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• Post #4222915

  Wait they're putting Ross Douthat on 60 Minutes, what stage of jumping the shark is that?

• Post #4222914

  RE: https://wandering.shop/@adapalmer/117004100207131652 This is such great news. Africa really is the poster child for where solar *should* be breaking through. Most of the continent is tropical, large swaths are desert, and its grid-based power infrastructure still trails far behind most of the rest of the world. With oil's ongoing instability, I had real hope that we'd see an African solar boom. And lo and behold, we have.

• Post #4222913

  RE: https://hcommons.social/@jnl/117004441279957034 Just riffing on this . . . I have an AI/VR solution that could actually save the world. Take all the billionaires and invite them to a conference where they're told they're going into augmented reality chambers that allow them to more effectively manage their assets and gain maximal oversight of global trends. Then we plug them into a basic version of The Sims and tell them it's the new Metaverse, feed them cafeteria...

• Post #4222912

  UNC should never have hired Bill Belichick as he is completely and totally unfit to be a coach of a college sports team. UNC should have fired Bill Belichick after the rumors came out about him playing favorites and hiring his cronies. UNC should have fired Bill Belichick after an abysmal and embarrassing season. UNC never should have let Belichick stuff the Athletics office with his cronies. UNC should have fired Belichick many times before now, but didn't. But better late than never....

• Post #3969334

  https://www.404media.co/ai-fiction-is-easy-to-detect-because-its-stupid-and-bad-research-finds/?ref=the-abstract-newsletter

• Post #3761079

  RE: https://social.coop/@ZaneSelvans/116905949173214025 Fantastic. I've been watching sodium ion batteries for the past couple of years as an essential step forward in battery storage. Lithium is terrific for small batteries but rare and damaging to mine, so getting enough for grid-scale batteries was always problematic. Sodium, to put it mildly, is neither. Portable electronics batteries and probably car batteries will continue to be lithium for the foreseeable future but it's a huge...

• Post #3534793

  In endorsing El-Sayed, AOC is continuing to do all the things that it always pissed me off that Bernie never did. She's not just sitting in her safe position yelling at people to adopt her views or whittling around legislation with amendments. She's actively, effectively building up a caucus of winning candidates to expand progressive power. #uspol

• Post #2430391

  RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116556075235791688 This is one of those cases where the best outcome would be both companies burning to the ground.

• Post #2358505

  RE: https://social.coop/@MichaelTBacon/116551245020135214 Because it's Sunday, I'm going to put this another way with a scriptural reference. You can't use a sword as a plowshare (the cutting part of a plow). It's the wrong shape, doesn't have a curve, and will probably break after a couple of passes through hard soil. To fulfill Isaiah's prophesy that "they will beat their swords into ploughshares" one doesn't simply p...

• Post #1928144

  In case you missed it, acting ICE head Tom Homan was up yesterday complaining that ICE is having a hard time meeting the quotas they're setting because of campaigns telling people their rights and how to resist raids. In case you're wondering if the little things you do could possibly make a difference, know that they already are. EDIT: Link to quotes added: https://www.themarysue.com/making-it-very-difficult-to-arrest-trumps-border-czar-supposedly-hates-that-migrants-know-the...

• Post #1812984

  RE: https://assortedflotsam.com/@smeg/116488609327705013 Something that US-based technological thinking has never in a century come to grips with is that technological developments always, ALWAYS are more effective when they augment human capacity rather than replace it. There are and will be useful things for language models to do. But the corporate lust for replacing humans with bots is ideological, not grounded in any actual understanding of how technology works. It's not my realm...

• Post #1812983

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_org/116488108791744339 This is a warm up to recruitment to a Cthulu cult, isn't it?

• Post #1812981

  Y'ALL I just heard a WHIPPOORWILL. In DURHAM. It's been DECADES since I heard a whippoorwill here. Even with climate change pushing them higher into the mountains, amazing things still happen.

• Post #1812976

  RE: https://mastoart.social/@ravachol/116492812935328742 May or may not be banksy. Whatever it is, it's great.

• Post #1812975

  I'm not really a big fan of Graham Platner as a person. But Mills quitting is terrible news for Chuck Schumer, and that alone is good for the country. #uspol

• Post #1812973

  Getting to the point where I don't want to do any kind of extended writing in anything but Markdown. I can format it in something else later if I have to. But all the GUI tools just get in the way. This may or may not have something to do with me cutting my word processing teeth on WordPerfect 3.2 and the "reveal codes" key. Markdown feels pleasantly familiar with that.

• Post #1732758

  There's this scene from Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood that has stuck with me for years. In the dystopian future, someone invents a genetically engineered headless, 8-breasted chicken creature that's used to mass produce chicken meat called ChickieNobs. The main character finds it revolting and wrong but later in the story ends up picking them up for dinner semi-regularly because they're so cheap and convenient. There's so much about how society responds to t...

• Post #1732757

  There's a lot more to go underneath this but "software brain" isn't a bad shorthand for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RKGWg2Ex2U

• Post #1732756

  Dr. Tressie is dropping a new documentary short on the W-S Black Panthers. https://indyweek.com/news/culture/power-to-the-people-yall-winston-salem-black-panthers/

• Post #1669362

  https://bsky.app/profile/psychicozma.bsky.social/post/3meici7vgxk2o

• Post #1378153

  RE: https://wandering.shop/@susankayequinn/116420902745022245 Informal, social economies are for everyone!!! Including you!!!

• Post #1209683

  Impeachment articles filed against Hegseth. Good. This probably won't work. But it might. There might be a handful of Republicans for whom his extreme dereliction of duty is a bridge too far and at least send it to the Senate. Normalize impeaching incompetent shitheads! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/15/democrats-pete-hegseth-impeachment #uspol

• Post #782752

  Whatever you're building right now that brings people together to make a small thing better, keep building it. Whatever you're maintaining right now that supports your community, keep maintaining it. May there be joy in that work. Even if it feels useless, keep at it. You have no idea how far reaching the effects might be.

• Post #782585

  I have to believe this made the headline writer's day. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/activist-pushed-2020-election-fraud-claims-convicted-election-fraud-rcna265134

• Post #732460

  I echo @404mediaco's take on the death of the Metaverse: "A few things on the end of Horizon Worlds, the metaverse that Mark Zuckerberg believed in so much that he renamed his company: 1) It’s very sad that many of the people who worked on it have been unceremoniously laid off because their leaders appear to have no idea what they’re doing 2) lol 3) lmao, even" (Edit: link added) https://www.404media.co/rip-metaverse-an-80-billion-dumpster-fire-nobody-wanted/?ref=...