PLASTIC RECYCLING IS A LIE. Aside from bottles in certain states, little else is recycled. This study shows that 95% percent of plastics end up in the trash. Much of it is dumped in developing countries. https://www.beyondplastics.org/news-stories/may/04/us-recycling-plastic-waste

“The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the […]

Jalopnik: No, Defensive Walking Isn't The Solution For Road Deaths "...Everyone can agree that this is bad, which is why so many organizations have committed themselves to curbing road deaths. The problem is how those organizations, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration itself […]

They locked this firefighter up for FOUR WEEKS without due process (finally released). He had proper paperwork and status to work in the US--visa being processed, he was contributing to helping fight fires in Washington. He was ONLY released because of legal action. "The attorneys argued […]

Next up in the anything-but-Epstein distraction plan: Send troops into Portland. "President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, and to immigration detention facilities around the country, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” and escalating a campaign to […]

The Onion on point as always.

This is really bad. It won’t get the popular opposition the Kimmel incident did, but it’s way more sweeping and authoritarian. This is an effort to bring the full force of government down on any and all opposition to this administration. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

From Teen Vogue, which is doing some of the best journalism about the extremist cult now in charge of the U.S. government: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/men-dressed-as-ice-agents-to-assault-immigrant-women-horrifying-trend We need to assume that every masked person kidnapping people off the […]

On October 26 I will be giving walks and talks at the Presidio Visitor Center, as part of a month of SF Stairway events! Walk #37 features Tunnel Tops and Battery Bluff Park in the tenth edition of Stairway Walks in San Francisco, and I include free things to do in Further Ramblings for each […]

As terrible as all the pollution from reentries is, I have to say that it's REALLY FREAKING COOL that I now know all the right people to ask to find out what exactly reentered when a journalist sends me a reddit video from a random Canadian city. I don't know the answer yet, but I know who to […]

Hmm, watch out for self driving Tesla vehicles in parking lots 😬 (also, nifty database of AI incidents that caused harm from MIT... lots of nasty stuff actually in there. ) https://airisk.mit.edu/ai-incident-tracker#explore-dashboard

Another study finds AI is not leading to workplace productivity gains and is making people mad because their colleagues have to waste time cleaning up their bullshit: www.404media.co/ai-workslop-...

A thing I have noticed while riding the bus lately: Young women (older teens, maybe?) address each other as "bro." I guess the meaning of it has mutated and it no longer signifies "narcissistic, entitled scumbag" then.

So.... anyone off the top of your head know the feasibility of migrating a Mastodon instance to a new domain name? Is it generally better etiquette to run the 3-month decom rule and spin up a new clean instance, or do a DNS redirect? #mastoadmin

Fediverse! I need some help! I have a fellowship to go to Aotearoa New Zealand for a few weeks, and also an offer of an additional fellowship to give lectures around NZ. This is INCREDIBLY EXCITING!! ...but I have a lot of animals! And it's going to be […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

@futurebird hey, the history of printing is one of my special interests! they're called 'signatures' because, especially in the old days, books were printed onto full-sized, un-folded reams of paper called 'folios'. they would arrange the page so that when it is folded to suit, it forms the […]

I wrote a little bit more about the Kimmel firing, and how the "big four" major networks are being extra feckless right now because they've been lobbying for years to eliminate the few remaining media consolidation limits we have (including one major rule preventing them from merging)

Make America Hepatocarcinogenic Again rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/cross-the-... For the last week or so, there’s been an awful lot of chatter about the hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine and whether or not it should be administered to newborns.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/115224321548138026 Take note that @phanpy doesn't support composing native quote posts yet. It's a lot more work than expected. And also just trying this out from Mastodon web.

One of the natural consequences of blurring the line between state censorship and “cancel culture” was making it easier to engage in state censorship. I leave it to your imagination whether the people who did that intended that result or were merely recklessly indifferent to it.

In July, I reported on the arrest and storied history of two key members of the prolific "Scattered Spider" cybercrime group -- U.K. residents Thalha Jubair, 19, and 18-y/o Owen Flowers. Today, U.K. prosecutors charged the duo for the hack of the U.K. transit agency Transport for London (TfL) […]

time sensitive: the Pacific Crest Trail (and indeed, all our national parks and wild lands) needs your help. There's proposed rulemaking at the US Forest Service that could introduce roads and development into currently roadless areas, making wild lands less wild and irrevocably changing the […]

#blind Fedi, recommendations for family games for holiday next summer with 3 generations from seven years old to grandparents with one person who has no sight at all. The traditional family favourite boardgames won't work, so anything with an audio version would be great. Thank you!

Question: Are there any services similar to #patreon that are based in the EU? I am increasingly uncomfortable with having such a huge chunk of my side income being reliant on a US-based company.

A grim reminder: these people will never be satisfied. There’s no point at which they will say “we’ve won, let’s enjoy life.” They will always be looking for someone else to punish, to revile, to dehumanize. They’re empty without that.

very much this we need to continue building the media we want ourselves, and (because you've now seen what happens when it's tethered to ads and consolidated corporate power) it largely has to be crowdfunded

Caltrans District 10 District 10 Hybrid Bicyclist Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting Stockton – The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District 10 will host its next Bicyclist Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) meeting from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 8 […]

As this CJR story explains, the youth of Nepal chose a new interim government during chats on Discord following violence and anarchy triggered by a social media ban. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/discord-nepal-protests-social-media-ban-discord.php

Who could have figured out that automatically downloading half the internet and ten thousand always-changing dependencies every time you build could actually be a weakness?

One pretty foolproof way to know your government is fascist is when your government tries to punish you for calling it fascist.

If you're in the U.S. and haven't gotten the 2025-2026 COVID vaccine yet, experts are recommending you schedule it NOW before Friday. If you live in a Republican-controlled state, I STRONGLY recommend you get it before Friday if you can, before the ACIP restricts access. #COVID19

Maybe think twice if you have Wyze Cams and pay for their cloud subscription. If you have a supported camera, maybe consider the Thingino firmware. #privacy #wyze #wyzecam

We just released Mastodon 4.4.4, 4.3.12, and 4.2.25. These versions contain a few bugfixes, notably related to quote posts display in 4.4. Full release notes and update instructions are available on the GitHub releases page. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases #mastoadmin

#enshittification Next month, Microsoft will begin automatically installing the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices outside of the EEA region that have the Microsoft 365 desktop client apps, Bleeping Computer writes. "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app integrates the AI-powered Copilot […]

Reflect Orbital thinks that having "only" full moon brightness skyglow caused by their satellites anytime they are shining down near you is no big deal! This level of light pollution is "only" as bad as near the Six Flags amusement park in suburban Los Angeles! Why are astronomers even […]

For the record. My posts were not even about Kirk directly, but about America's apathy towards political violence, and the coddling of white male shooters and hate peddlers. I was fired because I mentioned race: white men and violence-- that was my "gross misconduct."

Oooh, I hate it when I see these... (open source/community projects which are aimed at getting free volunteers to help provide wealth to the founders or heads of those projects). This is a letter from contributors to the Organic Maps project. "Concerns About the Future of the Project: As […]

"the crash risk was 8.3 times higher for e-bicycles than for e-scooters [per mile] ...of 686 reported crashes with e-scooters and 35 with e-bicycles." Maybe also some self-selecting/user bias, whether people think they know how to ride a bike or scooter users wear helmets less and avoid […]

Good job amateur radio operators for your letter writing campaign to the FCC! https://www.openresearch.institute/2025/09/12/defending-amateur-radio-spectrum-the-ast-spacemobile-battle-continues/ AST SpaceMobile is now only allowed to have 20 satellites use amateur radio bands for operations for […]

Good job, Kaiser! “Kaiser says no limits on COVID vaccine for its patients” #healthcare #covid #kaiserpermanente #sfba https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/kaiser-covid-vaccine/3946558/

The Great Firewall of China has apparently experienced a great data spill. > 500gb of source code, work logs and internal communication records were leaked. Some light reading for the weekend /s https://gfw.report/blog/geedge_and_mesa_leak/en/

A functional press would accurately label Fox News as GOP propaganda, but when you read ANY mainstream news story that mentions fox, they're always treated like a legitimate news organization as if doing anything else would be impolite or radical hyperbole

Clam gardens have been used by Pacific Northwest native tribes for thousands of years. They build rock walls to trap sediment, at the right height to be immersed at high tide but also exposed for harvest at low tide. This encourages burrowing clams to settle in […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

All this suggests is that the shooter wants people to believe they're a far-left ideologue. Maybe they are; without more evidence, we don't know. But a far-right "accelerationist" wanting civil war, more hatred, more violence would do the exact same thing.

DW: Vietnam opting for electric motorbikes over fossil fuel A transport revolution is brewing in Vietnam as the country races to swap millions of gas-powered motorbikes for electric two-wheelers. The transition could transform cities, the economy and daily life. "...Vietnam is preparing for a […]

New, from me: At least 18 popular JavaScript code packages that are collectively downloaded more than two billion times each week were briefly compromised with malicious software today, after a developer involved in maintaining the projects was phished. The […] [Original post on infosec.exchange]

"authoritarianism" is often discussed as its own special thing, when what we're really talking about (as I wrote about back in January) is an unholy alliance between fascist extremism and corporate power:

anyway, now they effectively control CBS, on their way to dominating the entirety of mainstream media