Sunday, October 26, 2025
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Why
Even aside from the impracticalities making this less than possible, why would millions of people live in space?
Jeff Bezos says the future is so bright, he "doesn't see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now." Speaking at Italian Tech Week 2025 earlier this month with Ferrari and Stellantis chair John Elkann, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder laid out a plan to launch humanity into orbit — literally.
The conversation started on Earth but didn't stay there long. Bezos dove headfirst into space — predicting colonies, building data centers off-world, and using the moon as a gas station. "I believe, in the next couple of decades, there will be millions of people living in space. That's how fast this is going to accelerate," he said.
[fixed typos, sorry, phone posting]
Friday, October 24, 2025
Happy Hour
Another week done.
Obviously there are people who are actual victims, unlike me, but Trump I was probably the worst 4 years of my life and Trump II will certainly exceed that.
My job is easy, but I don't have the luxury of tuning out. And, yes, I get that is a minor complaint, relative to the experience of many.
Obviously there are people who are actual victims, unlike me, but Trump I was probably the worst 4 years of my life and Trump II will certainly exceed that.
My job is easy, but I don't have the luxury of tuning out. And, yes, I get that is a minor complaint, relative to the experience of many.
Donald The Dove
I have no idea what Venezuela will or should do, but "they won't hit us back" is their assumption in their approach to everything.
BLOGGER ACCOUNTABILITY
One of my regular takes has been that we won't have real self-driving cars in my lifetime.
By accounts (I have never experienced), Waymo works a lot better than I expected. But I was still not wrong. Waymo has a remote operators who intervene. As long as that intervention is required, self-driving cars don't really exist.
You can have a modest taxi fleet, but you can't scale that too much. Personal cars definitely won't function like that.
And even if Waymo works, it is still a research project. It isn't a viable business model. That doesn't say anything about whether the technology works, precisely, but the dream of replacing low paid drivers with robot cars was always a bit dubious. Drivers are cheap!
True self-driving vehicles would be a neat invention, but the case for 96% self-driving is less obvious.
Everybody Knows By Now
Just to add to the previous post, everybody who is making "deals" with President Deals fully understands that the deal only lasts until he changes his mind. More than that, he knows you're someone he can keep extracting things from.
The point is that people/entities that do make deals are just agreeing to do what they want to do anyway, with Trump as cover. This is especially true of universities.
The point is that people/entities that do make deals are just agreeing to do what they want to do anyway, with Trump as cover. This is especially true of universities.
Remember Trump blew up NAFTA and forced a new agreement in 2019, even before we got to the recent shenanigans.
For The Best
Carney sucks but I suspect he is realizing that there are no deals with President Deals.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
Our Silly Attempts To Bully China
Dean Baker:
Trump apparently thinks that by making it more difficult for them to sell stuff here (by charging us high taxes), he is putting enormous pressure on our trading partners. He definitely is putting some pressure, but Trump seems confused on the size of the impact.No proccessed rare-earth metals for us.
Take the case of China, Trump’s archenemy. They sold $440 billion worth of goods to the US last year, about 2.2 percent of its GDP measured in dollar terms. (Their GDP measured in purchasing power parity terms is over $40 trillion, but for this calculation, the dollar value is more appropriate.)
If Trump were to cut off all imports from China, this is the amount of demand in the economy they would have to replace. (Their exports to the US are already down to $330 billion.) By contrast, the United States lost an amount of demand of more than 6.0 percent of GDP when its housing bubble collapsed in 2007-09.
Welp
If the powers that be wanted to defeat Mamdani - and of course they did - then they should've lined up behind someone who wasn't a complete scumbag.
It says a lot that they were happy enough with Cuomo that they never bothered.Cuomo, talking to conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg this morning:
— Nick Garber (@nick_garber) October 23, 2025
"God forbid, another 9/11—can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?" Cuomo asks.
"He'd be cheering," Rosenberg says.
Cuomo paused and chuckled before saying: "That's another problem."
Sure Why Not
Not precisely what I expected when this arrest was first reported.
More on NBA arrests: Chauncey Billups involvement in a poker game scheme involved La Cosa Nostra Italian crime families. Proceeds laundered were converted into crypto currency in an effort to avoid detection
— Yianni Kourakis (@WPBF_Yianni) October 23, 2025
Unwitting victims were defrauded out of tens of millions of dollars
There were also insider information sports bets, inclding Rozier saying he planned to leave a game with an "injury." Prop bets like that should be illegal, for obvious reasons.Details of the rigged poker games that Damon Jones and Chauncey Billups were involved (from the US Attorney press conference):
— chad millman (@chadmillman) October 23, 2025
+ X-ray machines built into tables to read face-down cards
+ Contact lenses/glasses that read pre-marked cards.
+ Secret cameras in card trays
Sounds like a Trump dementia fantasy (not saying it is).
The Epstein Ballroom
I haven't yet figured out if demolishing the entire East Wing was always the plan, or if an incompetent rush job fucked up a small amount of intended demo so they just kept going.
I've seen the conjecture about it all being about the bunker, but right now there's no bunker. There isn't going to be one for awhile!
I've seen the conjecture about it all being about the bunker, but right now there's no bunker. There isn't going to be one for awhile!
Pray for storms.
Whoopsie Doodle
The payroll company ADP appears to have cut off the delivery of timely data encompassing 20 percent of all payrolls, which Fed governor Christopher Waller disclosed in an August speech. ADP and the Fed would not comment on the matter, but sources tell the Prospect that ADP was unhappy with the disclosure. A letter from Fed chair Jerome Powell that has been described to the Prospect urgently asks ADP to reverse its decision and resume giving them the data, intimating that the central bank needs the information to set policy. A Freedom of Information Act request for the letter has yet to be processed.\
Waller was a first term Trump nominee, in the lame duck period.
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