Glen sed:
Large deposits of hydrocarbons: Yeah, it kinda looks like a waste to hoard all that stuff. But if you think of it like a battery (or a stock in stocks and flows), some tasks do seem to require a large battery, maybe to get over some hump with a steep energy curve. The question is who uses it and for what? If we take Pieter's optimism seriously, maybe our blowing through the fossil fuel battery does end up getting us over some hump. E.g. we resolve the Meaning Crisis and come to some high order conception of computation? Or a metaphysics that closely matches physics? Or if you believe in a life/biosphere diaspora to the solar system. But it's touch and go whether we'll collapse (gracefully or catastrophically) or explode into some new domain that was only reachable by draining the battery.
I think it was a Neal Stephenson fiction which suggested that the Suez Canal was built by steam-shovels (drag-link earth movers?) fueled by a huge supply of mummies wrapped in cloth and soaked in crude oil for preservation? Not as dense as coal, but convenient? Fits right into my sparring with DaveW on morbid ways to dispose of human remains?
I don't know what the Suez Canal provides lowered friction for, but I'm guessing it is significantly moving fossil-fuels (mostly liquid? mostly refined?)...
I was avoiding the news for a month or so after the election. But now my attitude is that we need a clown like Trump to lay bare our oligarchy. The oligarchy thrives under Bidens and Obamas just as much as under Putin or Trump. It's just that the pig has some lipstick on it under the Obamas and Bidens. It think we'll begin to suss out some of the differences between the US and, say, Russia or Hungary as we slide a few notches in that direction. The trick is to be disinterested without becoming disaffected.
See my maunderings on bistable, metastable, fascism, etc. Are fascism and oligarchy distinct lobes in a metastable system? I do think that when Musk threw down for Trump and the other near-Trillionaire tech-bros joined him, our trajectory went more toward the oligarchic style of fascism?
I'm not watching the inaugural events but did enjoy being "present" to hear of the Biden pre-emptive pardons... I'm guessing there are more than a few other "easter eggs" distributed throughout the day? Any chance someone will give Trump a tour of the Capitol with special attention to the places his "patriots" smeared feces? Probably not.
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