taraharris

The national debt stands at $39.5 trillion. Interest payments on that debt exceed war department spending. Major recessions trigger massive stimulus payments, which would balloon that debt further, which puts the entire nation into a doom loop with the bond market. So instead the economy will simply not be allowed to fall into recession. Rates will not be raised; the debt will simply be monetized.

Part of that strategy requires continual talk of rate hikes to maintain the appearance of a market.

We are clearly living through a period of national autophagy. What's happening all around us is causing a great deal of confusion, so I thought it might help to look at this from an economic perspective.

The federal bureaucracy was largely created by the New Deal, which depended on an expanding American empire. In 1935, US debt/GDP was around 39% and the world traded in physical gold, the Pound Sterling and the USD. By winning WWII, American institutional power was set in stone, both at home and abroad. For generations, Americans largely lived and died believing in Pax Americana.

Today the American empire has begun to visibly shrink. US debt/GDP is at 123%, the USD is slowly losing its reserve currency status and the prospects for American expansion are low. Decades after Reagan and Thatcher, the bond market is in total control of public spending. America is locked in an intense security and technology race with a peer competitor. Is it any wonder that institutions are being remodeled? The economics of an empire determine its laws and the shape of its institutions.

None of the above is an endorsement of empire. Creating, maintaining and unwinding them always leaves a stack of bodies too horrifying for most people to consider. Don't forget that if this stuff makes you rich.

I didn't click the link. (My first guess is this was inspired by a Benny Hill joke.)

I have a home in Seattle, so I get to see intersections and signs that are so confusing that I can't understand what I'm supposed to do when I encounter them. On residential streets around my house, people put up all these "20 is plenty" signs, close off streets, etc., have speedbumps put in, place their cars in driveways that block off the sidewalk, put in traffic cameras in school zones, etc.

My wife's car has FSD (it's a Model X Plaid with HW4) and it does a great job at navigating all of this madness. The magical milestone for autonomy is here already, and it's a part of my daily life. I drive my girlfriend to her job and back four round trips a week, from Ballard to Green Lake.

Three thoughts come to mind:

1) At some point a federal limitation will be legally imposed on the kinds of special cases residents can force on the roads and/or we'll just shrug and let the tunnel-boring machines go under our homes.

2) I think the Boring Company tunnels would be a lot better if they had a grid topology and a story that's more than just lip service about public use.

3) It would be really cool if people got together to take over some of the surface streets and made old-timey functioning streetcars from 120+ years ago. The city and state governments could support this by simply ceding control to worker-owned cooperatives that build and maintain their own streetcars. Ballard was going to get a train that connected it to the rest of the city by 2039, and now that plan is dead because it can't be sustained for financial reasons (public planning is rife with linear assumptions and other forms of myopia).

The claim is that compilers were f(x) -> y, and LLMs are f(x) -> P(y | z1 | z2 | ... z3).

But how were various combinations of popular programming languages, operating systems and hardware platforms not effectively f(x) -> P(y | z1 | z2 | ... z3)? Suppose you were quick on the take and were writing in Unix and C in the early 80s and found yourself porting your program from a PDP-something to an 8088 PC, or to a 68k Mac, dealing with DOS extenders, printer drivers, different versions of C (remember K&R style?) or C++? Remember MFC? The evolution of the STL?

LLMs are similar to that maelstrom, just on a faster timescale.

No. Just grow up, please.

It's telling that there isn't a single mention of surgery in the study or the interview.

Facial feminization surgery (FFS) exists but is extremely rare in Finland. After puberty, hormones alone can't change bone and cartilage structure, nor can they make vocalization congruent. Only surgery can do that.

Comparing what life was like before I had FFS+VFS, and I remember the way people treated me. After puberty locked in my bones, expecting life to be easy with hormone therapy alone simply wasn't realistic socially. Most people were incredibly judgemental. Life is a lot easier when people can't instantly spot you as something they see as abnormal.