@TinyTimmyTokyo Amphetamine (and related stimulant) psychosis is a well-characterized syndrome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis

@istewart @sneerclub One thing Andreessen, Thiel, et al. have shown a real skill for is finding ways to use a LOT of computing power. Even if only as effective debtors-in-possession, I’m sure they’ll figure something out.

@dgerard I have a strong recollection that Keith Henson had intimate involvement with a cryonics project and actual published a rather harrowing account. Should be searchable.

@V0ldek @sneerclub For both Facebook and Netflix, the interesting technical challenges are secondary to scale.

@billseitz @froztbyte @V0ldek But F is obsolete.
It’s now MAGA.

Oh, wait: G is obsolete too
MAAA

@V0ldek @sneerclub It happened when rich people realized that their individual liberty in a world of mostly poor people would intrinsically be constrained by proper democracy.

A government dedicated to maximizing the broadest possible freedom will, if allowed, redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, to provide the poor more opportunities & limit the dangerous “freedoms” of the ultra-wealthy to impose their own control over others.

@Soyweiser Not as a primary focus, but as a background fact, e.g. Trantor in Foundation.

@gnomicutterance @sneerclub Are you familiar with Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!”?

@PyroNeurosis @sneerclub Something like a national socialist party…

@zogwarg Bronze Age Empires:

Hittite
Minoan
Mycenaean (briefly but opportunistically picking up the very wet Minoan pieces after the Thera eruption & tsunami.)
Old Babylonia (i.e. not the Neo-Babylonians who revered that past)

Given their intermittent hegemony over Kush and Canaan, I don’t agree that Egypt doesn’t count as an empire. One can also make such a case for Zhou-era China, particularly before its splintering into the “Warring States” interregnum.