Notices by John Socks (john@socks.masto.host)

@ai6yr I heard about the gas leak, but oil seeping across your kitchen floor is a whole other thing!

There is some weird shit going on out there.

I think this is a pretty good graphic. We could quibble about the years and positions but yeah.

TRUMP: Our message is very simple. If you come illegally into the US, you're going to jail or you're going back to where you came from or perhaps even further than that. You know what that means.

Me: I don't actually know what that means? Is that merely a reference to unpleasant third countries? Or is he going full on "we're going to kill you?'

To add to all the other problems of plastic recycling, nobody knows what's in them. These are not always simple plastics. There may be any number of additives or contaminants upstream in the plastic cycle.

https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/recycled-plastics-contaminated-toxins-water/

This dragon fruit flower snuck up on us. Pretty impressive that it's growing out of a 2 gallon pot.

I think dragon fruit is supposed to be one word, but I'm letting speech to text win these days.

So far this is only at the New Republic, but it's the narrative we would like to see picked up more broadly:

@ai6yr @jbaggs @sundogplanets

It's amazing how everything is online now. Even a light pollution map. We aren't actually in the worst zone .. pink not white.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

"Musk asserts AI will make search redundant in comment on Google Search share dipping below 90%"

Did Tom's Hardware actually write this story without mentioning the recent and strange political skews Musk's AI has taken?

Does anyone here know Tom? Ask him what's up.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/musk-asserts-ai-will-make-search-redundant-in-comment-on-google-search-share-dipping-below-90-percent

Tom really should have linked to this story:

"For hours, chatbot Grok wanted to talk about a 'white genocide'. It gave a window into the pitfalls of AI"

Because after all, what happens to us if everyone does start relying on AI rather than search, and then the AI tells us what it(*) wants us to know?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-25/grok-ai-accuracy-doubts-after-white-genocide-claims-fixation/105325028

"58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump’s meme coin. 764,000 have lost money, data shows"

That's pretty much the transfer every time. It runs from the many to the few. I guess it comes down to how many understand that, and are just taking their long shot to be in the few.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/06/trump-meme-coin-crypto.html

"Study shows 90% metal pollution drop in Adirondack waters five decades after the clean air act"

From the underlying paper:

"Although recovery has been slow, particularly for Pb, metal deposition in the ponds has declined significantly. Sites that have ceased major watershed activities have achieved a > 90 % return to baseline metal deposition in the last 5 years."

Amazing.
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-metal-pollution-adirondack-decades-air.html

@cwebber it's the safest form of social media as well ;-)

Sad. Even though electric cars are now faster, they will say this is the "fastest mustang ever" and charge $300k in celebration of fuel burning.

https://www.howtogeek.com/mustang-gtd-enters-production/

"According to 538, which compiles weighted averages of quality polling, Trump at the time of writing has a net unfavorable rating of +1.6 (unfavorable 48.1 percent versus favorable 46.5 percent) and a net approval rating of +3.3 for his presidency (approve 48.9 percent versus disapprove 45.6 percent)."

A sea change in US politics.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-contradictory-poll-numbers-2030472

CNN Business has an article on Corey Doctorow's enshittification. Apparently seriously and without irony they have an HP printing service ad in the middle of it.

It is 2025, why is Apple still letting fake FastTrack messages through to old ladies with iPhones?

WTF.

In the latest example the sender had a Hotmail account, how hard is that to exclude?

Our LA fire evacuation may end tomorrow. That would be nice. It would be a week. On the one hand that seems long, but on the other it matches the amount of dog food I took. So maybe I knew.

I think people, especially outside the area, might make the LA situation into too much of a climate change story.

This is our climate, and people living here know it.

You might know the story of Goleta’s Great Simoon of 1859. While we don't live in a desert, in the coastal areas, we have a desert behind us in a deep history of dramatic weather events. As you may have heard we have whole ecosystems evolved for fire.

Suburbs are not evolved for fire in the same way, making an inherent risk

It's amazing how many air sorties they've done against these LA fires. I've seen almost continuous operations against the north side of the #palisadesfire. That fire has been trying a slow march up the Sullivan road/canyon and into the valley. Amazing effort, especially given all the fires in the area.