@Bluedonkey@mastodon.social
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Bluedonkey

@Bluedonkey@mastodon.social

British ex-pat living the island life in the #SanFrancisco Bay Area. #Alameda.

Architect of #Cloud / #embedded / #IoT systems. Working on #AI #GunDetection.

Like #ElectricVehicles, #CleanEnergy, #Photography, #3dPrinting, #Electronics and #Travel.

All opinions mine.

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QasimRashid, to random
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It costs ~$70 to produce a yearโ€™s supply of insulin. Yet, the average annual cost of insulin went from $2,864 in 2012 to $5,705 in 2016 to $18,000 in 2024. Thatโ€™s a 25,714% markup.๐Ÿ˜ณ

That isnโ€™t inflation. It isnโ€™t supply chain issues. It is 100% corporate greed.

Bluedonkey,
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@QasimRashid And for those who would jump up and down and say that national healthcare systems don't work: I lived for almost 30 years in a country with one, and I can tell you it works. Nobody is afraid they will become sick, or get hurt, lose their job and then be bankrupted by medical bills. Nobody has to tell the ambulance which hospital to take them to for their insurance to cover it. It works much, much better than the US scheme. Unless the goal is corporate profits, of course.

dangillmor, to random
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Climate scientists are angry, helpless, and overwhelmed as they watch humanity accelerate toward the climate cliff that will likely destroy much of our civilization. But they have no choice other than continuing to fight, as long as they can.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair

Bluedonkey,
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@dangillmor

โ€œThe worldโ€™s response to date is reprehensible โ€“ we live in an age of fools.โ€

That pretty much captures it. We are living in an age of fools, and not just in regards to climate. Climate change has been an issue for quarter of a century and still there are politicians who refuse to accept it, and religions that preach it is unavoidable. All the while, oil companies make record profits racing to burn everything before they are finally banned.

Bluedonkey, to random
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There is something oddly amusing about a company that sells online collaboration tools insisting that the only way its employees can be effective is to be physically in the same building.

Also, given the distributed nature of the offices these large companies have, I suspect a lot of their meetings have at least a few people from another site in them.

This is not about the workers. It is about the managers, not knowing how to manage a remote team.

https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/companies-trying-everything-to-get-workers-back

Bluedonkey, to photography
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In addition to posting photos here, I have also been adding them to my new photography website (repurposing a domain I already owned). You can see the California birds in their gallery:

https://ourlivez.com/galleries/california-birds/

There are other galleries for birds from Hawaii & other parts of the world, as well as galleries for other animals (that I am still building out).

Bluedonkey, to RaspberryPi
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For those of us old enough to remember the Cray-1 supercomputer... here's a performance comparison of it against a - we've come a long way in such a short period of time (relatively).

https://www.hackster.io/news/roy-longbottom-pits-1976-s-cray-1-supercomputer-against-the-raspberry-pi-single-board-computer-range-152bbe2d4111

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Hit a roadblock with the task I was doing for work (and need somebody who has likely finished work for the day to fix it), so clearly time for a Hazel photo.

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Another shot taken while I was hoping to find birds yesterday.

Bluedonkey, to random
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Argh, two letters today with accounting errors. First was Fastrak - somehow the tag didn't read the number of people in the car so charged us for the express lanes. Called and they fixed immediately.

Second is California tax people, who send something with numbers that do not appear anywhere on our return as justification for them asking for more money. Have a funny feeling this one won't be as simple to get fixed based on previous calls to them.

Bluedonkey, to random
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The sad irony here is that when they rejoin, the deal will be much worse than before.

Not only was it a bad decision, it had real consequences for a lot of people. Many of those responsible for the lies that were told should be held responsible.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/brexit-opinion-poll-will-uk-rejoin-eu-when-is-march-to-rejoin-354483/

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Trying to work out which of these two crops I like the most. Very different takes on the same flower.

Tight square crop of the same white flower with the indigo blue and yellow center. This crop is tight and cuts off all the petals near the center.

Bluedonkey, to Electricvehicles
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Just saw this on the X site... hard to believe people like this exist, but now apparently simple arithmetic is subject to opinion...

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Itโ€™s a dogs life.

Bluedonkey, to random
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Mehdi Hasan hitting the nail on the head again. It is sad that so many are writing off these comments as entertainment, or just jokes. Trump is not joking at all. He hates losing. He has to believe he is the best at everything. If he regains any power, you can guarantee he will go after every person who tried to hold him to account for his actions. He will become a dictator, and it won't just be for the first day.

https://youtube.com/shorts/yEkGUrV7LzU?si=3am0BRDG9WdNBNka

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Posing for photos apparently wasnโ€™t what she was after! That look says it all.

Bluedonkey, to photography
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I finally managed to get a shot of the Annaโ€™s hummingbird that hangs around the front of our house (it likes one of the flowers we have there).

It perches on the branch here in between feeding sessions (given how fast it flaps its wings, taking a break between feeding makes a lot of sense to me!).

Bluedonkey, to Dogs
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Somebody is a sleepy puppy tonight. Two walks to the kidsโ€™ school and back probably helped.

Bluedonkey, to photography
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โ€œWhat are you looking at?โ€

One of the male house finches looking backwards at me taking its photo.

Bluedonkey, to random
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As a venture backed company, you could take that money and spend it on making your technology better than the offerings of your competitors, or you could spend it lobbying politicians to draft bills that limit the choice of solution to the one your company makes, whether it is the best option or not.

Luckily, some state governors are not caught out by this blatant attempt at blocking competition & forcing schools to spend their limited funds on just one company.

Bluedonkey, to photography
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These house finches are regular visitors to our front yard feeders, often waiting in the nearby tree until I bring out food in the morning and going up there between eating.

Bluedonkey, to random
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So, our heat pump water heater (WiFi connected, of course) started sending me these late night alerts. Warnings that the "discharge temperature" was too high.

Called their tech support folks today, and refreshingly the first person I spoke with was able to walk me through starting test mode, get the diagnostic readings, tell me the evap thermistor needs changing, and arrange to ship one out & send me a how-to video for fitting it.

Thank you Ruud/Rheem.

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Love birdsโ€ฆ

Bluedonkey, to photography
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A mourning dove. Fairly regular visitor now to the ground below the feeder, but very hard to get good photos of as it is ultra-timid and leaves at the slightest sound or motion.

Bluedonkey, to photography
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Todayโ€™s bird photo is a female house finch. These are the most common visitors to our feeder, and they perch in the tree outside the French doors in our bedroom in between feeding. Theyโ€™re getting more used to me being there with the camera too. This one was eating one of the buds on the tree too.

Bluedonkey, to cars
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Totally out of my budget, but just watching that straight at the end of the lap, with speeds north of 340 km/h is terrifying. And I know from experience that camera footage looks a lot slower than it feels when you're in the driver seat. That is getting close to double the fastest I've ever driven a car...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x9amijnDt4

Bluedonkey, to photography
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โ€œLook, I can jump!โ€

A small white-crowned sparrow jumping in the grass underneath bird feeders. These little birds seem to be happy feeding off the ground or from the feeders (as long as there are no finches on the feeder at the same time).

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