Just a reminder, the “major questions doctrine” is bullshit, used by the partisan conservatives to ignore the plain text of a statute whenever they want to engineer an outcome. Don’t pretend that this is anything less than make-believe judicial bullshit.

Thanks, Biden!

Paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/LAUew

I just want to tip my hat to Elizabeth Lopatto’s writing in this piece. I miss following her on twitter and had forgotten how spicy and on-target she can be. Good stuff.

Just stop building in Phoenix already. We’re just creating the next round of climate refugees.

The current Indian government has prosecuted or detained employees of foreign companies in the past for actions taken by the company. There is a real risk here.

I do think the Indian government has a point if you read the lawsuit. This is a ongoing lawsuit and the page taken down had info on it and a discussion page where people were talking about the ongoing lawsuit. The lawsuit says that this “…Complicates and compounds the issue at hand.”

Hard disagree. Ongoing lawsuits often have complicated issues, but are nonetheless topics of public concern. It’s sometimes inconvenient for governments and large corporations to have the public aware of the lawsuit and the underlying facts and issues, but that’s no reason to impose a gag order.

Frankly, whenever I hear a court give vague rationales like “complicates the issues,” I assume they judge just doesn’t like the criticism. That’s what it sounds like here.

I know that the state is trying to manufacture standing so it can bring the claim, but this is a deeply cynical and unethical argument that I would be embarrassed to make.

Back atcha, buddy, you know this sub removes posts that don’t use the article title? Take it up with the title editor, not me.

Cybercabs are two-seater vehicles

Just two seats why? Has this so-called genius ever taken a cab with friends ever?

I don’t like how every news story about the layoffs uncritically parrots the company excuse about the strike, as if decades of regulatory capture, short-term business strategy, and poor engineering and supply chain decisions by successive waves of over-paid executives didn’t sink the company.

¿Por qué no los dos?

Kamala’s addiction to thin mints

Relatable.

This comment is getting downvoted, and I don’t oppose nuclear, but I do think it’s worth noting that the nuclear energy sector has still under-priced the costs of nuclear waste management, transportation, and storage. Engineers don’t have practical methods of building storage containers and buildings that can last as long as the half-life of nuclear waste (1,000-10,000 year), and the long tail of storage costs has not been priced into the cost. Typically, this does end up being paid for by taxpayers over the course of many years. No energy generation system is without downsides, but it’s worth acknowledging them.

If you get a paywall, a paywall-free link is here: https://archive.ph/hoaIs

My take on this story: dragging this reactor out of mothballs is expensive and risky, and operating at 50+ year old reactor is risky. The company that owns admits it isn’t even solvent enough to run it, much less ensure the risks of operating it. Microsoft and the 3 Mile Island owner are basically asking for a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy for an enterprise—so-called AI—that eliminates jobs and is used more for revenge porn and deepfakes than it is for any societal good. This is a bad deal.

Miranda’s two sons and Halfkenny’s son, neither of whom were Boston Public School students

This alone is kinda messed up. It’s easier to functionally steal from other students when your kids don’t even go to that school system.

So the community guidelines aren’t being enforced? I still think that’s a problem. The federated video sites I’ve used (mostly peertube instances, tbh) all have community guidelines, and if they didn’t enforce them, I wouldn’t use the sites.

Oh, they wouldn’t. But Sib might . . .

This is just the Tiktok ban all over again. The problem is not the Chinese apps/cars spying on you, it’s ALL the apps/cars spying on you. If it’s creepy to have a foreign power with that much access to our data, then it’s creepy for a company to have it too.

Aviation biofuel is mostly a distraction. Any serious effort to decarbonize the transportation industry would focus on a scalable system, presumably high-speed rail.

(And whoever is thinking about being a smartass, don’t you dare come at me with bullshit about trans-ocean flights, they obviously can’t be take by train, but biofuel is still utterly incapable of supplying even only ocean flights. It’s not ever going to be a viable product. We’d be better off trying to scale up carbon capture than try to use all our arable land to grow crops for fuel.)