Notices by Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)

@hyc @ariadne @slyecho @dalias

I’ve read a little bit about the trend towards having a solar roof on golf carts – if they have lithium ion batteries apparently it can extend the range a non-trivial amount; but again, that’s because the vehicle itself is very lightweight

(and slow: not something you’re going to use to accelerate on to the highway 😂)

@kp

Yeah, in the US parts of this were already in and out of place for centuries -- as with all the groups that in different ways and to different degrees (slaves, native americans, interred Japanese families, among others) were the bad others that needed to be crushed and contained

In 1945, the US War Department realized that its soldiers stationed in Europe fighting the Nazis probably needed a good pamphlet explaining what fascism was, and how it occurs ...

... so they wrote one

and in it, they noted that America was not at all immune to this

So they explained how fascism would come to the US

Heather Cox Richardson writes about it in the latest edition of her newsletter: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-26-2024

"Imagine if you and your partner discovered that the same lawyer was representing *both* of you in the divorce, while also serving as the judge, *and* trying to match with both of you on Tinder. Now imagine that when the divorce terms were finalized, lawyer got your family home."

@pluralistic on the loony and ruinous conflicts of interest that come from Google's monopoly position online

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/19/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/

A good analysis of five ways that RFK could undermine vaccines and seriously risk public health (gift link): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/health/rfk-jr-vaccines-hhs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bE4.HiIB.xkvxWcjWmAIG&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

The one I’d never thought of is weakening legal protections for vaccine manufacturers. It’d require congressional approval, but lawsuits, even frivolous ones, could make vaccine makers say hey we don’t need to be in this business

(this highlights, of course, our big dilemma: the way huge for-profit pharma companies play such a crucial role in public health)

@lednaBM @kookster @pluralistic

Since — Cory’s made this point many times — then the folks running Bluesky actually have to pay attention to what the folks using Bluesky want

because now they could face serious competition 😅

@lednaBM @kookster @pluralistic

I think some people indeed would pay for Bluesky!

The problem is I suspect it’s a minority … and like many corporate social networks, Bluesky would probably like to grow *fairly* quickly, and “free” does that better

Mind you if they made it so you could really leave Bluesky and take all your followers with you …

… then *that* would probably be an even bigger preventative against enshittification than a paid option

@lednaBM @pluralistic

yes, one enormous advantage of a federated service like Mastodon -- and all fediverse projects -- is that they're self-funded by the people who form the community of users

self-funding by the community has its own limitations bien sur

but it doesn't have the mass deformations we've seen with every major social network so far

I can't imagine how bluesky will avoid running into the same monetization problems in the long/medium run ...

An excellent layperson's breakdown of how Bluesky works, beneath the hood ...

... specifically, what's decentralized about it (content storage, for now) and what, for now, isn't (the part that queries for updates in user's posts, and then assembles it into a feed)

https://anderegg.ca/2024/11/15/maybe-bluesky-has-won

via @pluralistic

holy *crap* this one is dark

but: good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ZA76dttys&t=10s

A wall clock that displays your ping rate: https://github.com/turingbirds/ping-clock

Terrific in-depth piece in the Economist arguing that the transition to lower-carbon energy sources is likely to be a lot less expensive than many estimates predict

The tl;dr is that most models of the cost of shifting to renewables tend to underestimate just how damn cheap renewables get, and how fast ...

... while overestimating economic growth ...

... and, they don't compare a baseline: i.e. the cost of maintaining/expanding *existing* fossil-fuel sources

https://archive.is/ztYC5

Waymap" is like a form of Google Maps ...

... except for the visually impaired

Works indoors: It loads a map of where you are indoors, and uses pedometer-style tracking to determine where you are -- then gives directions in your earbuds

It only works if the indoor location has already been mapped, which is the catch

Interesting idea -- designed by a guy whose sight became significantly impaired later in life. I wonder if other folks would want to use it

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/how-the-blind-inventors-answer-to-google-maps-could-help-us-all-nclf28tbq

Over at @404mediaco, Jason Koebler writes about the flood of Elon Musk-focused AI slop ...

... images showing an AI version of Musk unveiling UFOs, $7,000 tiny homes, a "water engine", etc ...

... that appear to have, as far as Jason can tell, massive numbers of likes and comments and shares from real, live Facebook users

https://www.404media.co/email/48aeaa0a-7e25-421a-8abe-d61bb9fccc94/

Rooftop solar may be growing even faster than we think ...

... because in many cases globally it's (relatively) permissionless: Local governments don't need to approve it ...

... so their stats are off: They're unaware of tons of cases of people putting panels up

When analysts used satellite imagery to measure how much solar existed in South Africa, it was nearly 2X what the government thought existed

Item #12 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-26-cryptophasia-wigner-crystals-and-how/

sine and cosine visualized in a soothingly repetitive CSS animation

https://codepen.io/schwiiiii/pen/MWNqrMv

@luckytran
Yep — I live a few blocks from this park, and if you want even crazier climate news …

… the city hasn’t cleaned the leaves on the curb of the street for three weeks, and the drought has made them so dry …

… that last week a fire started at 2:30 am in the leaves outside my house, probably a tossed cigarette butt

A leaf fire started; it spread under the car, and ignited the gas tank …

… and the car blew up. I woke up to the WHOOMP

the car was a ball of fire

@mekkaokereke

yeah this is truly superb advice

finding sources of joy and knitting together/serving one's community are a hell of a lot more resilient than individualist prepper stuff

For folks still on Twitter -- or who are trying to reconstitute their networks on Bluesky or Threads -- probably/possibly the most persuasive part of @pluralistic's argument ...

... is that these non-portable/can't-leave-with-your-followers services are just a huge *risk* to use

How many hours, days, years will you sink into finding and cultivating a collection of awesome people?

That's time your risk uttetrly *wasting* if you can't leave

how much time do we have to *waste*?

Here, @pluralistic neatly distills the real problem with Bluesky ...

... which is that, because they don't offer a way to quickly leave *and take all your followers with you*, as Mastodon does ...

... it risks becoming a trap. You spend months, years, building up connections to tons of cool people and then Bluesky enshittifies, not because of any individual terrible decision, but because of a ton of small forced-hand ones

The essay: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast