Climate change is throwing a snag in one of the most important considerations during the home-buying process—location. With catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes and sea-level rise climbing, experts are urging prospective homebuyers to take regional climate risks into account before settling down somewhere with a 30-year ...
Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland has escalated into a full-blown international crisis. He is threatening military action against NATO ally Denmark and imposing tariffs on European countries that don’t support his quixotic quest to own the icy island. ...
A line from Ethan Mollick’s most recent newsletter (“Claude Code and What Comes Next”) caught my eye. Mollick tries out Claude Code and sees a step-change in AI capabilities: ...
According to this study, an income of $38,000/year puts you in the top 10% of carbon emitters. This study puts it at €42,980, or about $50K USD. That's a little higher than the median income in N. America, Europe, and Australia.
That said, carbon emissions are just one way humans impact the environment; other facets are far less variable (we all produce about the same amount of human waste per day, for example).
A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works ...
I lived without a cell phone for about 3 years (2022-2025), and once in a while there was a small hurdle but overall it was surprisingly easy. 2FA can be done via text/email, I never ran into an instance where I needed an app. Every ticket I bought could be printed at home, so it takes a little more forethought but not a deal breaker. Never ran into any parking stations that couldn't be paid via a kiosk/card, but YMMV.
These days I own a phone per request of one of my business clients, but it stays turned off at home unless I'm on a job. Once in a while I'll break it out to use the GPS but most places I drive to I can find by memory. There are many "middle" ground solutions out there too (like Graphene OS), but as a general rule, I would make a habit of leaving your phone at home when you can, and definitely when engaging in anything spicy.
And not to go down the conspiracy rabbit hole - I think this is more of a blind "race to the bottom" scenario - but it makes a lot more money for the rent-seeking class when we're socially isolated. A couple shares a house/apartment, shares chores, may even be able to share a car. When they break up, that's now 2 apartments, 2 cars, individual trips for everything, etc.
It's not quite that clean of course, and plenty of folks live with roommates. But there's definitely a perverse economic incentive to keep us detached from community and partnership, and everything from AI/social media/online dating to the gender/culture wars seems to be pushing us farther in that direction.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) may sound the death knell for a tool social scientists have increasingly come to rely on: online studies. Researchers who use surveys, games, and other online methods to rapidly gather data from large numbers of people have spent years refining methods to weed out unwanted ...
Like many American communities, Dublin, Ohio, grew from a small rural town in the 19th century into a sprawling suburb in the 20th. Today, it’s embracing a 21st-century development trend: walkability. ...
A little late to the party with this one, but I came across this study today and thought it was very interesting. Self-driving electric cars are often touted as a solution to fossil-fueled transit, but that comes with a lot of potential downsides that aren't always recognized. For reference, data centers are currently ...
It’s not a novel observation to say that supporters of President Donald Trump and supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders find common ground on many issues. They often share a skepticism of entrenched power and a desire to dismantle systems that they think have ceased to serve everyday people. In Indiana, this agreement ...
There was a time period in recent internet history — call it the era of Big Data, or the platform era — when the large digital platforms (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix) focused on optimization. The platforms had an immutable comparative advantage over their potential competitors. They had more data, more user ...
Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire member of the “PayPal Mafia” who is also a co-founder of Palantir, wants a return to draconian punishment and public executions in the United States. ...
Not sure why you got a downvote, this is absolutely true. If you have a low SSC you may be subject to travel bans, reduced employment prospects, being barred from attending certain schools, increased surveillance and police monitoring, and public shaming. Other individuals can also have their scores lowered by interacting with you.
In an unusual op-ed in the Washington Post, a former Palantir official named Wendy R. Anderson warns Democrats: bow down to Silicon Valley oligarchs or lose the future: ...
Last week, on the decaying husk of X.com, a former Disney Channel actor posted a 90-second advertisement for his AI company, 2WAI. The ad centers around “Baby Charlie” interacting with the avatar of his deceased grandmother. ...
What would it take to make car-free living possible across the United States? The question has critical implications for the climate: Transportation is the nation’s top source of emissions, and everyday vehicles are the largest contributor within this category. ...
Jennifer and Dean Bye were just getting by before Hurricane Ida slammed into southern Louisiana in 2021. The couple own a house in a comfortable subdivision in Paulina, a town about an hour west of New Orleans, that they share with their three kids. ...
When Cornell University systems engineer Fengqi You started modeling the environmental footprint of data centers three years ago, the AI boom was just beginning. Even then, You and his colleagues noticed something missing from the conversation. ...
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the "don't build data centers here, build them there" conclusion of the report. I see no reason why we should be allowing these monstrosities to be built in the first place, they're a total waste of essential resources.
Mark Carney has earmarked a billion dollars in the new federal budget to build a “sovereign” AI cloud and made-in-Canada quantum computing. The goal, he says, is to retain the ability for Canadians to regulate our own digital realm and protect our privacies. ...
When automobiles first started tearing through American streets a century ago, they weren’t exactly welcome. One of the main problems was that they were killing children: in 1921 alone, 286 children in Pittsburgh, 130 in Baltimore, and 97 in Washington, D.C. Cities memorialized the dead with monuments and solemn marches. A ...
If you were an authoritarian seeking to influence another head of state, you might offer him a luxuriously appointed Boeing 747 airplane. You might spend big at his hotels or invest in one of the many companies owned by him and his children. You might buy his sneakers, NFTs and other branded products. In the case of President ...
The entire US economy is currently being propped up by growth in the AI/tech sector. And I am convinced that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of delivering on the promises being made by the AI CEOs. That means there is a massive bubble that will eventually burst, probably taking the whole US economy with it. ...
This is all great stuff to have on hand, but not relevant for OP's question. They're wondering how to prepare for the equivalent of the dotcom burst or the 2008 recession, not a grid-down scenario.
You're catching downvotes, but according to Google Trends, searches for "gold price" and "ai bubble" are positively correlated, and there's plenty of historic precedent for people flocking to "safe haven" assets when the markets nosedive. Gold went up by 30% from Jan-Sep 2020 (COVID), and nearly doubled in value between 2007 and 2009 (housing crisis), although it did take a dip before rebounding during the dotcom bubble (2000-2003).
That said, I would recommend keeping a significant portion of your money in an HYSA as precious metals are subject to large fluctuations in price and markets don't always behave rationally.
As Ireland's $1,500-a-month basic income pilot program for creatives nears its end in February, officials have to answer a simple question: Is it worth it? ...
But the famous director gets hundreds of thousands every year to make shitty movies nobody sees, because that one time 20 years ago he did something good.
To be fair, this is also how it works in Hollywood.
According to new book by two of the world’s leading experts on AI risk, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, AI presents an existential risk to humanity. The title does what it says on the tin: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why superhuman AI would kill us all. ...
We're in a state of ecological overshoot, defined as a population consuming more resources than its environment can replenish. At its simplest, overshoot is a function of individual consumption x total population.
The Global Footprint Network calculates that we crossed this line in 1971, when both our global population (3.8B) and individual energy consumption (15.8kWh) were far lower than they are today (8.2B and 21.7kWh, respectively). Consider also that population is both a cause and effect of energy consumption.
the wealthiest 10% causes over 50% of the pollution.
You're referring to CO2 emissions here (and it's actually closer to 60%), but there are many other symptoms of overshoot. Habitat loss, species extinctions, overharvesting of resources, and other forms of pollution (industrial, particulate, trash) are huge problems in less wealthy nations. In South America, for example, we've seen a 95% loss of wildlife species over the past 50 years. The planetary boundaries framework is helpful for looking at overshoot more holistically, instead of focusing solely on emissions (although that's important too).
In wealthy nations, populations are declining but consumption is unsustainable. In poorer nations, individual consumption is low but population growth is unsustainable. Only by reducing both do we have a hope of living equitably on this planet.
Poorer nation’s peak population estimates are declining every year, as life gets better and child mortality falls population growth lowers everywhere
Yes, that's a good thing.
(another racist shit that’s spreading that poor nations are reproducing too much, btw).
Race doesn't enter into it. If we accept that we crossed into overshoot over 50 years ago, then any birth rate above replacement is ultimately unsustainable.
Energy consumption is more or less useless measure with the rapid rise of renewables, although there are also efforts there to lower that everywhere.
Energy consumption is the measure. It's a direct reflection of the degree to which our lifestyles impact our environment. People seem to have this idea that the only real issue with industrial civilization is that it runs primarily on a fuel that destabilizes our atmosphere, and that if we could simply transition away from this fuel (to solar/wind/nuclear/fusion) we'd be on our way to utopia.
But let's consider what we direct all that energy towards: first, we use it to harvest massive amounts of natural resources, degrading and destroying the environment in the process. (Mining, logging, farming, fishing, etc.) We then transform those natural resources into towns and cities, which pave over and fragment the natural environment in which they're built. We transform them into consumer goods (cars, electronics, plastics, clothing, etc.), the vast majority of which end up as waste in less than a decade. We transform them into all manner of industrial chemicals, many of which end up becoming individual ecological disasters of their own.
Transitioning to a "clean" form of energy does nothing to address what we do with it. Living sustainably requires drastically downscaling our total ecological footprint.
If you ride a bike even remotely seriously, your bike is not cheap… It might not be expensive, but you quickly realize why cheap bikes are cheap.
Spot on. I've got about $3k into my bike, but it's not a fancy race bike (it's a steel fixed gear), so I invested in bombproof parts that could end up outliving me. Once a year I'll replace the tires/chain/brake pads, service the bearings, and strip/regrease a few parts, so the running cost is maybe $15/month. If you've got a road bike with a 2x drivetrain, or if you're paying people to service your bike that might go up to $30/month, but still negligible compared to a car.
The people living in true rural America truly do not have the ability to do so. But again, that’s less then a quarter of the populations and likely far less then a quarter of all kids.
Counterpoint: I lived in an extremely remote part of Vermont (population 400) for a couple years without a car, and I got around fine on my bike. The trick was living close to my work, which was easy since housing was dirt cheap. That said, getting out of town was difficult, as the buses (Greyhound) were notoriously unreliable. I also got random people buzzing me in pickups screaming at me for existing once in a while.
By twisting the dials on key neurotransmitter systems in our brains, psychoactive compounds in a few kinds of mushrooms can provoke profound psychedelic experiences. The same compounds also show promise in treating illnesses such as therapy-resistant depression. But researchers don’t fully understand how they work in the ...
True, but consider that a huge amount of retail investors' portfolios are tied to the S&P 500/NASDAQ. Think retirement savings, IRAs, 401(k)s, pensions, etc. Then consider that the entire market is effectively propped up by AI right now (see: The entire stock market is being carried by these four AI stocks). If the market gets a 60% correction, it's going to be the middle class losing their shirts all over again.
Earlier this week, I obtained transcripts of four private lectures Peter Thiel delivered to San Francisco tech elites about the coming of the Antichrist...Yes, really. ...
In 2022, a small group of researchers came up with a bright idea: What if we were to install a network of lamps above tropical forests, flooding them with light at night in order to boost photosynthesis? Doing this in the Amazon alone, they argued, would increase plants’ uptake of CO2 by so much that it could “completely ...
Scientists have long assumed that insects and other invertebrates can’t feel pain. As a result, these creatures are often left out of the legal and ethical guidelines that require mice, monkeys, and other laboratory animals to be treated as humanely as possible. But what would it look like to broaden these protections to the ...
Microsoft bioengineer Bruce Wittmann normally uses artificial intelligence (AI) to design proteins that could help fight disease or grow food. But last year, he used AI tools like a would-be bioterrorist: creating digital blueprints for proteins that could mimic deadly poisons and toxins such as ricin, botulinum, and Shiga. ...
Some Good News: Curtis Yarvin, the anti-American “Dark Enlightenment” guru credited as “the philosopher behind JD Vance,” believes the Trump administration is doomed to fail. ...
"Hitting a green wave? It’s the best feeling, especially when you’re in a hurry,” says actor Samuel Traum, unlocking his bike by a Copenhagen intersection thronged by two-wheeled commuters. “The opposite, a red wave, is the worst.” ...
Choosing the Right Home Is Tough. Climate Change Is Making It Harder. ( insideclimatenews.org )
Climate change is throwing a snag in one of the most important considerations during the home-buying process—location. With catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes and sea-level rise climbing, experts are urging prospective homebuyers to take regional climate risks into account before settling down somewhere with a 30-year ...
Nearly half of homeowners want to relocate because of climate-related concerns ( www.independent.co.uk )
A rising number of American homeowners are ready relocate this year due to extreme weather events and other climate-related concerns. ...
‘Committee of Vultures’: Tech Billionaires Circle Greenland ( www.thenerdreich.com )
Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland has escalated into a full-blown international crisis. He is threatening military action against NATO ally Denmark and imposing tariffs on European countries that don’t support his quixotic quest to own the icy island. ...
Stocks sell off globally as traders digest Trump message saying he wants Greenland because ‘your Country decided not to give me the Nobel’ ( fortune.com )
First comes the novelty, then comes the corrosion. ( davekarpf.substack.com )
A line from Ethan Mollick’s most recent newsletter (“Claude Code and What Comes Next”) caught my eye. Mollick tries out Claude Code and sees a step-change in AI capabilities: ...
Humans are part of the ecosystem.
Ecofascism ...
Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods ( www.404media.co )
A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works ...
Managing an endless todo list
The Enshittifinancial Crisis ( www.wheresyoured.at )
One time, a good friend of mine told me that the more I learned about finance, the more pissed off I’d get. ...
AI Is Contaminating Online Studies
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) may sound the death knell for a tool social scientists have increasingly come to rely on: online studies. Researchers who use surveys, games, and other online methods to rapidly gather data from large numbers of people have spent years refining methods to weed out unwanted ...
In an Ohio suburb, sprawl is being transformed into walkable neighborhoods ( yaleclimateconnections.org )
Like many American communities, Dublin, Ohio, grew from a small rural town in the 19th century into a sprawling suburb in the 20th. Today, it’s embracing a 21st-century development trend: walkability. ...
Computers that power self-driving cars could be a huge driver of global carbon emissions ( www.eecs.mit.edu )
A little late to the party with this one, but I came across this study today and thought it was very interesting. Self-driving electric cars are often touted as a solution to fossil-fueled transit, but that comes with a lot of potential downsides that aren't always recognized. For reference, data centers are currently ...
Everyone Hates Data Centers ( insideclimatenews.org )
It’s not a novel observation to say that supporters of President Donald Trump and supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders find common ground on many issues. They often share a skepticism of entrenched power and a desire to dismantle systems that they think have ceased to serve everyday people. In Indiana, this agreement ...
The end of optimization ( davekarpf.substack.com )
There was a time period in recent internet history — call it the era of Big Data, or the platform era — when the large digital platforms (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix) focused on optimization. The platforms had an immutable comparative advantage over their potential competitors. They had more data, more user ...
Palantir Co-Founder Calls for Public Hangings ( www.thenerdreich.com )
Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire member of the “PayPal Mafia” who is also a co-founder of Palantir, wants a return to draconian punishment and public executions in the United States. ...
We're not so different you know
Western perception of “Social credit” largely propaganda btw and if you believe it isnt then you got manipulated.
Silicon Valley’s Extortion Letter to Democrats ( www.thenerdreich.com )
In an unusual op-ed in the Washington Post, a former Palantir official named Wendy R. Anderson warns Democrats: bow down to Silicon Valley oligarchs or lose the future: ...
Black Mirror is not a Pinterest board. ( davekarpf.substack.com )
Last week, on the decaying husk of X.com, a former Disney Channel actor posted a 90-second advertisement for his AI company, 2WAI. The ad centers around “Baby Charlie” interacting with the avatar of his deceased grandmother. ...
This car-free neighborhood was designed to revolutionize American cities ( yaleclimateconnections.org )
What would it take to make car-free living possible across the United States? The question has critical implications for the climate: Transportation is the nation’s top source of emissions, and everyday vehicles are the largest contributor within this category. ...
They survived the hurricane. Their insurance company didn’t. ( grist.org )
Jennifer and Dean Bye were just getting by before Hurricane Ida slammed into southern Louisiana in 2021. The couple own a house in a comfortable subdivision in Paulina, a town about an hour west of New Orleans, that they share with their three kids. ...
Cornell Study Maps the Environmental Cost of AI ( insideclimatenews.org )
When Cornell University systems engineer Fengqi You started modeling the environmental footprint of data centers three years ago, the AI boom was just beginning. Even then, You and his colleagues noticed something missing from the conversation. ...
Tracking Canada’s ‘Nerd Reich’ ( thetyee.ca )
Mark Carney has earmarked a billion dollars in the new federal budget to build a “sovereign” AI cloud and made-in-Canada quantum computing. The goal, he says, is to retain the ability for Canadians to regulate our own digital realm and protect our privacies. ...
What We Lost When Cars Won ( grist.org )
When automobiles first started tearing through American streets a century ago, they weren’t exactly welcome. One of the main problems was that they were killing children: in 1921 alone, 286 children in Pittsburgh, 130 in Baltimore, and 97 in Washington, D.C. Cities memorialized the dead with monuments and solemn marches. A ...
Crypto: A Weapon of Mass Corruption
If you were an authoritarian seeking to influence another head of state, you might offer him a luxuriously appointed Boeing 747 airplane. You might spend big at his hotels or invest in one of the many companies owned by him and his children. You might buy his sneakers, NFTs and other branded products. In the case of President ...
Is there any way the average American can insulate themselves from the AI bubble bursting?
The entire US economy is currently being propped up by growth in the AI/tech sector. And I am convinced that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of delivering on the promises being made by the AI CEOs. That means there is a massive bubble that will eventually burst, probably taking the whole US economy with it. ...
As Gold Hits New Record, Some See Warning Signs of Civilizational Collapse ( www.newsweek.com )
Ireland plans to make a $1,500 a month basic income for artists permanent ( www.businessinsider.com )
As Ireland's $1,500-a-month basic income pilot program for creatives nears its end in February, officials have to answer a simple question: Is it worth it? ...
How to Stop an AI Apocalypse ( beiner.substack.com )
According to new book by two of the world’s leading experts on AI risk, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, AI presents an existential risk to humanity. The title does what it says on the tin: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why superhuman AI would kill us all. ...
Friends with babies
AI Is Giving Enron Vibes ( davekarpf.substack.com )
There are three big stories that one can tell about the dotcom crash. ...
Fuck Cars
In mind-bending twist, ‘magic’ mushrooms evolved twice independently ( www.science.org )
By twisting the dials on key neurotransmitter systems in our brains, psychoactive compounds in a few kinds of mushrooms can provoke profound psychedelic experiences. The same compounds also show promise in treating illnesses such as therapy-resistant depression. But researchers don’t fully understand how they work in the ...
Everyday AI looks more like the '08 housing bubble
Leaked: Peter Thiel says Antichrist ‘Wants a Nobel Peace Prize.‘ ( www.thenerdreich.com )
Earlier this week, I obtained transcripts of four private lectures Peter Thiel delivered to San Francisco tech elites about the coming of the Antichrist...Yes, really. ...
So many climate solutions, so few emissions reductions. A new book explains why. ( grist.org )
In 2022, a small group of researchers came up with a bright idea: What if we were to install a network of lamps above tropical forests, flooding them with light at night in order to boost photosynthesis? Doing this in the Amazon alone, they argued, would increase plants’ uptake of CO2 by so much that it could “completely ...
Insects aren’t ‘little robots’—so scientists are rethinking their welfare
Scientists have long assumed that insects and other invertebrates can’t feel pain. As a result, these creatures are often left out of the legal and ethical guidelines that require mice, monkeys, and other laboratory animals to be treated as humanely as possible. But what would it look like to broaden these protections to the ...
Made-to-order bioweapons? AI-designed toxins slip through safety checks ( www.science.org )
Microsoft bioengineer Bruce Wittmann normally uses artificial intelligence (AI) to design proteins that could help fight disease or grow food. But last year, he used AI tools like a would-be bioterrorist: creating digital blueprints for proteins that could mimic deadly poisons and toxins such as ricin, botulinum, and Shiga. ...
Political Whiplash Is Terrible for Wolves’ Future. But More Is Coming. ( insideclimatenews.org )
There are some 2,700 wolves across Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and seemingly just as many opinions about how they should be managed. ...
Curtis Yarvin Plans to Flee the USA ( www.thenerdreich.com )
Some Good News: Curtis Yarvin, the anti-American “Dark Enlightenment” guru credited as “the philosopher behind JD Vance,” believes the Trump administration is doomed to fail. ...
How Copenhagen gave cyclists a green wave ( www.theguardian.com )
"Hitting a green wave? It’s the best feeling, especially when you’re in a hurry,” says actor Samuel Traum, unlocking his bike by a Copenhagen intersection thronged by two-wheeled commuters. “The opposite, a red wave, is the worst.” ...