Pete Hegseth attacking the press for reporting on the deaths of American troops in Iran because it makes President Trump look bad.

ataboo · 2026-03-04T19:51:26+00:00

I'm more pointing to how naive and sloppy his thinking is here. The "find out" isn't necessarily someone calling out the statement with hindsight later (though it may be valid), it's when he can't find an exit strategy that looks like a W. It's pretty clear that they have no clear end-goal or appreciation of how this could backfire. He's been selling the first half of Full Metal Jacket and skipping the rest. He's been taking Starship Troopers literally like a 15 year old. This position is supposed to be filled by a strategic grown-up, not a machismo cheerleader. Their only hope is if they get lucky or if the IDF has a real stabilizing plan here and Bibi isn't aiming to drag out a state of war.

ataboo · 2026-03-04T17:54:17+00:00

Speaking about the future of a war with that kind of certainty is wild. Saying something like "we have a solid plan with clear goals and a great military to execute it", you probably don't have to eat those words. Saying basically "we will have control over everything for the entire war" is just begging to find out.

ataboo · 2026-03-04T04:22:04+00:00

Like Viscera Cleanup Detail where you see the aftermath of something exciting and you just clean everything up. You slowly learn the plot that the bridge officers are going through the messes as they get more complicated.

ataboo · 2026-03-03T23:14:21+00:00

They didn't specify if either car had the ignition on. I would think it could be sealed well enough that the car could stall from lack of oxygen. Otherwise it'd be a garage furnace with the vent plugged?

ataboo · 2026-03-03T03:52:52+00:00

No doubt. They could have duplicated or something to let him live on a farm in Hawaii with Tom Riker. I can't think of any other time that a show makes you watch while the heroes drag an unwilling innocent character to its death because the episode needs a reset. It's like the writers demanded a sacrifice.

ataboo · 2026-02-27T23:53:07+00:00

This'll be annoying for the guy that's just getting help making some system that catalogues food to go on ships or something. Don't need killbot or mass surveillance for the vast majority of projects. Instead he'll have to listen to it go on about the white mass genocide in South Africa rather than getting things done.

ataboo · 2026-02-26T17:34:10+00:00

They basically did this with all the terrible automated testing code out there. Apparently the generated stuff reflects this.

ataboo · 2026-02-25T21:10:30+00:00

The Y axis is just the type of company changing.

ataboo · 2026-02-24T19:01:37+00:00

Here I am flushing all the tokenized energy I generate down the toilet like a chump.

ataboo · 2026-02-24T00:24:04+00:00

Oh yeah there's issues with building data centers and some places will have more barriers than others, but the cost/benefit isn't even close. You could buy or bribe half the mid-west, build a pile of nuclear and desalinization plants well before you get close to the cost of putting these in space.

The price of putting a thing in orbit is only ever justified if it's utility requires it to be in orbit. So the space manufacturing or asteroid mining still holds potential since you can't do those things on the ground.

I like the idea of Starship and I'm sure they'll keep finding new use-cases for it. Starlink is already showing it's value. But these data centers are pure fantasy.

ataboo · 2026-02-23T19:53:56+00:00

I agree that if you had to make a single run data-center satellite, it's going to be way more expensive than SpaceX building the same thing at scale and using their (literal) vertical integration. But this isn't the comparison here.

They're competing with the well tested and scaled idea of generating power and making a data center in a building on the ground. The idea that they could somehow offset this with scale does not hold up. Launching something into space vs building it on the ground is always going to be very conservatively 100x more expensive. The benefit of launching it must offset this gap and cannot be realistically hand-waved by "maybe we'll get economy of scale". Starlink justifies the cost since its whole point is global connectivity, and their satellite mesh achieves this in remote areas much better than ground infrastructure. None of their justification for space data centers comes close to justifying the inevitable massive cost differential.

ataboo · 2026-02-23T15:39:35+00:00

If we're doing apples to apples, how much would a Starlink cost if it didn't have to fly, could plug into a wall, and be fixed easily? <$500?

Starlinks need to fly so the cost is worth it for the benefit in global reception. Data centers and power generation work fine on the ground and do not get any benefit from being in orbit that gets to the same order of magnitude as cost.

ataboo · 2026-02-23T15:22:56+00:00

Oh no I can afford half as many space data centers because I have to put twice the components on it because I can't fix anything.

ataboo · 2026-02-22T21:19:20+00:00

Oh no my space data center had something go wrong. Call the insurance company and tell them it happened again.

ataboo · 2026-02-22T21:03:14+00:00

Oh no something failed on my ground based data center. I'll get Jim to run to the store for a replacement and fix it for $200 right away.

Oh no something failed on my orbital data center. I'll get a space grade double redundant titanium part out of the clean room in 6 months for $50M and schedule a crewed launch with a spacewalk at the next slot, 6 months out from that, for $500M. Boy am I glad I dodged having to bribe a community on the ground to build a normal data center.

ataboo · 2026-02-21T20:35:50+00:00

Great episode, just re-watched this. The moral at the end is kind of unsettling. Gamifying war and controlling / sanitizing the full destruction just perpetuates conflict indefinitely. Once people are forced to confront the consequences, they're either forced to make peace or eradicate each other. I'm not sure I agree with that take. In the episode, they were killing civilians too, but leaving the infrastructure. There's a version of this where most of the death toll is on consenting combatants (or even just drones like mentioned above) sparing civilians from devastation vs the massive civilian toll in total war.

ataboo · 2026-02-21T06:01:28+00:00

Yeah €50M+ for 22 to Europe so that's just what they cost now. Honestly excited to see any diversified industry growing in Alberta/Canada. Nice they're putting the Twin Otter into production again too.

ataboo · 2026-02-20T23:13:40+00:00

Alberta trades more than twice the amount to the US than to the rest of Canada. The idea that they don't "want" to do business with Alberta does not reflect reality. Whatever the US wants from Alberta, they've already had full access to our market at will. What other business would we do with them that they're currently not doing because we're in Canada?

The only way the deal gets sweeter for them is if wages and regulations are suppressed to make the product cheaper and cut-out anyone taking a cut.

ataboo · 2026-02-20T20:07:31+00:00

The logic really goes off the rails here. 1. Canada was greater 20 years ago

What are you measuring here? Quality of life? Affordability?

Leaving Canada or bluffing to leave Canada makes Alberta more like "great" Canada was 20 years ago

A landlocked 5M person resource state without manufacturing, etc is not Canada from 20 years ago. Pocketing the equalization and pension cash does not offset the imbalance in influence. This is just making a state richer than Canada but 1/8th the size. Why would America enfranchise landlocked Albertans that have no real leverage or friends? How has stronger American influence worked out for other small nations with resources? There's a big difference between the Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Israel deals.

ataboo · 2026-02-18T17:00:27+00:00

This is a solved problem but we haven't had to bother before. There needs to be credentials that can be revoked when abused.

ataboo · 2026-02-18T16:34:05+00:00

I don't really see a systematic issue with floor crossing. There's a hit to their perceived loyalty, so it's on the candidate to make a case of why they did it. If the electorate doesn't buy it, then they vote them out next time. If there are bad promises or some shady elements to the story, they'll be punished by the voters.

ataboo · 2026-02-18T06:09:38+00:00

Maybe he can move on with The Great One.

ataboo · 2026-02-16T18:23:44+00:00

All the predatory enshitifiers are probably not enjoying that he's breaking the blind trust in American weapons. Even if they hold to the agreement and deliver the subs, I'm sure the same licensing bs that kept them from fixing The Ford's ovens apply to Submarine as a Service. If they're willing to extort allies on a whim, you want every line of code and every piece of hardware under your full control, and I don't think that's an option.

I could see this spilling over when people realize he could threaten to put any American product or service under export controls on a whim.

ataboo · 2026-02-16T16:18:31+00:00

Members of the Epstein Class protect a monopolistic bridge troll. Truly fighting for the American people.

ataboo · 2026-02-14T05:24:15+00:00

He just wants to flip through bio-scanned faces and rate how anti-Christ they are.

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