• 27 Posts
  • 1.17K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle

  • The UK issued silver dollars once. They were dated 1804 and considered “bank tokens” as they had less silver than their denomination required at the time. They basically stamped a new design on Spanish colonial 8-real coins and passed them as five shillings.

    The UK had a hard time with coin supply for most of the 1700s until 1816 when they finally downdized many coins.



  • I expect the hype people to do hype, but I’m frustrated that the consumers are also being hypemen. So much of this stuff, especially at the corporate level, is FOMO rather than actually delivered value.

    If it was any other expensive and likely vendor-lockin-inducing adventure, it would be behind years of careful study and down-to-the-dime estimates of cost and yield. But the same people who historically took 5 years to decide to replace an IBM Wheelwriter with a PC and a laser printer are rushing to throw AI at every problem up to and including the men’s toilet on the third floor being clogged.







  • I wonder if it’s just so far outside the scope of what capitalists know to risk model that it’s not a compelling bet. The “it’s 20-50 years on” timelines are also a hard sell.

    If you win by delivering a reactor, you unlock so many knock-on effects.

    Does your business immediately get subsumed on national security grounds? Does a massive reshape of the energy market cut off your current gravy trains? How do you monetize “too cheap to meter”?

    Researchers don’t care. They’re in it for the cool project.




  • HakFootochapotraphouse@hexbear.netPitch me your TV pilot
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    9 days ago

    Copaganda drama with pop-up analysis from real legal experts. Includes corny Blind Date style graphics and bell that goes off every time Constitutional rights are violated.

    Shark Tank, but the panel is four minimum wage workers and the guests are VCs who have to justify their current wealth.

    A McLaughlin Group style panel discussion but one guest each week is an intentional novelty (reads ChatGPT responses verbatim, foreigner with know knowledge of local politics making it up on the fly, Marjorie Taylor Greene)

    South Sesame Street, from the writers of The Wire.


  • “Destroying a nation” does not inherently mean “genocide”.

    That was the historic norm. If you lost a war, you ended up under the flag of the conquering country and were expected to adopt at least some aspects of their culture. But in general, much of the civilian population survived. A thousand states vanished from Europe in the last millenium, but only a handful of times did it result in their entire populations being slaughtered/displaced.

    I suspect much of the time, it was more valuable to have more subjects than a lot of empty land with nobody to work it. Not like Russia has that problem already…


  • The worry is that it feels like we’re moving past a consumer-directed economy and not in the wholesome Soviet five-year-plan way.

    The almighty market has figured out how to collude and cram stuff that people don’t want down our throats (what consumer wanted everything to turn into an enshittified subscription?)

    Real people may not want AI slop, but if there’s enough of a sense it will make line go up, we’re getting slop.

    On the other hand, this factor might be the salvation: the current AI market is full of 2000-era-dot-com business models based on selling at a loss and making it up on the promise of global domination later. If the VC money dries up, and every “delve” costs whatever the actual amount it costs to drain the oceans and oilfields to pump into an array of Quadros plus sufficiently reimbuse all the ghouls that bankrolled the project, maybe the line doesn’t go up anymore.






  • I read an interesting book recently- “Paved Paradise”- that basically blamed a lot of urban planning problems on there being too high mandates for parking:

    • Density is lowered by demanding an ocean of parking lot for apartment buildings and public facilities even when the spaces are empty most of the time.
    • Free parking tends to hinder urban businesses as non-customers occupy limited free spots in front of shops
    • Emissions and frustration trying to find affordable/optimal parking
    • Public parking can become a flashpoint for NIMBYism (they’re taking valuable parking spaces to huild houees)
    • Economic mismanagement as paid parking becomes an asset that cities can privatize or misprice.
    • Annoverall fear of chang making the cluster— worse somehow.