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I hope this is the downfall of Google search we are witnessing before our eyes…

Mutually assured destruction is a hell of a concept


It's the most empowering thing in the status quo; when a check and a balance from one entity to another is mutually-existential, it keeps things at a pretty steady pace.

M.A.D should be practiced in policy more often, without having leverage - there's no reason to represent you.


For anyone having gastrointestinal issues from processed foods in America, I implore you to take a trip to the EU and experience the lack of digestive issues their foods have on your gut.

It really changed my relationship with food knowing that it’s not my gut malfunctioning but stems from what I’m putting in me.


Nope he’s reviving it


Anyone else with ADHD struggle to parse this?


This sounds like most tech executives hopping around with their golden parachutes every odd year ..


yep, I can confirm that many people like that exist at other tech companies ^^


The crazy thing about the Manhattan project is that scientists thought there could be a runaway chain reaction in nitrogen or hydrogen in the atmosphere, burning all air or oceans and result in an extinction event.

It’s such a mind bending story and point in human history. I digress..


I'll note that I have a physics degree. My undergrad advisor and several people I've worked for had worked directly under those scientists, though post project. Including my time at the two labs not in New Mexico. I'm saying this to help convince you that I know what I'm talking about here:

That story is wildly overblown. No one really thought this would happen. But given the consequences of being wrong no one wanted to trust themselves. So what they did is keep asking each other to try to do the calculations independently and see if they would get the same results. The idea came from Teller who was researching stars, which do have a runaway reaction. In the movie Oppenheimer says "nonzero chance" and that's accurate. He really did mean "we aren't confident that this would get impossible" but they were very confident the likelihood was almost zero.

The reason this it's important is because it flips the story on its head. Had they thought there was a meaningful chance and moved forward then the story represents how brash they were and careless. But instead it is a story of where they were considering and taking seriously something they thought was a near impossibility and yet they took great effort to ensure that it was actually impossible. That's now a story of how careful they were. It's the exact opposite of being brash.

Mind you, this doesn't contradict what I said before. They did know the bomb would be powerful, but I doubt many knew how powerful until near or at Trinity. And I'll tell you, unless you can do the calculations then you really don't understand what those things actually do. It is so much more than an explosion. It is more than the radiation. There's a reason so many could no longer be blind to the consequences. To this day the skeletons are out of the physicists' closet because we all know we are capable of unknowingly following the same path. When you learn what that bomb does you hope you're at the center of it


Would you say they were significantly more concerned about nuking the entire atmosphere than scientists were "concerned" about creating a small black hole that would swallow earth by turning on the LHC (AKA not at all)?

The stories have the same vibe to me.


Wow what an amazing follow up! I’m thrilled to hear this anecdotally with your personal commentary. I always go down the rabbit hole and take everything at face value, so I appreciate the color you added to the story.

Any good books or documentaries you recommend?


The international student —> h1-b pipeline is unaffected it seems?


Do you have generational wealth? Seems like a paradise out there..


One of the oddities of California is that you frequently see shabby, cheaply constructed houses of no significance selling for millions of dollars.

That is because some mid-century developer built it as middle-class housing. A middle-class family moved in and had kids. They continued to live there while property values soared. So the kids grew up in neighborhood where all the houses cost millions of dollars.

I used to know an elderly coupled who lived in one of the nicer parts of Malibu. Both were school teachers. They bought the house when Malibu was cheap because of the "horrible" commute along scenic Highway 1 and the lack of sewers in Malibu. Before the fires, their house was probably worth over $10 million (thanks, prop 13!).

When they passed, the kids couldn't afford to keep the house (even with the feudal property tax system in California, which allows inheritance of low property tax assessments like some kind of medieval title of nobility) because the kids were also just normal middle class people.

So, to answer your question: In some sense, yes, almost by definition, the family of person you're responding to does have generational wealth (in the form of the house). But in a different sense, no, because it's quite likely that they have nowhere near the amount liquid assets implied by the phrase "generational wealth".


Really appreciate the thoughtful response and made me see things in a different light. Cheers.


Hey I’ve been getting these sketchy Delivery Status Notification (Failure) emails too with my gmail handle but @google.com

“ The response was: The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or unnecessary spaces. For more information, go to https://support.google(.)com/mail/?p=NoSuchUser

Then it has a phishing email copied below trying to look legitimate.

Can I create a filter to block this spam for good? It’s been happening for over a year now and makes me think one of my emails failed to send so I jump to open it ugh.


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