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

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  • Colonization doesn’t make sense in light of what’s likely to come first. Artifical intelligence, mind uploading, extensive genetic engineering, programmable nanotech for fabrication, take your pick… All these are infinitely more reachable and cheaper than dedicating tons of resources to sustaining a squishy, fragile human bodies in space while the vast majority are still stuck on Earth due to economic constraints.

    It’s just not economical until humans are so different that it doesn’t really resemble are Star Trek-ish visions of humans on space boats (eg they’re flying around in computers, AI are sent ahead to construct habitation, bodies are genetically engineered for survival in space, that sort of thing).

    Again, I am not talking about research or the glory of stepping foot somewhere, but I just don’t see the point of trying to emulate a traditional human living in an environment where it’s so impractical.



  • Two things:

    • That was kinda the dream after WWII, no?

    • Exploring space should be a uniting purpose of humanity, but colonizing space, as humans live now, is just wildly, hilariously impractical. It would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to live at the bottom of the ocean, or under the antarctic ice sheet. And this is speaking as someone really into exotic rocketry and transcendental sci-fi.

    I’d recommend reading through Project Rho, if you’re interested: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

    As well as “farther future” but grounded Sci-Fi like Orion’s Arm, where humanity doesn’t really resemble its current form. And play KSP! The more you read and see, the more you realize “wow, sending humans through space is hard, and living there kinda doesn’t make sense right now.”



  • According to an anonymous European diplomat, if Democratic candidate Kamala Harris wins the US presidential election, it can be assumed that Joe Biden will start working on an invitation to Ukraine during the transition period.

    The implication though… what if she doesn’t?

    I guess they can’t invite Ukraine in the transition period if Trump would shoot it down? But why can’t they just rush the ratification?


  • If Ehud Barak had gone back to the Israeli people with “You have to give them back their houses and stop encircling/blockading their settlements”, he’d have been assassinated by the Israelis.

    Isn’t that the nature of a “winner takes all” knife’s edge political system, though? If the opposition were in power, they would have done something like this, and Israel would hate it, but they’d have to take it just like they took what they didn’t like over the past decades. Maybe they’d lose the next election (and get assassinated), but the deed would already be done.

    …Or maybe I’m totally wrong.