Can't imagine LLM's reproducing this from first principles.

The amount of money we are talking about could have given the entire US high speed commuter rail.

I'm a physicist in academia, and the amount of money we have gotten from DoD branches for things that have no immediate military applications is like 40-60% of our budget YoY. Like for straight fundamental physics research.

Most scientists I know who have gone to Europe have had to go into the private sector. And the famous ones I work with have gotten like blank check $10M offers from max planck and directorships with guaranteed $1m/yr funding, and still turned them down.

One of the reasons that so many researchers come to the US, even with our decline in research funding over the last 30 years, is because the US makes available so much God damn funding in comparison to any western world. The reason China is starting to outstrip the US? Because they are starting to surpass the US in funding. The only downside I have heard from Chinese scientists is that you tend to get pigeon holed for the rest of your career into things the state wants/needs

If I can individually pay for and maintain an NAS with TB's of data on it, I think these multinational megacorps can afford to do the same. Maybe scale for delivery will cost them a bit of profit, but really it's a shame how individuals say this is some how an undue burden on these corporations...

You know what is the real undue burden? 100 year long IP/copyright law. It actively diminishes our culture, making it bland and hardly changing. Humanity is created by the stories we tell, and retell, and with every retelling - the stories change and evolve... But you can't do that and make a living in modern capitalism... That is the true undue burden, and I think forcing these companies to at least provide access to the stories we paid for is the least they can do for a nigh 100 year monopoly on the stories of our society.

Citations needed. From what I see is

(1) the demand for electricity is growing at an explosive rate

(2) The AI data center build out is relying more on natural gas than you might expect. I believe it was the utah one that plans to build the world's largest gas power plant, which the next largest one is orders of magnitude smaller.

(3) The US is actively blocking hardware from China being sold in the US (low cost high grade solar panels, electric cars, etc.)

So, yes I deny that energy is getting cleaner and cheaper. In fact, I think it's going the exact opposite... It's getting more expensive and dirtier!!!

Mars: more like we are rapidly transforming earth into Venus.

Temperature by itself is just the easiest to observe

"Let them eat cake...", I wonder what the 'taken out of context' trigger will be this time around