The replicants have risen. Humanity has fallen. Blade Runner 2099, a new limited series, premieres November 25th on Prime Video.

I fucked up and talked to the negotiator on the phone long enough for them to box me in. They have dogs so I'm probably done for.

I fucked up and talked to the negotiator on the phone long enough for them to box me in. They have dogs so I'm probably done for.

Inference Gross Margins - 87.76% to 96.94% Assumptions: 97% cached input, 2% uncached input and 1% output tokens Prefill: 80k uncached input tokens/s/GPU. Decode: 16k output tokens/s/GPU (250 tokens/s/user) Token mix: 970M cached input + 20M uncached input + 10M output per billion total tokens. It takes around 875 GPU seconds (250 for prefill & 625 for decode) to process 20M uncached input + 10M output tokens. Assuming GPU rental cost is around $3-$6/hr, the GPU system cost per billion tokens is around $0.73-$1.46 1B tokens generate $11.91 in revenue at off-peak prices and $23.82 at peak prices At off-peak prices, inference margins are between 87.76%-93.88% depending on the GPU rental cost ($3-$6/hr) At peak prices, inference margins are between 93.88%-96.94% depending on the GPU rental cost ($3-$6/hr)

Violet Backstory: Violet immigrated to The Cursed Apple when she was 12, and while there was a certain amount of culture shock to adapting to New York, she quickly fell in love with the vibrancy of the city. Dedicating herself to the pursuit of the arts, Violet's passion lead her to successes far beyond most of her peers. First, a full ride to art school. Then in her junior year, inclusion in MOMA's prestigious celebration of student artists: "The Upstart Gallery". By any measure she's doing phenomenal for her age, however Violet has not been able shake her existential dread of dying a failure. She knows that commercial success as a fine artist isn't about being good enough. It's not even about being great. It's about being seen by the right person at the right time. And so she has set her sights on The Ritual... not to embellish on her own talent, but just to have a chance to show the world what she can do.

Real life, baby

There is a documentary called "Empire of Dust" that the "It's all so tiresome" meme comes from. The film shows the futility and frustration that the Chinese logistics worker, Lao, experiences while trying to rebuild a crumbling road with local workers. The contract required that the workers be native Congolese, but they quickly run into difficulties because they don't take the work seriously and instead steal from the company. Workers stand around aimlessly, gravel crushers sit idle, loaders can't count, people steal gasoline and fuel, and they often quit mid-shift. The entire documentary is basically just them trying to get some gravel, against the backdrop of a crumbling society with defunct railroads, abandoned infrastructure. At the end of the film, as the gravel was delivered, they lamented the fact that billions were spent on the Congo without any return on that investment. The locals said that it's only a matter of time before even the Chinese will give up on them. The film ends with Lao speaking... "On payday, the men go crazy. Two days later, they come asking to loan them money. They don't hold their drink that well, they just like drinking. They stand at the bar drinking a beer and then start shaking their behinds. It's wonderful" 11 years after the film aired, the 296-kilometer National Road 1 was completed, but many of the road projects still face major maintenance issues, potholes, and quality problems. Some areas experience modernization and urbanization, but again, entirely dependent on Chinese investments. Today, in 2026, the core structural situation, cultural issues, and the dependency dynamic are still exactly the same. So yes... no matter what help is given to them, what is built for them, it eventually degrades and collapses.