#TexasInstruments just released a #microcontroller so small you could lose it in your pocket. The #MSPM0C1104 is only 1.38 mm², smaller than a grain of rice, but still acts as a tiny computer. It has a 32-bit processor running at 24 MHz, with 1KB of memory and 16KB of storage. It can even sense things like temperature or movement. Power use is minimal, running on just 87μA per MHz and dropping to 5μA in standby. This makes it ideal for tiny devices that need to last a long time on small batteries. It is also built to handle extreme conditions, working in temperatures from –40°C to 125°C. https://www.ti.com/product/MSPM0C1104
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4L20t8Dvlg
Pretty sure SOAD is cringe and gay now just like anyone who used to be cool in the earlier era, but the fact they openly say it in the song still fits.
Pretty sure SOAD is cringe and gay now just like anyone who used to be cool in the earlier era, but the fact they openly say it in the song still fits.
We live in an era where the word "austerity" is meaningless. It's a red herring.
120 years ago, the government made up a single digit percent of GDP. In many countries today, that number is 30, 40, 50%.
If your government makes up half of the economy, you're in an era of functional fascism. The government becomes totalizing, it controls way more than 30, 40, 50% of the economy at that point because when you're in bed with an elephant you lay where it lets you, not where you want to lay.
Next, there's the fact that people who want to keep all the government we have don't want to pay for all the government we have. If you take out huge amounts of debt you never intend to pay back so you can hand yourself money, that's morally bankrupt -- selling kids into slavery is morally wrong, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
Not that it's necessarily the relevant discussion anyway. From a class standpoint, government is filled with the bougoisie, people whose job is to sit at a desk extracting value from the working class to fund their lifestyles. As we're learning more and more, the government gets captured by corruption, and so you end up giving government money to rich people, who then use that money to give to government officials in legal or illegal ways. The powerful help the powerful. The fact that they're powerful through the market or powerful through the state becomes irrelevant. The postmodern "city people" (the etymological basis of the phrase "Bougoisie") is
In this way, austerity becomes a red herring -- the government in most countries has virtually never meaningfully shrunk. The only thing is they stop giving tax money to needy people and reroute it to the powerful. Same amount of money spent, but homeless camps spring up everywhere because the common man is drained, their kids are drained, and get nothing meaningful in return.
When governments claim they're going to spend more money, what it really means is, they're going to spend more money on themselves and their buddies. The United States spends as much public money on healthcare as Canada (actually much more at the moment), but Canada has single payer healthcare, the United States basically requires everyone to buy private health insurance because there is no universal healthcare for people, just for the rich and their bank accounts.
120 years ago, the government made up a single digit percent of GDP. In many countries today, that number is 30, 40, 50%.
If your government makes up half of the economy, you're in an era of functional fascism. The government becomes totalizing, it controls way more than 30, 40, 50% of the economy at that point because when you're in bed with an elephant you lay where it lets you, not where you want to lay.
Next, there's the fact that people who want to keep all the government we have don't want to pay for all the government we have. If you take out huge amounts of debt you never intend to pay back so you can hand yourself money, that's morally bankrupt -- selling kids into slavery is morally wrong, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
Not that it's necessarily the relevant discussion anyway. From a class standpoint, government is filled with the bougoisie, people whose job is to sit at a desk extracting value from the working class to fund their lifestyles. As we're learning more and more, the government gets captured by corruption, and so you end up giving government money to rich people, who then use that money to give to government officials in legal or illegal ways. The powerful help the powerful. The fact that they're powerful through the market or powerful through the state becomes irrelevant. The postmodern "city people" (the etymological basis of the phrase "Bougoisie") is
In this way, austerity becomes a red herring -- the government in most countries has virtually never meaningfully shrunk. The only thing is they stop giving tax money to needy people and reroute it to the powerful. Same amount of money spent, but homeless camps spring up everywhere because the common man is drained, their kids are drained, and get nothing meaningful in return.
When governments claim they're going to spend more money, what it really means is, they're going to spend more money on themselves and their buddies. The United States spends as much public money on healthcare as Canada (actually much more at the moment), but Canada has single payer healthcare, the United States basically requires everyone to buy private health insurance because there is no universal healthcare for people, just for the rich and their bank accounts.
The other thing to be careful of is getting sucked into the idea that there's such thing as a "post-scarcity world".
It's just not possible.
There's always scarcity, even in a world that has a lot.
There's going to be land, where there are more attractive and less attractive places to live. There's people, where only so many people can ask of certain individual's time. There's skill, where many people don't want an automatically produced thing, they want something created just for them by a human being with skill.
There's also the fact that human desire is unlimited. Aluminum was once the world's most valuable precious metal. The top of the washington monument was made with aluminium. One of the kings of france had a set of aluminum plates they only brought out for important state guests. Once more became available, we started making everything from vehicles to drink cans out of the stuff. The same would likely prove true if unlimited gold was available, but the likelihood of building matter subatomic particle by subatomic particle and successfully doing that at scale cheaply is near zero.
Even stuff that's effectively unlimited is limited by time, location, and package. Earth is essentially a water world, but we want water on land where we live when we need it that's clean and desalinated and often packaged up for us.
Of course, the fact that material desires are unlimited doesn't mean we need to indulge those desires -- there is a moral virtue in humility and thriftiness -- but societies don't typically ignore fundamental physical laws or human nature for long and remain a going concern. It also doesn't mean that there won't be things that are abundant -- Most people can buy more salt than they have anything to do with, for example -- but the fact that you can have enough salt doesn't mean other forms of scarcity won't exist.
It's just not possible.
There's always scarcity, even in a world that has a lot.
There's going to be land, where there are more attractive and less attractive places to live. There's people, where only so many people can ask of certain individual's time. There's skill, where many people don't want an automatically produced thing, they want something created just for them by a human being with skill.
There's also the fact that human desire is unlimited. Aluminum was once the world's most valuable precious metal. The top of the washington monument was made with aluminium. One of the kings of france had a set of aluminum plates they only brought out for important state guests. Once more became available, we started making everything from vehicles to drink cans out of the stuff. The same would likely prove true if unlimited gold was available, but the likelihood of building matter subatomic particle by subatomic particle and successfully doing that at scale cheaply is near zero.
Even stuff that's effectively unlimited is limited by time, location, and package. Earth is essentially a water world, but we want water on land where we live when we need it that's clean and desalinated and often packaged up for us.
Of course, the fact that material desires are unlimited doesn't mean we need to indulge those desires -- there is a moral virtue in humility and thriftiness -- but societies don't typically ignore fundamental physical laws or human nature for long and remain a going concern. It also doesn't mean that there won't be things that are abundant -- Most people can buy more salt than they have anything to do with, for example -- but the fact that you can have enough salt doesn't mean other forms of scarcity won't exist.
[admin mode] bit of downtime last night, just growing pains. looks like I was trying to run npm and nodejs on my reverse proxy and it caused some issues, maxxing out swap. I increased the contained memory and swap, then removed npm and nodejs, if I need them I'll run that application on another container.
Believe it or not, drinking hydrogen peroxide is a thing some people do for health.
I don't believe it does anything remotely positive, but people drink all kinds of crazy shit thinking it's health food. People used to drink radium infused water ffs.
I don't believe it does anything remotely positive, but people drink all kinds of crazy shit thinking it's health food. People used to drink radium infused water ffs.
I don't recommend it, but I think it'd actually be surprisingly easy.
That's one of the worst parts about lobotomies, they were so easy any dumbdumb could do them with a pointy stick.
That's one of the worst parts about lobotomies, they were so easy any dumbdumb could do them with a pointy stick.
To think, if only he'd decided to firebomb the russians instead.
But I guess the nice thing is tesla chargers don't shoot back, and nobody important would be nearby.
But I guess the nice thing is tesla chargers don't shoot back, and nobody important would be nearby.