how does the electrical power utilization of generative AI compare with that of bitcoin?

a thing no microblogging platform offers, but all should: a hidden by default but click-to-revealable space for attributions of claims made in the post. just links, excluded from the character limit. many posts make factual claims that strike me either wrong or extraordinary, no way to tell which.

@paninid will the MAGA base, and the Congresspeople who fear it, give DOGE the benefit of the doubt, be willing to defer to, embrace to recommendations, or will they become hostile to it and render implementation toxic?

@paninid if it becomes clear it will be the latter, why bother even with the exercise?

in reply to self

is DOGE going to be politically sustainable at this point under its proposed leadership?

an irony of the mad-white-guy H1B debate is that the fix most in their interest is to make the visas more generous — eliminate the tight attachment to continued employment which means visa-holders accept worse conditions than native-born would to ensure continued status.

@lackthereof @jonathankoren i wish i had any clue how to find this bottom-up party of which you speak. i guess the ghost towns are so ghostly they don't let us know where they are or how to visit.

@lackthereof @jonathankoren at levels beneath Federal office, the Democratic party simply does not exist. i get hundreds of e-mails soliciting donations. no events soliciting participation, offering an opportunity to meet candidates. i had no opportunity to meet or get to know a damned thing about the Ds who ran for state reps. i don't think there was a competitive primary. ofc in the general i just voted for the D. you can't have competitive primaries if no one has a clue who these people are.

@jonathankoren yes. i’m not claiming some kind of breakthrough is impossible. Sanders almost overthrew incumbents’ grasp over the Democratic Party. he didn’t quite. but there was a real threat.

but time is of the essence. a Democratic Party whose insiders are comfortable despite their failures is not something we can really afford. (has anyone been held accountable for fumbling the fate of the republic 11/5?) 1/

@jonathankoren i’m for eg a lot of primarying. but i think that will require building alternative institutions, to which “mainstream Democrats” will be hostile, to counter their support for comfortable stasis. maybe the Working Families Party is an example of this. /fin

in reply to self

@jonathankoren there’s tremendous incumbency bias in the American system. it’s silly to blame the electorate (frankly it’s always silly to blame the electorate) for what is clearly a widespread institutional phenomenon. incumbents have rigged the game for themselves. health, even survival, of the republic depends on unrigging, really altering, that game into one that prizes flexibility over insiders’ stability.

deleon would not have won by highlighting feinstein’s dementia.

@jonathankoren but they punish primary challengers brutally.

you know the Democratic Party is the party of fairness, because whenever they have to decide who their leaders should be the question they ask is “whose turn is it?”

finance masters of the universe boasted and swung their BSDs and brought us the Great Financial Crisis. then Obama gave them a mulligan.

tech masters of the universe boast and are on the verge of giving us bigger, crazier crises.

i think what follows is an age of wrath. no telling who will burn.

every billionaire is a mad king in waiting.

you may say Donald Trump has achieved nothing, but he has performed a Christmas miracle. he has made Canadians impolite.

we keep arguing about immigration but i wonder if pretty soon we won’t be competing to emigrate.

@artcollisions probably our choices there get rather dark.

centrism as triangulation in the age of Trump.

do the drones negotiate a Christmas truce? refuse to kamikaze, light up a cigarette with their neighbors in the sky?

sick, perhaps getting worse. hmm. see a doctor? or wait a week + hope for the best because contributions to the calendar-year deductible disappear into a black hole now, make progress towards useful insurance in a week.

skin-in-the-game really renders health-care utilization choices more rational.

@jellyfriend @haskal and then it was weirdly fine that the solution to absolutely everything became JSON.