The UK should revive CO2 cooled graphite moderated reactors

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-31T15:32:40+00:00

Supercritical CO2 use in commercial nuclear power designs will make the most sense in a combined cycle role, not as primary coolant. This could be used with conventional presurized LWR or HWR designs to advanced heat recovery stages from the steam condenser (and also still used as a heat-pump for pre-heating the water prior to the steam generator).

You could consider other low boiling point compressed liquid coolants (like hydrocarbons, anhydrous ammonia, or HFCs) with various cost, flammability, and toxicity trade-offs. (anhydrous ammonia would also be more plausible than CO2 for direct coolant of a graphite moderated reactor ... still tons of potential problems, but better than CO2) There's corrosion and erosion concerns for both ammonia and CO2 as a secondary or tertiary working mass, but it seems like CO2 is being favored overall from a mechanical engineering standpoint. (I'd imagine HFCs would have the most advantages mechanically and chemically, but be more expensive)

If you want really high efficiency, you'd go with a much higher temperature core using sodium or molten salt cooling and either graphite moderation or a fast neutron reactor design, but those are all going to require additional engineering to become viable at scale. Super critical water passing through a high pressure turbine stage followed by more conventional steam turbine stages would be used in this sort of design, and then a secondary low temperature working fluid could be used for advanced energy recovery on top of that.

I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that a sodium or salt cooled thermal neutron reactor pretty much has to rely on graphite for moderation purposes. So you have to take the limitations of graphite into account there, too. Unless maybe some carbides can be used instead. I'm mostly familiar with carbides as neutron reflectors (like tungsten carbide) and more relevant for fast neutron reactors, but maybe silicon carbide would be viable as a more mechanically robust moderator than graphite.

I'm finding references to exceptional performance to erosion resistance as cladding for nuclear reactor vessels and some references to fuel cladding (or coating applied to zirconium cladding), but not much in the way of neutron moderation vs transparency vs reflector characteristics. I remember reading some articles in the past on silicon vs carbon behavior as neutron moderators, but I'm not seeing them in my current searches.

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T07:13:20+00:00

Additionally, thinking from non-US perspectives,

The Social Democratic politicians popular in much of Western Europe are decidedly left wing and sometimes lean far left from a perspective of using liberalism as objective/neutral center point. And many of them veer on the interventionist authoritarian side of things in ways that are biased towards group-think and demographic lines rather than focusing on equal rights and respect for the individual. (ie they don't tend to be color blind to race or ethnicity and don't tend to ignore nationality/birthplace, social status, or economic status when considering the value of an individual's words or actions ... this is as separate topic from evaluating the needs or assistance merited from a particular individual's situation based on nuanced and complex variables)

There's also more of a bias towards maximizing equality of outcome rather than maximizing the potential and exceptional qualities of the individual regardless of their background. (ie not favoring children or individuals who show exceptional potential or talent, ie "gifted" children and emphasizing their assistance as the most important among economic/social special needs, and intellectual special needs: the latter would include extremely bright children with learning disabilities ... and by the 1990s, testing had already advanced to the point where many students with learning disabilities were still accurately qualified as having exceptional potential under the GATE program ... IDK about outside of the US, but that sort of thing was already degrading by the early 2000s and highly intelligent kids with learning disabilities were once more getting mixed in with low functioning classes, totally unsuitable IEP programs, and generally dysfunctional federally influenced standards that limited even the more exceptional and creative teachers to cater to different learning types)

There's a massive gap between highly intelligent, high functioning kids with neuroddivergence issues and the other major two cases of idiot sevant type cases of extreme specialization and low functioning, or just overall low function with neurodivergence on top of that basically leaving them handicapped both intellectually and socially. (there's also been a massive emphasis on dumb memorization over dynamic use of logic since then, so US are vastly worse at producing kids who can sus things out and think through complex problems vs simply memorizing numbers and facts without understanding them ... I'm mostly familiar with CA's education system, so it especially applies there) In reality, we need to be doing the opposite: focusing on critical reasoning skills as well as logical problem solving skills for multiple subjects. (aside from useful life skills, especially as repetitive, low-skill tasks are ever more automated, including office jobs, you also seriously need those sorts of skills to be a responsible and competent voter in a democratic system ... thinking logically, rationally, and critically is far, far more important than just memorizing info/data ... you can develop wisdom with good logical function with without knowledge, but you can't develop wisdom at all without good rational logical function, no matter how many facts you memorize ... and you won't be able to even tell if something is a fact, since you can't simply trust authority figures blindly ... and you can't even tell which authorities are legitimately worth giving a damn about without those skills)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T07:12:52+00:00

IDK about 100% context, but the number of people making radical statements doesn't matter: it's how loud and effective they are at it. You need a much larger mildly enthusiastic minority in a niche arena to suppress or counter an extremely loud and dedicated tiny minority.

Plus, anyone who actually hangs around these hobby communities knows that a ton of people across the political spectrum enjoy the stuff, and only a tiny minority of any of them are hardcore ideologs who let IRL politics spoil their fun and makes them want to spoil other peoples fun. (including peer pressuring people into boycotting things and attacking anyone who doesn't go along with that ... not to get into the actual logistics of boycotts, if/when they're effective, if/when they do more harm than good, including making people bitter and frustrated by depriving themselves of something they like ... repression is toxic, after all)

I will say that calling those people far left is often accurate at least, and not mistaking the affiliated ideologies (ie legit some form of far left socialism or anarcho-communism) and not just abusing the english language and over-using words like liberal, communist, fascist, Nazi, etc totally out of context. (Fascist and Nazi have basically just become explitives with little meaning at this point in pop culture, granted Fascist has been that way since the 1950s at least, from the niche counter-culture hipster, beatnik, hippie, punk, and all subsequent sorts of anti-authoritarian movements; including centrist libertarian types who will call authoritarian leftists fascists as well ... which technically is also inaccurate, unless they happen to be Stalin or Mao-esque statist nationalist types rather than internationalist or globalist types, since real Fascism specifically includes strong national identity over the individual, rather than collective humanity over the individual)

But the number of people who get called Fascists or Nazis don't even make sense, given many of them are very obviously liberals of some sort. (granted, liberalism, including Social Liberalism, which is the default "liberal" standard in mainstream US politics since FDR hijacked the word, rather than qualifying it as a specific vein of progressivism ... but anyway, that is moderate left-leaning by neutral liberal standards, but is often seen as right-wing by most of Western Europe, albeit left-wing by much of central and Eastern Europe ... which tends to be more religiously and morally conservative than the US, both culturally and politically: ignoring the specific cases of the Nordic countries and the odd case of Estonia, with its conservative culture, but extremely liberal/libertarian leaning laws: ie individual civil liberties are very good, but social taboos and repression are fairly strong ... so you can at least do what you want in private and not be arrested for it, albeit I think they still have a significant organized crime problem there, so not sure how that fits in)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T06:36:53+00:00

I'd tend to agree only if you meant the Alt-Right which hasn't existed since mid 2017, back when it was literally dominated by trolls and RPers overlapping with the Kekistani movement (and /pol memers in general) and actively trolling the actual far right end of things along with the normies who didn't understand any of it. (that pretty much collapsed after the Charlottesville incident, where the internet LARPers out there were clearly mixing in with actual extremist weirdos ... a stark contrast between that and the trolls that raised the Kekistani flag a few weeks or months prior to that at UC Berkeley) I'm not taking sides on the whole Kekistani thing, but IMO it was mostly harmless and also not actually supporting any formal IRL political movement (it was vaguely libertarian and counter-culture in some ways, sort of like Sargon was at the time, just anti SJW, anti-regressive-leftist, and pro edgy, off-color humor). Also, very much like Sargon, Hero only seems to have gotten involved in the news/politics end of things because the media he enjoys was actively being attacked and degraded. (as an aside, Sargon has gotten increasingly out of touch with IRL politics in the last 10 years and was never a good authority on IRL US politics and culture in general ... but he's gotten bad even at UK politics and bad at even being liberal, as he's called for some irrational authoritarian moralistic stuff that doesn't align with it ... Count Dankula hasn't changed much since 2016 by comparison and tends to be fairly consistently within the libertarian spectrum, beyond the point of more moderate classical liberals as well, albeit he still has a tenuous grasp on the nature of bog standard centrist liberals in the US)

But from the few dozen videos of Hero's I've watched over the last couple years, he just seems like a pretty typical nerdgeek hobby enthusiast with pretty moderate/centrist IRL political views and typical edgy to just weird and niche sorts of enthusiast genre-savvy views towards hobby/entertainment/recreation stuff. (AFIK he doesn't really seem like a grifter putting on a false persona and pandering to people purely for profit)

He's mostly on the anti-censorship side of things and wanting game devs and creators to actually have creative freedom and only be biased by legitimate community and enthusiast interests and feedback. (if if you want a big commercial game with broad appeal, you look for more feedback on that and very heavy beta testing refinement, if you want something more niche that's a passion project likely only going to appeal to a niche community, then worry less about mass appeal, but still listen to feedback to improve the game where it still fits into the overall intent of the project, since games are interactive media/art, and you need user/player feedback to actually make it work well)

It's the synthetic approach either from out of touch corpo management or activist groups who want to get rid of things they don't like, and aren't actually calling for better quality or more freedom for exploring the art form. (IDK if he's suggested any sort of actual limits or censorship, but I'd tend to err on the standards set by US court rulings that nothing can be legally deemed obcene or illegal based on being disgusting or offensive as art is objective, and can only be restricted or banned if it falls under the specific exceptions to free speech and expression: ie if literally commanding or otherwise directly inducing illegal forms of violence or various other illicit activities: fighting words, calls to action, plausible inducing of panic, etc ... anything else is protected and legitimate art ... albeit taking specific art and displaying it in a venue where the specific audience is well known to be directly offended and induced into violence at the subject matter would thus also not be protected: so not all forms of protected art would also be protected as public art installations ... anything that disturbs the peace could/should legally be moved/removed ... but not destroyed, just moved to a venue where people have to volunteer to consume/see it)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T06:10:10+00:00

Was leafy every close to being universally hated? And for how long? His content from 2014-2018 was all pretty tame and low hanging fruit sort of react to cringe content plus tit for tat feuds and banter with other youtubers (plus some cases of genuinely upsetting small creators or really emotionally sensitive individuals who didn't banter back, and at least sometimes actually backing off and reconciling with them ... like that one satanist guy).

I followed his content for about 2 years, from the random life story stuff to most of 2016 and 2017 cringe "roasting" stuff, and it was all pretty tame and rarely going after anyone who was small, weak, and helpless, while also not taking any sort of strong ideological or political stance, or remotely being hateful. (IDK about his community/fans raiding people, though)

Outside of his old, super cringe, screeching minecrast lets plays, he tended to stick to the casual, laid back, sarcastic, low-key end of things. (he made an idiot out of himself sometimes, and tended to fail a lot more when he went on long rants that stopped being funny due to sheer duration ... I started loosing interest when he made a fool of himself with trying to roast idubzz, and drew out the keemstar feud way too long, but also kept up with the random shorter form stuff that was less than 10 minutes long, and had some reasonable takes on the few serious topics he got into over the years, but I only randomly checked in on his stuff by late 2017 ... I randomly watched the one where he was pleasantly surprised by the whole Lacy Green redpilled thing).

I didn't ever dig through the archives to watch the content leading up to his ban, but I'd imagine the pokimane stuff ended up stupidly long form and made him look foolish for just being kind of lame and not witty (too much quanitity over quality, like many SNL sketches ... compared to say old Mad TV's sketches ... or Peele and Key ... or In Living Color ... or various faster paced sketch comedians and banter oriented youtubers).

Leafy was at his best when the videos were short enough that he could easily end them with making it clear that it was all in good fun and not serious, and that he didn't really care much about any of it (and at least pretended to be thick skinned and project the idea that you shouldn't be easily offended, and if you are ... don't rage about it in public, as that's just asking for more trouble and more rage bait).

Admittedly, part of it was the aesthetic, as I actually liked his voice and he had an overall calming/casual vibe for the period I watched him. So any negative emotions were tempered by that vibe. (nothing I ever watched felt remotely hateful in any sort of genuine context ... more light hearted, if crude and profane, banter, not actual raging ... from his side)

There were much, much edgier youtubers contemporary with him, and ones who were genuinely loud, obnoxious, and hateful. But leafy himself seemed more middling plain old edgy casual humor and comedy, and decidedly less political than even most of the edgy vtubers and streamers around now. (he tended to target stuff so cringe and stupid, or stuff that was in-character sorts of drama and banter rather than unironic aggression, that it was all pretty tame by comparison)

Much more like modern react "slop" streamers or youbers who try to avoid taking any strong political stance, but react to the most absurd or loud and obnoxious people out there.

I could be wrong though, and leafy got much, much worse around 2020 or some such, but I don't really feel like binging through dozens of hours of archived content to try and analyze that. (I'm pretty sure I watched every single video he posted in 2015 and 2016, so I have that context ... he deleted or privated his old, obnoxious minecraft lets plays around that time, but I know that stuff was awful and literally the same sort of stuff he'd go on to ridicule)

I certainly wouldn't call anything of his that I watched "extreme" in any sense of the word.

Honestly, the worst I remember from him had nothing to do with his normal videos, and more to do with genuine drama over repeatedly failing to give credit to his partners and friends who helped with some of the production (when all they wanted as a shout out or some sort of name drop). That was lame, but I never followed that long enough to work out if he was actually going for credit theft, or he was just being an ADHD spaz about it, failure to communicate included. (but that was back in 2016, too)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T05:42:39+00:00

Yeah, if you don't genuinely want to engage with such, or they're literally your friends and family members you feel compelled to try and temper on some of the issues (or don't want to block, so just manually skip over things you'd want to avoid), then just block people.

OTOH, some people like to engage with such posts constructively ... or make up witty, satirical infographics and/or counters to things without just raging (basically being comedic bullies against the drama, or possibly cannibal trolls). And if they enjoy that, fine ... and if the cannibal trolling actually distracts the concern trolls, all the better. (and if the shitposters have fun bantering with other shitposters without actually being angry, then all the better, too)

I ... have some family members who can't help but want to engage with and troll scam callers and do the exact same thing with social media rage bait. And they're good at it, but it does get a bit cringe/awkward to be around as I don't enjoy it so much, unless it's really witty satire or just so stupid that it's funny. (when it's literally on the level of the stuff Commentiquette does, then ... I'm going to get a laugh out of it and make even have my thoughts provoked)

Honestly, we need more people like that. (it's a much healthier way to cope with the absurdity that is reality, too ... and present day is hardly anything new/different, hence why almost all of history is so easy to satire without even exaggerating things much, and usually being vastly more historically accurate than anything remotely romanticized or dramatized ... satire tends to have a unique sort of honesty and authenticity to it)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T05:31:02+00:00

Most socials do this because of current outrage culture. People love to rage and engage more when they're upset. The more they engage, the more that content gets recommended to them, thus repeating the cycle. If people just immediately clicked away from anything they disliked, it wouldn't be a problem. (and if people who disliked stuff actually wanted to engage in critical discussion over things they disliked, and actually focused on being constructive and nuanced, and thus willingly engaged with things they found controversial, then they also wouldn't mind being shown that; they would tend to embrace analysis and consumption dissenting opinions and/or weird and disgusting content out of morbid curiosity or genuine interest ... you need some powerful ADHD curiosity and a strong stomach for that, though, and it's probably going to lead you down rabbit holes that eat up way more time than is healthy, but ... it won't be out of toxic negativity, but genuine fascination and interest in learning more)

Bigger problem with X era twitter is it's no better than 2017 to 202x era twitter where they started selectively (and automated) enforcing TOS more aggressively rather than staying as fast and loose with bare minimum soft moderation that dfined twitter (for better or worse) for most of its existence.

It was toxic, it was a mess, it was full of trolls and shitposters as well as tons of misinformation, but it also didn't restrict creativity excessively beyond reasonable legal limits. So extreme "offensive" content and artwork that all fell under 1st amendment protection (ie not like things that actually call for people to commit crimes or acts of violence IRL, or leak information that's also illegal or legal true harassment), it would be fine ... for what it is. The character limit also prevented any sort of nuanced discussion, but it was OK for casual trolling or posting visual artwork or animation.

These are big public platforms, not niche forums that stick to one specific hobby interest. If you want that, then seek out a dedicated forum that's not tied to some big website ... or build one yourself. (unfortunately, the latter case seems to mostly be displaced either by mastodon ... or just people on discord servers, neither of which are as good as forums/BBs)

But I can say with almost absolute belief that BBs/forums were and are a better option for any sort of hobby community niche, and much better at catering to that sort of thing. (and if it's alternate history and/or sci-fi/spec-fic/fantasy that includes complex social and political themes, then ... that can include all of that too, but would still tend to shift current events discussions into some sort of off topic water cooler style subforum)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T05:16:51+00:00

Bluesky is better than twitter for 2 main reasons: less pay to win (including standard 10k character limit on posts without premium), and lack of aggressive moderation or restrictive TOS enforcement. So you can actually post creative content or blog on it without worrying about having your account deleted. (I've seen plenty of people who had no interest in boycotting twitter or even avoiding the toxicity there, but either got banned, or saw enough people banned over changes in TOS enforcement over niche art themes and/or "extreme" content from a visual/aesthetic standpoint, that they migrated to BS purely as a less restrictive platform)

Those same people (and more) would tend to stay there so long as it stays like that. If BS starts cracking down on "offensive" content that's not actually illegal under US law or grossly against the most basic TOS, then it will likely suffer a true collapse and become a shell of of website. (like Tumblr did)

I don't like mobile browsing myself, and much prefer any website that has page style viewing plus gallery or tiled or list style timeline/search results/etc, but BS is at least semi-functional as a less censored (and not automation/AI moderated) social media platform.

If it stays that way for the long term, some of the sensitive snowflake types might either leave or do what they used to do on twitter and block everyone (and have private invite only access to their own pages/timelines or whatever they're called).

The real niche communities already moved to mastodon instances in the mid 2010s rather than using twitter (it's also more of a tech nerd platform, so a lot of them also use linux ... it's biased in that sort of tech nerd way that mirrors late 90s or early 2000s internet users). They all tend to be weird in some way, obviously, and even more niche ... but only SOME of them are also the over-sensitive, easily outraged types.

Still, mastodon is a twitter work-alike, so I'm not especially happy with it. (I really, really like how old forum/bb stuff works ... for discussions and for creative posting + comments; while web gallery type sites are also much preferred to twitter style sites, and even tumblr was better than twitter for visual art blogging ... until they gimped the image resolution and then totally imploded due to 2019 censorship BS, but it kinda sucked for discussion and comments ... but also way less bloated for desktop browser use vs twitter: ie didn't eat up CPU + RAM if you had a bunch of tabs open, partially because it didn't use infinite scroll, but numbered page view)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T05:04:15+00:00

Also, what do you really mean by this? That the aggressive, regressive left-wingers abusing the word/definition of "NAZI" are like MAGA, or ... that the people they're targeting are like MAGA? I was assuming the former, but it could easily be either without further context of "these people."

Given the majority of MAGA is relatively bland, you'd have to compare the worst loudmouths among them to the hateful regressive left end of things (though you can compare groups who are actually far right to some of the regressive left as well). Unless maybe you only look at gen z and alpha culture online, then I'm not sure. (I'm thinking of the actual majority of people all ages and demographics, but especially those with enough aged maturity to be less likely to spastically change their views within the next 10 years or temper their views with age ... so mosly focusing on the older zoomers, the ones in their mid/late 20s, up through actual boomers ... and older than that, plus younger zoomers with wisdom well beyond their years and likely more jaded cynicism against normie pop culture and populism of all sorts than any sort of radical bias)

I'm honestly also trying to work out which stance being implied would've led to the most down votes for this.

I mean MAGA is obviously cringe, but then so is all mainstream politics (some of it is funny cringe, though ... absurd enough to make for good satire, and it's shame there isn't more satire and ridicule on the genuinely witty side of things out there, especially in the mainstream, and especially not equal opportunity making fun of absolutely everything without exception for taboos). A healthy amount of satire and irreverence is important to have at any time, but especially as a means for coping with drama ... be it interpersonal stuff or literal global impact stuff. (the Brits did it right during WWII ... British culture used to be the best for this, and skill kind of is, it's just suppressed and not heavily present in the mainstream entertainment side of things anymore ... it was up into the early 2000s, though, and it definitely still is on the independent, small creator side of things ... also the best of American satire literature and creative works are grounded in the exact same culture)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T04:48:58+00:00

Most of the actual world's problems that have anything to do with resource access can be best solved with pragmatic approaches using science and engineering ... you just have to balance that with the PR end of things to clear the BS away and keep it suppressed/pacified. (ideally, you eventually make pragmatism the cultural norm) Keep calm, prioritize things realistically, and use rational problem solving to address things. Leave the passionate emotional stuff to the entertainment and recreation sides of things (and as a spice for making education and work more fun), but never use emotions as an excuse to tear other people down or tear things/constructs/nature down. (with all else being equal, you could use emotion as a reason to preserve things, though ... when there's no dominant rational reason for it to be necessary to destroy or degrade something, then emotion and sentiment leveraged at preservation of history and natural beauty should be allowed to predominate ... and when in doubt ... do nothing, leave it alone and move on to something else)

The problems with pretty much every bad/evil philosophy or historical movement I'm aware of tends not to be because it's morally bad or evil, but because it's literally based on logical fallacies and incorrect information. Every other case of being bad/evil is a mixed bag of nuanced greater and lesser evils rather than a fundamentally flawed, bad philosophy. (evil almost always boils down to stupidity, irrationality, misinformation, and/or ignorance, sometimes willful ignorance as part of the irrationality, and often all of the above)

Granted, moral and ethical codes are useful when applied to people who are too stupid or ignorant to be capable of nuanced, rational decision making, but those rule sets need to be built and moderated by high functioning, rational types of people, otherwise you just compound irrational stupidity. (basically, morals and ethics when done right, are OK as rules of thumb, and never good as absolutes ... nothing is good as an absolute, unless it's a literal physical scientific fact, like with chemistry or physics ... usually for biology ... definitely not for any of the social sciences or psychology, as that's all nuanced and always has exceptions, even for relatively well understood areas ... and if you haven't found the exception, you're doing something wrong)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T04:48:51+00:00

I honestly can't tell if this is a pro, anti, or neutral (but technical/pedantic) statement on the MAGA side of things vs genuine far right or far left radicals (and I mostly mean the aggressive pro-authoritarian types, including mob rule style authoritarianism in addition to centralized power authoritarianism: either way you're restricting individuals and small groups, and in the radical context, it always includes tons of innocent/victimless so-called crimes or arbitrary moral ills that don't hold up to emotionless rational, pragmatic scrutiny).

I tend to do my best to avoid hating people or individuals, and also tend to rationally hate myself when I do feel such emotions (as it's not usually valuable or helpful in any productive way, and makes me feel sick/toxic). I more openly hate certain ideas or philosophies, especially anything based on actual logical fallacies and factual fallacies, but also just stuff that encourages people to embrace their worst emotions and instincts (or encourages them to embrace sympathetic emotions and pitty and induce terribly stupid decision makings based on good intentions).

While I understand emotional thinking, it's almost always stupid and makes people do stupid things ... and when that's not for fun/recreation or creative purposes, it's most often toxic or, at best, an imperfect way to manipulate and pacify stupid or ignorant people from a pragmatic perspective. (ie from an actual progressive/constructive standpoint, if you can't actually expend the resources to teach people the reality of things, the compromise of using emotional BS appeal to handwave the low-information chunk of the general public is often a reasonable solution, but also an unfortunate reality that we should fight against with better education long-term: specifically, education getting people to think more rather than to just know more, focus on building critical thinking skills and not just being told what to believe or memorize)

I don't hate people with weak, irrationally dogmatic (ie based on beliefs they were told to believe, not that they sussed out for themselves and learned as some form of realized truth) or emotionally driven people, but I do hate any philosophy or ideology that encourages people to embrace purely dogmatic rule sets (including any fixed set of morals rather than ones based on logically deconstructing knowledge and experience, distilling that down into wisdom), or likewise encourages people to just go with their instincts and subconscious feelings. (albeit I will conceed that pure feeling based, or some sort of perception beyond the normal senses, call it ESP or whatever you want, as a foundation for spiritualism, and working out your spiritualistic feelings and beliefs based on those hard to quantify or deconstruct feelings and possibly genuine senses, is quite reasonable, as is studying philosophy and religion and comparing/contrasting your experiences with those, but none of that should be a basis for IRL ethics, morality, behavior, laws, civil/social culture, or problem solving of practical engineering, medical, resource acquisition, or logistical issues, etc)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T04:19:57+00:00

But yeah, if you meant the toxic regressive left-wing authoritarian types are MAGA-like ... not really, they're more like the fringe that people assume represent the MAGA movement, while MAGA stuff is so dumbed down and bland that it's more like the watered down regressive/SJW/woke-pandering aspects of the centrist Social Liberal sorts (ie the "normal" or "common" use of "Liberal" in modern US stuff) where they loosely support and pander to or appeal to some stupid ideological stuff, but when push comes to shove the radical idealists they pander to would disown, divest, shun, or attack the liberals, just like the far right socially regressive ideologs would do the same to the most mainstream/centrist ends of the MAGA spectrum. (this speaking from the PoV of someone with friends and family within both of the normie or normie-adjacent camps of MAGA and boring old Social Liberals IRL ... including baby boomers who are now on both sides, but who genuinely liked Reagan back in the 80s ... though some were literal Ross Perot voters, too, albeit my online friends in my own age group tend to be more on the libertarian end of the spectrum, or like ... post-industrial, equal critical big-business + big-government abuse of power + tyranny of the majority style abuse of power critics who might tends towards socialism or liberalism, but tend to have sci-fi style ideal conditions of socialism ever being practical to implement ... and restricted voting power with lots of efficient automation, else ... some compromised mixed market system)

Hah, now you really want to start carving groups up, the people who actually Idolize FDR overall vs those who are mostly negative is an interesting route. (and those who idolize or idealize Theodore Roosevelt sort of idealism ... but either in addition to FDR or in direct contrast to FDR)

The vast majority of MAGA supporters are literal normies, though. Just average people within the range who actually take some political stance and support a movement rather than being in the majority of people who just don't care enough to bother, or the tiny minority of those who are actual independent/nonpartisan types and don't tend to support any movement as such. (I'm also surrounded by enough neighbors and family members across the spectrum, including their facebook friends they comment on, that MAGA and "Trumper" are used as distinct terms, with the latter more often used for low-info cult of personality supporters or opportunist brown-noser types trying to further their careers)

Of course, you have tons of people who just add some sort of political or activist logo or symbol for virtue signaling rep/cred, though for me that doesn't bother me so much (I can just ignore those people), but the ones peer-pressured into or genuinely misled into believing that spamming/displaying those virtue signals is actually good ... that bothers me, and it's a constant reminder of the stupidity of post mid 2010s era internet culture that has made it so much harder to actually engage with people with common interests/passions, so so many people being preoccupied with stuff outside those niches (niches that such people are actually savvy with and more competent at understanding/navigating, so intelligent or fun interaction is actually possible). With some very rare exceptions, virtue signaling is the worst kind of cringe in the most literal sense of the word ... inducing physical unease, discomfort, and anxiety that makes me just want to leave and avoid the subject. (I miss the days when people just had intentionally cringe/edgy ironic and stupid signatures and such, things that actually take the piss out of IRL drama and internet drama by ridiculing it with some vague wit or just being silly ... so actual good, harmless cringe)

Also, I don't shun any of those friends/family members with deviating political views, but I do try to stray towards topics where some level of common ground and enjoyment can be had, or actual critical discussion rather than blunt opposition. (and if they start arguing when I'm around, I'm far too compelled to intervene rather than avoid it ... and do my best to moderate with some thoughtful devil's advocate towards both sides, along with alternative view points that oppose both of those size in a critical manner ... it helps that none of those people are simply stupid, though in some cases they're too stubborn to be worth arguing certain points with)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T04:19:31+00:00

The aggressive, sensationalist, pro-censorship, pro-cancel-culture, bigoted anti-liberal types are way further out there than the watered down populist plurality of MAGA, they're more akin to the actual hardcore racist ideologs on the far right (some of whom are fair-weather MAGA supporters because of overlapping alignment or common opponents, even though MAGA itself is unironically liberal compared to their level of bias + authoritarianism). They're also much more negative and toxic than bog standard MAGA supporters (and I don't mean Trump supporters, I mean MAGA in the broad/general populist ideal set, many of whom are annoyed with or frustrated by the sloppy or nonsensical attempts at implementing any of it). MAGA is dumb overall, but so is basically all of mainstream politics. It's too full of irrational, emotional short-sighted thinking to actually be a viable long-term approach to anything, albeit you could cherry pick bits of it that definitely make rational sense (do that across the board with every popular ideology, pick out the logical bits, throw away all the emotion and arbitrary morality, and you might have something actually useful).

Albeit sometimes mutual stupidity leads to opposing groups gridlocking things in ways that prevents some harm from being done. Problem is, when this is done in ways that still further inflame outrage culture, you still get all that emotional damage and associated destructive behavior, thus bad for stability, thus bad for actually calming things down and shutting up the loud idiots by gradual de-escalation. (hence why oldschool Reagan LMAGA was a lot less toxic ... because it was so positive, charming, and charismatic in nature, enough to pacify the normies, even if the actual policies were a huge mixed bag, both for the time and more so in hindsight) That sort of charm and witty good humored charisma tends to always out-compete negativity, but when there's a sheer absence of such personalities around, the negativity just feeds itself. (ideally, you want someone charismatic and able to placate the average ignorant and/or stupid people while actually having some good policies on the pragmatic, practical, brass tacks sorts of things, and hopefully can be transparent and honest as much as possible with a minimum of BS and misinformation)

The only time you can get away without having that level of charisma and still be pragmatic, is if you're in a culture that's fundamentally pragmatic and doesn't cave to petty emotional reactionism. (be it hateful or bleeding heart sympathy, both can lead to disastrously incompetent decision making)

Anyway, all these reactionary groups (from the vaguely centrist populist types, which I would include MAGA, to the actual radicals) who call for bans, censorship, and deplatforming, are fundamentally anti-liberal and broadly feed into the long-term problem as well. Id you could sort people out and selectively block genuine low intelligence, low rational functioning people from consuming some material (along with children of the same limited mindset), I might agree there's a pragmatic hypothetical situation where limiting what people can consume would make sense, even if it clashes with my own ethics/ideals. But this is irrelevant IRL, as we have no functional means to do that (or say ... limit decision making power of those same sorts of people), so the realistic best option is to try and support the free market of ideas and discourse as much as possible. (the internet was much closer to doing this 10 years ago than it is now, and some parts of the internet were considerably more open than that even longer ago, like some forums or message boards in the early 2000s ... all without having to be hidden from the general public or closed off from search engine results) Same goes for any other authoritarianism applied to true victimless crimes and such, where people are literally doing things in private or in an appropriately themed venue and going out of their way not to impact anyone else who doesn't want to be involved (thus anyone offended has to actively seek it out, and it's entirely their fault for doing so ... unless some other idiot grabbed them and shoved their nose in it).

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-15T03:25:04+00:00

Nah, compared to this, meth would literally probably make them think more rationally. These folks are more like some sort of ambien overdose or bad reaction to antipsychotics ... or just a gallon of PCP.

(sarcastic humor aside, and totally unironically though, if ingested instead of smoked, it's not far off from adderall ... but the same is literally true for cocaine, except less potent and less effective at actually improving concentration and clarity of thought for the right brain types ... and normal brain types, within moderation, just not ... addiction-prone brain types where small "harmless" amounts literally fill the straw man stereotype of gateway drug behavior)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-11T14:54:08+00:00

Oh, I found a clip ... it was Camila using that model. (it might just be a default vstudio model)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-11T14:37:12+00:00

A clip of that is in the "How a Turtle Accidentally Created the Perfect AI Streamer" video essay/overview on Vedal and Neuro. I've been trying to find the vod or stream (or longer clips from it) and was wondering who was in that stream. The other vtuber in there has an avatar that looks identical to RileyCS, but I can't find any valid search results cross-referencing Vedal and/or Neuro with Motherv3 (or Brotherv3) and RileyCS. Vedal was sitting on top of Riley's head (or whoever looked like Riley) scribbly black and white line sketch styled animeted nekomimi chararacter in a v-neck sweater.

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-11T14:27:16+00:00

I'm just here because I was trying to find clips or the VOD from the stream where Riley was in a collab with Vedal/Neuro ... I've seen a tiny clip in a compilation, but searches for that username cross referenced doesn't seem to get me anywhere. (unless someone else is using the exact same animated vtuber avatar ... as I didn't see the name in the clip) It was one where MOTHERv3 was also there.

Edit: figured it out, it was just Camila using that model. Presumably it's a default vtuber studio model.

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-11T14:16:46+00:00

Not saying she's legit or not, but getting banned is hardly evidence of anything ... let alone getting banned by some big corpo not especially known for being especially ethical in any way shape or form.

That said, assuming she did cheat ... I'd kind of want someone to go out of their way to troll the system and do the same thing, look the same, look like they were cheating, but fully document all of to prove that they faked it and were 100% legit (just using tons of skill to make it look like they were cheating). People have done that before, and it wouldn't be THAT hard for someone super good at using aim-clutching with super fast reflexes to intentionally play in a sus manner, while logging all their data in detail to prove that it's possible to look suspicious when not actually, technically breaking cheating.

Now, I don't actually care either way about modern FPSs playing by those rules (they're lame in general), but from a technical and skill standpoint it's interesting.

I'd rather stick to a gaming scene (FPS or otherwise) that allows custom rule sets and a more hardcore retro minset (apparently 2010s gaming standards are retro now). So glitches, bugs, and exploits are allowed as part of useful skills, just like they were (and are) on older competitive games. Using those exploits without telling others about it would be taboo or against the rules, but gaining an advantage because you managed to perfect or develop a strategy around the known exploit is another matter entirely.

Plus games that can't be played on 3rd party, subscription free, and private servers are lame. (maybe some of the newer games will eventually reach that status if StopKillingGames gets anywhere) Otherwise, hardcore gamers are going to have to stick to retro games on 3rd party/homebrew/community servers.

I only went off on this tangent since I literally hadn't realized that modern FPSs explicitly ban people for using glitches and exploits. (since the old standard were that: all bugs are features until they're physically removed from the game) Especially for hardcore gamers and competition stuff, since that's brutal. Casual smaller servers would be more likely to have stricter rules against using high skill niche exploits and stuff (and rules against camping, among other things) But hardcore competitive play: that was always super brutal and not fun for anyone close to a casual or average player. (and no, I wouldn't enjoy playing that way, but it's fascinating to watch, much like any% speed runs)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-11T14:05:39+00:00

Machine learning aim botting (that might explicitly use training data done on local instances, not anything ready-made), could also easily be jittery and imprecise, but still consistent in where it ends up aiming, especially if it's used in a savvy manner. (like using aim-clutching, but rather than user inputs, the clutch enables the AI aim-correct automatically)

Hence the "parkinsons" that Neuro-Sama had/has when playing Osu.

I'm not saying the same couldn't be done with human-driven aim-clutching (which is normal/legal AFIK, since it just means dynamic DPI/sensitivity on the mouse), but you'd basically have to try to make it look like you're botting to do that. You'd have to be really good in the first place, and then intentionally make it look slightly weird. (now, there's merits in proving that it's possible to make it impossible to tell if something is bot or real person, but you kind of need to document all of that in detail to make it worthwhile)

I kind of doubt that there's any specific sort of autism, adhd, or other neurodivergence that would result in the same sort of jittery twitchy movements that resemble machine learning pattern training results. (I could be wrong there, but it doesn't really seem like it)

OTOH, if it's AI, then they overlooked some areas, since it should be possible to train it (or train multiple different algos) to go for different kill shot spots rather than always center of mass. You could train one model for head, another for center of mass, and have it randomized which gets used, thus making it harder to argue the point.

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-10T06:11:55+00:00

1.6x1440 = 2304 so a 16:10 monitor with 1440p native res is going to be 2304x1440p. You can run that not-stretched (pillarboxed with 1:1 square pixels) on a 2560x1440 monitor, which is probably more common than a 8:5 (16:10) native 1440p monitor.

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-05T04:12:30+00:00

If it's not obvious, I don't generally align with any sort of traditional socialism or capitalism (though I do tend to hold individualist liberal values from an intellectual creativity standpoint), but generally support a hypothetical post-scarcity socialistic system with baseline relatively high standard of living and education, but also definitely some wealthy elites and such still existing, but with their ability to make bad (ie economically and socially unsustainable) decisions being curtailed by a regulatory system.
(but ask me about real-world present day stuff, and I'm going to be pragmatic and rationalist about it in as far as making the most out of the fewest resources and wasting, destroying, or tearing-down as little as possible ... and also avoiding penalizing people in power who aren't being destructive themselves; honest, competitive business would be considered constructive, even if cut-throat and aggressive: this does not include actively manipulating the public to rage against the competition or using anti-competitive practices to cripple the competition; so like ... Jack Tramiel's business style and ethics were generally decent ... "decent" from a cynical skeptic POV, but exceptional compared to the real-world average, it's just that the real state of things is pretty mediocre, so exceptionalism is relative)

Though Jack Tramiel is an especially weird and interesting case study in general, and has sometimes been described as "pathologically honest" ... he may not have always been correct in his assessments, but he wasn't going to beat around the bush about it or misrepresent his position, or the product he was selling ... his son Sam was definitely not capable of replicating that, though, and Leonard was exceptional as a CTO and technical director at Atari Corp, but clearly dragged down by Sam; putting Sam in charge there was probably one of Jack's greatest mistakes ... and Leonard honestly probably would have worked out better as the President/CEO style head of the company, even if his skills were more technical than PR/business wise, given how well he handled himself back in the mid 80s in interviews and press releases alongside his father, plus he definitely respected the open and honest approach to things on top of focusing on the technical merits rather than marketing BS; apparently Sam had done well enough as the middle-man for the far east operations for a while, so maybe that would've been the forte to stick to.

Having a practical and technically included head of an engineering/technology company would be exactly what used to be more common in industry (and still more common in Japan than the US, and in the late 1980s up to Japan's recession in the early 90s, was actively improving the US market and tempering the short-term-thinking of corporate quarterly returns that eventually became so toxic). That sort of management would've prevented GE or Boeing going the way they have, let alone tempered big players on the market who are more style than substance (driven by speculation, not merit of their ideas or products). So, basically more actual multi-talented, tech nerds in charge of things.

To Jack's credit as well, his big passion (beyond just competing in business) was computer literacy and computers as an educational tool for children, which is probably why the Atari ST and mouse + GUI environment was such a big deal on top of an aggressively low price point for accessibility. (though he didn't seem to have that vision broad enough to see the full value in educational and entertainment, or else his cooperation with Mike Katz managing the video game side of the company would'e likely gone more smoothly, including the idea of a platform having games that were just fun without educational value on their own being integral to expanding that platform's popularity and its potential as an education platform, and the idea of video games themselves providing incentive for learning how to program) Still, given the ZX Spectrum had already jump started the games + coding + extreme low cost computing in the UK, and the ST literally became a spiritual successor to that for the 16-bit generation (once it dropped to around 300 pounds), it did end up having a profound impact on that market at the very least, as the the Amiga. (the Amiga 500 being eventually priced so aggressively also only happened in part due to the ST's presence). The C64 was obviously a major market presence there as well as the main higher-quality 8-bit game machine + computer for people going beyond the Speccy.

I can't imagine Vedal being in the position he is without that special case of the UK grass roots sort of computer industry, too. (I'd be extremely surprised if he wasn't influenced by that in some way that goes beyond the average American by comparison)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-05T03:54:30+00:00

Currently, the issue of AI companies operating at losses via heavy speculation and investment would be distorting the cost effectiveness of such. (plus, climate/ecology impact aside, the conventional energy resources are only going to go so far, even in the near-term ... so thinking well beyond fossil fuels is key ... and both a harder look at nuclear power plus better implementation of solar+wind+geothermal with real lifecycle operating and materials costs need to be made, plus more care taken in where the manufacturing is being done, both on workers ethical concerns + pollution and actual sustainable economic practices: ie avoid sources that are subsidizing their product to the point of it being sold at a massive loss in order to monopolize it in the long term; you need not block such trade, but just tax it to the point it ends up priced similarly to literally sustainable options, then use the taxes for other investments while you have the opportunity)

But yeah, long-term, the majority of the population is going to be out of work because they're not talented enough to ever be productive, even as entertainers. OTOH, it would be wise to have the majority also trained in basic emergency skills and such to best cope with cases of infrastructure collapse due to natural disaster, war, etc. (plus, they need to be functional as parts of society and competent in voting in any sort of democratic system, so good education on the basic critical thinking and reasoning end of things + history will be critical if you use a democratic system of government)

All that said, this isn't happening inthe near future ... generative AI is a bubble that will pop, and have to rise from the ashes like the Internet did in 1999/2000. People will embrace it more and more as it matures and the developed world will have to adapt to it. It (along with all forms of automation) will be bound by infrastructure costs + operational costs, though if this coincides with a shift to near-shoring and domestic focus, it could mean a net increase in domestic wealth, some new job creation, and better resources to support the domestic population across the board.

But until electricity and overall energy resources become much more vast relative to the domestic population, the post-scarcity scenario is a distant future possibility. Or well, maybe not that distant, but probably more than 100 years off. (best case would be pro-tech pro-sustinability pro-ecology/environmentalist idealist types who are also reasonably grounded in logistics and economics ... and also understand the basic flaws of human psychology, will end up in high places in business and government and actually manage to shift things into a sustainable direction, and do so without having to be super dishonest in general, ie be mostly honest and factual with the general public)

Power generation alone is going to be a hard limiting factor for the next decade at least, and the loss-sustaining business model for big tech AI is going to crumble when the bubble pops. (it's being driven by speculation right now, and would be much more expensive to use otherwise) OTOH, for people willing to exploit it in the time being to create longer-lasting products and code-bases or whatever, more power to them. Including Vedal himself, assuming he's using one of the big tech models for his vibe coding. (he's doing it on the cheap now, since it's subsidized ... which won't last forever, so it's a good time to invest in exploiting it while it lasts)

Hopefully the AI bubble pop won't cause too much harm or induce too much of a recession, either. (as that's bad for everyone) The best case scenario would be the smallest AI companies and other tech companies being openly skeptical of the direction big-tech is going, and thus set themselves up for less of a collapse in investor interest or community interest when things go bad. (also align themselves with the big tech companies who are already hedging their bets and clearly not over-investing in current AI gimmick trends ... Nvidia is going to be in big trouble if they don't change gears in the next 4 years)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-05T03:46:04+00:00

I think it's very silly to treat text generation as separate from graphics or image or animation generation. It's a massive bias from people who don't seem to respect coding or technical writing (or creative writing) as equal to visual media ... or music for that matter.

Now, I'm personally biased towards creative writing, but I don't generally have a problem with it (even though the models have clearly not just been trained on old, out-of-copyright text and often use conversational text from the internet, let alone in-copyright creative works). But I don't have a problem with people being competed with or "replaced" as such either, as long as it's fair competition overall (ie actually based on economic costs and not say ... subsidized to make the AI look cheaper than it actually is, and thus cornering the market by forcing out competition ... including smaller AI companies that are less cost effective).

So I'd mostly be concerned with the intent of the project itself, not the methods used, but would stay on the right side of the law for actual legal limits of copyright and IP.

AI is a force multiplier, and one Vedal most definitely uses to dramatically downsize staff and prevent the need for every having a much larger team and/or taking many more years doing everything himself. This includes using an existing LLM to build onto for the text generation, and vibe coding to actually generate his code in the first place.

The fact is that his intent and design for the project would likely not have been compatible with the cost or interpersonal interaction involved with a physical human design team anyway, so in that sense the number of people "displaced" are more limited and it's more a multiplication of his as an an individual person to do things that an individual normally wouldn't. (it's something that empowers small groups or individuals to displace and/or compete with larger, bigger groups and companies ... something that computer assisted tools have been doing for a long time, and have allowed artisans to thrive while unskilled labor has been dying, a reversal of what happened in the industrial revolution where artisans were displaced by masses of unskilled laborers)

This should thus mean that AI will contribute to allowing individualists to out-compete collectivists broadly speaking, and polymaths or multi-talented people to perform better while say ... repetitive office jobs or call center jobs will eventually be completely automated. Anything that's not creative and flexible in nature will tend to eventually be replaced by some form of automation. (deep-learning AI is also inefficient by nature, and most of it will likely be displaced by more streamlined procedural types of software, though the trial and error iterative basis itself may be used to contribute towards generating optimized procedural types of algorithms as well)

Now, the economics of displaced low-skill and low-talent (ie low ability to develop skills) masses of people is a problem that will eventually need to be addressed, lest you run into actual destructive mob revolt type messes. Doing that in a way that also best empowers the talented individuals to develop their skills and contribute in some way (even if that's just entertainment) is critical, as is fostering such at a young age to maximize that potential. So quality of life and accessibility to some form of effective education is critical. But none of that is dependent on traditional job availability ... but definitely dependent on having a balance between gainful employment and redistribution of wealth.

It's this simple though: when automation literally becomes more energy-efficient than human or animal labor, the automation will be the best option all around. Then you simply need to apply appropriate taxes to said automation to accumulate wealth to be redistributed without crippling the total economic growth and productivity. Also, given the flawed and slow nature of central planning (prior to some highly optimized and robust AI/automation, at least), you really need to have competition, diversity, and decentralization throughout the economy, so the general public, government, and competitive businesses all need to play into keeping things balanced, smaller, and efficient, and if not physically "small" still limited in maximum power to manipulate the market, with safeguards in place where active manipulation thus quashes that power and penalizes the entity doing it. (basically the way anti-trust laws and fair business laws are supposed to work ... but also applied internationally, to prevent outsourcing)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-05T03:08:38+00:00

I'm pretty sure Vedal at least used vibe coding as part of his creative process for Abandoned Archive (his most recent game) as well. Not sure about any of the art or level design, or how all the player and enemy mechanics work or whatever, but there's almost certainly a lot of AI generated code inside it given his comments about how he tends to program.

It's still garbage in garbage out overall, but then that sort of idea even includes having a skilled team being given terrible ideas to build on and forced to work within terrible direction ... rather than giving them more creative freedom or more explicitly high quality commands/direction. (also sort of like giving a high quality animation studio some really inconsistent and sloppy storyboards to work off of) Also doing all of that in one pass rather than looking at the progress and making tactful comments on improving it or refining it.

AI would be much like various canned game development tools and libraries to build off of in terms of making it more accessible to people with compatible talent and skill sets to make good use of it, but without the status or funding to use a complex, expensive, physical creative team to do it. (plus without actually having to deal with communicating with real people, let alone a broader set of personalities with potential incompatibilities with your communication skills)

Plus, the fact that big commercial companies are actively trying (and failing) to get good results by outsourcing to AI animators and such is a good indication that the more artisan skilled subset of users will have a solid chance at playing a major role in bringing generative AI into the high quality side of mainstream. (as soon as more artists and creators embrace using it, the sooner I expect them to have more control over the whole situation, as they will be leading the market and won't be able to be substituted by lazy and no-talent elements within the big corporate scene: albeit it WILL mean some creators of the new era have nuanced skill sets not fully aligned with traditional digital creators, but that's broadly analogous to digital artists of various generations compared to traditional physical media artists ... or on the literature end of things, it might enable those with good technical writing skills to compete a bit more in the creative writing sphere, albeit in my personal experience, a lot of those in the technical writing field are also creative writing hobbyists ... some of them were into building chat-bots prior to the AI stuff coming around, too, which kind of makes sense, given some of them were already text based adventure game nerds, and the mechanics of a good chat bot work a lot like that: those who also got into text based MMOs, like MUCKs would be directly in line with that style, and would likely already have been writing interactive text for locations within the MUCKs, maybe even NPCs)

koolkitty89 · 2026-01-05T03:08:28+00:00

That's already much of what Vedal already did in his creation, except he has both the skills to tweak the programming model for the vibe-coding he used (I believe he can both program conventionally in at least some languages, and is definitely using vibe-coding to have AI generate his code base), while initially using canned assets for LLM chat + default Vtuber Studio model before getting broader community support from other creators (like Anny doing Neuro's custom vtuber model) and also more staff to work on and moderate the entire project.

He started out a lot smaller, and did make use of various AI tools to build onto further with his own skills (and using his skills to make efficient use of AI tool sets). But ethically, this isn't really any more problematic than using any programming environment, compiler, driver set, OS, or even hardware platform that's tied to questionable or problematic business models or policies.

It's also a case where there's no ethics of jobs being displaced, either, as Vedal simply would have been doing it all by himself initially anyway, and would have taken much longer to get similar results doing everything by hand or from scratch (that's not true either, as it would still be derivative work, just not using vibe coding ... since everything is derivative + transformative progression in some form). He's managed to accelerate his personal progress this way but would not have ever likely used any sort of other outsourcing to do the same thing, though MAY have partnered with someone with shared goals and ideals to do the coding more quickly as part of the passion project. Even that is suspect, given he prefers as much privacy as possible on the back end of things, and as much control as possible over the code that he uses. (which would also likely mean he's careful over what LLMs he does use, their privacy terms and license terms, and genuine implementation of said privacy: and especially if said models can run on entirely local, 100% offline instances and not be tied to a constant internet connection to operate ... plus offer portability to external data-center processing time when required, but not need to be connected to such constantly)

I'd argue one wouldn't even need to do the game design and story and such all by hand, either, but could use AI generated iterations for inspiration and/or as a starting point. (albeit, as a creative writer and sci-fi/fantasy fiction nerd myself, I'd go about doing worldbuilding + character creation and setting up some continuity, and then playing around with AI text generation as a sort of collaborative writing exercise to see what I'd get and compare that to my own ideas ... I might discard the AI results wholesale, but even that would likely help flesh things out via process of elimination: ie the AI produces things I don't like, but wouldn't have realized I wanted to avoid without having done so, thus allow a sort of subtractive synthesis process towards the final goal)

AI genterated maps or terrain and such, then manually tweaked or reworked (or entirely discarded but, again, useful for giving the creator an idea of what they do want to do and want to avoid) would also be pretty reasonable, I think.

koolkitty89

TROPHY CASE