Sick of hearing this one. I always respond with:

"But you wouldn't be able to get gas, either."

"Well I would have gas!"

"Well, my car would be charged!"

"Oh."

Do people think the grid needs to be up in order for them to use an electric vehicle? Like it would suddenly driving if power went out because it has no reserve capacity?

Ugh. Just venting.

No credible source has confirmed the affair just yet, but it’s basically an open secret at this point. She’s only 31 years old. She posts incredibly racist things on Twitter (I refuse to call it X). And she is definitely having an outsize impact on his campaigning and debate prep - the “migrants eating dogs” thing appears to have originated with Loomer.

So a while back I had an idea that I just can't stop thinking about, and to me it sounds oddly poetic. We've all heard of Mother Nature, and that name is typically used to describe nature (the biosphere, not the universe) as something outside of us, something that we're merely one part of, however with interstellar colonization, megastructures, self replicating machines, post biological life, genetic engineering and completely new exotic life, that by definition would no longer be true. Instead of Mother Nature taking us into her earthy embrace, we suddenly get Daughter Nature, clinging shyly to the dress of Mother Technology. The roles have reversed now, civilization no longer needs the, or really any biosphere, let alone the one we're familiar with.

And even in the case of terraforming that implies us coming before nature and being the only thing really keeping it afloat for a very long time, and if it becomes self sustaining faster, it'll be because we helped it along. And even then such a civilization would outlive nature, out amongst the stars terraforming new planets which will one day wither and die without their masters keeping the ever growing flames of the stars at bay, and cradling their frail forms with warmth as the universe around them freezes over. And in reality it's even more imbalanced than that, our technology itself would be like a vastly superior ecosystem merging the best hits of evolution and innovation together to make technology so robust that it's the one overgrowing into the ecosystems after some apocalyptic scenario, not the other way around. Machines that can self replicate, repair, and work at every scale form nano to mega in one big "fractalization" of fully automated machinery that functions as a bodily reflex of post-biological human descendants that have full control over their minds and bodies. And technology could easily never malfunction either, there's already life that never ages or gets cancer, and while no organism is immune to disease, having nanites basically means that by default as we could adapt exponentially faster than virus mutations and just annihilate them eternally, always winning as we just adapt faster. And science can't go on forever, the universe is only so complex, eventually we will know every question that has a definitive answer and isn't just philosophical, and we'll have posed every philosophical question and possible answer out there, even if we can't test those hypotheses. And the completion of science (or at least reaching a point of vastly diminishing returns with only very minir adjustments occasionally made for new situations) should probably take no more than 10,000 years, perhaps even fewer than 1000. And everything for billions of lightyears can be ours, the stars themselves packed up into cold storage and brought back as a hoard of fuel to last us far longer than the death of the last stars would've been.

And when there are ecosystems, they're made by our own hand, crafted with love and made in our image, countless forms of life that evolution could've never dreamed of, even on aliens worlds. Instead of humanity being but one species of millions in a planetary ecosystem billions of years old, we get an entire biosphere being just one little curious attraction among trillions of such experiments, and not particularly important to civilization as a whole, which is now more technology than biology, being able to shape themselves just as they shape the life around them. Human nature is no longer treated like a law of reality, it's just a design that can be changed at will, allowing us to advance morally, intellectually, and be better adapted to deep space where there is no greenery.

Honestly, I think the most likely fate of Earth is not as a nature preserve, but a gigantic megastructual hub for most of humanity of tens of thousands of years to come, covered mostly in computronium for vast simulated worlds and unfathomable superintelligent minds, and swarmed by countless O'Neil Cylinders filled with various strains of life, ranging from the familiar, to the prehistoric, to the alien, to wacky creations straight out of fever dreams.

Now, many people may say this is pure hubris, indeed many already have. However, although a bit of a philosophical tangent, the very idea of "hubris" is fundamentally flawed. Does ambition make one a bad person? Are there some ambitions that are just magically too big? How does one even draw the line of what's too arrogant to even think about trying? Is it still bad even if it's physically possible? Or if it both possible and proven to be beneficial? A good rule of thumb is that "If it exists, we can understand, utilize, replicate, and improve upon it". This rule is less common in physics as there's not much you can do to improve on fundamental particles and forces, indeed most particles are completely useless, but everything emerging from physics into more complex structures operates this way. If anything, nature is the thing we're most guaranteed to master, as it's a complex physical structure we can pick apart and study, not some abstract physical force like dark energy.

Now, before you say "But, nature is just the universe!" I'm aware that definition tends to be used, but I'm taking the colloquial definition of nature as synonymous with the biosphere, specifically the one that has naturally evolved as opposed to being engineered by us through genetic interventions like selective breeding. For the other definition of nature, we're essentially the next phase, like the leap from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life, the thing which took billions of years to occur. Always remember, evolution is speeding up exponentially, progress is the number one rule of existence right now, the sentiment of "there's nothing new under the sun" died the moment the industrial revolution started, and truth be told it was never really true to begin with, now the reality is just undeniable.

"But isn't this all pure fantasy?" No, not any more than any other speculation about the future, in fact it's vastly more grounded than most science fiction concepts like FTL. It operates entirely on the known laws of physics, and uses technologies we either have some primitive analog to, or can at least conceive of without any new physics. In fact, the Kardashev Scale alone is a quite grounded idea with wide scientific acceptance. And even very near-term technologies like climate-controlled arcologies, nuclear fusion, and hydroponics mean we're independent from nature by default, afterall there are no ecosystems in space, so the moment we can support a man throughout his entire life up in space, using only resources from space, the age of biosphere reliance has come to an end.

Here's a video that's definitely adjacent to this idea and takes an overall supportive stance of it, but doesn't just shrug off the melancholy of it either.

Last time i checked didnt find any simulation of the project, since i am into city building games and the venus project, i always wanted to try it together making for example round cities in cityskylines and other experiments but that misses the point on the econnomy aspect. And i was thinking i could make a mod for CitySkylines(1) although I wouldn't know where to start because I miss some key points particularly on the project transition from regular economic society to the idealised vision.

For example:

• There's a large amount of investment to start, is a loan on the table? If yes, how will it be paid back.

• The city(ies) need either mines, refineries and industry for basically everything that needs repair/replacing or just new needs as the city(ies) grow, or there is the need to make money to buy what you don't produce from the regular society.

• People need money to get out of the city(ies) involved if they want to travel.

This are just some issues i am not sure how are handled, althought i can figure out some solutions i wonder what are the project official stance on these.

Anyone would be interested helping in solidifying the concept, programming or test playing?

Can we talk about early transition problems and solutions?

I'm seeing posts about RAG multiple times every hour in many different subreddits. It definitely is a technology that won't go away soon. For those who don't know what RAG is , it's basically combining LLMs with external knowledge sources. This approach lets AI not just generate coherent responses but also tap into a deep well of information, pushing the boundaries of what machines can do.

But you know what? As amazing as RAG is, I noticed something missing. Despite all the buzz and potential, there isn’t really a go-to place for those of us who are excited about RAG, eager to dive into its possibilities, share ideas, and collaborate on cool projects. I wanted to create a space where we can come together - a hub for innovation, discussion, and support.