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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Pohutsky told large crowd gathered in Lansing at the state Capitol Wednesday that she chose last month to have a bilateral salpingectomy to remove her fallopian tubes. While abortion is constitutionally protected in Michigan and state lawmakers have bolstered contraceptive access, she said the decision was prompted by doubts that the Trump administration will not target access.

    I do find this to be a little odd, kind of drastic. But, it’s her body. What people choose to do, under the guidance and care of an ethical, reputable medical professional, is their business. I certainly don’t understand getting so upset about it, especially not to the point where you would harass her for it. Even if you strongly disagree with her decision, just shake your head, shrug your shoulders and move on.





  • One theory is that a global shift to cleaner shipping fuels in 2020 accelerated warming by reducing sulphur emissions that make clouds more mirror-like and reflective of sunlight.

    Paradoxically, we might be accelerating warming by burning less sulphur emitting fuels. Clean the air, heat up faster. It’s still a matter of debate, however, now much the reduction in sulphur emissions is causing the current accelerated warming. It’s entirely possible there are other factors at play, as well. That’s not going to stop people from advocating for geoengineering, though. Pump more sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, cool the planet. I don’t know, I suppose.




  • A lot of Americans voted for Trump because they were hoping he would be able to bring prices down. Cheaper oil could help with that. Who doesn’t want to pay less at the pump? But, also, because petroleum based fuels and other products are ubiquitous along essentially every supply chain, it could help bring down other prices, as well. I don’t think it would help that much, though. It might bring down costs for producers a little (or maybe a lot, depending on the industry), but there’s no guarantee those cost savings are going to be passed on to the consumer in the form of lower prices. Most producers would just pocket the savings. And why shouldn’t they? Businesses exist to make the highest possible profit for their owners.

    To even get cheaper oil, though, oil producers would need to over produce. They’d need to drive down the price of their own product. Why would they do that? Why would oil producers choose to reduce their own profits? That doesn’t make any sense. Plus, as more and more oil is pumped out of the ground, what remains is harder and more costly to extract. So, it costs more to extract a barrel of oil than it used to, and that means that oil producers have to sell each barrel of oil for a higher price to cover the higher costs of extraction. Drop the price of a barrel of oil too much, and it no longer becomes cost effective for oil producers to extract oil from the ground. The price of oil has to stay over a certain threshold for continued oil extraction to even be financially viable.

    For prices to come down, demand would have to come down, and that would likely lead to a recession. For prices to come down significantly, it would probably require a significant recession. That’s it, that’s how you bring prices down. So, pick your poison: higher prices or recession.


  • A recent claim that DeepSeek trained its latest model for just $6 million has fueled much of the hype. However, this figure refers only to a portion of the total training cost— specifically, the GPU time required for pre-training.

    How much have other companies spent just on pre-training? If that figure is just for pre-training, it would be useful to know what current industry leaders have spent, to make an apples to apples comparison.

    It does not account for research, model refinement, data processing, or overall infrastructure expenses. In reality, DeepSeek has spent well over $500 million on AI development since its inception.

    But later in the article they quote Elon Musk, saying “if you want to be competitive in AI, you have to spend billions per year,” but $500 million is significantly less than “billions.” And that’s since its inception, which was about 18 months ago. So, that’s less than half a billion dollars, per year. That’s much, much less than “billions per year.”

    Also, the title says that DeepSeek spent “$1.6 billion,” but further on in the article they say “well over $500 million.” $1.6 billion is “well over $500 million,” but conventionally you wouldn’t phrase it like that if the amount was that much higher (over 3x) than $500 million. That leads me to believe the amount DeepSeek spent on AI development is much closer to $500 million than $1.6 billion. Apparently, that $1.6 billion figure includes costs not associated with AI development.