FaceDeer

Indeed. This sort of thing goes way back - the term “barbarian” was literally a result of Romans making fun of how non-Roman languages sounded to them (they used the onomatopoeia of “Bar Bar” to represent what they thought foreign languages sounded to them). Dismiss their language as meaningless gibber and you dismiss their thoughts as meaningless too.

Yeah, this looks just plain awesome. Grocery stores are so bland and samey, it’d be nice if they had more creative decor like this.

Saying a black person is “well spoken” is such a common slight in the US, as if it should be surprising somehow that they’re not all speaking Jive or Hip-hop or whatever. If people insult African-Americans like that what hope do Liberians have?

Really, you think all existing uses of data centers stopped now that there’s AI in the mix? There may be specific facilities under construction that are intended primarily or solely for AI use, but all the existing demand is still there.

That’s how all medical advances work, they are expensive when they are first developed and then over time they generally become cheaper as patents expire and processes are refined.

Once upon a time only a handful of people could get insulin to treat their diabetes. When it was first discovered you had to process huge numbers of pancreases to extract enough for one person. Should we have opposed research into treating diabetes because only the rich would be able to afford it?

Well that’s even less likely to cause our extinction, by definition.

I think people often conflate “the collapse of the comfortable familiar civilization I’m currently part of” with “the literal extinction of the human species, full stop, the end.” The two situations are not remotely comparable.

That’s not really how these things work. It’s not going to be like someone eats the very last edible thing one day and then a week later all of humanity is dead.

Do you think it is not a widespread or harmful condition?

Ah yes, we shouldn’t do research into a condition that harms literally everyone because there are a handful of people we don’t like who suffer from it.

The main problem with Biosphere 2 was that it was as much an instance of performance art as it was an attempt to create a sealed biosphere. When you’re doing an experiment you should be trying to control variables, not throwing everything into a huge pot and seeing what happens.

For example, there’s this class that military helicopter pilots take as part of training for surviving water landings.

This is nothing remotely like the scenario OP is talking about.

If they’ve read enough about the subject then they’ll realize that they’re not drowning. You don’t drown simply from being in water, the actions required to let you float with your face in the air is almost trivial. Knowing what those actions are is enough to get you to the “okay, now how do I go somewhere?” Step.

The point of this post is to ask whether reading about techniques is enough to “at least, be able to swim enough to reach the steep end and save themselves from drowning.”

And yes, yes it is. It’s not going to make you a good swimmer but it will certainly allow you to accomplish that.

Someone who is able to walk around and control their breathing already has those prerequisite motor skills.

We’re the terminators of the animal kingdom. We never stop coming.

Yeah, this is more of a camp. A camp where they can concentrate a specific sub-population of people into.

Don’t know if there’s a specific word for that.

I think more likely someone in Ukraine quietly asked Trump “hey, would you like to have one of our hotels?”

Or it’s just a symptom of pure chaos and random decision making, which is not uncommon in this administration.

All these “absolutely not” responses are silly, IMO. I speak as someone who’s quite a good swimmer. Practical experience is important to get good, certainly. But if your main objective is simply to not sink and to have a basic ability to propel yourself, I think that’s stuff you can manage quite easily starting from pure book learning. The “not sink” part is key, because that will give you the time to actually experience what it’s like moving around in the water and clarify what that book learning told you.

You probably don’t need 6 months of study, at that point your time would be better spent finding an actual pool. The sorts of basics I’m talking about here that would be useful is stuff like how to float with your face in the air so you can breathe, and once you’ve got that part down how to efficiently kick your legs to propel you rather than just flailing around uselessly. Learn those key tidbits, drill on just that, and then if you find yourself unexpectedly tossed in water you’ll know what to do to not die and get yourself back to the edge.

Reading will nevertheless help. It’s not going to give you perfect form on your breast stroke, but that’s not what OP is going for here. He wants to not die if he suddenly finds himself in deep water. There’s plenty of benefit from reading about how to go about not dying under those sorts of circumstances.

PJM has lost more than 5.6 net gigawatts in the last decade as power plants shut faster than new ones enter service, according to a PJM presentation filed with regulators this year. PJM added about 5 gigawatts of power-generating capacity in 2024, fewer than smaller grids in California and Texas. Meanwhile, data center demand is surging. By 2030, PJM expects 32 gigawatts of increased demand on its system, with all but two of those gigawatts coming from data centers.

So this is a combination of utter mismanagement by the power companies, combined with growth in data center demand. Data centers are not purely AI. And I would expect that if PJM continues to be a basket case with exceptionally high prices those data centers will move elsewhere, or at least not get set up so more in those locations. Data centers generally don’t have to be located in specific places, by their nature. AI-specific ones in particular since the bandwidth required is a lot smaller than their processing power.