Yeah, I know, I’m not arguing against electric now, or even as a concept then. This was an alt-history exercise, remember?

Batteries could have been standard for a bit longer, but it seems to me that eventually the need to go faster for longer would have forced combustion engines to be a thing. All they had were lead-acid batteries (or primary cells, but that would be dumb) and new more energy-dense chemistries didn’t show up for a long time after. Maybe they could have found one if they really needed, but it’s a tricky science even today, so I’m skeptical.

It’s possible, I suppose, that infrastructure could have been rolled out for both en mass, but I don’t see an even mix lasting through the whole 20th century. Probably not even past WWII.

Or, y’know, there’s a war on and you can’t stop to recharge, or you need to cross a desert, or you just want to do an express route with one vehicle…

Combustion is just a superior vehicle technology vs. lead-acid electric, assuming you don’t worry about emissions, and that will show up in plenty of contexts. Eventually, lead-acid would go the way of the other workable-but-not-as-nice technologies like crystal radios or black-and-white film.

“Thanks bro/comrade!” would be a great way to play this off diplomatically with someone you still want to be allies with, so that could be the origin of that bit.

Because it lead directly to feudalism and other forms of autocracy?

Batteries could have been standard for a bit longer, but it seems to me that eventually the need to go faster for longer would have forced combustion engines to be a thing. All they had were lead-acid batteries (or primary cells, but that would be dumb) and new more energy-dense chemistries didn’t show up for a long time after. Maybe they could have found one if they really needed, but it’s a tricky science even today, so I’m skeptical.

It’s possible, I suppose, that infrastructure could have been rolled out for both en mass, but I don’t see an even mix lasting through the whole 20th century. Probably not even past WWII.

In addition to mixing up the man and the place, I got that wrong. Fixed.

Human history, as a whole, is so depressing and meandering it’s a weird question to try and answer. Were the great empires a success, or a failure? It depends on if you’re measuring monuments built or social justice enacted, and if you’re comparing against modern polities or whatever shitty local warlord they replaced. History doesn’t really have an end goal, as much as we’d like it to.

Maybe you just meant a personal failure:

Thomas Midgley is one of my favourites, because he’s famous for three things: Inventing leaded gasoline, inventing ozone-destroying PCBs, and inventing an accessibility contraption that strangled Thomas Midgley. He did nothing else of note; he’s like the real life Bloody Stupid Johnson.

Pheidippides of Battle of Marathon fame is famous for running a long way just to deliver some news first, and then dying from exhaustion. People regularly make the same trip and are fine. He was regarded as a hero, and the races were originally in his honour, but I wouldn’t want to be him. Edit: Maybe not a great example, actually. The story names a much longer distance than a marathon, although it’s kinda mythical.

Muhammad II of Khwarazm received an envoy from Ghengis Khan, who wasn’t bent on invading at all but wanted trade, and decided to steal their shit and kick them out instead. Then he killed the people sent next to ask for a nice apology. You can guess where that went.

The Soviets once tried to sextort Indonesian quasi-communist leader Sukarno with a tape. It did not work, because he was shamelessly proud of his “virility”. In at least some tellings he misinterprets the KGB’s presentation as a gift, although I doubt he could have been that dumb.

Producers are rich, and don’t find poor people problems sexy, but rather inconveniently guilt-inducing. When they do show poverty it has a way of being pretty theme-park, too.

I’m not a big rom-com consumer, but of course there’s probably exceptions to the rule.

I often feel like that too, but there were things like haggis and sausage before them. It’s good to remember that turning inedible mush into something appealing actually has a long and noble history.

Scientists revealed that Neanderthals cared for their disabled children out of compassion

I mean it’s the obvious guess, but compassion doesn’t leave a direct fossil record. In the paper the thing they emphasise is that it was an obviously permanent disability, so there couldn’t have been a practical survival motivation.

Also, yeah, not good writing.

If so, it’s still probably deliberate, because corporate knows full well a bigger box would work too. Eshittification is coming for our nuggies.

In a lot of jurisdictions there’s no minimum reserve requirement anymore, in cash. It’s not really a problem, because at the big bank level money on paper is barely real. If they need more, they can almost just ask. They do have to have a certain minimum amount of capital, though, which can take a number of forms.

I mixed up my exact terms a bit earlier, sorry about that. I’m not a professional macroeconomist, I only know enough to know they’re not completely full of shit.

we are experiencing greater and greater asset bubbles and at no point in world history were things actually different.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. If things aren’t any different from before, how can we have bigger and bigger asset bubbles? I don’t know that we do, really. The niche for bear investors is very full, if something’s overvalued by the whole market you and me won’t know either.

Yeah, that’s fair. Most of the VR stuff out there has a pretty walled-garden feel.

If I could pick your brain a bit, what are the big computational bottlenecks these days?

I see. Thanks.

Edit: Holy crap, yeah that’s scummy. Literally manipulating children - openly, specifically children - into being whales without even knowing.

Somehow, none of the “think of the children people” care or talk about this.

Well, you had excellent luck with Tinder then. Most people do not have that kind of success.

Very. They’re all swipe boxes at this point, and that basically means it’s a slot machine that dispenses people. It’s designed to be addicting, not actually locate a compatible partner.

No, I don’t really have a good alternative. Date-me docs are interesting, kind of a zine-y grassroots version of the app we wish we had, but they’re a small phenomenon and I don’t know how many people actually manage to meet through them. I heard something about fediverse dating, but that’s even more niche.

Not really an answer, but Western sources are already pretty positive about the Soviet defense there. I’d be surprised if communist sources differed much.

Извините, я кажется плохо помню его фамилию.

There’s a lot. He’s been active in this since 2008 or so. Scott Aaronson writes about him quite often on his blog, which is the main way I know of him.

Having an internet connection, a proper AI can easily order contractors around and reproduce, secure and empower itself.

I mean, that’s the standard idea guys like Yudkowsky talk about. Having poked around a bit, it seems a couple decades of petty hackers have made that pretty impossible to do without either leaving a meatspace paper trail, or having meatspace human accomplices. Conquering the world instantly by Wifi, unless you can break encryption, is probably overblown - for now.

Otherwise, I just agree.

If you’re in the <1% of SUV users that needs to drive through unmaintained trails or similar.