@buermann@mastodon.social
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

buermann

@buermann@mastodon.social

"Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish."

Profile picture alt text: The late great Townes Van Zandt filling in for my spirit animal and grinning in a Pac-Man hat.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

buermann, to random
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

Basically half of America always believes the economy is in a recession if a Democrat is President.

The lopsided partisan effect where Republicans complain about the recession and 50% unemployment (true when you include children, the disable, and the elderly in the workforce: Republicans want to legalize child labor and raise the retirement age so you can hardly say they're mistaken) whenever a Democrat is President only reveals some properties of our collective epistemic bubble.

Gallup tracking, "do you think the US economy is... in a recession?" 1/2019: 17% 12/2012: 44% 2/2012: 46% 4/2011: 55% 9/2008: 65% (actually in one this time, but Bush is still in office) 1/2008: 45%

TheConversationUS, to news
@TheConversationUS@newsie.social avatar

The Republican road from a deep faith in freedom given by God, to a candidate hawking $59.99 bibles

https://theconversation.com/reagans-great-america-shining-on-a-hill-twisted-into-trumps-dark-vision-of-christian-nationalism-226997
#News #USPolitics #Religion @histodons

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@MaggyWells @TheConversationUS @histodons

Well it's nice to hear that Saint Reagan wasn't so preoccupied with murdering Catholics in Latin America to attempt a death bed conversion of his atheist father in-law by testifying to how prayer cured a peptic ulcer. Really puts a human face on an impersonal god.

buermann, to random
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

Great Scott there's a fourth Brent Bozell!?

Why does anybody take the right's allegations about paid activists seriously when anyone on the right who is not a billionaire is on a billionaire's payroll? The Brents being obvious cases in point, along with at least half of the Supreme Court.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/conservative-activists-son-sentenced-to-nearly-4-years-in-prison-for-relentless-attack-on-capitol/ar-BB1mAbPH

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

The outside agitators at Columbia were a chat group of 100 right wing billionaires, executives, and Israeli officials organizing police riots through the board of trustees and mayor's office.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/16/business-leaders-chat-group-eric-adams-columbia-protesters/
https://archive.is/7JJzV

buermann, to random
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

"EVs are too expensive!"

"Yes your climate action party keeps raising tariffs on the cheap ones -- hardly necessary since the dealerships are already a fossilized racket that wouldn't sell them to begin with -- while continuing to dump the treasury into grandfathered fossil fuel subsidies, just like the rolling coal party."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/here-s-what-we-know-about-biden-s-tariffs-on-chinese-evs-solar-products-and-more/ar-BB1mjOML

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

"After worrying for decades that the price of EVs was too high... China is now producing over ten million electric cars a year, some carrying price tags of under $10k. This has prompted terror [in America], with politicians tripping over themselves to find ways to keep people from buying them."

https://cepr.net/the-problem-with-electric-vehicles/

buermann, to random
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

Israeli whistleblowers from the Sde Teiman concentration camp told CNN how Israeli doctors "amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot."

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

"For Palestinians who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving, the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively, according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran. A whistleblower who worked as a guard said he saw a man emerge from a beating with his teeth, and some bones, apparently broken."

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

Another whistleblower said he was ordered to perform medical procedures on the Palestinian detainees for which he was not qualified.

“I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise,” he said, adding that this was frequently done without anesthesia.

“If they complained about pain, they would be given paracetamol,” he said, using another name for acetaminophen.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Aw man RIP Steve Albini 😭

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@inquiline

Oh no! Barely start his 60s. What a loss :(

buermann, to random
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

I've been exceptionally lucky to have an excellent landlord that has cooperated with us to electrify this drafty little cottage in Oakland.

According to the EPA vaporizing 188 therms of gas emits 1 ton of CO2, a vast underestimate due to upstream methane emissions (venting, flaring, losses in every step of the supply chain) fossil firms are still lying about, so let's call it 150 therms/ton.

Our first year the gas appliances (water, furnace, stove, fireplace) emitted a little under 6 tons.

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

I spent some time trying to tighten up the envelope just by feeling for drafts and weather stripping (or closing the windows my wife habitually leaves wide open for the property manager, our landlord's cat Lily).

This conservation effort reduced the CO2e by about a half ton (765 therms instead of 840).

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

The furnace was a constant headache: every cold spell I had to crawl under the house to relight the perpetually extinguishing pilot light. The owner replaced the furnace with minisplits and a solar array in the spring of 2022.

The usual 120 therm Januaries were reduced to 77, a 36% reduction, and we went from May through November burning fewer than 20 therms a month. 372 therms for the year, down to 3 tons of emissions.

But why was the seasonal variance still so high?

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

I'm not happy with these minisplits. You can't schedule them. They don't have remote thermometers. They won't let you keep the fans on low to keep air mixing when the pump cycles on and off. My wife and roommates fiddle with them or the doors and leave half the house cold. Better products exist.

But I don't have to crawl under the house to light the pilot light, and with the fans on high and the temp set to 80 they keep the place around 70.

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

Does burning natural gas to produce a kWh of electricity to run a heat pump 'produce' more heat than burning the natural gas in a furnace?

I can't tell enthalpy from entropy from gibbs free energy and can't answer this seemingly basic question because I fundamentally don't understand how the world works. Like and subscribe!

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

Anyway, the gas water heater was in the basement and so poorly insulated the standby losses when it got chilly must be to blame, warming the neighborhood instead of our showers.

The landlord let me buy a heat pump water heater instead of raising the rent. Installed in late January (everybody was out of town half the month, too), and look at that dropoff: from 61 therms in January to 15 therms in February. The old gas water heater was blowing a massive amount of heat into the wind.

JoshuaHolland, to journalism
@JoshuaHolland@mastodon.social avatar

Looking forward to a thousand pundits acting as if Ronna McDaniel was cancelled for being a conservative and ignoring the fact that she participated in a hamfisted coup attempt.

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@JoshuaHolland

People who are in prison need to be represented more in the media, but people not in prison that belong there have been vastly over-represented.

CatherineFlick, (edited ) to random
@CatherineFlick@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Help mastodon gardeners, setting up my automatic waterer and no matter how tight I screw on the hose end it sprays water everywhere. Am I missing a seal or something? I don’t recall it having one before (this is my replacement timer after I accidentally left my old one out in the cold). I’ve tried some plumbers tape to no avail too.

Edit: going to get an o ring for the timer unit and see how that goes.

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@CatherineFlick

The white stuff hanging off the threads in the last photo looks like there used to be plumbers tape on whatever it was screwed onto last. Stopping water from spraying through the threads is what plumbing tape is for.

LeftistLawyer, to disability
@LeftistLawyer@kolektiva.social avatar

Houston, we have a …
Is there a doctor in the house?

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@glightly @LeftistLawyer

Gosh what happened to Fred's share-your-graph link generator? It was there the last time I looked.

That Brookings researcher made some noise about the increase in disability from the pandemic but it seemed like she was brushed under a rug so the folks fretting about labor shortages could go back to pretending Americans are just lazy rather than acknowledging that an additional 1.2% of the labor force has been disabled by their mishandling of the pandemic.

LeftistLawyer, (edited ) to random
@LeftistLawyer@kolektiva.social avatar

Nature Communications: Fasting-mimicking diet causes hepatic and blood markers changes indicating reduced biological age and disease risk

This is me. It's just how I eat. Eating has always been a distraction to be suffered. But all my damn life people have been telling me how bad my diet is for me when all signs indicate I'm healthy as a horse. I never listened to them. Actually kind of pitied them for being chained to such a boring routine. Eat eat eat ... everything centers around eat eat eat. It's crazy to me.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@LeftistLawyer

I suspect the meal-skipping-is-bad-for-you stems from breakfast-is-the-most-important-meal-of-three-squares, both of which had All Doctors Agree stamped on them by post-war Ovaltine commercials, repeated ad nauseam in breakfast marketing since.

Maybe the fat metabolism is downregulated if you never go hungry? Going hypoglycemic as soon as you run short on glycogen would feel unhealthy, making it a self-verifying conjecture.

Anytime I start eating 3🤓s it just makes me fat.

JoshuaHolland, to random
@JoshuaHolland@mastodon.social avatar

What a stinging indictment of our press.

(I suspect tht there's a kind of response bias reflected in the polling and don't have any faith in it.)

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@JoshuaHolland

Lotta Americans achieving grace by touching the brim of a magahat.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/03/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html

dangillmor, (edited ) to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

What a disappointment that Mehdi Hasan is joining forces with Substack for his new media company. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/mehdi-hasan-zeteo-msnbc-1235838100/

I might have subscribed to something like this if it was hosted by people with better ethics.

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@dangillmor

MSDNC replaced their Muslim anchors at the onset of the war with the nepotistic offspring of Bob gold brick Menendez. Given the state of America's perennial wave of Islamophobia maybe the only commercial platform that will still have them is the one with all the Nazis?

jake4480, to Sony
@jake4480@c.im avatar

In today's "be sure to own actual digital or physical copies of your stuff" news, Sony claims it's offering subs "appropriate value" for deleting their digital libraries.

NEVER rely on companies to keep stuff. They do NOT care, and your stuff will be gone.

You gotta do it yourself.

Grab it and put it on your computer or a thumb drive.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/sony-claims-to-offer-subs-appropriate-value-for-deleting-digital-libraries

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@jake4480

A timely reminder to backup my media library.

tess, to random
@tess@mastodon.social avatar

If your EVs aren't selling maybe that's because you're making giant fucking trucks and SUVs and hyper-expensive luxury sedans and the kind of people who want EVs mostly just want a compact car for getting to work and running errands.

Just sayin'.

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@tess

Absolutely impossible to get a small anything, let alone a plugin-in hybrid that's good for getting around town off the plug but can still take you out of town without hour long pitstops at charging stations.

"Let's hawk electric monster trucks to coal rollers" was apparently the plan? It's not like the administration is unaware that the NHTSA could bring the size of the fleet down by extending safety to include pedestrians, since they're taking a half-assed swing at it.

qkslvrwolf, to climate
@qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social avatar

Wherein vox, which usually isn't as bad as the older propaganda outfits, participates unconvincingly in oligarch propaganda. "We won't get there by soaking the rich".

We don't save ourselves unless we get rid of the existence of billionaires. Preferably by taxation, but however we have to get there we have to get there.

https://www.vox.com/politics/24074408/climate-change-blow-up-pipeline

buermann,
@buermann@mastodon.social avatar

@qkslvrwolf

Why blow up a pipeline when you're treated like the next hilter for throwing soup at tempered plastic.

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