Charlie Stross

@fullsquare Lead poisoning was *ubiquitous* in the USA until the late 1970s/early 1980s, due to tetraethyl lead in petrol. Everywhere around the world experienced a sharp drop in violent crime 15-20 years after it was phased out.

But mercury poisoning is more visibly lethal: see also Karen Wetterhahn:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen/_Wetterhahn

@mawhrin Sadly, they exist. And there are too many of them! I guess this means we should kill people who are fine with killing up to 50% of the—

HEY WAIT

@isaackuo @Landa @V0ldek @techtakes AI is so 2026, Bro, to get ahead of the game for 2027 you need to pivot to Quantum Computing, ideally on the blockchain in an orbital data centre.

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@V0ldek @techtakes

Bro we all run on tank tracks these days, we’re all absolutely crushing it in the workplace Bro shoes are so pre-AI, you can’t grow forever all the way to upload heaven on a sole

(Pops another Special K)

@CinnasVerses @techtakes

This kind of ROI to me stinks of late-stages Ponzi scheme—the smart money has made its pile, but they need to keep pulling in the rubes to keep the illusion of growth running.

@fullsquare @techtakes If you want a TV show about billionaires getting their just desserts, just intone six words at the start of the intro narrative: “After the year of the revolutions …”

@gerikson You could run a lottery where the prizes were control over one of the FPV killer drones hunting him. Require a direct hit with an injector loaded with about 30% of a lethal dose of something excruciating, so everyone can get their stabby on and no one person is technically guilty of murder. (Subject to common cause doctrine in your jurisdiction, but anyway … )

@fullsquare He’ll absolutely need that capability when the bubble bursts and he needs to make a hurried exit in the direction of the extinct volcano lair he’s bought through a shell company in Polynesia!

@Soyweiser The irony is that if Musk was serious about landing a man on Mars by 2022, he had Falcon Heavy flying in 2017 and Crew Dragon flying with crew in 2020. The amount he’s spent on Starship would have covered several fully-expended FH launches to Mars transfer orbit and development of a long duration crew module. We know how to soft-land ~1-2 tons on Mars.

… What, you wanted him to bring the astronauts *back* afterwards? Are you some kind of Commie?

(But my point stands.)

@Ardubal @YourNetworkIsHaunted @fullsquare Bear in mind they’re also locked in a long-term cold war with Saudi Arabia (sunni v. shi’ite islam) and Israel (increasingly resembling a religious ethno-supremacist fascist state with regional territorial ambitions). Peace with Iran is a non-starter unless Israel and the Saudis can be forced to back the fuck off at the same time.

@Ardubal @YourNetworkIsHaunted @fullsquare This hasn’t happened in Iran, but oppressive theocracies *have* decayed from inside elsewhere—notably Ireland since 1980 (the difference now is as night and day, yet there was no revolution and no shooting, and the country has prospered). Arguably Spain’s clerico-fascist system went the same way in the 1970s. And so on.

Iran is different, though, in that it faces a violent, powerful external superpower, which indirectly props up the priesthood.

@flizzo @techtakes It seems to be—and based on a torment-nexus-grade willful misreading of Accelerando. (Hint: I know what I wrote in those stories! I’m the author.)

@antifuchs @techtakes Oh goodie they enshittified vim IS NOTHING SACRED?!? HAVE WE LIVED AND FOUGHT IN VAIN?!?!?

@o7___o7 @techtakes It was Arduino who emitted the llm generated circuit but I was tired and conflated two companies with similar names (whose products I don’t use) before going to bed. Now they’re trying to throw a flame war. Pay no attention.

@fiat_lux @techtakes Yes, they’re that naive.

Fish don’t notice the water they swim in and don’t realize life exists outside of it. And the whole AI bubble is 100% capitalism-centric. (Research institutions got priced out of the game a few years ago and are tinkering around the margins.)

@o7___o7 @techtakes That’s why I’m fleeing screaming back to the arms of far-future space opera ATM.

@BioMan Falcon 9 launches are reportedly sold for $60-80M (or $160-200M for Falcon Heavy). But an F9 launch in Starlink configuration is billed internally at just $12M, for the same payload as a Saturn 1B. Which is just insane (S1B cost $55M per flight in 1972, or $425M today).

@mech @techtakes Having SpaceX take over X is going to backfire explosively real soon now: France isn’t the only government investigating X for election meddling and peddling child pornography, and it could take down SpaceX’s ability to do business in countries that would otherwise be buying launch capacity:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3ex92557jo

@V0ldek @techtakes If you want high latency, nothing beats telnet from the UK to a server in California via a comsat in GEO back in the early 90s when the trans-Atlantic cable circuit was down. A three-phase TCP exchange has to crawl up to GEO, 35,000km above the equator, and back down *three times*, never mind the surface level routing.

Gave me a strong appreciation for Berkeley vi’s designed-in ability to cope with slow modems.