barracuda!

this hurt me physically

Related: one reason I have an OCD diagnosis is that I am compelled to make a small clothes pile besides the place I'm sleeping, whether that's a hotel bed, someone's couch, a hospital bed—Clean Clothes Hill everywhere I go because I simply cannot feel properly settled in without one.

solar is the future

Cory Doctorow has a very long, wonderful post on the enshittification of solar (and how to stop it) that I urge you to go read. Here's my favorite part:

Fossil fuels are valuable because they are a chokepoint on the entire productive economy. Anyone who's seen the Mad Max documentaries knows how this goes: even the most mid, paunchy, straw-haired boomer with volcanic bacne and shitty dress-sense can seize power over the whole population if he controls the supply of one of life's essentials.

The fossil fuel industry is a magnet for people who love a chokepoint. These people are born tollboth operators and they never stop hunting for turnpikes. They are landlords for ancient corpses, charging the whole world rent to keep the lights on.

He goes on to point out that these people are starting to go for large scale renewables because they involve rent-extraction—someone's gotta own the land around the river you dam or that you plant windmills on, the uranium mines needed to power nuclear plants.

Note that China is going all-in on renewables as a country and not even mainly to export the tech, but for internal use; they'll be producing half the world's renewables in five years. The USA is forfeiting this race, thanks to you-know-who.

(Speaking of enshittification… has anyone visited BoingBoing in recent years? It's covered with crappy ads and looks completely low rent—who is even still reading it now, let alone paying for the privilege? Cory got out just in time, but I still don't know all the chisme behind that; lemme if you do.)

appalled but not surprised

I spent ten years in Catholic school with a few hours each week dedicated to studying religion—graduated an atheist but also a socialist because hey, Jesus was convincing—so it's always interesting to read John Pavlovitz, who spent three decades pastoring in white Southern churches, on the state of American Christianity. He recently wrote this excellent polemic on the canonization of Charlie Kirk:

The White Conservative Church in America has slowly eradicated the compassionate, peacemaking, power-opposing, hypocrisy-confronting Jesus from its movement. 

It has replaced his open heart for the poor and the sick with their open contempt for our most vulnerable; substituted his expansive welcome of diverse humanity with a gated community of white supremacy, and exchanged a God who so loved the world, with one who serves America First, and only. 

And since MAGA Evangelicals have created and embraced a bastardized, Frankensteined religion made of power, greed, white supremacy, and intolerance of difference, it has needed to manufacture saints who embody it all.

One of the many ways Democrats have failed at messaging is allowing right wingers to define what Christianity is in recent years, which has nothing to do with the New Testament and everything to do with capitalism and racism.

I've long noticed that WWJD doesn't appear in conservative social media bios anymore, just "Christian", a cross emoji, or their favorite Bible verse; I wonder if it's because on some level they know Jesus wouldn't approve. Meanwhile believers on the liberal side of things generally just don't signal at all, which goes better with Christ's admonition to be known by your fruit.

Further reading: former WaPo/Atlantic writer Philip Bump lays out the statistics on the critical role Christianity plays in Trumpism.

a few other things

Data engineer Mike Boyle on how to predict Citibike station bottlenecks with max flow data analysis: "This means maintenance teams can focus on a small number of critical stations rather than treating all 2,200+ equally, and bike rebalancing efforts can target the specific routes that prevent network-wide cascades."

OG Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani is back to blogging over at Note to Self, which she describes a blog about creativity over productivity.

"If reparation is about making repair, it’s about education, mental health reparations, making sure that white people and society fully understand the legacy of slavery. The damage of slavery manifests itself in current racism."

A delivery guy in Texas stopped a kidnapping from turning into murder at a motel: "Witnesses told KTAB and KRBC [the suspect] ordered items like trash bags, zip ties, bleach, a hatchet, and more."

The Trampoline History Blog has a five-part series on how competitive trampoliners Ron Munn and George Nissen got a full-sized trampoline atop the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the Seven Great Wonders of the Ancient World that's still standing, complete with photos of then 63yo Nissen doing somersaults. (via Ironic Sans)

Ireland did a basic income for the arts trial and found it a very solid investment: for every €1 invested, society got €1.39 back in the form of taxes generated and savings in social welfare payments. It's almost like investing in people pays off…

"When a plus size influencer who has made their entire business on being plus size gets thin, we’re not entitled to talk about their body changes. They don't owe us this explanation. However they’ve built their entire platform on body positivity. So when they’re getting thin and ignoring it, what’s going on?”

After 38 years, R.A. Salvatore says he just might be done writing Drizzt books, at least for the near future; he'd much rather be playing D&D with his grandkid. (Also he stopped reading his Facebook comments because they were so angry!)

Punjabi Disco, the holy grail of British Asian music, was recently unearthed and will be rereleased at the end of October on a US label! It's a real banger, and I can't wait to listen to the entire album.

song of the day

Chappell Roan's been performing Heart's anti-industry slimeball absolute masterpiece of a rock song Barracuda on her current tour—and she brought Nancy Wilson out to play at her Forest Hills stop, with her all-female band kitted out like 70s/80s big hair rock stars. You're welcome.