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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2024

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  • When I first read your comment, I knew that DOGE was going to be more real/impactful than you seemed to realize. After all, there was Project 2025 and it spelled out that that Trump should drastically reduce people power and spending everywhere across the bureaucracy. I also knew that Trump gave a fuck about legalities and that his goal would be to lead autocratically (he literally said the thing about being a first-day dictator).

    Here’s the things I didn’t know:

    • I saw the comments about “President Musk” but I didn’t realize that it would actually be true.
    • I didn’t realize that a coalition of atheist-tech libertarians and Evangelical-oil/gas libertarians would work either. I was counting on the latter being at the forefront, not the former.
    • I had no idea DOGE would simply close down entire federal agencies within weeks.
    • I had no idea that they would go right to the office that processes payments and slash everyone’s funding. Or that you could be brazen enough to just email the people of entire agencies “there’s a fork in the road, go resign”.
    • I hadn’t heard of network states or accelerationism. I’d mostly forgotten the name Curtis Yarvin and I’d missed that the libertarian idea of “seasteading” had morphed (and I’d only seen it presented to me as comedy, as part of the series Silicon Valley where one character [who was transparently modeled after Peter Thiel] built an artificial island).

    For the record: If you’re an American, I’d like to urge you to stand up and protest. At the rate it’s going, you won’t have much time to defend democracy. I’ve read Wapo yesterday and watched late-night shows – they’re all still sanewashing what is happening to some degree. They are still failing to mention the word “coup” and that’s extremely dangerous.








  • China’s energy use is still rising. In terms of g CO2e/kWh, yes, they’re transitioning rapidly. But in terms of total CO2e emitted, China’s footprint is still expanding – unless there’s an economic crisis (like the recent excess housing/tofu dreg crisis).

    Part of the reason for that is that China’s primary motivation for their use of wind/solar/batteries is economics, rather than the prevention of climate change or biodiversity loss.

    In the late 2000’s, Chinese leadership realized that wind/solar/battery technologies could be viable worldwide, and that they could be optimized heavily. They also knew that, besides oil/gas imports being costly, they probably couldn’t ever import enough oil/gas to bring the Chinese average lifestyle up to the standard envisioned in their plan. And of course, they had massive smog problems—one important point was that during the 2008 Olympics, the government had many factories and coal plants turned off, to avoid national embarrassment over the level of smog in Beijing. So they heavily invested in this stuff, Chinese companies became market leaders, yada.






  • Modern day Germans themselves say Hitler’s style is very comical.

    As a modern-day German, I can confidently say that the thought of Hitler being comical per se has never crossed my mind. You can, however, take elements from his style and exaggerate them to make them become comedic, but that’s not Hitler, that’s Chaplin.

    As a modern-day comparison and for someone who took a lot of cues from Hitler’s rhetoric and style: I wouldn’t say Trump that is comedic either, even though a lot of things about him are completely ridiculous.

    The Mein Kampf is basically incoherent ramblings.

    I haven’t read the book but yeah, it’s not supposed to be good or particularly entertaining. Repetitiveness, contradictiveness, and incoherence are not the hallmarks of comedy though.