So the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each 15,000 tons
And the largest atomic bomb ever tested was,
And this is crazy,
I mean I'm going to tell you, but
I want you to think about it first. Like,
how much bigger do you think bombs can get?

The USSR was responsible for one third of those.
The United States was responsible for over one half of them.
The rest of the world was responsible for the remaining 15%.
Though that's just 7 countries.
The rest of the 178 signatories have never tested an atomic bomb.
Nor do they have them.

Funny thing,
the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15,000 tons.
Now we can detect ones as small as 500 tons anywhere in the world
which is important because from '45 to '63
over 2,000 atomic bombs were tested.

They all agreed to lookout for anyone breaking the promise to not test.
Thanks to the Test-Ban treaty,
we have one of the largest global collaborations working to monitor nuclear explosions.
Stations all around the world
looking out for the impact of tons of explosive material going off at once.

In 1996 nations all around the world got together and wrote a treaty to not test nuclear weapons anymore.
187 signed the treaty, the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty,
178 of those signatories ratified it into their national law.

And I wonder,
can any of them detect enough people hugging at once?
It seems easier to detect bodies hitting the ground.
Especially hundreds of thousands at a time.

There are also 3 large gravitational wave observatories, looking out for things like the merger of black holes and supernovae.
Two different sets of instruments,
looking for explosions all around the earth
and, somehow, all around the universe.
Both are achievements
but not in the same way.

All around the world there are stations keeping a lookout for the testing of nuclear weapons.
There are 170 seismic monitoring stations, 80 radioactivity stations, 11 hydroaccoustic stations, and 60 infrasound monitoring stations.

I'm not sure if that means our neighbors get a discount on their rent.
Though two things people often tell me about myself
is that I laugh loudly and that I give good hugs.
I hope the laughter is at least pleasant for my neighbors,
I'm not sure if you can hear a hug.

Power grab to increase his 2028 chances.
www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

We are going to see the Democratic party increasingly make the case that democracy is flawed. Instead of having a party that we can votes for purely because they are against authoritarianism, we are going to have two authoritarian choices before eventually having no choice at all.

The Democrats saw that democracy wasn't a popular enough idea to win them an election, and so they're ready to give up on it. The two parties have made sure that our democracy has been broken from the beginning, ensuring that they are the only two parties in the game.

Democracy is a way to hedge our bets while engaging in society: we give up some autonomy in governance to be free to do what we want with their own lives. Democracy is pragmatic. To suspend it with the hopes of strengthening it is absurd.

This is not an argument about morality or ethics. Democracy was not created as a system so everybody would feel good about themselves. Democracy was created as a pragmatic means of deciding leaders in a way where everyone had equal stake in the decisions.

The Democrats prefer to increase their own power while holding onto their donors, rather than put forward candidates and policies that are more popular with their constituents. The Democratic establishment, like the Republican establishment, has sold out their own constituency.

We are seeing that the self proclaimed party of democracy is only a party that is interested in maintaining its own power. Democracy is not a system that will survive escalatory authoritarianism by both sides. They make analogies to assert that to not act autocratically in this moment is naive.

Newsom, who already has so much power, will not voluntarily give up a shred of power that has been given to him. Once he has been given the power to choose his own electorate through a gerrymander, he will use it as precedent to do it again the moment he has the opportunity.

We are seeing that democracy itself was never valued. Instead, people seem to want a dictator that believes what they believe. Both parties are gambling on the fact that most people just want to not have to pay attention to politics and would rather have someone they agree with make decisions.

The current political moment is difficult, but the idea that we ought to give either of these people even more power is completely delusional. These are two people who are actively hungry for power and are willing to do whatever they can to secure their chances at gaining as much power as possible.