gaukes

The money they’re printing isn’t being circulated because people are keeping it in their bank accounts and reducing spending. I think we’re in for something when things return to normal.

I’ve seen this a lot with professors of industry-focused business schools in universities. I think they’re either getting funding / paid or using the connections to pull strings.

These professors usually consult with a lot of government organizations and older companies. If you can make these professors your corporate shill, I guess it’s good marketing.

Narcissism isn’t necessarily characterized by strength even though we imagine the quintessential narcissist people to be “strong” and “driven”. That may be true in their professional lives but not personal.

Narcissists are driven by external validation and appearance, yes. So much so that they forget the people most important to their lives are humans too, not tools or ornaments of achievement. When these relationships sour, there’s a lot of self-doubt, not about the achievements, but if the trade offs are really worth it in the end.

A lot of these seem tied to narcissism in some way. Not that it’s a bad thing but there are a lot of secondary effects of prioritizing ones “success” over all other things like relationships, friendships, mental health, etc.

Well, they wouldn't be looking for Earth specifically, they'd be looking for more resources which are everywhere. An intelligent and energy-hungry enough species would want to harness the power of every sun it can reach.

That growth would be exponential because acquiring resources provides more energy which allows them to acquire more resources even faster.

If an intelligent species doubled the number of stars they control every 2 million years, they'd have every star in the milky way in around 50 million years.

That's still like 0.2% the lifetime of the galaxy.

I'm not so confident we're in the top 20%. Our galaxy is middle-aged. Our star is only 4.6 billion years old in a galaxy that is 13.51 billion years.

There were several stars that blew up before we got the sun which means several systems and planets right in our neighborhood and that's just 1 star in the entire milky way.

Even at 1% the speed of light, it would take 2 million years to travel across the milky way which, relative to the age of the galaxy, is nothing.

Ceres is one of the more interesting candidates for life in our solar system. Ceres is in the habitable zone for our solar system (although just barely), it's surface temperature is -30 F (eq. to winter in Greenland), and it's detected that the water on the surface is 20% carbon by mass (though that can mean a lot of things).

It's like if Stanford brought a picture of an L5 self driving car to the DARPA grand challenge.

On the other hand.. the overreach of the executive branch is a response to the political deadlock in the legislative branch.

If we end up in a situation where neither branch can respond quickly and effectively, that may be worse than what we have now.

The big issue seems to be that companies don’t know how long this version of NAFTA will last. If Biden becomes the next president and signals support for keeping the agreement the way it is, there’s a good shot they’ll move to the USA.

Anyone think this is an additional factor in the Fermi paradox? i.e planets that are too small can’t support a strong atmosphere and life. Planets that are too big make space travel too uneconomical.

The US also gets a larger share of its energy from oil relative to coal. With the shale boom, oils become cheaper and more reliable in the US and burns more cleanly than coal.

Also, what number of drones. At why point does a swarm become a WMD?

To me, it’s more about intelligence than numbers. You could have a single rocket but if it’s smart enough to evade enemy defenses, that rocket could level a city.

I used this website in my last round of interviewing. The interviewers were hit or miss but I definitely got a lot out of it.