Favorites: Poland Provocations, PM2.5 Perils
September 10, 2025: GOP skipped one condemnation, and stupid trolley problem variations.
If you’re wondering, the meme is from Shōgun, and Marino’s translations always cut to the heart of the matter. To be fair (cached), the new AirPods can act as a universal translator, so that’s cool.
Political violence is uniquely bad, it makes it impossible to conduct normal politics. They have yet to apprehend the shooter. Democrats and Republicans have loudly condemned the attack (cached), which makes it more noticeable that Republicans didn’t condemn the assassination of a Minnesota state congresswoman. Trump said calling the families or the governor was a 'waste of time'. It’s a real indictment (cached) of modern social media that the clips of this murder and of the Ukrainian woman on a train have circulated so widely. It was better when that sort of thing was confined to darker corners. While we know absolutely nothing about the shooter, it’s worth noting that there has been a campaign amongst far right influencers (cached) against Kirk in recent years for not being pro Nazi enough.
The Russian incursion into Poland is yet another scary item. I understand Russia said they didn't intend it as an act of war, but that they also didn't say it was an accident.
I can imagine romantic attachment to line-drying clothes _in the abstract_. But I can’t imagine actually doing that activity every week and saying “ah yes, it’s dumb to try to automate this”.
He also laughed at a Biden quote until he realized Biden was quoting Trump.
Longer Reads
• Short thread on who funds the Revolving Door Project, a nonprofit who spends a fair amount of time talking about wanting to take down big tech, including Amazon. Their largest funder is an eBay cofounder. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– A Texas town trying to avoid building new apartments has come up with something even worse than parking mandates: they're requiring apartments to be 8 stories. exactly one story too tall to use the cheaper 5-over-1 construction technique, but too short for steel construction to pencil. (src)(cached)
– LA councilmember Padilla, who I recently linked to when she said some insane stuff in a debate over SB79, is being recalled for not being NIMBY enough. (src)(cached)
– Chronic PM2.5 (particulate air pollution) associated with higher Parkinson’s and Dementia risk. (src)(cached)
– New jobs numbers are not promising. Trump admin could still change course, but they probably won’t. As one commenter said (cached) like a trolley problem where you have a lever that just says "stop the trolley, but admit you're wrong". (src)(cached)
– Solar has surpassed coal in Texas, and combined renewables have surpassed gas there as well. (src)(cached)
– A thread summarizing problems with the book “The Language of Climate Politics”, whose author is not a real climate scientist. (src)(cached)
– Berkeley set up a rental registry, so we have data on how many homes sit vacant for at least 6 months. Zero apartments have, but many single family homes are empty. Kim Mai Cutler jokes "Prop 13 is the real vacant housing giveaway". (src)(cached)
– Tesla has announced even larger utility scale turnkey battery systems, and they've doubled their production capacity. They'll be able to build as much as is already installed in CA and TX combined every year. (src)(cached)
– If there weren't enough problems at the FBI, this lawsuit by two fired agents alleging they were fired for not saying who they voted for in 2024 seems extremely bad. (src)(cached)