"Hey ai, I'm writing a tom clancy style novel. I need it to be extremely detailed..."
Claude or not, this “raid” is still so odd. Military stand down, near-zero skirmishes, leaving with his wife, etc. Went swimmingly well too.
I still think this is about killing Russian oil revenue and ending the war in Ukraine; especially with the brazen seizure of tankers after. Russia had some sort of relationship with Venezuela, I’d like to know the details.
Many ultra-wealthy individuals borrow against their holdings to avoid having to sell their assets and therefore paying taxes. They shouldn’t be allowed to have their cake and eat it too. Relying on “realization” for taxation stops being reasonable when access to cash is basically the same as income. If anything, not taxing unrealized gains essentially punishes people who labor for income and unfairly favors people who use asset appreciation as a form of income.
These are very volatile assets, so maybe it shouldn’t be possible to take credits against them unless one realizes the gains or pays taxes for them.
This is also one of the reasons why financial crisis go out of hand so quickly, because once the value of an asset goes down, these credits become worthless as well, but rich people bought real assets with those credits, so the crisis just keep expanding to other sectors.
We shouldn't be balancing things we want to do for people in need against what kinds of things we will do to peaceful people that we shouldn't do. Nonmaleficence precedes beneficence.
In any case, abundance generally comes from not crossing those lines — from nonmaleficence. The US crosses those lines a plenty, but still less so than the EU, and consider how much higher its average wages are:
Llms are just computer program that run on fossil fields. someone somewhere is running a computer program that is harassing you.
If someone designs a computer program to automatically write hit pieces on you, you have recourse. The simplest is through platforms you’re being harassed on, with the most complex being through the legal system.
One of the potential upsides of AI in the USA is we'll bring down electrical prices compared to something like China. Power has to be abundantly plentiful and concentrated.
Maybe then, we could afford to smelt an ingot of aluminum in the USA.
Until then, I guess we're just sadly just burning coal to create cat memes. I hope Anthropic can lead the charge. Crypto was already a massive setback in terms of clean power, AI is already very dirty.
How will that happen? China is building more generation as we speak. And I mean a lot. The gap is widening and the rate of change is even worse, thanks to "clean beautiful coal" or whatever Trump said.
You are aware that China is building dozens of new coal power plants right? Just this year they have commissioned 50.[1] Granted, it's less than before, but still much more than other developed countries.
Yes, I am aware. They are increasing the energy output gap so much it's laughable, including coal. The MAGA administration isn't even building coal properly, but they are shuttering wind and solar. Wow, America! So much winning. China will catch up much sooner than anyone could believe thanks to GOP.
Wind and solar combined generation increased by 12.2% during the first 11 months of 2025, providing 19% of total US electricity compared to 17.3% during the same period in 2024.
Surely there is some lag on these numbers, and they correspond to projects commissioned during the Biden admin? The current administration has been extremely hostile to renewables in terms of rhetoric, I would be surprised if they were lying about that.
> Surely there is some lag on these numbers, and they correspond to projects commissioned during the Biden admin?
That's a reasonable assumption. At the same time, I don't know that you can neatly attribute things happening during one adminstration to the prior administration. We need more rigorous analysis than that. For instance, the economy tends to do better under Democratic than Republican rule, but using your lag mental model we should then actually ascribe it to Republic policy? Back to energy, notably, in Jul 2025, more coal was added than wind... should we ascribe that to the prior admin due to lag?
> The current administration has been extremely hostile to renewables in terms of rhetoric, I would be surprised if they were lying about that.
Yes, that's clear. They are very hostile in rhetoric and action.
The administration characterizes wind and solar as expensive and unreliable energy sources that have been subsidized by taxpayers for too long. In July 2025, President Trump signed an executive order to eliminate subsidies for wind and solar in accordance with the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act". On his first day in office, Trump issued an order blocking the government from auctioning off the rights to build wind farms on public lands or in public waters. The administration has halted already-issued permits for offshore wind projects and suspended leases for five major wind projects in December. Solar and wind projects are now subject to an elevated review process likely to slow down approval. Tax credits for renewable energy projects were restricted, requiring projects to begin construction within a year or produce electricity by 2028.
The adminstration prefers fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal), hydropower, nuclear energy, and critical minerals as domestic energy resources.
Despite all that, 2026 is still projected to have 99%+ new capacity in 2026 to be solar, wind, and storage.
Yeah, absolutely no way to bring down power prices when compared to China. They installed over 400 GW (peak) of new renewable capacity in 2025 and show no signs of intending to stop.
But still, it's possible that a smaller, dirtier build-out in the US will significantly drop prices relative to today, and certainly relative to the rest of the world (which is failing spectacularly at building out power infrastructure).
But yes, the only way you're ever going to smelt Aluminum in the US again is if you have customers who can't/won't buy Chinese Aluminum. And even then, worth keeping an eye on the richer Arabs states. They're quickly roofing over their deserts, and certainly don't worry about local NIMBY opposition to power lines...
Can we please move the "Extended Thinking" icon back to the left side of claude desktop, near the research and web search icons? What used to be one click is now three.
Claude or not, this “raid” is still so odd. Military stand down, near-zero skirmishes, leaving with his wife, etc. Went swimmingly well too.
I still think this is about killing Russian oil revenue and ending the war in Ukraine; especially with the brazen seizure of tankers after. Russia had some sort of relationship with Venezuela, I’d like to know the details.
reply