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Lindy's law:

For non-perishable things - i.e technologies, ideas, books, institutions - the expected remaining lifespan is roughly proportional to how long they have already survived

Time acts as a filter: what has already withstood a long stretch of disorder is more robust, so the longer it lasts, the longer it is expected to last.

The old nuclear software running on mainframes have passed the test of time. The new software, has yet to.

Nassim Taleb talks about this at length in his book, Antifragile.


Is it correct to say that the video looks far worse than it actually is ?

As in, the dust/mud particles sprayed & floating in the air do not have the force to do harm beyond vision or breathing impairment, similar to the dust from a collapsing building, or the lead shockwave of a nuclear bomb detonation.

Of course, it looks terrible, and certainly somethingbut its not a reason to perish as long as you can stay away from the following water wall and mud current that does strike sometime after.


No, that's not correct.

The length of time between the spray you mention, and the impact of the water wall, is single digit seconds. It doesn't make a difference.


No, it is not.

The camera position is elevated at least 6--8 stories above the valley floor, an elevation of 20--24m or so by my estimate.

Slightly below it is a concrete platform supporting a parabolic dish antenna.

That platform is well above the main debris flow, catches only comparatively minor impacts, and ... is knocked flat just before the video terminates.

More significantly, the three story block structure at the lower left of the frame is seen visibly displaced an instant before it is obscured by the debris flow, at about 30s into the video.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mudslide_at_Gyirong_Port_...>

We now have before/after images of the precise location of the port. THere is absolutely no indicate that structures ever existed there:

<https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-08-28/3D-imagery-reveals-pat...>

From: "How do newly released 3D images explain the Gyirong mudslide?" <https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-08-28/3D-imagery-reveals-pat...>.

There is no conceivable way that this can be perceived as a minor or generally-survivable incident.


It literally completely wiped from existence hundreds of reinforced multistory concrete buildings.

It's much worse than you seem to think based on the videos.


Clearly you've never felt the full force of a 6' wave crashing down on you and rolling you in the surf, never mind a 100' wave. What a silly comment.


Just hold your breath, bro, no reason to perish, bro.


birth rates are falling off the cliff in all developed nations, most are below replacement rate already


Most developing nations are below too now!


Buses were indeed the logical solution before Waymo/etc. Now, they are just a modern version of horse carriages. Dirty, slow, smelly and insecure.

The faster you get out of the bus, the faster you liberate grandma and kids from a fall, being mugged, or from freezing to death while waiting, and instead you promote an active lifestyle.

Waymo-like transport is incredibly liberating for low middle class parents, that cannot be trust their young kids to ride a bus alone and take time off blue collar work to take their kids to X practice.

Plus, they are much cheaper and safer to operate long term

Buses are a solution today, but only for upper class americans & soccer moms, who don't realize the issues that low income or limited fixed income seniors face in their everyday life.


neutralize largest threat surface, work your way down.

First is email. Have their login. Then can-spam everything from nigerian princes. Usually if they have been pig butchered in some way before, they are "hot targets". SO they will continue to receive emails until the algo has been retrained to reject the massive amount of junk they likely get. Set up tons of filters as well.

The 2nd threat surface are landlines, since they usually have been around for a while and the number has been passed around. Force VM-only for unknown callers. Then have VM transcribed and sent over to you. Scammers will not usually leave VM so its an autofilter. Anything important, you can relay. With LLMs this becomes considerably easier.


This could have been stopped so easily on its tracks with a simple premise: 1 day turnaround build permits, to any proposed off-the-grid data centers.

BYO power. BYO water. BYO pipes & sewage. OK, you are good. Now build!

Instead they are look like parasites invading the heartland and sucking resources (true or not), and owners pretend to be surprised when they are getting voted down.


> 1 day turnaround build permits, to any proposed off-the-grid data centers.

Utility planning is one tiny part of approving a building permit. You still need to look at storm water runoff, fire safety, environmental impact etc…

I’m also not even sure what bring your own water even looks like.

And even if they are providing their own wastewater treatment, that requires an even closer look than hooking up to municipal sewage. It also requires at least occasional long term inspection because these kinds of systems fail at insanely high rates.


BYO power with a carbon and/or noise and/or local emissions footprint worse than the grid is definitely not good.


> BYO power

Like 26 gas turbines that make a ton of noise and pollution?

> BYO water

What? How does one BYO water?

> BYO pipes & sewage

Pipes and sewage to where? There's an implied common ground at the end of those.


>>> Like 26 gas turbines that make a ton of noise and pollution?

there's only noise pollution if there's anyone around. If there's anyone around, odds are land value is too expensive for a datacenter. As for pollution, that's already regulated. As is noise anyway. Lets not be pedantic. No one is protesting these due to pollution or noise.

>>> What? How does one BYO water?

Tankers. Like 95% of the world. Its a thing. This is actually the least likely to be an issue, since most datacenters run a closed loop water system anyway.

>>> Pipes and sewage to where? There's an implied common ground at the end of those.

Porta-potties for humans. Tanker disposal for the rest (to the extent you do have waste).


None of your statements about the gas turbines are true in the context of the Memphis grok data center


Yes

It falls from the sky

Septic tank


>>> Nowadays when a slide-in appears that sneaks through ublock origin

Does that really happen ? I don't know what this is

Note: I have Ublock set with no JS permissions by default, so maybe that's why i never see a slide-in menace ?


Here's a revolutionary idea.

Instead of mandates, why not lower the tax burden on citizens. That would give move freedom to parents to decide not to work, and actually, parent their kids.

Don't force parents to both be absent from home because the burden of the bureaucracy salaries is too great without sucking blood from the middle class

Houses don't need to cost 0.5M AUD with long mortgages that force 2 parents to work. They cost that because the government is spending like a drunken sailor and destroying the value of money held by everyday australians.


What houses cost under $1.5m?

Plenty of single income families had their children on social media.

This is just a conflation of different issues to push an unrealistic narrative.


Any tax reduction on the average household will just become a rent increase, and nothing will change for the household.


>>> Those with power try to bend reality to their desires

you won't get much disagreement there. Yet to say that WaPo has a lib left bent at the whims of bezos in the last 10 years, is a stretch of the imagination.

However, you don't need to do much of mental gymnastics for

>>> Those with power try to bend reality to their desires

to remain accurate. Because those in power - the WaPo Editorial Board - used the WaPo as their personal megaphone until Bezos noticed his toy was on fire... and burning his rug made out of $$$ dollar bills.


agreed. The sale of data is effective a run around existing law that forbids govt to collect it.

This is a huge issue. Privacy is dead as long as the government can buy its way around it.

Sheriffs depts and FLOCK, Ring Cameras, FBI , etc.


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