Rampant consumerism, a United States so dominated by corporations that there is a senator from Cocoa-Cola, and advertising so aggressive you might even prefer the world we live in... published in 1953.

He was part of the original krautrock scene, being a member of the band Dom (see https://dom1972.bandcamp.com/album/edge-of-time , scroll down to the notes at the bottom). If I recall correctly, he went to school with some of the members of Kraftwerk.

Later, he because a particle physicist at CERN. When I was in grad school he was my thesis advisor, while I was doing a project on the measurement of... radioactivity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292161

That said, one big missing thing (other than the economic stuff, mentioned by others) which would add a lot to this simulation would be more about 'where does Q come from?'. Obviously this could be too complicated for a little sim, but perhaps a few simple things could be added like showing how increasing the volume/surface ratio for tokomaks/sphereomaks can help, or how getting rid of certain types of instabilities can improve say mirror or pinch designs. This might help people to understand why certain design decisions (like building ITER so big) were made.

Question for anyone who works in this space: is the reason why most (all?) streaming services I see have the same exact UI problems because they are copying each other, or is it because of some constraint in the Roku API which doesn't allow them to fix them? For example, on Netflix, Amazon and Youtube, if I click down to a new row, (say, from Recommended for You to Action Movies), many of the icons shown will be for content that was already offered in the rows above. Like, I've already said no to this movie five times in the last minute, why do you keep asking? It's pure waste. I figure at least one of the streaming services would do things differently (and thus gain market share), but I haven't seen one. Is it due to platform limitations?

The company had "Nuclear" in the name, and our average customer had at least a masters in physics, so maybe not the typical support situation. But in at least one case, it has been a real thing. It doesn't work at AT&T and Spectrum, I've tried.

You could often see him walking around campus, covered in a fine white dust, looking like a ghost.

It's been 30 years, and I couldn't remember his name, but man do I remember his lectures.

Update: after typing this, I searched for him, and unfortunately found him almost immediately. He just passed away, and there was a memorial to him on the front page of his math department: https://www.math.fsu.edu/DepartmentNews/Articles/Fac_Nolder....

I note this line from the memorial: His students marveled at his ability to draw a perfect circle on the blackboard with a single stroke.

Here's to you, Dr. Nolder!

The offerings on the market, including the SE (which is probably the best small phone), seem to say, based upon features and price point, "Here is a phone for those of you who can't afford a full-size phone". But that's not why we want a small phone. I would have happily paid twice the price for my SE, so for me the low price was a bonus, but it's not a bonus when they are pricing them too low for sustainability. They should jack up the price and get more margin from it. We'd still buy it.

The number one reason why I prefer a small phone, is because I have plenty of other computers. Your 'big' phone screen doesn't impress my gaming PC. So what I want is a device that fits a niche in my ecosystem of devices, and that niche is portability. Anything that takes away from that is a minus because it's trying to do the job of some other device, which I already own. In other words, make a small phone for professionals. There are plenty of us, we like to buy devices, and we have money. Features we would be willing to pay for include working with our other devices and not having bugs associated with software expecting bigger screens.

For people whose only computer is their phone, big screens totally make sense. And I understand that is the majority of people. But there are millions of people who have another computer other than their phone. The manufacturers are discontinuing the dirt bike because they'd rather sell you an Escalade, but there is an unaddressed market out there for a Ducati.

It tells you exactly what it does in a way that "social media" obscures. Nothing drives engagement like a Gossip Engine!

So, yeah, it's a lot of mixed feelings. There are certain things that it's easy to know what to do with. For example, I inherited a box, which is worth maybe $1k at most on the market, but which was part of a story which has been passed down in my family for 800 years. It's really nice to be able to finish that story with "and we still have the box." So, yeah, its easy to know I'm never getting rid of that one.

But there are other things that I kinda wish I didn't have to take care of. Now I have at least four more colonial dressers than I have room for. Marie Kondo would say that if it doesn't give me joy, I should get rid of it. And they don't give me joy. But getting rid of something that has been in my family for 300 years just because it doesn't fit in my house right now, that would give me guilt. I'm not sure that's healthy, but it's true.

I grew up in a house that was a lot like a museum, full of antiques, don't touch, hey that's older than the US, don't play on that. My mother did too. I don't know if that was always the best environment for a kid, but it did teach me a reverence for the past and for history.

So, I try to be a good custodian of the past. Visitors to my house might not know much about Ras Gugsa, Mother Seton, or Boudwyn of Constantinople, but I have interesting items on display that often prompt questions, so I can then tell stories. It's the other things, the dressers and silver chafing dishes, that are a burden rather than a privilege to have. I'm not sure how to have one without the other.

One thing that I've noticed is that a lot of the more guilt-burdensome items, not just for me but for people in general, are those things that used to be valuable and prestigious but aren't anymore. In 1920, a top hat or silver chafing dish showed you had class. Now, those things don't signify anything. But their importance to our ancestors of a previous time lingers on a bit. We feel like even though they are worth little that they should be worth more somehow. I suspect that in a few generations our grandkids' generation will be stressing over what to do with our Rolex watches and Coach bags.

I think this is a large reason behind the polarization in America today. We aren't all facing the same aspect of this imbalance.

I was hoping that the work-from-home movement was going to help with this, but RTO seems to be in full swing. So, I think our best bet would be to stop incentivizing the concentration of job creation. Absent a fix, we will have to wait a few decades for the imbalance to even out.