• skillissuer
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    5 months ago

    i like how he started on the premise that iceberg is cheap real estate, then okay let’s cover underside with thermal insulation, and also reinforce top with freshwater ice, that freshwater will be have to be transported there and then frozen in place, and also let’s cover top with expanded glass and concrete, and let’s put wood pulp and basalt fiber rebar in ice, and

    all while never counting beans, and any and all numbers are entirely pulled out of his ass

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        5 months ago

        Roko even said the ‘I think agricultural waste products like straw can be substituted for sawdust so maybe you are paid to take it off their hands.[emph mine]’ line. which is always a good sign when somebody is trying to the economically feasible math.

        • skillissuer
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          5 months ago

          yeah let’s just divert entire global straw output so that Roko can build his libertarian crypto paradise

          also straw is not a waste, wtf is he thinking

        • flavia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 months ago

          Even if it was waste, the sellers would notice and start charging for it. Libertarians have a fucked up definition of what ‘waste’ also with bitcoin mining.

          • skillissuer
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            5 months ago

            straw goes for something like $70-100 per ton (in poland; depends on region and other factors) sawdust is probably cheaper

        • V0ldek@awful.systems
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          5 months ago

          It’s hard for me to even imagine a more apt description of a privileged silver-spoon moron than thinking straw is waste and people would pay you to get rid of it.

          Human minds are amazing, I can’t even hypothesise what thought processes, if any, led him there

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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            5 months ago

            And even if it was waste, that you are planning to build megastructures with it makes it no longer waste very quickly, and as there was no demand for the product before and now it is in high demand, the price will prob do some very interesting things. A suggestion was made to use sugarcane bagasse which has no other use it seems. But that would then also quickly get a use and increase in price, which would also do things to the price of replacement products, like sawdust, or straw. And I assume that if the price of straw in the world rises a lot due to this megaconstruction a lot of farmers would be unhappy, but yeah fuck the poor countries.

    • jonhendry@awful.systems
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      5 months ago

      Just program the godlike AI to turn everything into pykrete instead of paperclips.

      Problem solved.