Considering how much the far-right culture-war propaganda machine dominates social media and mainstream television, I’m terrified that it works too well, and enough of the lumpenproletariat will suffer misery blindly so long as alleged enemies are made to suffer more.
I hope we’re better than that, or can crack the code (or young people who grow up with it are more immune – that is the case with general advertising). Otherwise it speaks to a horrible future for humanity.
Or, you know, Google could go back to its link-ranking system for now until it figures out how to keep AI from hallucinating.
AI is still premature. Experimental. It should be regarded as such, like an early-access game.
While valid, the reason they’re encased in those big concrete pillars is to assure they’re safe for transport, and can survive accidents without leakage.
ETA: I should admit not ALL of our waste has been processed into vitrified HLW or packed for transport, but these processes are undergone before waste is shipped to a repository.
I have fantasies that some day we may hunt billionaires (and anyone who refuses to abandon the wealth) much the way we hunted escaped high-ranking Nazis after WWII.
We’re going to need to collectively get really mad for this to happen, though since whenever someone does a socialism the capitalists get aggressive, so a rising socialist civilization emerging from the ashes of empire might go after the ultra-wealthy as a pre-emptive defensive measure.
For now it’s all just blue-sky fantasy, though.
You’re right. John Oliver did an LWT segment on nuclear waste and how we have an overflow problem at many local sites, and meanwhile can’t get budgeting to complete the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. (It has some NIMBY problems, though it’s one of the most stable regions to put a deep geological repository.
But the storage overflow problem is approaching critical in some places. The US may not have enough repositories for nuclear waste, but we need them badly.
In the current era, I do not expect this situation to improve, and may get worse, especially since the regime is against renewable energy development.
I keep saying it, so maybe I should make a meme of it:
The key ingredient for data centers in the US is not an abundance of water and power, but cheap, bribeable regional officials.
I didn’t say other nations wouldn’t be better off without US interference. The US has caused a lot of problems and overthrown plenty of governments, sometimes for no greater crime than being an ideological threat by its presence, or refusing to let capitalist interests exploit their resources.
But the US is responsible for a lot of stability in the world. This is one of the reasons the dissolution of USAID has been so disastrous. It was a vector by which the US did good and created stability.
And yes, the fall of the US would mean that some military adventurism from the US would not happen, allowing some societies to develop in peace…but at the same time, other societies looking to expand violently will also be emboldened. It will be chaotic and unpredictable.
The US is showing a lot of the classic symptoms of approaching civilization collapse, from unmitigated climate change to polarization of wealth and power at the top, to the open, extreme corruption of government officials.
All the horsemen of the apocalypse are getting ready to ride.
But in the aftermath, we’ll learn all the ways that the empire stabilized the rest of the world, and conflicts between local warlords will break out across the world like hives.
That’s because the key ingredient for a data center is not an abundance of water and power, but regional officials who can be bribed to fuck over the local neighborhood.
In other parts of the world, data centers are regulated, required to not overwhelm the local infrastructure, and not bother the neighbors, but here in the US, politicians come cheap.
While there are a lot of war hawks in the GOP that wanted a war with Iran for Christmas, I’d hope that the sponsors of AIPAC came from a brighter sort, or at least were advised by think tanks enough to know how bad an idea war with Iran is.
The GOP hawks want a full-on invasion and regime change (more puppet-dictator than democracy, still, but certainly not the Islamic republic that is in place right now.) But that would involve a level of commitment akin to the what we saw with the Vietnam war, including conscription (id est the Draft), and that would be super unpopular in the states and would poison the US armed forces from within.
Prior presidents, including Republican ones didn’t push into Iran because all down the line our intelligence sector has been iterating how really-really bad an idea it is.
So when Trump did it, we quickly learned it was a bad idea. Who knew!? ( Narrator: Everybody. Everybody knew.)
But since Trump is in office, our government is currently immune to the advice of its intelligence officers. We may invade Iran with full boots on the ground, and we may invade Cuba. We may do both together and then watch in horror as China invades Taiwan, and the US is too overextended to do a thing.
As per the George W. Bush years, anything can happen.
It would be like the Onion to mock Trump for yet another promise in two weeks.
It’s not a strong like-the-Onion, but it is like the Onion.
This is the Star Trek episode What Are Little Girls Made Of. and Peter Thiel is an android from the future trying to make sure his timeline comes to pass.
As the California regional Commanding Officer of Antifa, this is the first time I’ve heard of Turtle Island Liberation Front.
Doing some cursory research, it looks like they don’t exist outside a single cell of a few guys. Sources are mainstream news agencies and the federal Department of Justice, all of which have been compromised and are not a valid source.
Turtle Island refers to the earth or North America by some indigenous groups, some of which engage in activism towards civil rights for indigenous peoples, a legitimate concern.
I’m reminded of the regional anti-gang law enforcement groups who alleged deep expertise in how street gangs worked, but were mostly making bullshit up. It’s from them that we got the notions that gangs were feral teens who could not be negotiated with and simultaneously global crime syndicates that engage in drug trafficking and human trafficking.
I became a true believer in the pathway to a communist society. At very least I now understand how capitalism is so often doomed from within.
Trump totally wanted Greenland. It appears he was also super-eager to invade Iran, and needed just a little nudge from MBS and Netanyahu (though mostly from Jared Kushner).
The question is whether the far-right propaganda machine is effective, and can mask the affordability crisis, the disastrous elective war, the blatant corruption with hatred and male grievance. The machine has really drilled home that you’re a communist and effeminate if you dare vote against the godhead, even if doing so is in your own best interest or in the interest of accountability.
A lot more people are going to have to suffer and die before the revolution turns violent. And yet, if a non-violent revolution gains any ground, the ownership class will be happy to resort to violence to defend their wealth and power.
There is definitely a difference between the one that wants to see a neoliberal state continue and the one that wants to dismantle the system for a oligarch-run autocracy.
When it comes to the neoliberals, at least their opinions can evolve under pressure.
ETA: I came across this take from Jamelle Bouie, It’s Not Both Sides. It Never Was.
I think that if Trump were personally responsible for dooming humanity, he’d see that as a win.
Bribeable officials appears to be the key ingredient for ideal sites for data centers.
The far-rich tends to be far-right. The ones that are smarter or have a conscience want to improve the lives of the working-class to fulfill the social contract so they don’t revolt, but they still are only interested in a system in which their wealth and power are preserved.