Mandatory reminder that Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into a trust to avoid conflict of interest accusations.
He also put solar panels on the White House roof. Which Reagan removed.
Hopefully, whoever the next president is will remove the ballroom.
Why would Trump Jr. remove it? (/s, I hope)
Nah. Keep it and redecorate and/or repurpose it. Then rename it to something super woke. Spend as little money as possible since it’s probably coming from our tax dollars to do this shit every four fucking years.
Host Planned Parenthood fundraisers with the fundraising goal set at the projected costs of the renovations, then make a statement of how it did nothing to promote the general welfare of Americans to renovate a roughly 200yo house and not even have a PBS special to show for it!
Ah, yes. The ballroom being designed by an architect with experience in electromagnetic protected buildings, built by the construction company with experience with classified data centers, and sponsored by tech companies and not luxury brands, in an area where the utilities companies have issued warnings their demands for water and power will increase 5 times.
What I'm trying to say, the ballroom is just the cover (literally).
Since it's just the cover, there should be no problem in changing the cover. Tear it down and replace it with something that hasn't been tainted by Trump's fingerprints.
What a sucker! He should have used the power of the presidency to bully his way into a merger with IBM. Surely no one would have objected.
And just days after the murder of an MIT nuclear fusion professor...
What’s that now?
The prosecutor’s office said no suspects had been taken into custody
Huh. I guess not being a healthcare CEO really puts a damper on the whole investigative process.
Well, the suspect was just just found dead so they didn't take all that long
So this is why he was assasinated
I'm sorry, but what the fuck?
You don't need to apologize.
Ah the days of crazy pills are SO back.
They never left, they are just horse pills now with unclear labeling.
Pardon my French but que le putain est ce merde?
Reminder some European physicist working in nuclear fusion at MIT was just murdered under suspicious circumstances. 😏
its too sad for me to accept the usage of an emoji on that piece of terrible news. Like if it was a CEO i wouldn't have posted this comment. Losing a scientist hurts.
A competing entity as well. Curious.
I just posted how I’ve grown skeptical of nuclear fusion.
This site outlines some misgivings quite well: https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/
As one example, the “lack of radioactivity,” an often touted benefit of fusion, is just… not true. In fact, D-T fusion releases much higher energy neutrons than any fission, and that’s inevitably going to degrade the equipment, turn it radioactive, and wreak all sorts of havoc.
Tritium production isn’t easy, nor particularly sustainable.
Many of fission’s “problems” it’s supposed to solve, like storing hot waste or the finite supply of uranium, really aren’t that big a deal, and can be addressed with the extra expense/engineering of breeder reactors or (possibly) thorium reactors if it’s so important.
Proliferation? Fusion reactors are great at producing fissile material.
Other issues, like fission's required capital investment, are clearly worse with fusion, and don’t seem to be improving. Heck, we don’t even have the capital or political will for newer fission reactors.
Look. I want a fusion breakthough. This was a good avenue to try.
…But now, fusion feels like one of those interesting ideas that turned out to not be so practical in reality (not yet anyway), now transitioning into a grift.
And if Trump Media buying a fusion startup to put it on the market isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is.
Nah, the point is to get a sweetheart deal when they inevitably file for bankruptcy because they are a budding energy company taking big risks on new tech, not a media company hemorrhaging money at an unsustainable rate, silly goose!
There we go. That’s the angle I was looking for. I was curious what the grift was, but now this opens them up to getting energy subsidies and protections.
It’s part of the AI hype train too. Energy is hot in the stock market, with the idea being scale up for all these chip fabs and data centers we’ll need for infinite AI.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because there was a similar energy craze over cryptomining. Though not at this scale.
But now, fusion feels like one of those interesting ideas that turned out to not be so practical in reality (not yet anyway), now transitioning into a grift.
2020's: Time to invest! We're like 5 years away from fusion reactors, hyper loops, and general AI!
2040's: Time to invest! We're like 5 years away from fusion reactors, hyper loops, and general AI!
But hey at least the world now has Ai-powered human-slaying drone swarms thanks to all that VC. 👍
To be clear, I don't want to hate on tech investment. Fusion has to be tried to see if it works.
But it's got a lot of tries, more than its fair shair IMO. Imagine if we split all that cash between fission, thorium, solar, laser drilled geothermal, things like that.
Until the last 10 years, fusion barely got any funding in America, and similar levels elsewhere. Here's a budget projection from decades back that should give some perspective on the inevitable outcome, and why optimism has been so high lately.
As to the radioactivity issue, fusion would irradiate the equipment with isotopes of very short half-life, but the volume would be no more than with fission, and at a much lower radioactivity requiring decades of storage rather than millennia. It also aids in anti-proliferation as a fusion reaction won’t generate significant fissile material under normal operation, unlike fission. So it could be used in countries that aren’t feasible now with strict regulations such as maintaining a minimum lithium enrichment level.
It doesn’t produce waste isotopes directly, no, but the neutron radiation creates new radioactive isotopes within whatever equipment is in range. And AFAIK it’s harder to stop than fission because the D-T fusion neutrons are 14.1 MeV. And separately from that, it degrades the equipment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_embrittlement
Which seems pretty significant when fusion needs so much equipment hugging the reactor chamber. It would complicate cleaning, too.
That changes with other types of fusion, but D-T is all we got now.
As for proliferation… again, it’s a great neutron source. It doesn’t have the same waste, no, but countries can absolutely use it to breed fissile material if they want.
And let’s say, hypothetically, a country goes against regulators and decides they’re going to breed material with their fusion reactor. With some trouble, they can use it to make tritium too. The supply couldn’t be cut off.
its probably specifically the neutrons degrading the core chamber, is whats going to prevent any commercial, or even useful advancement of it, because the cost of maintenance,
I guess the news is just madlibs now
TAE focuses on nuclear fusion, a technology that combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one. It releases enormous amount of energy
.......... theoretically, if it could be achieved. Is this company purely a research company? How can one be a "Nuclear Fusion" company, when there's currently no such thing as sustainable fusion?
My guess is in the same way companies claim to be Artificial Intelligence companies?
Pretty sure we've achieved sustainable fusion. What I think is missing is making it cost effective and scalable.
I think the record is like 22 minutes, not sure if I would call that sustainable yet.
By developing technologies and licencing the patents.
How crazy would it be if Trump's corruption and conflicts of interest are what gets us to invest in cold fusion and make it a practical, scalable energy source.
Doubt it. Probably end up like another one of his casinos.
There's like a dozen companies already working in fusion reactors. This would only siphon money away from projects that might actually produce something useful
Exactly this. Guarantee at some point down the line there's a bill or budget passed that allocates a bunch of money to fusion research ("Puuting America on the forefront of vital emerging technologies that will power this great nation throughout the 21st century!") and then this company, surprise, wins a bid to get allocated a big portion of that funding.
You're assuming good faith when it's only about the grift. They don't care at all if it succeeds, it's only about what they can skim off the top. They're leeches, they bleed the host dry and move on to the next victim.
Where on earth did I say any of that? My dude, I am literally describing the nature of the grift.
gets us to invest in cold fusion
I don't doubt it.
and make it a practical, scalable energy source
Some of us remember that pipe dream the first time around.
I had to double check this wasn’t the onion ..
Are they just gonna call it “Corruption Inc.”?
Ah, so we're living in the Final Fantasy Vii timeline? When do they start drafts for SOLIDER?
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.