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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 2h

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 4h

To quote a great military theorist

Everyone has a plan ' till they get punched in the mouth
Mike Tyson

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 4h

The best summary of this thinking, and the inevitability of authoritarian defeat to liberalism I've yet encountered was, unsurprisingly, written 82 years ago.

Camus' Letters to a German Friend, a Warning for Our Times

In the midst of WWII, Albert Camus wrote 4 letters to a fictitious German. Here is the first, predicting the triumph of truth over falsehood.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

Yeah, AI is quickly going to run into the issue of it doesnt matter how much money you throw at the problem, the necessary hard infrastructure is going to take a decade plus to deliver. No one was really ready for this boom.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

This is because even gas turbines like some data centers are using now need connections to the NG pipeline system, and there isnt the capacity there either

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

Data centers are the rare case of that mythical baseload power requirement that renewables arent the best fit for, and need big power. A co-located SMR at a mega data center may be the one area where it actually makes economic sense

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

One thing that might make things different this time, I attended an energy conference last week that had some utilities and even a grid operator speak, and no one (in the US at least) has anything close to the excess generating or transmission capacity available that AI is looking to need

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

Even France and South Korea at the peak of their nuclear build outs averaged something like 70%-80% cost over runs. In the US it has historically been over 100% over budget

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

That said, on a $/MWh I have yet to see any SMR that is even close to competitive. No matter what, nuclear will always be expensive to build and operate so really need that gigawatt scale of big plants to soak up the cost over shear volume of power

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

Workforce is a huge issue, which SMRs potentially have in their favor because you dont need to recruit local welders with nuclear certs every time you build in a new location

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 6h

There is some news right now in the US about building some more AP1000s which even if its not the most efficient reactor has an actual supply chain set up (though might lose that soon if these orders fall through) and that is a huge selling point in their favor

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

At least as far as role-playing games go, I would actually lay a decent amount of the blame on the Conan the Barbarian which debuted 5 years prior to The Hobbit and created (or at least popularized) the sword and sorcery pulp fiction genre, which in turn inspired many rpgs particularly D&D

Warren Terra @warrenterra.bsky.social · 1d

Also, I've seen it asserted that Tolkein is responsible for creating the popularity of racial essentialism in English-language fantasy literature and role-playing games.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Apparently Hanwha just bought up the yard a year ago. They only really build commercial tankers there.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

They only build components for submarines, in the US the only two yards that can do assembly and launch nuclear subs are Newport News and Groton.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Hanwha Philly Shipyard

The Navy still operates a small inactive ship reserve station there.

Hanwha Philly Shipyard - Wikipedia

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Lmao even

Im sure Electric Boat is scratching their heads right now trying to figure out WTAF this is about

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

It was, dont think so anymore.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Piketty relates this to velocity of money, inflation, gdp grow, national income, and a huge host of other factors (like i said hundreds of pages of work) to reinforce why inequality is ultimately bad for a national economy.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Hard to summarize a 700 page book (and 1,000 page follow on book) into a single skeet so I recommend reading his work yourself for the full picture, but my rough summary is inequality & concentration of wealth historically stagnates an economy, and inequality accelerates through inherited fortunes

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Lorenz systems are counter-revolutionary and will be sent to the gulag!

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Also a Kennedy is a cabinet secretary right now

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Even the current new money billionaires are over represented by elite Ivy leagues. Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Buffet, all Ivy league, Koch brothers went to MIT. Even Trump who is the son of a slumlord was afforded access to many elite private institutions.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

Going off of Picketty again, considering the US maintained a top decile tax rate of over 70% between 1935 to 1985, I dont think evidence points to economic consequences, and the whole thesis of the Capital in the 21C is that these large fortunes lock up capital versus putting it to productive use.

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

You dont think America's old money elite dont or didnt attend prestigious institutions? Harvard doesnt have a massive endowment just from training future bureaucrats. Similarly, old money and politics have long gone hand in glove in the US. e.g. The Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bushs, Nelson Rockefeller

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Nick Peterson @thetecheng.bsky.social · 1d

I want broad based progressive taxes to pay for progressive social wellfare programs, but also, what Piketty would lable as; confiscatory taxation of excessive incomes b/c the last decade has shown how corrosive massive wealth accumulation is to public order.

When a government taxes a certain level of income or inheritance at a rate of 70 or 80 percent, the primary goal is obvi- ously not to raise additional revenue (because these very high brackets never yield much). It is rather to put an end to such incomes and large estates,_ which lawmakers have for one reason or another come to regard as socially unacccptable and economically unproductive-or if not to end them, then at least to make it extremely costly to sustain them and strongly discourage their perpetuation. Yet there is no absolute prohibition or expropriation. The_ progressive tax is thus a relatively liberal method for reducing inequality, in the sense that free competition and private property are respected while private incentives are modified in potentially radical ways, but always according to rules thrashed out in democratic debate. The progressive tax thus represents an ideal compromise between social justice and individual freedom.

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