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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Its the running costs of these that are insane, and the CO2 that it produces.

    All will be rated by gallons per hour for the engines, the big boats can consume 500 gallons per hour. Now assume the owner wants to move the boat just 100 nm, or about 3 hours of travel at the most efficient speed (allowing for departure and arrival). Thats about 1500 gallons for one of the big boats. Assume £6 per gallon, thats £9k, to do 60 nm. Assuming an average of 40 mpg in a car, you could do 60000 miles for the same amount of fuel, or the same annual consumption as seven average UK drivers vs. 60 nm in a big boat. A 60 nm trip is something you do to get to a lunch stop before going on somewhere else for the evening. It can take multiple days of continuous travel to work across the Med, mean while the owner flies somewhere else while the boat is moved, then flies back.

    Then there is the electric production on these. Sure, solar has helped a ton, but a lot of the really big boats don’t have a ton of solar as it takes flat surface space that has other shit on it. So they use a generator, a big one. Whole boat will have aircon and copious amounts of inverters to give the guests mains electric, electric toys, tons of lighting, and navigation equipment. The fuel for this is on top of the fuel burned to move the boat.

    Then there is the staff on the boat, big boats can have a dozen or more staff on board, all of whom had to fly to get to the boat, and have their own food, washing, and daily energy needs.

    Its not uncommon for a rich owner to request the boat moved to a particular location, stocked up with food and booze that is flown in from multiple locations. Then the owner and their guests fly in, and sometimes not, so all that effort and energy is wasted.

    Final kicker is that really big boats have a second chase boat, full of even more staff and often similar size to the main boat in consumption. Bezos has two helicopter pads on his chase boat as he cannot have one on his main boat because he wanted sails on it, which don’t actually work properly, they have never used more than one at once.





  • I agree it has some value, but the problem is that value doesn’t seem to align with the cost of Western AI.

    If you look at what Altman said about how much OpenAI was losing despite charging an arm and a leg for its premium subscription, no one will pay for that for low value items such as transcription or scaffolding code.

    Unless it can actually replace high value jobs long term rather than short term pretend replace as with Klarana then its doomed with the current models.



  • None of which is tied to raising the retirement age for the younger groups, this does fuck all to fix the actual problem.

    None of which is tied to medical or elder care for the Danes, this is also mostly funded by taxation, again mostly paid by the young.

    The actual solution is to start means testing Ponzi scheme state pension funds with a tapered reduction based on private pension income. However that will never every happen to this particular group as they are the largest single group, and this will be a single issue voting matter for them as they are in the middle of retiring.

    Social care should be self funded by the government forcing sell off, of assets like the home, for those that can for this generation.



  • So this rise for Denmark does not kick in on people born before 1970, so it does not count for baby boomers or the oldest and usually wealthiest sub set of Gen X. Oh, also Danish politicians can still retire at 60 right?

    This is fairly typical with these age rises, applies to everybody BUT the largest group who have caused all the problem by being the largest group and who often haven’t paid their fair share in a lot of schemes as a lot of state pension schemes are a Ponzi scheme rather than an actual investment fund, including the Danes as its paid directly out of taxation.

    This means all the poor fucks who will now retire later will still be paying for that largest ever group to retire at an earlier age.

    What is particularly insidious with this type of change is that the private pension age has also been raised for people in the UK. This means even if you can afford to you cant take it as early as you once could. Absolutely done because they will be means testing the UK state pension at some point.







  • Yeah Japan is awful for that and the tourists have only gotten worse with their behaviour over time. I did the main spots of Kyoto once, biggest mistake of my trip.

    If you avoid the popular spots entirely then its usually pretty easy to find places that are more authentic. But its been a few years since I last went, its a very tough holiday for me as I am coeliac and the Japanese just do not take gluten allergies seriously (they had something like three people in five years diagnosed in total) so I have to self cater the entire trip.


  • Toss up between saying BVI a year after Irma, it was so quiet and empty. We spent the day on the beach at Bitter End (its absolutely amazing now its reopened) and if you know that beach its never empty except we had it to ourselves. Went to a bar in Little Bay and just spent the day hanging out with the owner, only ones there, told to help ourselves to beer from the fridge and had dinner with them. BVI is never that quiet during main season, its usually busy to packed.

    Other one is Antigua during COVID, quiet beyond belief. Restaurants only allowed to do take out, so they would bring you the meals to your boat. Had a BBQ of the best steak and lobster on the main beach at Barbuda cooked just for us. Last night they opened up restaurants for dine in, only customers at this fancy Mexican fusion restaurant on the beach. They were so happy to have people back, ended up sharing the head chefs bottle of (very expensive) wine as we chatted at the end of the meal.

    Most of my favorite holiday stories are when we have gone somewhere and its empty of tourists and just pretty quiet overall.


  • Germany was miles off, they lost the war before the first bomb was dropped, 7th May vs. 6th August. Its impossible for them to be both behind the Allied effort to make a nuclear bomb (so would have not been read to drop one until after 6th August) and still make one after they surrendered.

    The Allies very much lied to the scientists about how far along the Germans were to guilt them into making one against objections raised at the time.

    Now if those defecting Nazis who joined NASA and the like post war would have instead been used to replace objecting Allied scientists in the nuclear program, thats a real possibility.