In the case of the small solar farm I’m about to put in on my homestead, the biggest blocker is now apparently the support structures for the solar panels… that’s the part that costs the most and where there are major delays on availability. What a world we live in 😆

Talarico makes me proud to have grown up Texan, at the same time a little sad that he is describing a category of Texas man that has declined dramatically of late. I remember growing up my Dad taught me the same things Talarico described: he was always helping out folks from church or neighborhood

Ah NZ.

I was first shocked by police behavior back in 2011 during Occupy Wall Street, because I was still young and naive. Unfortunately it took me until Black Lives Matter in 2020 to realize it’s not just one city or department. It’s all cops, everywhere. I hope others learn faster than I did

Only a sadistic American brained capitalist would look at real estate prices going down and ask "what went wrong?" Too many modern capitalists want their money to grow without them doing anything to deserve that money growth. Sorry your poorly maintained property isn't passively growing in value.

Thinking about this video: The implication is that these “hopeful” mechanisms are just cope and distraction, most likely from revolutionary change. But these are the mechanisms that pick up the people after capitalism drops them. Additionally, strong communities are the basis of strong revolutions

Worst predator vs alien reboot ever:

Passed by only a single vote huh? Absolutely embarrassing state of affairs in the US right now. www.wkrg.com/news/bill-ba...

Sounds like people panic buying the essentials before the price goes up even further. It goes without saying the next stop is a severely depressed economy. This guy is so clueless, that it would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sickening to see him grinning about credit card spending

In the 2000's, The Bravery recorded The Sun and The Moon, and released what I believe to be one of the strangest and most emotionally fascinating albums I've heard. Every song was recorded twice. The Sun version is bright, rousing, and outgoing. The Moon version is haunted, nocturnal, lonely.

On the "blue button" vs "red button" discourse many people are moralizing about pressing the blue button. Sorry to break it to you, but if you live a typical normie life, you are already pressing the red button every single day, and not even to save our own life, but for the sake of convenience.

Reading some threads about decrease in quality of fresh veggies and fruits at supermarkets in the US. The scary thing no one is mentioning yet: if supermarkets are selling low quality food ingredients, what do you think they are using as ingredients at factories for highly processed food products?

“Crises are the moments that build trust, or erode it, and we face a future of rolling shocks. Governments need to act to reduce vulnerability to known risks, and invest in the expertise to tackle hard-to-predict events.” One of many hard to swallow but critical truths in this report.

Worst so far… this isn’t just about one ignorant and evil man. The fact there was ever a dispute is the problem. He’s backed both by active supporters, as well as passive supporters among the set of people who are willing to sit back and be comfortable under the whims of a corrupt and evil system

In Korea, when the president declared martial law after midnight and erected barricades in Seoul, congressional reps from all parties ran into the streets, yanked ak47s from the army at the barricades, broke down the locked door to Congress, repealed the martial law order, and arrested the president

You are so close to the truth dear Redditor. Now let’s think more: Firework shows are specifically designed to sound like war. It’s not an accident. It’s purposeful prep and desensitization. If they are switching to drone shows now it’s because they expect the sound of war to change soon.

No Kings. No Jesters. No Child Molesters. #WeSayNoKings

Calling it now: impending nitrogen shortages are going to lead farmers to rely on use of biosolids from sewage as fertilizer. The thinking will be “better to do this than for people to starve”. Next stop is a mass public health disaster from PFAS and microplastic contamination.

Currently reading one of Jane Jacobs' lesser known books, written decades after Death and Life. Her loathing for cars (and Robert Moses) did not diminish with age. "Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities."

Someone in NYC should do interviews with middle-school kids who take the subway to and from school every day, to see if they have any advice for Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy who can't seem to go a single day without pissing himself in fear over them.

Wow it is so blatantly obvious when Cursor Auto mode switches from Opus 4.6 to a dumber model. Night and day difference in code quality, and adherence to instructions. I can't go back, only Opus 4.6 for me now.

Reminder that Anthropic’s “radical leftist demands” are to ask the US to please not use their models to make autonomous killer drones or do domestic surveillance on American citizens. How far has America fallen into fascism that these two requests are now considered “radical”?

The infamous question mark emails at Amazon are probably one of the biggest examples of this. Nothing like a single "?" to set of a flurry of work and investigation lol

Thinking about whoever said that by accepting a meal from people and then arresting them ICE agents broke a cultural taboo that was invented by, like, the first humans to set up a tent

I get tired of saying it, but I’ll say it again: the nature of oppression in America is that they workshop it first on Black, Latino, Asian & Native people. But it is always, in the end, coming for everyone.

ChatGPT has gotten frighteningly good at being the interface for a search engine. The workflow on the left was easy, accurate, and nearly instantaneous. It took a couple search queries and the tools filter (which most people overlook) to replicate and get Google to find what I was looking for

Yeah I voted for Suozzi. He was the best bad option on a terrible ballot. I’ve been keeping my eye on him since. He’s consistently catered to MAGA’s over the immigrant families and average New York City residents he claims to represent. This isn’t a one time failure, nor an accidental mistake.

I don’t completely buy it. If they only wanted to rig elections it wouldn’t be that hard to just run a fake Democratic candidate, get NGP VAN access and grab data themselves. That takes time though. I fear it’s far darker than just rigging an election. It’s something they want to do sooner

There’s a lot of people who are willing to abandon democracy if it means that capitalism stays dominant. There’s a small number of extremely wealthy people who will abandon both democracy and free market capitalism if it means they can keep getting richer The latter are using the former

Bingo. Does anyone else remember the era when tech workers actually thought that maybe we could make the world a better place? Now it’s full mask off evil as capitalism has finished consuming the open source and tech nerd communities that used to be cornerstones of what was built.

OpenAI exec James Dyett calling out the cowardice

jfc

Yes name and shame… but also remember that it’s by design. Democrats keep a rotating set of sacrificial “villains” to be the fall guys who keep the status quo going. It’s not a new pattern. We’ve seen this for a long time.

There is a theory that all of civilization started so as to stop psychopaths. We gathered around campfires to sing and dance and tell stories, because in the light of that flickering flame we could see the true faces of the psychopaths among us. They were unable to engage properly with the group

NZ geothermal power hit a new record on 28/12/25 – 29,367 MWh, meeting 31% of demand for the day. Looks like there will be more records set in days to come. Note a lot of capacity was offline in Nov-Dec for maintenance.

One of my favourite anthropological theories is that camp fires with conversation, songs, story telling, and dance, are an ancient defence against psychopaths.

Jesus famously did not disrupt proceedings at a place of worship and call out religious hypocrisy

Soon: “Pokémon…. Go to the protest” New app for keeping track of your collection: “Gotta catch ‘em all!” Watch as they evolve… from agents, to criminal charges, to prison. Okay I’m done now, but someone will have fun with this.

Back when I was working at AWS there were a number of protestors that would interrupt the NYC AWS Summit to protest ICE, among other things. This was years ago, and at the time I thought it was a little bit silly. They were right though.

Something I've been turning over in my head for a while: All systems converge toward the expectations embedded in their narrative environment. No reward functions, constraints, safety mechanisms, or checks and balances can fully prevent this. Yes this applies to both AI and politics.

Sometimes when I make a decision early, at first I doubt myself, but in the long run I’ve end up with no regrets: - I quit Twitter right after Musk bought it - I moved out of the US to NZ soon after Trump took office No regrets on either decision. I feel lucky to have been early, rather than late

So many downgrades between these two scenes but a few things stand out: - Twitter on the big screen in the background? Lmfao… - What are those uncomfortable looking golden dining room chairs? You know they probably feel terrible - Are they just hiding behind a curtain instead of in a proper room?

How many US government assisted/directed coups have there been in your lifetime?

This video had me hooked from the beginning, throughout the 55 min duration. Absolutely incredible engineering went into this machine, and the story of how it was built and refined, shows why it is the single most impressive thing that humans have built so far: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUH...

This is interesting, and I’ve noticed this as well. On the other hand, I wonder how much of this is because we’ve just become accustomed to every online interaction with a “real human” being a confrontation, so a “yes and” style of improvisation with a non critical speaker actually feels strange

One of the discoveries that has been getting more attention recently: solar panels last longer than originally expected. As long as they aren’t physically destroyed by hail, there are surviving solar panels from the 90’s that are still at 80% capacity, 30 years later. Oil industry FUD has failed.

In case it’s not obvious: America after 100 million deportations would look like peak Detroit urban decay: boarded up buildings and closed shops and decaying infrastructure that can no longer be supported by reduced tax dollar income. Crime and squatters would be all that remains in a dead economy

day one in mamdani’s new york

All our soft animal bodies ever wanted was the feeling of strength in numbers. Who knew our progress would come with so much chaos?