mbgerring

3 ms·

1.
by mbgerring 6d ago
The linked article doesn’t say what you think it does. It says that China’s use of coal this year is increasing after a multi-year trend of leveling off or decreasing , mainly because China is using coal in place of LNG imports made more e
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by mbgerring 6d ago
This is cope. Oil, gas, and coal are dead, and with them, America’s control over the global financial system, and its political hegemony. America is actively ceding the future to China, and our ruling class have no ideas left other than loo
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by mbgerring 6d ago
> the math doesn’t add up There’s no way for you to know that. You don’t do the math. People like me, who work in the clean energy industry, do the math. The math works fine. You should try working as hard as the math does, instead of co
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by mbgerring 7d ago
Cool man, how good of a job would you do at your craft if I only gave you $5
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by mbgerring 13d ago
This paper was extremely influential for me, and it’s worth reading for a perspective shift that’s not often considered in these discussions: what happens when you consider “the apocalypse” as an event in the very distant past? https:&#x2F
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by mbgerring 13d ago
People have been saying this a long time, and I’ve participated in this movement, and I think we need to add something: science fiction can be gritty, realistic, and full of conflict, and also optimistic. I’ve encountered a lot of “climat
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by mbgerring 14d ago
> although I doubt something else would be widespread in in just one decade.
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by mbgerring 14d ago
I know this is off topic, but I feel compelled to point this out — the transition away from fossil fuels is happening extremely fast, in punctuated bursts, in broad daylight, and you still get comments like this. And meanwhile, many putat
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by mbgerring 15d ago
Not in my lifetime!
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by mbgerring 15d ago
This is the missing context for NIMBYism. The legal mechanisms used to stall construction in San Francisco were created because of an explicitly racist plan to demolish people’s homes to build freeways. The people building datacenters shoul
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by mbgerring 15d ago
Really, you can’t? When the President and his party have been saying out loud for decades that they want to destroy the EPA?
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by mbgerring 15d ago
IMO, capitalism is itself an unaligned artificial intelligence, with its own logic and goals orthogonal to human life. All “ex risk” paranoia is a projection of sublimated anxiety about capitalism.
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by mbgerring 16d ago
This lost me at “the economy is composed of tasks” There’s so many assumptions packed into that assertion that tell you the horizon of possibility considered here is uselessly shallow.
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by mbgerring 19d ago
I was laid off as a senior product manager in December of 2025. I’ve been looking for a new job in clean energy (which is supposedly “having a moment” due to data centers) since then. There is no “jobs boom”. There are certainly job opening
15.
by mbgerring 20d ago
Yes, I do use the recursive autocomplete trained on Stack Overflow, what does this have to do with “training machines to love”? Do I fully endorse everything the people holding guns to my head are forcing me to do to stay alive? Definitely
16.
by mbgerring 20d ago
AGI is a cult and its Jonestown moment is inevitable
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by mbgerring 24d ago
I’ve encountered this same inability to think or count when people claim that the lifecycle emissions of solar panels or batteries wipe out any potential emissions savings from use. It’s easy to confuse people with big numbers!
18.
by mbgerring 1mo ago
If you’re one of the people wondering why there’s an enormous backlash to AI, here’s your answer: “this thing we’re building is going to he fucking terrible and ruin your life. Please give us all your money to build it.”
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by mbgerring 1mo ago
Are you being serious? Are you actually not aware that Elon Musk ran the federal government department tasked with cancelling federal grants and firing government employees in 2025? How is it possible that you are not aware of this?
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by mbgerring 1mo ago
He personally ran the department that eviscerated funding for basic scientific research in the United States
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by mbgerring 1mo ago
lol, is it, because last time I checked we’re currently losing a war badly, and we’re out of munitions
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by mbgerring 1mo ago
I don’t think it’s a messaging problem or a trust problem. I think it’s that the world AI boosters want to create is one that most people don’t want to live in. “You will be fundamentally without agency or purpose, and people you don’t like
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
So is it just that these are people who haven’t personally experienced well-intentioned technology turning into a living nightmare? Watching the optimism and then collapse of Web 2.0 was a formative experience for me. I’m 38. Is this just n
24.
by mbgerring 2mo ago
The only path forward is to get LSD into the water supply at Davos and put on a really scary play about Rokko’s Basilisk for all the money people, or else Sam Altman won’t be able to afford to repair his infinity pool
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
My partner and I both just got new jobs after a long period of unemployment. Neither of our new employers offer subsidized health insurance. We both have chronic conditions for which we need regular access to medication. The financial cliff
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
> It does sound like the property management company that owned the building might have been trying to get existing tenants to leave so they could renovate the building. And that's probably ultimately a good thing. Innocent children
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
It makes me feel like a crazy person seeing that “the government should fund basic R&D that broadly benefits industry” is a concept that so many people find confusing, hard to grasp, or even offensive. The government should fund AI rese
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
If AI optimists are correct, and AI can increase productivity across the board, tax revenues go up. Not rocket science.
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
I started feeling that way around the time ICE illegally broke, entered and ransacked a low-income housing building in Chicago, terrorizing residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Once I realized that fear of reprisal was
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by mbgerring 2mo ago
The people who sincerely believe that humans should be turned into mulch for the Computer God are “well meaning”? Say more

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