domain:ryandv.substack.com
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
People here like to sneer at litrpg as slop - that's way out of date:
https://x.com/JerusalemDemsas/status/1976740387344814365
A new type of entertainment called 'vertical drama' has emerged: shows filmed in vertical format to suit smartphone users. Each episode lasts between two and five minutes, and after a few teaser episodes you have to pay to watch the rest. The dramas are usually taken from popular web novels. A title can be produced in less than a week, and the requirements for the actors are basic: they just have to look good on camera. Nuance and subtlety are the preserve of artistic films; verticals need as many flips and twists as possible. Production is often sloppy. If a line is deemed problematic by viewers, the voice is simply muffled, without any attempt to cut or reshoot. The stories are sensational. One that has got lots of viewers excited is the supposedly forthcoming Trump Falls in Love with Me, a White House Janitor. According to an industry report, vertical drama viewers now number 696 million, including almost 70 per cent of all internet users in China. Last year the vertical market worth 50.5 billion yuan (€5 billion), surpassing movie box office revenue for the first time. It is projected to reach 85.65 billion yuan by 2027.
See this is where AI is going to make insane profits, disrupting/expanding the immensely lucrative but radically unprestigious media formats you never knew existed. Just a few minutes, no need for fancy acting or cinematography, just stimulus in your face. I bet this will come to the West too and make Netflix look like a joke. Maybe it already has.
pbmonster
3d ago
Yeah, state of the art FAB is really only necessary for advanced autonomous functionality.
And it's not even any of the more recent AI shit, classic computer vision algorithms, millimeter wave phased array 4D radar or synthetic aperture radar just need to solve a shitload of Fourier transforms, in real time.
But it's worth noting that you can do a lot - and a lot more than we've seen in Ukraine so far - even with just 65nm.
Corvos
3d ago
I've lived on top of a supermarket before. It's not ideal because of all the noise, especially early morning deliveries. Lots of crashing and banging.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Thiel has stated that he is a "small o orthodox" Christian.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I don't actually have much of a position on who the GOAT of cycling is. I don't know much about the topic. I'm still not entirely sure what a domestique does that's so valuable exactly.
What I object to is that in trying to learn about the topic, most of the sources I would rely on for the question in any other sport, like Wikipedia tables or mentions in newspaper sports sections, they won't tell me easily that Merckx won in '73. It makes for a complicated and politically correct universe.
And FWIW, Ninth is pretty high. In NBA terms that's what, Magic Johnson or Larry Bird? That's the kind of athlete that gets discussed by fans pretty consistently. Not one who is memory holed.
Ademonera
3d ago
I try to only do it here when someone is making bad faith arguments but it can be cathartic to downvote someone. In highly insular communities, any wrongthink is quickly teleported to the shadow realm.
Moderating is a whole other topic but it’s essential to quality discussion. The less pervasive and more focused on agreed upon rules, the better.
Delta_this
3d ago
First, IIRC, recent research has not been kind to the nuclear winter x-risk hypothesis. Depopulating most of North America would be bad, but not literally the end of the world. If only some people in Madagascar survive, then they can in principle build the next technological civilization over the next 1000 years or so.
Throwaway for limited OPSEC
You're right here, though maybe with a few interesting caveats that others might find interesting from the (very niche) field.
Classic nuclear winter (everyone dies on snowball earth) was fairly quickly ruled out, and the worst case scenarios of present day teams most concerned on the issue seem unlikely. For example, the 150 Tg (a Tg being a million tonnes of soot in the stratosphere, where it persists) requires 4,400 unique (non overlapping) detonations over the most dense cities in the list, all of which make a firestorm. That's more than the total strategic arsenals available, some of which will be destroyed, fired at targets not in cities or held back, targeting is heavily duplicated in nuclear planning to ensure kills and not every urban detonation will cause a firestorm.
However, nuclear winter is unfortunately still possible, or at least the National Academy of Sciences is concerned enough not to rule it out at all and more research is being funded: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27515/potential-environmental-effects-of-nuclear-war. Models which exclude the possibility of stratospheric injection don't include latent heating (a huge deal) - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD036667 and you only need ~400 firestorms injecting soot to take out something like 30-50% of global crop yields via 47 Tg, depending on how well you adapt agriculture https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395439565_Strategic_crop_relocation_could_substantially_mitigate_nuclear_winter_yield_losses .
Add in losing agricultural inputs, access to mechanization in fields and mass logistics should the war also seriously disrupt global industry and civilizational complexity, and you have the conditions for a lot of mortality (that's actually true even without the winter, it just makes it much worse). This isn't certain, but it's really risky, and deaths in non target countries could be in the billions.
Like you say, it's hard to go from that to human extinction, and I don't personally think it's too plausible myself, but we have never run the experiment of putting our society in a situation where 80% are likely to die (absolute worst case following big rearmament, I would guess). Catastrophes can spiral, people could take risky actions as a result that contain x risks, maybe we cannot recover, it's full of unknown unknowns to quote the man who actually did the most for disarmament arguably in living memory.
MayorofOysterville
3d ago
Yeah you'd think he'd defect to the Russians or something then. The worry about the UN creating a one world government seems incredibly naive for someone as plugged in as him. The idea of the UN being more than a discussion forum and aid distribution force of the great powers is fanciful.
Blueberry
3d ago
As a European I am confused: Do Americans not have stores and supermarkets near them?
ControlsFreak
3d ago
In theory "we" the stockholders could cut their CEO's pay
This seems like something that "we" the stockholders can do. There are stockholder votes. Moreover, if "we" the stockholders "decide that a CEO is just too expensive", then "we" the stockholders can sell (or even short) the stock. No need to be organized about it, either. It's more likely that you just find yourself in a situation where many other stockholders disagree with you, and so you are not, in fact, a "we" that has "decided". You just "decided" on your own and want to imagine that you have a "we". You might even be upset at the fact that you don't have a "we", and so come up with things like....
or "we" as voters could pass a law limiting all CEO pay
And here is the rub that I figured you were getting at. What does the general population of voters have to do with it? Should the general population vote to "decide" that some company's investments in AI are "just too expensive"? How about the bill they pay for janitorial services? "Just too expensive". Or anything else? Why should it be across the board? A CEO could be massively "just too expensive" for Starbucks, but downright cheap for another company. You'll probably screw up both cases with a naive law like this.
I always sort of wonder what functions as the katechon in the world after 1945. This is Schmitt’s 1947 diary. ‘I believe in the katechons, for me the only possible way to understand Christian history and find it meaningful. The katechon needs to be named for every epoch for the past 1948 years.’ The way I interpret this is that sotto voce, Schmitt is saying he has no idea what the katechon is. And maybe, the New Dealers are running the whole planet. Then of course, 1949 the Soviets get the bomb, and my sort of provisional answer is that the katechon for 40 years, from ’49 to ’89, is anti-communism. Which is in some ways is somewhat violent, not purely Christian but very, very powerful. I’ve argued that the katechon, or something like this, is necessary but not sufficient. And I want to finish by stressing where one goes wrong with it. If we forget its essential role, which is to restrain the antichrist, the antichrist might even present himself or itself or herself as the katechon, or hijack the katechon. This is almost a memetic version. A similarity between the antichrist and the katechon, they’re both sort of political figures. The katechon is tied in with empire and politics. If the antichrist is going to take over the world, you need something very powerful to stop it.
The katechon, the restrainer of the antichrist, must be both really powerful to prevent the antichrist, but that means there is also the danger that it IS the antichrist. I have a soft spot for theology and think it is fun to think about such mindbenders and finding real world examples. I guess Thiel was nerd sniped here.
The general point seems to be that Thiel would like to avoid anything which is too powerful, which is a globalist one-world-government. Which makes sense in a not-all-eggs-in-one-basket way.
I laughed about the juxtaposition of Francis Bacon and juvenile japanese Manga:
In his second lecture, Thiel also explores the idea of the antichrist through four works of literature – Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Alan Moore’s Watchmen graphic novel and Eiichiro Oda’s manga series One Piece.
I laughed out loud about this:
Thiel says he is “very pro-JD Vance”. But he has some concerns about his allegiance to the pope. “The place that I would worry about is that he’s too close to the pope. And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the pope. I hope there are a lot more. It’s the Caesar-Papist fusion that I always worry about. By the way, I’ve given him this feedback over time.
I don’t know how wooey Vance is, he comes off as relatively grounded, but Thiel giving the unsolicited advice to not get too close to the pope must have been an absurd scene (and suspiciously what I would have expected the antichrist to say).
China doesn't care which tribe runs the ports, only that the trade flows.
Neither did the British at first, but eventually you have no choice but to care, because the other side might ally with someone else or extort you for more.
could exterminate every Pakistani but as long Gwardar port remains open for COSCO it doesn't matter.
Sure, but in a regional total war a key revenue-generating asset like that is getting bombed to nothing on day one, so the practical outcome is that they are invested in that kind of conflict. Comparative trifles in Burma (which are a little more complex than ‘supporting both sides’ I’d say, though my understanding is far from comprehensive) don’t suggest otherwise. Agree mostly on Taiwan, though one can’t discount face.
In the cascading list of great satans the dispossessed third world wants dead, China ranks relatively distantly.
I think the chance that China emerges unscathed from nuclear war involving all the largest powers on its border is very, very low. Involvement in several forms would be inevitable, and at that point the likelihood of getting nuked increases significantly. As for the Islamist threat, ‘rogue nuke’ is very 1990s; it is possible but I suspect the next major attack will have another format. China is less safe than you think; vigorous imprisonment and surveillance of the kind unimaginable in the West have reduced the number of domestic attacks, but I wouldn’t discount the very substantial number of jihadists now in Central Asia and elsewhere with a very strong grudge to bear. Russian collapse doesn’t mean that nukes will fall into the hands of Islamists who want to nuke the USA or Israel either, in fact given the locations of key sites and the personnel and staffing structure of the relevant agencies that is relatively unlikely.
Pakistan falling would see India or Israel get nuked by jihadis, Russia falling would probably see Israel or USA get the brunt of it.
More specifically, state failure doesn’t happen overnight and the respective officials with knowledge of all devices and sites will gladly trade that information to the Americans and/or Chinese in exchange for money and safe passage to a life in Gulf exile a week before the storming of the presidential palace.
Then they go on to talk about Pogacar being maybe the GOAT, surpassing Merckx or Indurain, with no mention of Armstrong.
Even following your philosophy of just taking the result at the very second itvwas achieved at face value, Armstrong has to claim to being spoken in the same breath as Merckx.
Arnstrong cared only about adoration of normies, by focusing on the one race normies know. This is in total opposition to the old masters, who would race all year.
prestigelisten.dk follows your philosophy in treating Armstrong as a 7 Tour winner, and even according to it, he is merely 9th in the All-time list.
Edit: Armstrong is just the most-familiar-to-American-casual-fans-of-cycling of their memories of the moment of victory, not matching official records. Even the GOAT won his 3rd Il Lombardia on 13th October 1973, only to have it yanked from him on 8th of November 1973 when doping was discovered. Would have made it 20 total Monument wins, but nobody assigns him this win today.
If you want to apply your philosophy consistently, contemporeneous coverage cycling is key, not picking and chosing when to trust official results and when one's memory.
But examining primary sources is hard, thus Armstrong won 7 Tours (primacy of lived experience over post facto investigation), and Merckx merely 19 Monuments (few Americans today can say they saw Merckx win the 1973 Il Lombardia as it happened, thus they defer to edited results).
sohois
3d ago
Death Valley is sparsely populated: by your logic, we can assume it's a good place to live.
Plus, I daresay that many Indians would in fact like to live in Mumbai, more than are currently there
sohois
3d ago
The examples we have of liberalised planning, both historical and current, are far superior to the examples we have of drug legalisation/decriminalisation, so it seems unlikely
Ademonera
3d ago
Remember when we were all so concerned about suicides at Foxconn in china 15 years ago? Apple helped china become even more proficient at manufacturing because they gave them the best regulatory deals possible.
It’s curious to me that we lost our edge with goods but became way better with services. Maybe that’s the ideal state if your citizens are mostly knowledge workers, but China is a huge adversary and we willingly let them usurp our chemical and commodities manufacturing strengths.
ulyssessword
3d ago
I probably could've told the difference between nitroglycerine and nitromethane when I was 10, but it's not that big of a mistake to make.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
3d ago
Chuck Marohn (of Strong Towns)'s recent big thing (and more or less the topic of his most recent book Escaping The Housing Trap) is that a major problem with YIMBYs is that simply legalizing housing isn't enough, since the financing for housing is also broken. He's cagey about offering solutions but generally thinks federal level support for 30-year mortgages is a problem and that funding should be at the local level instead.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
3d ago
I have not one but multiple stores within 2 minute walking distance.
The overall argument he makes is that while WW3 would indeed be horrible, the destruction may lead to a renewal down the road whereas the antichrist would lead to a permanent stagnation and total surveillance state, which could perpetuate unfathomably long amounts of time or perhaps eternally.
That certainly sounds like the palantir project, the irony must surely be deliberate at this point.
remzem
3d ago
Mumbai is crowded. Would you like to live there? Libs worried about rogue ai paperciip maximizers destroying humanity but it turns out they were the paperclip maximizers all along.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
Evidence in favor of Thiel being sane: He can't resist getting in a dig in on Andreesen.
Evidence against: Everything else
Yeah, dude's losing it.
I think Scott raised a very valid point on Antichrist ID 101: They're supposed to have "Antichrist" literally spelled out on their forehead. Do we really know why Yudkowsky always wears his fedora? On the other hand, Andreesen and Greta have fiveheads, but in 2025, cosmetic surgery or makeup can do wonders.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
Come on man. It's fine to say "I'm right about it", it's just silly to say "I'm so right about it that the other side is like phlogiston".
Get off it.
Isn't that literally what you did when you dimissed hydroacetylene point about viewpoint discrimination in therapy by pointing out that medical professionals discriminate against viewpoints like "disease is caused by bad humors" and "disease is caused by spiritual rot"?
I'm not sure "inducing infertility" is a problem -- consenting adults can get their tubes tied.
The restrictions medical professionals put on adults wanting to do this are much stricter than the ones placed on children wanting to do it as part of gender affirming care.
As for the rest, I'd assume it's balanced against the putative mental health issues that come with untreated dysphoria
Except Guyatt's own research shows that there isn't really evidence that treating gender dysphoria helps anyone.
FWIW, I don't even disagree with you here, if you want to fight someone over it online I'm sure you can find someone on reddit to take the other side.
It's just an example. My argument is that your view of the medical profession is rather rosy.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3d ago
Yeah the right understands the left better than the other way around. That might change in the near future though, because the right understand the left better out of necessity - it is more important to understand your opponent's theory of mind when you are weaker than them than when you are stronger than them.
This is something Sora 2 should help independent creators with.
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