It’s not just from industrial sources. Many flame retardants are “forever chemicals” & are often wantonly dumped by fire departments, Air Force bases, etc.

most structure and wildland fire has moved away from pfas based foams. not everywhere and not for aiports, but most other places.

What is the point of your comment? Are you trying to forgive these institutions on everyone’s behalf for irresponsible dumping?

Why do you think that is?

Good synergy. I use both; I can see them integrated.

Is there any evidence the books are truly "destroyed" & not merely "disassembled"?

It's common practice to cut the spine & binding off a book, scan the loose pages, & drop the rubber-banded loose pages in a box somewhere. The book still exists, just without its binding.

Your neighborhood examples are on an incomparably smaller scale than Meta et al.

It’s much easier to disregard the human cost of decisions when you are separated from said humans by thousands of miles & billions of dollars.

Redundancy is robustness is expensive.

Why should IP persist in a world of “intelligence too cheap to meter”?

Do you use Grok multiple times per day? Is Grok solving Erdos problems?

> Do you use Grok multiple times per day?

No body who has a choice is using Grok

> Is Grok solving Erdos problems?

Mēh! At a slower rate than models a fraction of the price

> No body who has a choice is using Grok

The Grok app had over 100 million downloads in 2025, over 60 million active users, and generated $350 million in revenue. That’s a lot of people being forced to use it.

Grok revenue is like 100x smaller than xai estimated capex? Doesn't look great.

Still more than I expected based on anecdotal experience

Why would they sell it for less when they could sell it for more?

We’re witnessing “American exceptionalism” transform from a brash claim to a whiny demand in real time.

> I think you won’t get [cathedral],..

> even if you do get [cathedral], [bazar] will run circles around you…

Ahhh I like that

It's nested and recursive cathedrals and bazaars, all the way down. And perhaps the bazaar has finally arrived inside the favourite cathedral of most everyone here

EDIT: out of curiosity, does anyone have any good examples of biomes/ecosystems that are so far toward cathedrals? Or is that a uniquely human invention/extreme at the ecosystem scale?

First thing that comes to mind is beehives and anthills. Highly ordered societies where each insect has a role to perform. Don't know how well you think that fits the "cathedral" model, but I'd say it's pretty close.

Beavers reshaping the landscape also comes close, but that's individual beavers acting more or less on their own, not a rigidly structured society like ants and bees, so perhaps the beavers are closer to the bazaar analogy than the cathedral.