Items for July 2023

Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand to ‘X’ is a total disaster. Here’s what’s happened so far

Tags: social media, disaster

Barbie Answers Oppenheimer

No Spoilers, Other than Oppenheimer Does Indeed Invent the Atomic Bomb

Tags: movies, gender

I Can’t Offer Up My Culture for Consumption

My novel, "The Girls in Queens", offers a different kind of food tour of the world's most diverse neighborhood

Tags: culture, attitudes

"The boom times are over."

Tags: tech, business

Antarctic sea ice levels dive in 'five-sigma event', as experts flag worsening consequences for planet

Tags: climate, disaster

From English to Japanese: A word’s journey into another language

Tags: cool, language

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to write about rockets, but I wish sci-fi writers and futurists understood conservation of energy. They'd realize that a lot of proposed tech is fundamentally unable to fix climate for simple reasons.

Take electric cars: to move a one-ton object from point A to point B at a given speed, it takes this much energy, period. It doesn't matter how and where you produce it. And guess what: solar panels are horribly inefficient. Power distribution networks are horribly inefficient. And do you know what happens with all the energy that doesn't end up moving your car?

It becomes waste heat, that's what. Even more heat. Just what the planet needs right now. You're welcome.

Tags: climate, science, education, updates

Spartans Were Losers

The U.S. military’s admiration of a proto-fascist city-state is based on bad history.

Tags: war, antiquity

Google vs. the Open Web

Tags: web, security

Rust-based malware used to hack both Windows and Linux servers

Tags: programming, security

Why Your Morality Is My Problem: modern holdovers from ancient theology

Tags: religion, attitudes

Heat Index At Iran Airport Hits 66 Degrees Celsius As Climate Scientist Warns Earth Will Become "Inferno"

Simultaneous heat waves are suffocating the US, much of Europe and parts of Asia, while El Nino intensifies in the Pacific Ocean.

Tags: middle east, climate, disaster

Since the Reddit debacle, I've been paying attention to Lemmy again, and more recently kbin (collectively known as the Threadiverse). The good news: this time around, some instance admins have a clue for a change, and talk about building community. Trouble is, they still de-emphasize people. Tip: any community is made of people, pretty much by definition. News and discussions don't just hang in the sky, much in the same way bricks don't.

Also, they still don't get privacy over there. Hard pass... again. Maybe third time will be the charm. But not this year.

Tags: social media, updates

Subtracting Homogeneity

for the sake of realism

Tags: books, movies, representation

San Francisco protestors are disabling autonomous vehicles using traffic cones

It's a great time

Tags: cars, activism

Just normal web things.

Tags: web, programming

Firefox 115 can silently remotely disable my extension on any site

Tags: web, security