@RoyBrander@urbanists.social

Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Jul 29, 2026

Replying to @davidho@mastodon.world

@davidho@mastodon.world Dump the whole idea of a "range" while you're at it - obsolete since you didn't want to run the stove and oven from a single firebox. http://brander.ca/range/

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Jul 05, 2026

Replying to @adub@beige.party

@adub@beige.party My blog at the time is very short, but links to two papers about CO2 and COVID. https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/04/co2-ventilation-research-virus-airborne-life-haddrell-celebs/?utm_campaign=rss They note that it isn't just a great proxy for the air too close to be safe from infection... ...it turns out that CO2 is like an acid/base buffer and keeps the air chemistry friendly to COVID, it lasts much longer in the air, above 800. Yes, COVID is no longer feared, but I can't imagine any reason that conclusion doesn't apply to colds and flu viruses. edit: link just fixed

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · May 03, 2026

Replying to @therightarticle@mas.to

@therightarticle Yeah, and Iraq used to have a healthy Christian community of some 700,000-800,000 strong. They're all gone now, dead or fled; their churches are empty. There were many posts, somewhat like yours, back in 2004-8, when it was happening. America did not relent, nor give them refugee assistance. So, I'm quite sure they'll watch this, too, without even adverse comment towards the IDF.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · May 03, 2026

Replying to @hal_pomeranz@infosec.exchange

@hal_pomeranz The latter is the historical Luddite. The former is the hysteria Luddite, a heavily-sold infotainment product. Every complaint since about any technology, including lead in the gasoline or DDT in your crops, is immediately subjected to Luddite hysteria.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · May 03, 2026

Replying to @dunedinmouse@mastodon.nz

@dunedinmouse@mastodon.nz I recently had an exchange on substack where somebody was complaining about wikipedia not being harsh enough on a Tanzanian socialist initiative in the 60s, that may have fed some, but much-reduced the crop output, was abandoned, nearly had famine. I mentioned the Great Depression as a failure of free markets; they responded with "Tanzania had forced relocation", so I mentioned the Okies economically forced to move to CA. Response: "That was just a story book". Sigh. I quit.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Apr 23, 2026

Replying to @maj@cosocial.ca

@maj Ambitious. Can we start by getting government officials and offices to stop using it for communications? All three levels of government, and the school boards, and indeed all educational institutions? Have ANY of those customers left? It would be a start.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Apr 17, 2026

So I'm torn: "Maga Jesus" is shorter, punchier. Trips off the tongue. "Maga Messiah" with the extra syllable, doesn't, but does have alliteration.

Maga Jesus

66.7% (2)

Maga Messiah

33.3% (1)

3 votes Poll closed

View on urbanists.social

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @mitch@hachyderm.io

@mitch @pluralistic Nothing, It's only a money issue in countries with their own carbon, and a tolerable expense for most. Mostly, you need to prepare to mock and laugh at those who were talking about oil investments a few months ago. Trump just sold more electric cars, solar panels, and heat pumps than any other single actor in history.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Apr 04, 2026

Replying to @randahl@mastodon.social

@randahl@mastodon.social Nothing is stopping any member of Congress from just flatly threatening any military officer accepting orders to commit such plain war crimes will be prosecuted for that crime by the next administration. The military believe themselves completely immune to consequences, after the torture report - understandably. So they will ignore all the Geneva Conventions and Laws of War until their fear of the Law is established.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2026

Replying to @koen_hufkens@mastodon.social

@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social Everybody's talking about open source and academia, but I immediately thought of how many for-profit company bosses would just take ruthless advantage of a guy like that and work him into the ground.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 17, 2026

Replying to @prime@mastodon.gamedev.place

@prime@mastodon.gamedev.place Some would say, "can you really understand how the disk is used if you don't know the underlying disk drivers, the way it allocates sectors"? We have all been working in a metaphor, a pretend disk drive that just has files and directories and all layers that make that possible are hidden. Yeah, I took sectors and blocks and the MBR and the sector tables and how virtual memory works, the paging algorithms...but they never did anything, I just used the metaphor.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 16, 2026

@pearlrotter@mstdn.ca

If Avi Lewis is forthrightly going all the way to a wealth tax, it may save the NDP. It would certainly galvanize me.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Feb 26, 2026

Replying to @AlisonCreekside@mstdn.ca

@AlisonCreekside@mstdn.ca And Senator Paula Simons can't even get them to DISCUSS not using Twitter in all 3 levels of government. And schools. Go figure.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Dec 27, 2025

Replying to @fatsam@mstdn.social

@fatsam@mstdn.social Very close to "thinking fast" in the "...and slow" split. The pandemic really separated out people, and parties, and whole cultures, by their ability to think using facts and figures, rather than wishful-thinking. The anti-vaxxers, (like creationists) with their acceptance of all the rest of medical science, except the bit they have a giant conspiracy theory about, could be the best example of Heinlein's "bowl of milk".

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Dec 21, 2025

Replying to @flargh@mastodon.social

@flargh@mastodon.social The first of this might have been Dave Thomas memoirs of his time on SCTV; just blown away by how decent John was. Wandered out of their little studio in Edmonton once, across the alley - Dave found him just chatting with the couple across the way while waiting for his call.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2025

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn @Paulatics @dkmackinnon I'm your basic IT engineer who happens to know a bunch of the "OpenBSD" security guys, but not a security professional. You might read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/18/phone-data-privacy-customs/ ...they keep the phone image in a database for 15 years. I was giving the technical time-needed, but Newsweek says they take 30 minutes in practice. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-if-u-s-border-agents-ask-your-cellphone-n742511 ..article notes how rare it is, bringing us back to my post that it may become more common now, because it's getting easier.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2025

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn @Paulatics @dkmackinnon If you grab everything, the copy runs faster, that might be simplest. It barely rises to the level of "AI" to write a program that looks at folder names, email-titles, searches every byte of text for keywords or word-combinations; using a database of 10,000 confiscated phones to know every trick every drug dealer ever tried, and of course every smuggler. Tries top 1000 passwords. Their every rule-of-thumb encoded in the program. While U wait!

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2025

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn @Paulatics @dkmackinnon Well, I just pulled every photo, download, and document off my phone in 1.8 minutes, but then I only had 2 GB. The speed it ran at would have carried 6.6GB off the phone in 300 seconds, five minutes. Of course, it would depend on what you're carrying around. Even then, if they skip photos and movies an d just go for text files, emails, etc, 6.6GB is a lot. And you can hand over your password or be refused entry, that's long established. No privacy rights.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2025

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn @Paulatics @dkmackinnon I've done it. A straightforward app uses the plug into the phone to copy every data directory to a faster computer that can search for keywords and combinations. The "five minutes" does depend on how many GB are in the phone.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2025

Replying to @teledyn@mstdn.ca

@teledyn @Paulatics @dkmackinnon Your question implies that nothing has changed from past administrations and we can rely upon our past experience. Nobody has been told to pick out certain foreigners before just for political review, so they didn't. Now, somebody "dressed like a leftist" might find your phone can be checked in 5 minutes flat by a computer, and of course the NSA has been recording your every email and post for 15 years. It's what we were worried about when Snowden showed it

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 20, 2025

Replying to @Paulatics@mstdn.ca

@Paulatics We must immediately form a brigade of these women to weaponize their anti-disinformation powers and send them in waves against the American border. Each will require an Instagram consultant as their control officer back in YPW Command Central, who will ensure their brave sacrifices receive maximum reach and impact. Each will be rewarded with a small role in one of our TV shows starring preposterously attractive police, lawyers, and doctors. Fortunately, these shows need them all.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Feb 06, 2025

Replying to @jessebot@social.smallhack.org

@jessebot I never knew, after 34 years of using bash! But, then, fact is, I never looked up the names and history of almost any open-source contributor. Most of open-source contributors are unknown and unthanked. Thanks for making Brian Fox Appreciation Day for me. It's a really nice, tight, clean, clear piece of code that has saved me hundreds of hours of drudgery.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Feb 13, 2024

Replying to @Lana@beige.party

@Lana@beige.party When The West Wing started, the intention was to have Martin Sheen barely seen, barely welcome in meetings because everybody would be too nervous. It was about the Team Behind The Scenes, what was behind that appearance, or speech, or bill-signing. Even though Sheen played a Fantasy President - Nobel Prize, Chess Grandmaster, and savvy pol - even he couldn't "be President"; its far too hard! Ten specialties, it takes a team to be President. And Trump CANNOT build one. Talk about THAT

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Dec 25, 2023

Replying to @jym@climatejustice.social

@jym@climatejustice.social @Daojoan@mastodon.social @parismarx@mastodon.online Is it possible to put together a specific list of journalists that could be interviewed with the question "After journalists were finished apologizing for the Iraq War assistance, after they admitted they accepted 20 years of the 'Afghan War Lies', why did you fall for this? There were many warnings at the time, did you look for them?"

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Jul 17, 2023

Replying to @lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social

@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social I keep meaning to unfollow because so many of these are so dumb. But then you make it all worth it with the best facts out there.

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 28, 2023

Replying to @andymatisz@masto.nu

@andymatisz@masto.nu @48kRAM@oldbytes.space ...turns out to be on the "Kanopy" streaming service, that is associated with my local public library - I can watch it for free at home! Not sure how widespread those Kanopy/library deals may be, so this might be a very general announcement. Check your library catalogue!

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Mar 27, 2023

Replying to @48kRAM@oldbytes.space

@48kRAM@oldbytes.space 1960s TV experience: -Turn set on. -Wait 30 seconds for tubes to warm up. -Watch what is on. -Turn set off. 2020s TV experience: -Turn Set on. -Wait 40 seconds for it to boot. -Try to find things in grids of thumbnails -Get paralysed by choice -Realize hour has gone by and you need food -Turn Set off

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Roy Brander🍁 @RoyBrander@urbanists.social · Feb 15, 2023

Replying to @mbonsma@mastodon.social

@mbonsma@mastodon.social You've slipped a decimal point: Canada has 31 million people over age 15, so 85% of that would be 26.5 million licensed drivers. I'd recommend rhetoric from the documentary, "Radiant City", filmed in Calgary, but about all North America. The great line is that every mortgage in the 'burbs should come with a red-ink, all-caps warning above the bottom signature: EVERY ADULT IN THIS HOUSE WILL NEED THEIR OWN CAR.

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Roy Brander🍁

Posts

So I'm torn: "Maga Jesus" is shorter, punchier. Trips off the tongue. "Maga Messiah" with the extra syllable, doesn't, but does have alliteration.

Remote instance