent chance it will amount to something big.
TheBailey
soapy mop
13hr ago
Losing your car to an uninsured hooligan sucks a lot, disrupts your whole life, and happens once in a blue moon. It's happened once so far to me, and has happened multiple times to almost every responsible adult I know. Even if there must always be some "house edge", I'm wanting UMPD coverage just to take the edge off the impact to my life.
What I resent is paying the additional premiums for full Collision coverage which also "insures" me against my own irresponsibility, at a premium based on the responsibility of my demographic peers. Even if there were 0 house edge, that's still a bad bet for me because of the massive behavioral component.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
13hr ago
You don’t think Islam is riven with a ton of internal ethnic division? Huh that was my impression.
The fundamental problem with Trek is largely the same one as Star Wars (and to a lesser extent the MCU) - it's running on fumes. It's got a huge fanbase of aging nerds who loved it when they were 12, but a franchise can only live so long on nostalgia, and both Trek and Star Wars are having trouble pulling in the next generation. I think this is something we are starting to see with cape movies as well. How many Zoomers are invested in 60 years of Superman or X-Men lore? Will alphas even read comic books at all?
That's not a fundamental problem. It's something perfectly manageable, and something that was managed competently in the past - there's a reason it's called TNG. All these franchises, in all their media forms including comics, deliberately turned hostile on the kinds of people that enjoyed them, and are now doing a surprised Picachu that the next generation is not picking them up.
He's being forced to insure the value of his own car
No! That is not the case. Per my original post, I'm only being forced to buy Collision coverage if I buy UMPD coverage in Alabama:
I've contacted 5+ insurers trying to purchase an auto insurance package that includes UMPD without Collision, and they all alleged that Alabama bans the sale of UMPD-without-Collision.
Every insurance company is happy to sell me a plan that only includes Liability and (at my option) UM/UIM and Medical; and several reps commented they'd be happy to sell me UMPD-without-Collision if I were to move out of Alabama.
(presumably) he is prepared to replace it out of pocket in the event of an accident
That's exactly it. I'm happy to eat rice and beans for 6 months to rebuild the emergency fund if I break my car due to my own stupidity (which is the risk that Collision coverage defrays), but I'll be damned to do it again because local deadbeat Micahal Rayshone Taylor was driving effectively uninsured because his worthless mother lied to the insurance company about who regularly drives the car (which is the risk that UMPD coverage defrays).
In the latter case, I'm not a squillionare yet so reducing the variance is still worth the middleman's fee; but every insurer claims that Alabama law forces them to bundle these coverages together. But I couldn't find such a law (and obviously the insurance reps don't know shit), so I'm trying to figure out what exactly I need to ask my Alabama State Legislature rep to do.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
13hr ago
I understand a few people on this site really abhorred RF Kuang's 2023 novel Yellowface. Freddie deBoer has a tremendously bitchy article today taking Kuang to task for her perceived false modesty in her New Yorker profile, which doubles as a very harsh review of Yellowface itself. It's transparently written from a place of envy and spite, deBoer barely pretending to mask how much he covets Kuang her literary success in comparison to his own meagre book sales, but entertaining for all that, and I'm sure that any of you who disliked Yellowface will find much to agree with in his critique.
(Without having read Yellowface I can't comment on its literary merits or lack thereof — but its author is pretty cute and I would.)
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
13hr ago
Yeah, I'll just move it over there.
FtttG
13hr ago
Usually goes in small-scale, although it's arguably a better fit for this thread.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13hr ago
It was remarkable for Lewis to be devoutly Christian and write a space trilogy specifically as apologetics against those who said that God can't care too much about Earth due to how large the cosmos are.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
14hr ago
Catholics are still writing Science Fiction, but it's generally not getting as popular. I think the age of seeing the world sacramentally/semiotically is in the past. In our materialist age, the Mormon worldview appeals more (not Mormonism specifically, but generally the idea of a God who is more like a superhero than something fundamentally different from a creature. And then the pseudo-scientific philosophy that comes out of that.)
Other Catholic science fiction:
- Elfheim
- The Sparrow
- Lord of the World
- Sun Eater
- Voyage to Alpha Centauri
- The Golden Age
- Toward the Gleam
There's also a lot of Catholic-haunted sci-fi (often written by ex-Catholics or agnostics who are inspired by Catholicism):
- Hyperion Cantos
- Dune (arguably)
- I'm running out of time but I feel like this list should be bigger than the first.
Hieronymus
14hr ago
Society doesn't seem to have the right model for it. "Oh, he's an abusive husband because he yells and throws things, he's using his emotions to control you." I don't think it was that calculated….
I 110% respect your insight here. Modern society is quick to lump unlike things together and label them all abuse.
… (and for the record, he never laid a hand on me).
Given the circumstances, I would encourage you to explicitly communicate your respect for this and to thank him if you haven’t already. I bet it will mean more to him than you think.
FtttG
14hr ago
Hardspace Shipbreaker. Attempting to dissemble a ship as neatly and efficiently as possible with a minimum of waste was enormously absorbing, appealing to the same part of my brain that can't relax until everything in my apartment is in its right place.
I agree with the comments below that older boys and men can rarely give unfiltered expressions of emotion, particularly anger and particularly to women, without their being misconstrued. Often swallowing one’s emotions is the right answer. The teen years are the right time to learn this, but if your son is on the autism spectrum he’s going to have trouble.
I would try to get his dad’s input if you can, even – perhaps particularly – given his dad’s struggles. You might also consider asking a male teacher for his perspective; if he has a male teacher who hasn’t called you I would consider him first.
"What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong."
Talk about brand dilution, this is fucking embarrassing lmao
I adore the concept of the "shining city on the hill" and I admire America's national mythos.
I actually like the concept of this initative.
But mortgaging America's brand to leverage your own? Cringe
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