Technology

I see your line about fusion, and I'd like to raise the point that commercial fusion reactors are no longer coming in thirty years but five. Now, is it hype? It's unclear to me because I'm honestly fucking drowning in cope, my dudes. But Commonwealth Fusion, a spinoff of MIT's fusion group, is building, right now, a commercial fusion reactor in Virginia. They did some really cool shit with high(er) temp superconducting magnets in their tokamak design and project that they can break Q10 (that is, get 10x the energy out that they put in) at scale. They're also licensing and building these reactors for other interested parties IIRC.

They're not the only ones. There's a few other companies that are working on fusion that seem to be making some really exciting strides, and I know China's also made some pretty impressive advances as well. Livermore Labs also claims to have broken unity in 2014 with laser-cartridge-implosion, but AFAIK on peer review, it turned out that they used some sketchy-ass math to make that case, not to mention that that tech can't really scale well. Since then, I seem to remember that there's been several other claims of having broken unity (at least one of which was Livermore Labs again) though I have no idea as to how well they hold up to peer review. The point is that we're actually finally seeing some movement in the field of nuclear fusion, including the ongoing development of commercial grid-scale reactors by at least one venture. I don't think it's enough to get fusion out of its infamous doghouse, not yet, but it's worth being aware of.