Tessera

maggie bell

@thesecondpineta.bsky.social

💻 clean energy / cleantech comms 🏡 Berlin, Charlottesville, Rome et al ☀️+💨+🔋>🔥 🚲 &🚶& 🚄 > 🚗 Arm Ukraine! 🇺🇦 Pet language peeve: disinterested ≠ uninterested

31 Posts1963 Follower 953 Folgt

Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 2mo ago

Put wind or solar on the land that grows ethanol corn. Run electric vehicles off the power. Use 99% less land per mile driven, at far lower cost. Let farmers use the freed-up land to do actual farmer stuff, like growing real food for humans and being good custodians of land for future generations.

Richard Waite@waiterich.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Also E15 cost savings are an illusion. Yes E15 currently costs less per gallon at the pump but 1) it’s less energy dense so cars don’t go as far per gallon & 2) it’s more corrosive so gas stations would have to upgrade tanks/pumps & would likely pass on costs to consumers, raising prices at the pump

Chelsea Harvey @chelseaeharvey.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I worked hard on this story, it's important, & I want to share it. I'm also finding it difficult to put it out there without this context: Just as I wrapped up final edits last week, I got word that a friend vacationing in Arizona had died after overheating on a hike. www.eenews.net/articles/dea...

Deadly heat is coming. But funding to save lives is not.

Emergency officials are searching for loopholes to save lives as President Donald Trump slashes programs.

eenews.net

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 2mo ago

The idea that only nuclear or gas can provide "firm power" -- the last line of defense against the relentless advance of clean energy -- is going the way of the dodo. There are no arguments left. The only reason to fight progress now is corruption & raw political power.

24/7 renewables could happen sooner than you think

Grouping wind, solar, and batteries together can already be more affordable than building a coal or gas plant in prime locations, new report finds.

canarymedia.com

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 2mo ago

This is more money than all annual Department of Energy geothermal power, solar power, and wind power research and development spending, combined.

Bloomberg News@bloomberg.com · 2mo ago

President Donald Trump is preparing to use Cold War-era authorities to dole hundreds of millions of federal dollars to support coal-fired electricity as well as US exports of the fossil fuel

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 2mo ago

This is condescending and, most importantly, completely ignorant of the actual, real and material reasons communities object to data centre developments (primarily: environment and resource concerns, which they genuinely understand very well and can explain with specific, accurate detail)

Reasons Americans Oppose Data Centers in Their Local Area
What are some of the reasons you would oppose the construction of a data center in your area?

Table with 2 columns and 37 rows.
% Mentioning
Effect on resources 50
Water/Excess water usage 18
Energy consumption/Excess power usage/Grid constraints 18
Environmental impact (nonspecific) 14
Loss of farmland/wildlife/nature/Deforestation/Eyesore 7
Waste of resources/Uses too many natural resources 6
Quality-of-life concerns 22
Community impact/housing/property values/population increase 9
Size of land required/Prefer other development/Don't want in this area 9
Increased traffic/construction/Infrastructure impact 5
Impact on health/disease 2
Effect on costs 20
Higher utility bills/energy costs 15
Cost to build/Using taxpayer dollars/Invest in other projects 5
Cost-of-living increase 2
Pollution 16
Noise/Noise pollution 9
Pollution (nonspecific) 6
Air/Water contamination 2
Light/Heat generated by facility 1
Economic effects 14
Jobs/AI replacing human workers 12
Impact on economy 1
Negative views of AI 14

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Genuinely don’t understand what’s happening here - it’s not like there’s been some major data center disaster. It feels like a meme around an issue the public only loosely understands to begin with

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It’s a trick question: buy an ebike

Should you buy a used luxury car or a new car? Here are the pros and cons

The car experts at Edmunds have broken down the key attributes prospective buyers ought to consider

the-independent.com

❀°。Der Siebenschläfer *.ﾟ✿ ⋆@sababausa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A detail that has really stuck with me about Tony Judt‘s ‘Postwar’ was the section about how hundreds of thousands of ex-Nazis went on to become East German communist apparatchiks Flunkies like Flanagan remind me of these characters—not truly attached to an ideology so much as place in the in-group

Anthony L. Fisher@anthonylfisher.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Caitlin Flanagan's beat at The Atlantic was "Bari Weiss is great" and now she works for Bari Weiss' Free Press and she's mocking the people Bari Weiss fires at CBS.

Ari Berman @ariberman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

WTF is this NYT headline? What the Alabama + Callais decisions really signal is that Roberts Court will make up whatever the hell rule it wants to maximally help the GOP & prevent Black voters from having any representation

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 2mo ago

"yeah our platforms destroyed journalism and give teen girls body dysmorphia at an industrial scale. no we're not going to do anything about that. instead we're going to spend trillions on AI stuff that, according to us, will take your job and double your power bill"

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 2mo ago

thinking it over there is a heavy dose of Glonzoism in this but it's also indicative of the incredible arrogance of the tech industry. they got so used to stuffing whatever they want down the public's throat on their monopoly platforms they forgot how to sell light industry

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 2mo ago

"The public has swung 49 points against data centers in just nine months" lol heatmap.news/politics/ame...

Exclusive: Americans Now Overwhelmingly Oppose New Data Centers Near Them

A new Heatmap Pro poll shows a rapid shift in public opinion since last fall.

heatmap.news

Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My crankiest old man take is that referring to all art/entertainment/journalism/criticism/comedy/advertising as “content” helped pave the way for broad-ish acceptance of AI slop.

Pete Miles @petermiles.eurosky.social · 2mo ago

4/5

AF: If you were, I'm sure this idea will horrify you, but if you were a government Corey, because ultimately it's them that we look to to try and sort these things out to protect us, exert control where we think control needs to be exerted, what would you be doing right now?

CD: Oh well I mean buying AI at the top of the market is the most ridiculous thing I can imagine, we can see that there's a time on the horizon can buy GPUs at 10p in the pound to hire as many you know unemployed applied statisticians as you'd like at knocked down rates and use open source models that will still be kicking around long after the firms that release them have been vaporized to do the useful things that AI can do because it's just a normal technology, it does useful things. If I wanted to do some growth here I would ignore all of that, not buy the asset at its most expensive and instead do something like repeal article six of the copyright directive that makes it illegal for British firms to reverse engineer and modify American defective tech products, and go into business selling things like kits that install a different app store on your iPhone that doesn't take 30p out of every pound in commissions and kits that jailbreak your printer so you don't have to pay 10,000 dollars a gallon for ink, and that sort of thing to a grateful world that would happily purchase those products instead of you know consuming the last drops of water in the United Kingdom that are not polluted by human faeces to cool a data center to make child pornography. I mean it just seems like an absolutely bizarre follow-on strategy done by people who have a superstitious dread of being seen as out of touch with the times.

Pete Miles @petermiles.eurosky.social · 2mo ago

Cory Doctorow was interviewed by Anna Foster on BBC Radio 4 Today on the topic of AI. I've captured a transcript of the questions here in a short thread (with the help of Google AI voice-to-text. Good AI, thank-you.) 1/5

AF: We could spend the whole of the rest of the day talking about AI but sometimes we need focus…

CD: Oh God, must we?

AF: We must, we must and while we decided to focus on this idea of a crisis of control, do you think that there is one?

CD: I think AI is the money-losing-est thing the human race has ever done, I think it's grossly oversold and I think that the capital markets have lost their minds because of the confluence of large tech monopolies that have saturated their markets and need to convince investors that they can keep growing despite the fact that they have 90% market shares and the fact that they have a large customer base of bosses who are just infinitely excited at the prospect of firing mouthy workers who know how to do things that they don't know how to do and replacing them with software that compliantly does whatever it's told.

Blake Wexler @blakewexler.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Give it up for the American healthcare system!

Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Cardinal Tobin “encouraged detainees and their families to have hope.” "Human dignity is not a concession granted by any gov’t; it is the will of God, who created us according to his own image and nature," he said. "And for that reason, no gov’t can take away our dignity.”

Rosary service brings 'prayerful, peaceful presence' to NJ immigrant detention facility

In response to rising tensions at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility in Newark, the Archdiocese of Newark held a prayer service about half a mile from its entrance.

ncronline.org

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 2mo ago

I would love for one (1) Democratic candidate to respond to this kind of bullshit by saying "My opponent is a panty-sniffing creep who wants to inspect your children's genitals."

Parker Molloy@parkermolloy.com · 2mo ago

*groan*

2
2
6
LIVE Updates
Results in Key Races
California Pri
June 2, 2026, 9:09 p.m. ET
Tim Balk
As polls closed in Iowa, the campaign of Josh Turek, a moderate Democrat running for U.S.
Senate, responded to a claim by Ashley Hinson, the Republican candidate, earlier in the day that he was "extreme on gender ideology" and supported "illegals over Americans." Hannah Goss, a spokeswoman for Turek, said in a statement that he "does not believe males should be playing female sports" and that he supports
"bipartisan legislation to address immigration."

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2mo ago

to my mind the most important biographical fact to know about samuel alito is that he was a member of a group that opposed the admission of women and minorities to princeton www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/p...

From Alito's Past, a Window on Conservatives at Princeton (Published 2005)

nytimes.com

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Frankly, I want to divest SCOTUS of jurisdiction to enter *any* orders reversing a lower court without a complete elaboration of the reasons why. They are the least busy judges in America with a self-selected workload. If they can't bother to explain it, they should not do it.

Post nicht verfügbar.

Carbon Brief @carbonbrief.org · 2mo ago

NEW – AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China | @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/Sg9ye9N

Annual investment in fossil-fuel power in China and the US, $bn. The figure for 2026 is an IEA estimate, based on current trends. Source: IEA.

John Halloran @profhalloran.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Any detrumpification effort is going to founder if it isn’t going through an independent court system (which divests the Supreme Court of any review authority). Because the detrumpification commission has got to look at this claim of immunity and say, “LOL, no.”

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Now that Todd Blanche has confirmed Trump will still enjoy immunity from IRS audits, Dems must find every way they can to force Rs to vote on this. Rep Jamie Raskin tells me Dems will push the issue in coming days. Let's turn this into a political fiasco for GOP: newrepublic.com/article/2112...

Akshat Rathi @akshatrathi.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I see a lot of charts everyday. Few make me go: THIS IS CRAZY. www.carbonbrief.org/ai-boom-mean...

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, issues a 17-page dissent to the 4-page order: "[J]ust as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos."

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election, held under a tried-and-tested congressional map that protects Black Alabamians' right to vote and with which all voters, elections officials, and candidates alike are familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians, that Alabama adopted in unashamed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this Court, and that will require officials to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters in just days at best, a task that Alabama previously represented would take months.
The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law. I respectfully dissent.

Weeks ago, I warned that vacating the District Court’s
injunction in these cases would “unleash chaos and . . . con-
fuse voters.” Caster, 608 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion)
(slip op., at 4). Nevertheless, the Court forged ahead. Now
the Court is squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it
has caused and the harm it has wrought. Yet just as Ala-
bama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court to-
day doubles down on chaos. Because I choose to defend the
rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate
equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.

Marcelius Braxton @marceliusb.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The SCOTUS has become so bold that they went from "This is the outcome we want, so we'll pretend/twist the law to fit the decision we want to get to" to "This is the outcome we want, so we're not even going to consider lower court rationale, apply the law, or pretend like laws matters for our side."

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BREAKING: In an unsigned, per curiam opinion on the shadow docket, the SCOTUS conservatives allow Alabama to use a congressional map held repeatedly by a lower court to have been enacted with discriminatory intent.

At this preliminary stage, the State has shown that it is entitled to interim relief from the District Court's injunc-tion. See Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citi-zens, 607 U. S.
一
(2025) (slip op., at 1-2). The
State is likely to succeed on the merits as to both claims. As to intentional vote dilution, the District Court did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith, see Alexander v.
South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 10 (2024), because it interpreted the State's legal disagreement with the court's earlier remedial order as proof of discriminatory animus. Cf. Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. 579,
608-609 (2018). And, as to both claims, the District Court's analysis departed from Callais. Under Callais, the District Court was required to deny relief unless the plaintiffs' alternative map performed "just as well" with respect to all of the State's constitutionally permissible districting crite-ria. 608 U. S., at— (slip op., at 29). Yet, the District Court found a violation even though the plaintiffs' alternative map would not perform just as well as to the State's constitutionally permissible criteria of keeping together the Gulf Coast community of interest and avoiding the pairing of in-cumbents. The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns. See id., at _ (slip op., at 30).

Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 2mo ago

hard not to be seriously alarmed by the direction of travel here

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Full statement of Scott Pelley after he's fired from CBS 60 Minutes, detailing the sort of corruption of journalism Bari Weiss has brought to CBS News:

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"I don't want the journalists who work for me at a prestige TV news magazine to ask tough questions." — Nick Bilton, essentially.

James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

There's just a certain fin de siecle absurdity of someone whose only achievement in life is having opinions on the internet ending the career of someone who managed to get into Kyiv in 2022 in the middle of the initial Russian invasion to interview Zelensky.

James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A failed op-ed writer bankrolled by billionaires purging a universally liked and credible straight news journalist from 60 Minutes really has to be the height of the complete slide of American news media into a complete death spiral.

Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is interesting, about battery revenues. Also presumably this "long-duration storage" is just bog standard lithium-ion batteries (lots of them).

Tor "SolarFred" Valenza@torsolarfred.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What’s the difference between a four-hour battery and an eight-hour battery? Not a lot, it turns out #energysky -- via Renew Economy: reneweconomy.com.au/...