At least with Trump the insanity is out in the open. I mean these cabinet picks are insane. It would be funnier if we didn’t have to live with the consequences.

Do you not get that Trump will likely get two more Supreme court appointments? The third branch of our government is locked into conservative hands for the next 30 to 40 years now regardless of who gets elected afterward.

Or saw that both sides probably lead to the same end eventually.

Get out of here with that false equivalency bullshit. Trump’s cabinet picks so far are a Russian propaganda parroter for head of CIA, an anti-vax and raw milk advocate for Health and Human Services, a white supremacist tattooed person for Defense secretary and a suspected pedophile that is having their ethics hearing results blocked for Attorney General.

Do you even think for a hot second that Harris would have make such unqualified and toxic choices for her cabinet?

I almost can’t blame them. A majority of Americans voted for fascism and racism. These are their customers.

You obviously didn’t read the book, because Galt actually innovated (book describes essentially a perpetual motion electrical generator). Musk is a salesperson who is particularly good at getting funding, as well as hiring people who know what they’re doing

Two things wrong with this:

1. Galt tells us he created the machine. If you were to ask Elon Musk, he would tell you he created Tesla, which isn’t true. Musk neither founded, nor did he complete Tesla from start to finished all by himself. Galt is portrayed as creating his machine all by himself, which again, calls into question its truthfulness.

2. Even if Galt created it all by himself, he did so build by a society that allowed it to happen and empowered him to do so. As soon as he perfected his machine on the back of a society that gave him the opportunity, transportation, safety, education, materials, and the populous needed to carry it out, he privatized his gains and disappears from society.

They’re labeled as destroying public goods because the government sees all private creations as some form of “public good,” but they merely practiced the ultimate form of “take their ball and go home,”

This is a great example of Rand’s bad teen fanfiction. The classic hero protagonist with plot armor is invincible. Galt’s Gulch never experiences a hurricane, drought, invasion of foreign military, pandemic disease, or any of the other grand scale crises that humanity encounters. It’s residents are unrealistic epitome of self-sufficiency. Yet Rand presents this as the ultimate utopia.

it’s pretty easy to assume than John Galt is some kind of important figurehead, when he’s actually just the first in a larger group to exit a corrupted society.

A group that left a corrupt society, and is successful without itself being corrupted? Can you point to one place in human history that this has ever worked long term? The pragmatic realty of this would more likely play out like the small real world examples we’ve seen where a New Hampshire town tried to turn itself into a Libertarian paradise a la Galt’s Gulch.

I get why Rand’s message is attractive. It paints a world that individual merit is the soul metric of achievement and demonizes everything and everyone that doesn’t follow this model. Its just not even close to being realistic across any culture or long lived society throughout our entire history.

At the trial one witness was brought forward claiming to have been turned into a newt by her. When the defense pressed the claim clearly pointing out the witness was indeed human, the witness reported “I got better”. And now for something completely different. /s

If recent history is the template, to be unaccountable you must be:

• white
• male
• rich
• racist
• misogynistic

…if you aren’t all of these then I’m sorry, the rules of accountability apply to you.

In a small win for Progressives, with the power wielded by Peter Thiel to swing elections and public policy, one attribute was removed from the above list:

• heterosexual

I don’t think thats what people mean when they say “ACAB”.

With classic cryptography being broken that also opens the need for quantum cryptography and commnications. China is a bit farther ahead of us on this launching their first satellite encorporating these concepts in 2020:

“The nation’s Micius satellite successfully established an ultrasecure link between two ground stations separated by more than 1,000 kilometers” source

China is launching a second newer generation satellite next year. source

I admit I haven’t read Fountain Head or Anthem. That still sounds like reading 400+ pages of Rand to get the same point she’s trying to get across. If others want some better storytelling surrounding her message, it sounds like yours is the better path. For those that just want to rip the bandaid off, the Galt speech by itself is the shortest path.

For those reading the Galt speech, Elon Musk might be a close contemporary example of Galt. He’s a rich industrialist that benefited from other’s labor and the society structures that gave him protective laws, safe food/water, an educated workforce, a welcoming to immigrants, and all of the things that let him succeed. As soon as he succeeds he puts all his energy into destroying those structures because he sees himself as the main character and everyone else unworthy of his ‘genius’.

Eh, I thought the opposite. I thought John Galt’s speech was absolutely skippable since the point had already been thoroughly made by that point.

I’m not sure what you’re proposing. I’m saying skip the rest of the 1000+ pages and JUST read the 48 page speech if you want to know the point of the book. You seem to be saying, “read the first 500 pages, and then stop reading the book once you get to the speech”. I agree with you that the speech is mostly redundant at that point however my method skips right to the point while yours would require the reader to suffer through 500+ pages of cardboard characters with vapid storytelling.

What am I missing from what you are suggesting?

“I hope you enjoyed your Uber ride today. Give me 5 stars or I’ll tell the secret police on you even though you never said anything.”

The player must be in Texas. Even though the game is long since dead, they’re not legally allowed to end it unless it is a threat to their life.

The 1000+ pages of Atlas Shrugged are all an excuse for a 48 page Manifesto portrayed as John Galt’s speech that occurs in the middle of the book.

If you want to understand what Rand was saying, just skip the book part and go directly to that manifesto. Its still a long slog to get through just that part. The rest of the book is slightly worse than bad teen fanfiction.

Even “the bible” isn’t “the bible”.

“Protestant Bibles have only 39 books in the Old Testament, however, while Catholic Bibles have 46.” source

Do we need to update Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness to Sam Vimes **‘Compute’ ** Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness?

Curious how you calculated that? What system load is it based on? Idle? Max?

Very much an estimate because OP didn’t mention what generation DL360 they had, how many CPUs, drives, etc. So I assumed 120W continuous 24/7/365 consumption which is pretty low. Assuming 22 cents per KWh for midwest, 33 cents/KWh for Boston and 44 cents/KWh for California.

OP is likely drawing much more than my estimate.

Just a guess, the mailing address probably specifies which state’s rules its under. Police enforcement might be interesting though.

My point is, you can possibly spend the same money and get better hardware that isn’t so power hungry and have a better experience with your hobby.

“Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) began recruiting “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” willing to work 80+ hours per week with no pay to help slash federal spending.

Future headline : “Department of Government Efficiency still completely without staff as those meeting the high requirements to take the job are smart enough to have zero interest in doing the job under those conditions"

Alternate future headline: “Department of Government Efficiency plagued by yet another scandal as its 45th employee is charged with fraud for attempting to personally gain financially from fraud they were perpetrating in the government”.

I was thinking something like this where you can be TOTALLY INSIDE ONE SMALL BUILDING and be in two different cities/states.

The left side of gas station (QuickTrip) is Kansas City, Kansas. The right side of the gas station is Kansas City, Missouri. So cross state lines going from the chip aisle to the soda refrigerators.