In respect to Trump's recent pardon of former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez, here are some search key words it might be useful to look into to understand the background. ZEDE. Próspera. Marc Andreessen. Peter Thiel.

Unfortunately, reality is only apparent *after* elections.

this looks great

Hank Green coming in hot with the best summation of the situation at hand in regards to renewables + energy pricing. #solar #energysky youtu.be/39YO-0HBKtA?...

I really hate the term "sideloading". I preferred the original term, which was "installing software on a computer that you own"

my mom periodically asks me for true crime documentary recommendations by texting me "any good murders lately" and if I ever lose my phone, the person who finds it is going to think I'm a serial killer with a weirdly supportive mother

name a non-LotR character who is a cool and good person but would nevertheless set land speed records for getting fucked up by the One Ring

"Kill the Messenger"; Outer Space edition. The Trump administration wants to get rid of the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, which measure global atmospheric CO2 and plant growth. Your Tax Dollars, burning up on re-entry, because The Powerful dislike the results. www.npr.org/2025/08/04/n...

Purposeful. Specific. Aimed. youtu.be/vglaT7awScY?...

Partisanship is like an accent. If you THINK you have no accent, it's probably just that the accent you DO have, is invisible to you.

Politics!?!?! In My STAR WARS!?!?!

If you see this, post a sword. #booksky

Taking a queue from software companies that count every pirated copy as financial loss of that many dollars, The current administration now counts every pill sized as that many lives saved. Of course, to see the problem with that you need to be a fan of Math.

US FDA suspends milk quality tests amid workforce cuts reut.rs/4cHdnz3

I was doing some research and reading some old NASA documentation from 1976, and they were talking about an international program to study Thunderstorms, and they used the phrase concerning scientists from "all over The Free World"... and I got all verklempt.

Goodhart's Law “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

My main problem with the "Blue Doomer" crowd (other than how boring and tedious they are in their endless repetition) is that all the things they say are useless to do - voting in the midterms for example - are exactly what a Trump true believer would want me to think. They manifest their own doom.

Awww Maaaaan! Penguin-Gate only made it to the A-Tier. youtu.be/8JuuGjRhSYE?...

People are criticizing Trump about wanting to spend 92 million dollars on a military parade, especially given the current focus on preventing waste. But I think its important that we put this in perspective... after all, 92 million dollars is only like, 3 golfing trips to Mar-a-Lago.

Alright, I think people knew of the tariff pause and traded it beforehand. You can see before Trump posted "buy" on Truth Social, traders opened $QQQ $TQQQ and $SPY calls RIGHT BEFORE THE NEWS, someone opened $SPY 509 calls, expiring TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Those calls are up 2100% in one hour.

Relevant every day.

When so much of understanding the modern world depends on "Follow the Money", it is inevitable that Money would make itself harder to follow. www.icij.org/inside-icij/...

This is of course an evolving story, but my current takeaway on Penguin-Gate... A bunch of entitled finance bros and Trump sycophants grabbed a big data set off the web, and used AI tools to apply an over simplistic formula to it.

A Sad reminder: Musk spent about $25 Million on the Wisconsin Court Elections, and lost. That's $25 Million down the drain. at this rate, he can only do that [checks math] thirteen thousand, six hundred, and sixteen more times.

Such a distillation of the con: guess who got Musk's $1 million check yesterday? The head of the Wisconsin College Republicans. meidasnews.com/news/republi...

Every time I see Ghibli style generative AI online, I am reminded...

"It's an Autocracy." "But it's efficient!"

"If you are a citizen and you are casting doubt on the importance of due process, remember this: you need due process in order to prove that you are a citizen" snyder.substack.com/p/the-evil-a...

I'm a fan of a YouTube channel called "Technology Connections". The host has been doing videos for about 10 years, and I find them petty interesting. He gives useful information about consumer electronics (cont)

Trump admires Putin. Trump is a wannabe Putin. For Trump to be more like Putin, America has to be more like Russia. That is the work in front of them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKBM...

New York Times: "I.R.S. to Begin Laying Off Roughly 6,000 Employees on Thursday" “Under an executive order, I.R.S. has been directed to terminate probationary employees who were not deemed critical to filing season”

The fallout from the Thursday Massacre has upped a notch.

I know its fruitless, but I can't stop imagining a world where Sanders won the 2016 Democratic Primary (which he Lost to Hillary Clinton by 12% of the vote. ) Does he loose to Trump, just like Clinton? Maybe? Is the trajectory of the Democratic Party changed? Probably.

Consequences. youtu.be/O515-0H8O18?...

Good. This is how you change the Democratic Party for the better. Even if the challenge fails, it has a chance of moving the establishment in the right direction. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

Of interest: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I no longer think I can change people's behavior by pointing at their religion, and noting their inconsistency. I think people are changed by the world. To change people you have to change the world. I struggle with the idea of how to change the world for the better, to make better people in it.

A thought: The end of the Cold War, and the piecemeal breakdown of the alliance structure built in its aftermath, means a return to Pre-WWII American Military 'strategy' (or a lack thereof). E.g. Adventurism in service to business interests.

For anyone who doesn't regularly follow Inuendo Studios (and you should) youtu.be/0YFdwfNh5vs?...

Being new to Bluesky, and not having been a Twitter user, the 300 character limit irks me. But also, I FEAR it. Will it change me? Will I start avoiding any profound thought that cannot be expressed in 300 characters or less? Do I let such disappear into the ether, sacrificed to the gods of concis

Ya know... If Globalization is breaking down and supply chains need to shrink, trade is going to become regional. Now seems like a really good time to insure that we have our best possible relations with our biggest trading partners. I wonder who those are? [check notes] Canada and Mexico. Oh no.

Street art seen in Frankfurt, Germany.