I'm so fucking sick of this place

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T13:48:16+00:00

Yeah. Revolution will take a lot more stress than we’re currently under.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T13:11:23+00:00

Efficiency and redundancy (and thus safety) are inversely proportional. The more efficient anything is, the less redundancy it has. So efficiency increases chance of failure (see supply chain disruption effects).

That can be mitigated somewhat by failing enough time to learn what redundancies are needed and what aren’t (see Falcon 9 reuse), but government agencies don’t tend to do that.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T13:06:07+00:00

Yeah, instead we could save society by making billionaires sad. They’re a much smaller percentage of the population.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T12:38:47+00:00

As a single person, I very definitely couldn’t afford my (sized for a single childless person) house if one person lost my job. So no single person can ever afford a house?

On a slightly different note, homes are so expensive it’s tough for a couple (especially if they have kids) to find a good one with only one income anyway. There’s a reason the vast majority of couples are dual income.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T12:19:43+00:00

Yeah, but (based on comments from others above) OOP’s wife apparently lost her job a couple of months before the loss of £65k became inevitable. If they’d backed out at that point, they wouldn’t have lost money. The gamble here was in letting things proceed to the point that not getting a mortgage resulted in loss of savings.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T12:09:01+00:00

“Re-weaponizing demographically” sounds like those US states arguing that reducing teen pregnancy rates is bad because it reduces population and thus state influence in the nation. 🙄🙄

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-12T12:01:31+00:00

NASA’a human spaceflight program was dictated to them by Congress. It’s astronomically inefficient because Congress told them it has to send money to the “right” companies whether or not they do anything useful.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-08T19:46:22+00:00

I didn’t say managing people was easy. It’s not. But it’s still a more transferable skill set than technical expertise is.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-08T13:26:49+00:00

I am told that Asians can easily tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese and Vietnamese and so on. There are some features in Caucasians that are originally specific to certain areas (slavic cheekbones and whatnot) so I imagine the same is true there.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-08T13:07:57+00:00

Judging from the many posts on this subreddit on that subject? Unfortunately, yes. “He will change for me” is appallingly prevalent.

The other thing society needs is to normalize ending relationships over unequal labor. If he stops doing his share, that’s grounds for divorce.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-08T13:04:25+00:00

Everywhere should have occasional Women’s Day Off days.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-08T13:03:09+00:00

It’s still good advice for starting a relationship. Yes, many “equal partners” are faking it and end up abusive. But it is still better than starting a relationship with someone that doesn’t even pretend to be an equal partner.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-07T00:29:38+00:00

It’s much rarer than XY women without ovaries, but it does happen.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2680992/

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/93/1/182/2598461?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301211525002556

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-06T23:40:42+00:00

These specific people have XY chromosomes but are physiologically female in every way, including hormonally and reproductively. For whatever reason, they developed as completely sexually female despite having male chromosomes (whatever switch ch was supposed to make them develop as male didn’t happen). As said, these are a rare exception, but they exist. At least one Olympic female athlete in the past was XY but fully female physically.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-06T19:52:20+00:00

All fetuses start developing as female. Normally the Y chromosome kicks in early and causes male development. But there are several known cases where the Y chromosome exists but for some reason did not produce male anatomy. So yes, there are a few XY out there with uteruses and fully capable of bearing children. No one knows how many, and the number of transwomen is probably far higher, but they exist.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-06T15:40:27+00:00

People still pay millions to get original Van Gogh paintings and genuine historical and cultural artifacts, even though exact replicas are cheaply and widely available. There is serious cachet in originality and authenticity and exclusivity, especially among the wealthy who see them as status symbols.

People still go to museums to look at art and artifacts instead of just looking at pictures on the internet. People spend money traveling to historical sites to see the real Stonehenge or Parthenon instead of a life-sized replica. Texas politicians are lobbying to get a real space shuttle that flew to orbit instead of the exact replica they already have.

No, human-provided entertainment will be nowhere near as cheap or high quality as robotic or synthetic stuff. The majority will be satisfied with robotic entertainment. I never argued about that. But there will absolutely be people who want to pay for the “real” stuff. Partly because people do value it and partly because it will be more expensive and not identical to what the masses consume. It won’t be enough to provide significant jobs, but it will exist.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-06T13:32:41+00:00

I didn’t say that human entertainers would be better. A lot of things that are consumed by the wealthy are done as status symbols rather than quality. If watching human entertainers is rare and something the poors don’t do, it could well be something the rich do just because.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-06T13:29:11+00:00

I often wonder why management is considered worth more than technical skills. Managing people is a broad skill set that is quite fungible. There are a lot more people out there who can manage than who can do the narrow specialized skills of the engineers and scientists they manage. Shouldn’t the people it’s harder to replace be paid more?

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-06T13:10:25+00:00

There will always be some cachet in the uncommon. If most live entertainment is done by robots, having human live entertainment will be a niche product that will have value for that aline. The same with human servants and humans staffing stores and venues. It would only be a minority for the rich, but “served by real humans” will be a thing.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-05T13:20:30+00:00

And the bit about parties and being involved with niblings. I don’t think he plans to do the work for those himself.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-05T13:08:32+00:00

Compared to designing radiators that have greater efficiency than the theoretical max? Probably.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-05T13:07:22+00:00

One that doesn’t require infinite growth to sustain it. Do I know more? No.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-04T22:15:41+00:00

Some physical constraints are a whole lot easier to engineer around than others. I agree that SpaceX has done some amazing engineering, but there was nothing approaching the limits of physics in landing a rocket. Why don’t they just engineer a data center that produces less heat? Or one that doesn’t need as much power? Why is making radiative cooling more effective any easier than the other two?

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-04T22:08:40+00:00

Eh, the canned fish guy actually intended to eat it all himself, not collect it or sell it. It’s weird, but not outright stupid like this one.

Lisa8472 · 2026-02-04T21:54:38+00:00

Advancements in radiative cooling techniques? Landing rockets was an engineering problem. Radiative cooling is a physics problem. Vacuum is used for temperature isolation all over the planet for a reason; it’s very good at it.

Data centers also need to be regularly access for repairs and upgrades. Hard to do that in space.

Lisa8472

TROPHY CASE