jolly_good_ginger Retired Army Vet Dropping Facts

A wide ranging convo between me & @rabble.nz for @revolution.social → past, present and future of Blacksky (the community + company) → mutual aid, susus, people's assemblies, etc → building protocols for people wherever you get your podcasts.

Sunset on the Swiss Riviera #Montreux 🏔️🇨🇭

Remember the part in “V For Vendetta” when the late-night comedy host gets canceled for upsetting the dictator?

From the 1878 World Fair in Paris, this solar energy concentrator could heat water and produce steam. It also produced ice. The inventor, Augustin Mouchot, also experimented with the conversion of solar energy into electricity, nearly 150 years ago!

Every billionaire is a staggering policy failure.

From 1987: SOLAR, the Sony Walkman WM-F107, was a cassette player and stereo radio powered by an integrated solar panel. It was equipped with a rechargeable battery for rainy days. #RetroSolar

This self-powered lampshade is both a light and a solar panel. Unfolded like a flower and applied to a windowpane during the day, it charges. At night, folded like an origami, it powers a light sounce. The solar light invites us to practice a ritual that follows the daily cycles of light.

Haven’t seen this before. Spotted at an airport in Europe. They must be using AI / robotics at the end point to auto-sort the waste. More on the role that sustainable robotics can play to scale climate action: climaterobotics.network #climate #climatetech

Somewhere over the Swiss Alps this morning 🏔️🇨🇭

On my way to Bangalore for our Regional Summit on Climate Innovation & Environmental Entrepreneurship. This is one of six regional summits we’re organizing across the globe in September. We = beVisioneers: The Mercedes-Benz Fellowship. #climate #inclusion #diversity #climatetech #india #asia

Cannes? St. Tropez? Think again: Montreux, Switzerland 🏔️🇨🇭

Time-laps of the sunset in the Swiss Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

"The only known solution to creeping authoritarianism is broad-based, peaceful, geographically dispersed mass engagement by everyday Americans. That’s it. That’s what works." Story: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Tonight’s Moonrise over the #Swiss #Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

ZEUS 2.0 depicts a bolt of lightning touching the ground, suspended beneath a drone. The symbol of Zeus' ⚡️ representing divine power in Antiquity, is updated. The sculpture draws our attention to the link between belief and knowledge, proposing a new entity as a "superior" divinity: technology.

Opening scene of the next Godzilla movie… oilprice.com/Latest-Energ...

History book from 2054:* In September 2025, the “Health Alliance” formed by just a handful of States on the West Coast would go on to include 13 more States in rapid succession. Thread 🧵 * Caldwell, Amina. Fault Lines: America in Crisis, 2020–2040. New York: Columbia University Press, 2054.

Moonrise over the Swiss Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

Montreux by night on the Swiss Rivierra 🏔️🇨🇭

US “leadership” has slashed R&D budgets by 10 of billions of dollars. Europe is almost doubling its Horizon R&D program, to the tune of 200+ billion dollars.

Wow, had missed this news… cc @romainmurphy.bsky.social, @simulacrandrew.bsky.social, @heatherleson.bsky.social

Reaching for the moon. Still my favorite statue in Montreux, #Switzerland 🏔️🇨🇭

From a slow walk in the vineyards this morning. Sending peace and tranquility from the #Swiss #Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

They’d rather let the country burn than have undocumented people fight wildfires

👏👏👏: The Swiss collect more than 90% of all glass for recycling! 🤦🤦🤦: Over 80% of this glass is exported to other countries for recycling. This represents 288,000 tons of glass exported annually, equivalent to 11,000 trucks. So, Switzerland is now considering reuse. www.rts.ch/info/suisse/...

Cement is one of the most widely used materials in the world — and one of the biggest polluters. A fellow at beVisioneers: The Mercedes-Benz Fellowship is creating a cleaner alternative by replacing 1/2 of cement’s most polluting ingredient with rice husk ash and other CO₂ absorbing materials. 🧵

Platform Capitalism has been the dominant digital model over the past 20 years. Large corporations have acted as central gatekeepers, extracting value through data control, monetization, and vendor/user lock-in. The #beckn protocol represents a quiet but radical inversion of this structure. 🧵

Independent media is shrinking. Voices from the Global South are being silenced. Global Voices is resisting that silence — and we need your help. #KeepGVStrong globalvoices.org/donate/

Here are some of the most curious and promising places to gather solar energy, according to the Swiss. 1. Why not do something with the unused space between Switzerland’s 5,300 kilometres of railway tracks?

Today near Rochers de Naye in the #Swiss #Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

From sunset to moonrise in the Swiss Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

A journey across Africa to highlight 54 books by women from each of Africa’s 54 countries. These books have broken boundaries and contributed significantly to the growth of African storytelling.

Somewhere in the Swiss Italian Alps 🇨🇭🇮🇹🏔️

"AI has become the infrastructure we build around not because it was integrated into our national systems, but because nothing else has been. It has filled the space left open by under-resourced schools, inaccessible mentorship and uneven digital policy" www.linkedin.com/pulse/kenyas...

And I chatted to Dr. Patrick Meier (@patrickmeier.bsky.social) from the Climate Robotics Network about how #robots can help scale action on climate change. 🤖 www.robottalk.org/2025/02/28/e... #Robotics #Climate #Recycling #Environment

Good morning! I'm in Uganda to visit family and friends. But depending on your perspective, don't worry or I'm sorry: I'll be back by the end of the month. See you soon, NYC.

[Amen] You work in tech & you want to ‘do good’. But you don’t get to decide what ‘good’ looks like, you have to care more about the system you’re trying to change than tech. You have to be open to the possibility that your services aren’t required untangled.substack.com/p/lets-get-r...

This is your regular reminder that if you are the smartest person in the room, go find another room. You are not going to run out of people or rooms.

My sentiments exactly: “AI for Good”, but good for Whom? Good PR for big tech corporations? Good for laundering accountability? Good for the atrocities the AI industry is aiding and abetting? I spoke at this Summit just once years ago and that’s all I needed to see how much of a joke this all is.

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy. I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

“Rudy Fraser built BlackSky as a decentralized digital community rooted in mutual aid … BlackSky prioritizes open-source governance and digital sovereignty, aiming to scale beyond any single platform by centering community needs above traditional platform logic.”

Right now in the Swiss Alps 🏔️🇨🇭

Manhood Mamdani’s books had a big impact on me while in grad school, so I was ecstatic to learn that Zohran Mamdani is his son. Bonus: going by the handle Young Cardamon, Zohran did some hip-hop in Kampala, singing about social issues. Learning this made my day. www.okayafrica.com/young-cardam...

Please share with early-stage founders: The Reductive Seduction Of Other People's Problems "If you're young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course you'd be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable." brightthemag.com/the-reductiv...

we're living through one of the greatest technological revolutions in the history of mankind and it's not AI

I think about this figure a lot.

Visit ShowYourStripes.info to find your climate change warming stripes & post to Bluesky

Switzerland killed independent study proving that upgrading to an electric car is good for the environment. The report’s verdict was clear: replacing over 90% of existing petrol/diesel cars with an equal-sized EV would save CO₂ immediately. electrek.co/2025/06/19/s...

Meanwhile..