space is infinite, and as such, infinite growth is possible

• A finite portion of the universe is within our cosmological horizon. The universe is in fact not infinite.

• The speed of light (the speed of causality) places hard limits on over what distances economies can operate on an interstellar scale.

• Interstellar travel is not a solution to population growth and resource depletion, as it costs orders of magnitude more energy to ship someone across interstellar distances than to keep them alive for millennia at absurd comfort levels.

• You can keep your economy localized and instead go out and grab resources from distant Suns, but that has real diminishing returns. And if you cram too much matter in too small a volume of space, you cook your civilization in its own waste heat or collapse it into a black hole.

Space travel, especially interstellar space travel, is not a cheat code to infinite resources. Colonizing distant stars is more like throwing seeds into the wind than it is extending your own civilization by settling the next valley over. When you start an interstellar colony, you’re founding a new civilization, and ultimately a new species, not building an extension to your own. The speed of causality demands this.

Sure, you can hand waive these concerns away by speculating about faster than light travel. But at that point, you might as well be arguing that we’ll solve all our resource problems by building a perpetual motion machine. If you can build one, you can build the other.

Ironically, the building on the right is not from forgetting their place in the fast food chain. Rather, it’s from remembering and embracing their real place in the chain. McDonalds isn’t a fast food company; it’s a real estate company. That’s where their real money is made. They build restaurants in high traffic areas with growing economies. They make some money from food sales, but the real long-term profits are from value of the land and the market value of the building.

The reason that all restaurants have become so bland and boring is that in the drive to pursue efficiency above all else, fast food companies have started optimizing their buildings for resale value. A building with really distinctive architecture - like an old Pizza Hut - doesn’t have good resale value. You either keep using it as a Pizza Hut, or you rent it out for a greatly reduced rent.

A McDonalds that is just a big bland box has more book value than a McDonalds that has a play place. Very few potential renters want a play place or the architecture to accommodate one. If McDonalds needs to close one of their restaurants and rent out or sell the old building, one without a play place will hold its value better.

McDonalds is a real estate company, not a burger company. That’s finally shown up in their actual architectural design.

Companies in the US have merged and merged, becoming ever larger. Most industries are dominated by 2 or 3 companies. And private equity firms own a staggering portion of the economy. As these companies become larger and larger, they start behaving more and more like Soviet central planners. Cheap efficiency at all cost. Standardization in all things. Minimum viable product.

Well, you heard it here. It’s perfectly fine to shoot cops with AR-15s if they shoot you with rubber bullets. If they can kill you for tossing a brick, you can kill them for shooting people unprovoked with “less lethal” munitions. Those rubber bullets are just as dangerous as bricks, and the cops are shooting them with impunity. By their own logic, any officer that shoots a rubber bullet at someone deserves to have their head blown off.

If you’re like, from a country where that’s a capital offense, and you’re applying for asylum somewhere…then yes, you would have to prove it. But other than rare occasions like that? No.

Except he’s not going to change. He’s going to vote for the next Republican running for office. These types never learn.

Freddy Kruger, as long as I have prep time. Get a good night sleep the night before? Staying awake for 24 hours is pretty trivial. I can get up at 6 one morning and stay up til 6 the next morning. I’m willing to screw my sleep cycle up for a few days in exchange for 3 billion dollars.

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• The case the election is rigged is also based on citing the purportedly fraudulent election results.

• Republicans won the popular vote in 2024.

• The swing state results are not independent variables. They usually swing together.

Is it possible the election was rigged? Sure. But the evidence so far is pretty weak.

I mean, I’m going to remain skeptical of widespread fraud until proven otherwise. The thing that people keep forgetting is that almost all states have some random spot checks built into their vote-counting process. Just as a matter of regular course, they’ll randomly select a certain number of ballots and compare the hand-counted and machine-counted results.

Also, fuck Trump, but I don’t really see anything odd about the idea that far more people would vote for Trump than a Republican Senate candidate. Trump’s whole shtick is getting low-propensity politically disengaged people to vote for him. And look at how low Congress’s approval ratings are. A fair number of people coming out just to vote for Trump is not unreasonable.

The point is that if there was malfeasance, it was likely applied by an algorithm in a way that was meant to be non-obvious. But, if you’re applying any kind of broad vote-rigging algorithm to vote tallying equipment across the country…well you’re going to screw up in some cases.

The idea would be to first find absolute definitive proof of election fraud in one precinct. Once that’s been done, you can use those result it justify broader searches. For example, if it’s found that this one area has fraud, then the NY legislature might direct funds to do a hand recount of the whole state. And other states can do the same.

Even if it wouldn’t revert the presidential election, if fraud is found in house votes, enough blue states might be able to reverse the elections of Republican House members elected by fraud, enough to flip the balance of power in the House. Plus definitive proof of fraud would immediately make Trump lose all political legitimacy, regardless of whether there is any actual legal mechanism to remove a president from power after being proven to be fraudulently elected…well any mechanism beyond the broken impeachment mechanism.

It may just be a factor that a lot of YouTubers don’t want to give up creative control. Working with Hollywood ultimately usually means giving up a lot of control on the type and content of your work. They’re paying for the big production budget; they get final say in all creative decisions.

YouTubing is a career type that naturally attracts those that want creative independence. And by the time someone would be of the clout to make a deal with a studio or network, they’re probably already earning enough money to be making a comfortable living from their work. 10,000-follower YouTube channels aren’t getting calls from Discovery, Nickelodian, or Fox News. They’re only going to be recruiting from the top channels. And people at that level are probably already earning a nice full-time living. Channels of that level are often entire miniature production companies. The biggest YouTubers aren’t individuals, but creative teams.

That’s a level of success many people would consider ideal. You get to live comfortably, you get to have a decent amount of social esteem, you get to pursue what projects you want. And you get the personal satisfaction of providing incomes for a whole bunch of your closest colleagues and maybe even closest friends. Many would call that about as perfect a life as there is possible. And you want to maybe give all that up to go work for a cable network?

I suppose for enough money, you could buy people out. But there’s more to life than money after all. If you’re already living quite comfortably, already very financially secure, would you really want to give up what you have - complete creative independence*, just to make a bit more? YouTube’s top ranks are filled with people who left the rat race to get into YouTube. Many simply won’t want to go back into that big corporate world, regardless of how gilded their chains may be.

*Obviously, creative independence is relative. All forms of ad-funded content will have to pander to the whims of advertisers. Even completely audience-funded works are subject to the whims of the audience.

It sure would be a shame if, in the bravest act of bravery so far this century, a few patriotic soldiers were to steal some demolition munitions and take out a bridge along the parade route, the night before the parade is to start. Sure would be a shame.

We need to start finding ways to take away the rights of Evangelical Christians. Let them see how it feels for once.

I have actually had this exact book as a text in one of my courses. I have a copy literally within arms reach of where I’m typing this.

My version of this lately. Really captures the vibe of the last few months.

I mean, I don’t know what else one would expect.

I still believe that biological males shouldn’t compete in women’s sports or be housed in women’s prisons.

So you’ve still learned nothing. As a transitioned trans person who this person, if I were arrested, would like to subject me to daily rape torture? She can go die in a fire.

Anyone who thinks undocumented immigrants don’t deserve in-state tuition in Texas is a racist bigot. That sounds extreme, but that’s really what it comes down to - a fundamental belief that immigrants are not full human beings. There is no motive accept for racial animus behind this. There is no reasonable position to oppose giving them in-state tuition.

Why? BECAUSE TEXAS HAS NO INCOME TAX.

Texas is funded entirely by sales tax, property tax, and various fees. Someone living in Texas illegally pays all the same taxes as someone in the country legally.

Texas is happy to exploit immigrant labor. But they want to be able to use people and then throw them in the landfill when they’re done with them. Typical conservatives.