This analysis is fascinating: it breaks down how when you fill up a petrol car most of the energy never moves it.
Petrol car: 13–21% of the crude oil's energy reaches wheels.
Electric car on today's UK grid: 43–45%.
Electric car on wind+solar: 77–80%.
via Jan Rosenow, Professor of Energy & Climate Policy at University of Oxford
My mate had a big gong in his bedroom.
"What's that?" I asked.
He said, "it's a speaking clock"
"How does it work?" I asked.
He picked up a hammer and hit it, and two seconds later a voice came through the wall shouting,
"For fu*k sake! It's half past two in the morning!"
Huh. Strategic Reserve is currently below 1980s levels, the lowest its been since inception. That's BEFORE he's releasing that 17 million barrels.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil_in_the_strategic_petroleum_reserve
Knowing that some good friends and colleagues still rate Mastodon, and with Meta's social media sites only getting worse, I figure it's time to start posting here again.
To kick things off, here's some recent #paleoart of the iconic #sauropod Cetiosaurus in a Jurassic landscape. All the plant recons are based on work by @Palaeojules. The composition is heavily indebted to a famous (non-palaeo) artwork.
It is imperative that our survival be disconnected from employment and connected instead to citizenship, or even better, a basic human right to existence. The arrangement we have of dependence on finding an employer to sponsor our survival cannot and should not be considered by anyone as being just.
I hereby initiate my campaign for David Tennant to play Puddleglum in Greta Gerwig's Silver Chair
2026, the year of air gapping all of your major appliances.
As someone who has become a small business owner within the past year, and whose COBRA benefits will be expiring in less then a year... yup. Shit is fucked.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4ixt3dbvauaisudrqpffal2e/post/3mxpeavazhk2w
If LLMs make us stupid because you can just pay them to do stuff without thinking, does that mean rich people have always been stupid
Good news from the Badlands! Today, October 6, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, a Lakota nonprofit based on the Pine Ridge Reservation, plans to return 50 bison to nearly 40,000 acres in the Stronghold area of Badlands National Park.
https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2026/10/03/lakota-nonprofit-returning-bison-40000-acres-badlands-national-park-restore-native-prairie/
https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social/post/3mx7w3w7uy224
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From resistance team of US Natl Park Svc
500+ char posts not resent
Unaffiliated w/ AltNPS
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#AltNPS #Coup #Activism #NationalParkService #FederalGovernment #USpol #Trump
You can’t afford a home because homes stopped being homes and became investments for people who already own one
I'm looking for work, please boost!
I'm a software engineer with 35 years of experience. I've worked across an unusually wide range of domains: mobile game backends, privacy-preserving data platforms, high-throughput COVID testing infrastructure, email and account systems, e-payment processing, job marketplace systems, and bioinformatics. I pick up new domains quickly and have a history of doing it repeatedly. I understand how to turn business needs into engineering requirements.
I prefer to work remotely but I am open to an in-office job in the Philadelphia area or especially in Philadelphia itself. I've often worked remotely since the 1990s and can operate with minimal supervision. Several of my favorite projects were self-directed: I identified the need, built the thing, and shipped it. My preferred time zone is America/New_York, but I'm flexible.
Some of the many, many technologies I've used are: Python, Perl, TypeScript/JavaScript, Haskell, Go, C, Java. Postgres, MySQL, SQLite. Flask, SQLAlchemy. AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS, SQS, EC2). Docker, Git. Github and Gitlab.
I've also repeatedly picked up new languages and stacks as needed: Haskell for differential privacy research, TypeScript for a 24/7 AWS Lambda system, Flask for my most recent employer. I've become productive with new systems over and over, and I can do it quickly.
I'm a published author (Higher-Order Perl, Morgan Kaufmann), longtime blogger, and conference speaker with a reputation for making complex ideas clear.
I am a U.S. citizen.
My résumé is at https://
plover.com/~mjd/cv/Mark%20Jason%20Dominus.pdf
mjd@pobox.com
Thanks!
#OpenToWork #remoteWork #softwareEngineering #Python #backend #hiring
#fediHire
#getFediHired
just begging you to zoom out and keep it on camera 1
"If companies are only taxed on profits, not revenue, then citizens should only be taxed after paying for rent and bills." #kenoath
I'm thrilled to have won the @BritishEcolSoc 2026 Book of the Year Award with my debut nonfiction book The World Beneath our Feet! This award is given to the book that has had/ or is expected to have the greatest influence on the science of ecology in any two-year period.
I'm absolutely buzzing, particularly since the book has only been out for a month in the UK and releases in the US in two days!
Quoting the BES press release:
"The World Beneath Our Feet takes readers on a journey, from freshly fallen plant litter, down through the topsoil, and finally into the permanently dark, undisturbed underworld of the subsoil. Along the way we meet some of the world’s strangest inhabitants and learn about the important roles they play in supporting us and the natural world, from nutrient cycling to agriculture and carbon storage.
Hefin Jones, a BES Marsh Ecology Book of the Year judge said: ‘Frank Ashwood’s The World Beneath Our Feet is an engaging and accessible exploration of soil biodiversity and its importance to ecosystems and human society. Its major strength is in Ashwood’s ability to communicate complex ecological processes through vivid descriptions of the largely unseen organisms that sustain soils.’
Ken Thompson, another BES Marsh Ecology Book of the Year judge, said: ‘There are jaw-dropping facts on every page and throughout the book, Ashwood’s narrative is greatly enlivened by his personal encounters with soil life. These adventures lend his text an immediacy and excitement that makes for an entertaining read.’"
Why not pick yourself up a copy of the book, and see what all the fuss is about!
Some people shouldn't be allowed to make diagrams or graphs.
Posting this from another platform via Mrs. Betty Bowers.
The major platforms—Facebook, YouTube, and X—are all refusing to show the trailer for the upcoming documentary that eviscerates the ridiculous pest Elon Musk. So I guess we have to do our part to make sure it is seen.
Newly unsealed court documents from Authors Guild v. OpenAI reveal that both OpenAI and Microsoft executives knowingly trained their AI models on pirated books (including all sorts of art theft) while privately admitting that the technology threatens writers' livelihoods. Yet, OpenAI & Microsoft went ahead and released their shity AI on stolen work despite knowing it was illegal. https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-v-openai-top-execs-knew-mass-book-piracy-was-illegal/
Stealing from small guys & pocketing billions per year is how they get filthy rich.