Tyler

@mustache_superb @HoansSolo This would probably be the worst decision in the history of humanity. And I’m not being hyperbolic. Maybe eventually we’ll find a way to clear the debris field from around Earth. But we’d say goodbye to low Earth orbit and manned spaceflight for perhaps half a century.

@HoansSolo Well, the good part is we have tools for dealing with satellites

‚Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satellite that gave the Islamic republic a powerful new capability to target US military bases across the Middle East during the recent war, according to a Financial Times investigation. Leaked Iranian military documents show the satellite, known as TEE-01B, was acquired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force in late 2024 after it was launched into space from China.‘

@ScottLikedSLS I don’t understand how they get it to not explode. Wizardry.

Insanity, truly.

@BellikOzan Actually, I’m telling you that F9 reentry at 2 psf is loud enough to wake some people 50 miles away. The boom can reach 2-3 psf as far away as Ventura, 80 miles away. Superheavy at 2x the pressure will not be better.

@Tylerkaerr Santa Barbara is nearly 50 miles away. Are you telling me it's going to be loud enough to wake them up over there?

Wow, I was really expecting SLC-14 to up being a Starship pad. But I suppose they'll probably convert one of their Falcon pads.

@BellikOzan And for the record, I think a Starship pad at Vandenberg SFB would be great. We’ll have to see whether SpaceX can adjust their descent trajectory such that flight operations aren’t prohibitively loud.

@BellikOzan The entire surrounding metro (Santa Maria, Goleta, Santa Barbara, Solvang, Lompoc) experiences this, especially areas roughly on-axis of the ground track of a typical launch. This is roughly 300k people. Keep in mind, Superheavy overpressure on reentry is ~2x greater than F9.

@allTheYud @dylanmatt Comments like these are akin to feeding inciteful statements to a deranged mob which has already lynched a half dozen people. Do you have a right to say such things? Sure. Is doing so responsible? Absolutely not.

@dylanmatt I'm glad you've updated! I don't suggest believing that economic growth will hit 30%/year before we're all dead. I think you are unaware of the degree to which these amazing correct predictions were watered-down, palatable versions of more correct, more disturbing predictions.

I am sympathetic to people who think AI is all nonsense hype. This is what I thought in 2015. I was very wrong, though, and I wrote about why and what I learned from that dylanmatthews.substack.com/p/the-ai-peopl…

@1_2_fizz_4_buzz @jd_pressman The thing is, there’s no evidence that such a technology will ever exist! I strongly believe AI will be able to do many things very well, because it already does! But that’s entirely different from claiming AI will be able to do everything (better than a human, much less)!

@jd_pressman What gets me are the "AI will create new jobs we cannot even fathom!" people. Like AI couldn't do those jobs too.

This would be a start but I'll be blunter: In a country like America where there's no safety net and the default attitude towards anyone who can't economically contribute is they should literally die, it is in almost nobody's interest for AGI to exist. You'd have to change that.

@jd_pressman @veaulans Why is grift such a problem here? Why does BART operate an order of magnitude less efficiently and reliably than the Tokyo metro?

@veaulans That is in fact a fantastic question. Without looking it up my guess would be some combination of NGO/Government grift, Republican sabotage, and America's underclass being genuinely less functional than the underclass in other countries.

Alright alright you folks win I will not use the phrase "no safety net" again, you're right that is not an accurate description of America it's just the desire of the current ruling coalition that Silicon Valley VCs and CEOs have made a big show of supporting and donating to.

@chrisontesla @DavidSacks You must not interact with anyone under age 40. Try consuming the media they consume. Spend a week sourcing your information solely from Re*ddit. Read popular subreddits with neutral-sounding names such as /r/politics or /r/technology.

@DavidSacks Lunatics. It has to be some kind of glitch in the matrix. I just don’t get it. I don’t know anyone in my real life that supports this kind of stuff. Who is out there voting for this?

Good luck California it was nice knowing you

@alabjorkma @KenKirtland17 @ratpuncher4011 Sure but shouldn’t we like build the gas station only after we establish that gas production is feasible?

@KenKirtland17 @ratpuncher4011 it’s also my understanding that if we find ice at the poles during the artemis missions, the goal is to be able to turn the moon into a liquid h/o gas station, so i’m assuming that would require the building of quite a bit of surface infrastructure?

When a gatewaycel says something so surfacephobic you gotta hit em with the artemis stare

@AndyMasley @ActualSeeren He spent years producing interesting electronic music, but apparently being a conspiracy theorist YouTuber is far more lucrative. Shame

@ActualSeeren He seems like a goofy goober

Two takeaways from an initial read of the data center noise pollution situation. Will have a longer blog post on this next week: -General issues with noise pollution are very real, but fixable with basic policy, and are the fault of both the data centers and local regulatory agencies. There are clear places where massive facilities like data centers should absolutely not have been built so close to homes. When and where governments swoop in to fix this, the problem goes away. It involves pretty commonsense rules about setbacks. It completely makes sense that locals are really mad about this where it happens. I would be. -"Infrasound poisoning" seems to be more or less completely fake. There are all these claims about data center infrasound (sound that's too low to hear but still shakes your body) that come from one specific popular YouTuber who has other really popular content on infrasound effects specifically. There are wild claims made about infrasound, that it can cause spikes in cortisol, heart strain, blood-vessel thickening, reduced blood flow to the brain, major physiological damage, and the video calls data centers 'acoustic weapons.'" The actual literature on this doesn't support this at all. All effects of infrasound seem to be effects of the wavelengths of the part of the sound that people can actually hear, and are the same effects as normal noise pollution. But this video has over a million views and now everyone's freaking out about data center infrasound, and this is being reinforced by people mixing it up with very real issues with normal noise pollution.

@TravisTsunami @ParkerJr4L @Andref727 @Komunikato78814 @alexkehr @Davidrejll This is true, I’m planning on highjacking the flight

@ParkerJr4L @Andref727 @Komunikato78814 @alexkehr @Davidrejll I’m a passenger on my way to my aunts wedding

the american mind (me) cannot comprehend european airline flight prices can i just book all 190 seats for $3400 and have a private 737 flight?

@Lurkingposter @kpomerleau I mean this is probably true, but today, anybody with even 6 figures of wealth can borrow money at the fed funds rate plus ~1-2%, using their brokerage as collateral.

@kpomerleau I thought the implication of buy borrow die was that it was mostly something people starting doing at like 8 to 9 figures of net worth not necessarily top 1% income

There is some good research suggesting that high-income households do not do very much of what's called "buy-borrow-die."

@notafinger42 @kpomerleau @MarcGoldwein Leaving the loophole open, however, allows people to make a plausible-sounding argument in favor of wealth taxes, which buys constituents to their side. Just close the loophole.

@notafinger42 @kpomerleau @MarcGoldwein It doesn’t really justify wealth taxes given that the issue would be solved even more effectively and directly by simply closing the loophole.

There are potential x-risk events everywhere one might look. Industrial power generation may very well create biosignatures detectable from distant galaxies, drawing the attention of hostile civilizations which mean to enslave or destroy humanity. But like with AI x-risk, we have no meaningful ability to assign any statistical likelihood to such an eventuality. And it seems entirely irresponsible to propose policy or collective action based on some hypothetical risk that we cannot remotely hope to quantify.

@gmiller @alexsholtz @tenobrus You doomers have a way of reading everything written on the subject of AI and turning it into “ruination and extinction” Nobody is suggesting we accelerate into ruin Nobody is suggesting we passively accept extinction as our fate This is a straw man, intentional or otherwise

what are the best writings (books, blog posts, essays, anything) that take the idea of mass permanent AGI-induced unemployment seriously and propose real plausible near-term policies and transition plans? is there anything??

On the other hand, every day we delay, a hundred thousand people die from some disease or other preventable cause of death. If the average life is cut short by 30 years, this is millions of years of human life that we lose each day. Does this mean we shouldn’t work to reduce whatever pain is caused by the transition? Of course not. But we should absolutely try to accelerate this progress by all means available to us.

@HoyaNation @postmetrogirl @WashProbs Hardly. The county voted 42/48 in 2024. Can you name a single other Republican activist protest that has taken place in the past 5 years? The only thing Republicans protest is other protests.

@postmetrogirl @WashProbs Republican county?

Scenic Chesapeake Bay county finds itself in the middle of a data center fight washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/…