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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • This is the world’s largest thorium reactor. There have been other experimental ideas, but not many operational ones. The next largest operational Thorium reactor I can find is called kamini in India, which is 30kw. For scale, China’s reactor is 2000kw.

    3Okw is a toy. That would power maybe 10 US homes. 2000kw? That’s more like 600 homes. Small, but usable. Fits the SMR niche well, actually. Making 1/1000th of the radioactive waste and basically no weapons grade materials locks in there too.

    The article makes it very clear its running continuously, which is what they are celebrating. They have successfully refueled it while operating, which is a huge part of the “continuous.”

    The article is all of 6 paragraphs. It’s not a difficult read.













  • Bikeshedding is when instead of making important, compex decisions that have consequences for being wrong, someone focuses on the simple, low impact, minimally important part of a project that has no consequences if its fucked up.

    I think the term comes from construction projects where instead of finalizing the design of a complex building, the execs spend the entire time talking about bike parking on site. What color to have the roof, how many bikes it should hold, etc.

    Bikeshedding is about offloading responsibility while still feigning involvement. You, the owner, avoid the whole part of your job youre paid for, i.e “making the hard decisions” and through misdirection and inaction, make someone else do it. That way you can blame them later if things go wrong, or take credit for their work if they go right.


  • At the same time, a lot of the most famous YouTubers/etc are also deeply formulaic. They copy the same trends, use the same formats, and post the same kind of videos.

    Gaming YouTubers flock to the same game at the same time or just play the ones that get big views like minecraft/etc, cooking youtubers are all doing “viral remakes” or “rate these 45 types of chicken nugget” or “eat the menu” videos/etc.

    There are always solid people doing their own thing, but the social media zeitgeist is just recycled, low effort, high engagement garbage, just like netflix.