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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Correct. The USSC rejected his claim to be able to impose unlimited tariffs (under a law that says no such thing), which forced him to then rely on an entirely different law that potentially offers him the ability to impose much more restricted tariffs; 15%, for 90 days, and he has to impose them equally across all trading partners. Which is threatening to upend a bunch of the deals they already made.

    It’s also likely not legal either, but it’ll have to go through the courts again. This time around it’s because the law he’s now using only applies where there is a “balance of payments” issue; basically, where the US is in danger of running out of actual physical money to make payments with. This literally cannot happen with fiat currencies; it’s a law that was designed to handle issues that can only occur with precious metal backed currencies. This a very real problem that used to happen. I think the most famous example I can bring to mind is the Opium Wars, which basically happened because Britain was buying so much tea from China, while selling them almost nothing in return, that they were running out silver to pay the Chinese with.


  • This is the only comment here that matters. Nothing has happened. Nothing will happen, because Trump is going to piss his pants and scream and moan, and then all of his advisors are going to explain to him for the sixteenth time that the only want to cut off trade with Spain is to cut off trade with the entire EU. No more Ferraris and Lambos. No more guns for their Abrams tanks. No more French cheese and wine. No more US trade to a market of 450 million comparatively wealthy people.

    Even the actual headline of the article reads “Trump to cut off all US trade with Spain over refusal to use military bases in Iran war”. Because it hasn’t happened yet. And it won’t. It’s just another empty threat from a pathetic, brainless coward.




  • The legal authority part is far less of an issue. Governments have the power to control what does or does not cross their borders. Trump’s authority in that regard isn’t infinite, but he does have access to a number of legal mechanisms that could likely enable, at the very least, a temporary pause on trade. It would likely turn into another supreme court fight like the stuff with the tariffs. But, perversely, shutting off trade entirely with a country, rather than tariffing it, is actually more likely to fall within the framing of the IEEPA, for one thing. It grants the president the authority to “regulate” trade under certain conditions. It was ruled that this doesn’t include tariffs - that’s a power of Congress - but simply saying “Nothing crosses our border” might actually be a more clear cut case of “regulating” (ie, controlling).










  • Basically the way you would make a stealth spaceship would be by focusing as much as possible on energy efficiency. At every juncture you would try to use as little power as possible, and use every bit of it as efficiently as possible, so that you’re not remitting waste. That waste, in the form of heat, radio waves, etc, is what gets you spotted.

    You could also run heatsinks temporarily for enhanced stealth as you suggest, then open up radiators to cool them - or eject them - once it’s safe to do so.

    (For the Elite: Dangerous players, yes, that game got it right.)


  • The entire ISS has 14GW of cooling (and a lot of that just goes towards keeping the sun from cooking it). A single server rack can produce around 72GW of heat.

    The ISS cost about $100 billion.

    Basically, if you took the entire budget of Sam Altman’s “Stargate” project (money that, to be clear, he does not have and will not get) and put it into space data centres you might, optimistically, put one rack in space.

    Most data centres have dozens to hundreds.

    You’re absolutely correct, but “quite big” might be the single biggest understatement I’ve seen in my life.