Notices by Waldo Jaquith (waldoj@mastodon.social), page 3

So *now* can we have a 13-member SCOTUS?

It is profoundly evil to criminalize homelessness, doubly so when providing no shelters, as in the case that was before the Supreme Court. There is no coherent moral or legal argument to be made in support of this.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges…” —Anatole France, 1894

Hell of a mystery.

Our democracy is fine. It’s weird that you’d ask.

Timothy Mellon is 82 years old and only started funding campaigns with Trump in 2018. I wonder what he sees in Trump?

…Oh. Ohhhhh.

One bullshit artist on Georgetown’s faculty, with the help of some pro-gun organizations that exist only on paper, appears to provide a major pillar of evidence that judges use to justify eliminating gun restrictions. His research is nonsense and his work is funded by the gun lobby. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/us/gun-laws-georgetown-professor.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0k0.2FGZ.X-6pzJp9ecZN&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

A blind colleague recently joined a new federal agency. The agency is refusing to let him use the NVDA screen reader (free, open source), because it's created by an Australian non-profit which is not registered on SAM.gov (because they're not a vendor).

If you know of how a federal employee has gotten approval to use NVDA, would you let me know what magic words were required?

It's 2024, and Major League Baseball is finally integrating the record books, which will no longer protect white baseball players’ stats from the superior performance from Negro Leagues players. As a result, Ty Cobb is no longer recorded as the leading hitter, and Babe Ruth is no longer recorded as the best slugger—those titles both now belong to Josh Gibson. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2024/05/28/negro-leagues-statistics-officially-incorporated-into-major-league-record-book/73882293007/

@emilygorcenski They have learned nothing.

My mentions are now filling up with people who would like me to know that EVs are better for them. That’s swell. They’re better for me too. But they are not actually better than ICE vehicles for most people, largely due to the challenges of charging if you can’t charge at home.

We EV evangelists do nobody any favors by pretending that they’re almost always better than ICE vehicles for most people. They’re not! They will be soon, as charging infrastructure rapidly improves. But not now.

Heat pumps and induction ranges are two strong examples of products that are better environmentally *and* better products than their gas/oil competitors, for almost everybody. (EVs will get there, but they’re not there yet.)

Because carbon emissions are free, it’s important that low-emission new products be clearly better than the polluting status quo. It’s a high bar, it’s not fair, but I’m glad we have heat pumps and induction ranges as a model.

what https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/realestate/iv-drip-therapy-luxury-building.html?unlocked_article_code=1.s00.FaUn.tjF8wddfI6oc&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

@krusynth I had no idea this was a thing.

@emilygorcenski It’s progressing slowly, and is largely to the credit of a small number of individual actors, but Charlottesville is finally opening up the river along High Street. The exception is Albemarle, which helped a lot by establishing the little park up 29 to create a take-out spot for canoes and kayaks.

@emilygorcenski In that case congratulations on getting out of that swamp

Artax! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/nyregion/horse-rescue-connecticut.html

nelson_ha_ha.mp3 https://wapo.st/4btMo8Z

@emilygorcenski PARC is what prompted me to mention this. It’s amazing to me that Xerox once did cool stuff. I only know them as a boring company that makes boring machines and bad software for government.

I’m reading a history of the development of the transistor, and I’m struck by the fact that some of the most important quantum physics research in the world was happening at Bell Labs, in the 1930s and 1940s, in service of improving telephony.

Is there any equivalent of this today? Is any major corporation funding Nobel-winning basic scientific research as a routine business practice?