That’s majorly moving the goalposts. Other than Saudi Arabia, I can’t think of any country in the world today that has more energy independence that you would get if you ran on renewables + battery + nuclear. You’d have years and years of buffer, compared to the US strategic oil reserve which has maybe a few months of buffer.

Czechia is quite nuclear-friendly and yet we ran into a problem with nuclear fuel supply; you don't feed raw uranium into the reactor, you need specially designed fuel rods. Switching from Russian to American ones for our nuclear power plants took several years. We just finished doing so, and now there is a conflict between the US and the rest of the world as well. Lovely.

All solvable, all better than just running out of oil, but I wouldn't call the situation "independence", just "having a better buffer".

Didn't framatome started producing vver fuel elements?

The US is currently a net oil exporter, and has been for a few years.

Now of course that's not the whole picture, but if push came to shove, the US could achieve energy independence (at least technologically, if not poitically).

True, the US could supply all of its energy needs through great effort and by making its population pay much higher energy prices. In contrast, if a country were to build around e.g. solar, and then all countries that made the panels embargoed them, the price of electricity would merely stop falling.

Why would it necessarily be more expensive?

The oil can be sold today profitably at today’s market rate.

If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside?

> If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside?

In the short run, yes. In the long run you’d fuck up the economies of scale and profit incentives.

I think whether the economies of scale and profit incentives get fucked up depends on the size of the before and after markets we are talking about.

For these to collapse, I believe we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil. Is that true?

> we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil

You just need U.S. producers to be insulated from international competition.

I’ve seen this argument in a couple places online. Some variation on “both are actually bad so little guy has no one to cheer for”. This misunderstands the system.

You can temporarily ally with the soulless corporation that happens to represent your interests right now even if you’re certain that if they had the chance, they’d be a monopolist themselves. They are using their corporate coffers to take action that helps level the playing field a bit, what an opportunity! Make the alliance, take the win, get the case law on the books, celebrate it.

If you ally only with angels, you fight alone.

Have you even considered the possibility that you or someone you love could one day be the victim of stalking?

As a child, evil was giant walking nuclear robots and monologuing villains and the temptation of otherworldly power, but as an adult, this is evil’s most common form. Come sell out democracy and humanity for a few bucks.

Turns out evil is childhood neglect on a below average person with enormous unearned resources. An ego easy to mold unleashed on us by people who wanted to push him to ruin us.

And his followers near and far egging him on. A lightning rod for fear, stupidity, and a urge to fix a sense of inadequacy.

This deeply misunderstands the Court. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court rests not simply on the justices being placed on the Court via the letter of the law, but also on the Court being an impartial arbiter of what the Constitution says. With verdicts like Trump vs. USA, the Court (especially certain justices) has pretty well jettisoned even trying to convincingly appear to like a judicial body and instead is behaving as a purely political actor. The Court has never been immune from politics, but its legitimacy rests in restraining itself by what the Constitution says, even when the justices don't like it.

My wife and I do this for Survivor and The Amazing Race. We’re very engaged, debating strategy, making predictions. And then we watched with other people and they just … watched.

I've seen people be smug that they read books and don't watch TV before, but this is the first time I've seen someone be smug that they watch reality TV better than someone else.

You're right, this does come off as smug. It was really more of a culture clash; they were annoyed at us for talking over the show, and we didn't realize that not everyone talked over it. We enjoy engaging with the shows this way, but no disrespect or superiority was intended.

Below Deck is our guilty pleasure for reality TV. We make predictions on who is going to get with whom, at what stage in the season certain people implode, who will get fired. I think Aesha from Below Deck was on the Australian Amazing Race. Also the show has an upstairs/downstairs dynamic we like. It's similar to shows like Downton Abbey.

That’s correct, Congress could pass a law removing its independence or eliminating it entirely whenever it so chooses. Until then, it’s independent because that’s how Congress created it using its powers under Article 1 of the Constitution.

The “skill” line is what gamblers tell themselves to justify it. A much more useful demarcation is “does this game have any positive impact on the world” (entertainment value of the gambling itself doesn’t count). For example, insurance is not gambling even though it is itself a zero sum game, it enables societally beneficial risk taking. Options trading on real assets like stock aid in price discovery. Memecoins, sports betting, your local poker game and the way prediction markets actually function in practice are all gambling.

Prediction markets serve as a hedge against real world events, which enables risk taking.

That’s what they say, but that’s not how they actually operate. There’s not nearly the liquidity there (and probably can’t ever be) to actually protect against downside risks. This niche is already better served by boutique insurance.

I always re-read this on MLK day and learn something new each time. Pull quote for this year

“All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

I think this pairs well with and contrasts to the quote that I think many prefer to quote, that “the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice”.

Likewise, and I always find something new in it. It is always more challenging than I remember it.