Brendon Slotterback

this dc situation looks pretty horrible. i wish i had more to say except that autocracy is always mundane and petty and vicious and encourages you to look away and be safe. and you can live quite normally under it until you're a direct target

A tragedy of errors: A series of maintenance failures led to the 2018 fire at the Clairton Coke Works The list of problems: A roof leak, corroded pipes, cracked metal, failed back-up systems. They all led to one of the longest pollution-control outages ever.

Before you read today’s US Steel news, you can read this about their last maintenance disaster in Pittsburgh. Another benefit of a transition away from coal would be dealing with a decrepit, ancient facility the company seems intent on running into the ground www.publicsource.org/clairton-cok...

He'll do the craziest things to distract from the Epstein Files.

For several years, one of the main reactionary centrist pundit positions was that liberals shouldn't abolish ICE. I'll let readers draw their own conclusions. However, I think the example illustrates how effective this method of political strategy is in practice.

“It was all a screen, I used to read Free Society magazine” - title of an oped that won’t be written by the media adored libertarians who pretended to care about freedoms but didn’t believe any of it.

Utilities can deploy a lot of capital. Basically what they are regulated to do. But state govt can deploy even larger amounts for cheaper

My very hottest take is that we actually need more people focused on stopping bad things

🔥🔥🔥

My least popular (and most correct) view is that cars should be automatically limited to the local speed limit. Put the pedal to the floor and you still can't go over 25mph in a residential area.

(15 in Manhattan btw)

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

And is it an all-in bet on AI or just the current version of data centers? If efficiencies improve, models change, or AI becomes distributed to devices, do we need them?

A Democratic message that leaned in HARD into uplifting the idea of the commons and re-teaching people about importance of PUBLIC GOODS and the fact that they are GOOD and FOR EVERYONE would be an easy place to mobilize lots of people towards a project of building.

NREL already answered this question. We could have net-zero electricity, and the direct land use of wind and solar would be less than the CURRENT leasing of federal land for oil & gas. Deeply unserious people docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy22ost...

@jael.bsky.social of course they don’t include the mining/fracking acreage

Agreed. Attacks are already widespread on renewables!

And now they definitely won’t as they watch an administrative state punish select technologies and even projects based on personal grudges, culture wars and pseudo-analysis?

Yes!

I'll ask! Maybe after the big day...

Sitting here thinking about my brother's upcoming outdoor wedding while watching waves of wildfire-induced smog and fossil apologists in the federal government publishing junk science and love notes to lumps of coal 😔

u.s. department of energy post on x praising coal: "She's an icon She's a legend And she is the moment [sparkly picture of coal]

struggling with an analogy here but imagine NASA posting a meme about how excited they are to return aviation to the pre-jet age

The cultural and political influence of fossil gas development in PA and WV greatly exceeds its actual impact on jobs, wages, and community growth. In fact, it's associated with stagnation. You can see it with your own eyes if you travel through these communities.

This response works in many contexts!

When will Burgum address the squirrel problem? www.publicpower.org/blog/defendi...

the sweeney ad is a good example of how the media environment is designed to help conservatives. were there some over the top tiktoks? yeah. was it anybody of note? or systemic on the left? not really. but literally anyone or anything can fuel a machine designed to make trouble for dems

Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work A new Department of Energy report “fundamentally misrepresents” climate research and leaves out key context, multiple scientists cited in the report tell WIRED.

Great reporting from @mollytaft.com on how the DOE's climate science report misuses scientists' work to downplay the negative effects of climate change www.wired.com/story/scient...

@pkrugman.bsky.social about the scam that is the US-EU deal:

"they know that, basically they just scammed Donald Trump. They humiliated themselves and then abased themselves before him—but they also made a fool of him."

Curious to read!

Israeli signatories, including the former speaker of the Knesset, are calling on immediate crippling sanctions on Israel

Now this is a really interesting thesis. I suspect both factions exist within government now, but it also explains why they will break instruments that could be heinous tools in the hands of an authoritarian. I wonder if these two factions often marry, historically speaking.

Let's not discount the possibility they are doing a bad job at leadership, coordination, and hiring. With a lot of folks doing stuff for purely performative reasons, without any particular goal other than getting attention.