Z Smith

Looks longingly at Florida Avenue canal

The sound of the entire @indivisiblenola meeting booing Eugene Green, Oliver Thomas and their super-powered surveillance ordinance is literally music to my ears! 🎵🎶🎶

Mary Hunt, the forgotten mother of penicillin.

This whole thread, combining facts, fairness, and a sense of humor. (“Not to be flippant but evolution did see to it that we're really good at getting food off of trees & bushes. We have a rather meaningful several-million-year head start over the robots here.”)

The situation in DTLA to which 700 Marines have been deployed is a couple dozen interfaith clergypersons leading a small crowd in prayer.

Lol just heard the NPR story about the DOGE guy who lost his job when he said he was surprised at how hard it was to find inefficiencies in the federal govt because he came from Silicon Valley where companies always have lots of people sitting around doing nothing

something that stands out about this is just how cheap it is for us to have world-leading scientific capacity

we spent ~6.75 trillion last year, and the combined budgets for NIH, NSF and NASA are barely more than 1% of that

what an incredible waste to lose it all for a drop in the bucket

If only the state could invest in some sort of technology that would help power the city on a sunny, windy day like today...

Senator Marsha Blackburn tweets: "We're going to build a big, beautiful Golden Dome."

Am I crazy or did we just have a convo about how we can't fund cancer research?

Crowd holding signs at 50501 protest in Jackson Square in New Orleans, St Louis Cathedral in the background

Protest sign reads The red hats are coming!The red hats are coming! #NoKings

Protester holding sign that reads “ Check The only minority destroying the country are the billionaires.”

Protester holding sign that says “Tariffs are Taxes” and “Hands off penguins”

#50501 protest at Jackson Square in New Orleans 4/19/25 #NOLAsky

Building a mass movement (instead of a subculture) will require a lot of cringe, so get comfortable with it

Crowd at HandsOff rally New Orleans April 5, 2025

Sign saying “Bad DOGe”

Sign at HandsOff rally with image of DJT labeled “Russian Employee of the Month”

Child riding on adult’s shoulders holding sign reading “Hands off my books” at Hands Off rally New Orleans 4/5/25

Thousands at Lafayette Square, New Orleans for #HandsOff #NOLAsky

Elon Musk faces week of harsh setbacks amid Tesla selloff and Doge backlash After a SpaceX rocket exploded, investors offloaded Tesla shares and Doge hit legal roadblocks, the world’s richest man saw his fortune sink by $100bn

Totally peaceful, but never demure. #TeslaTakedown protests at the New Orleans Tesla service center get covered by #AP and #TheGuardian. #NOLAsky

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Lots support at the first #TeslaTakedown in New Orleans #NOLAsky.

That's "Closer". "Cloture" is someone who makes, deals in, or repairs cutlery, particularly knives.

Let's just all agree to call renewables "domestic energy security" for the next four years.

March through the French Quarter of New Orleans supporting rights on International Women’s Day

Crowd at rally in Jackson Square. Signs held up read “Protest like your rights depend on it” , “Resist Fascism”, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” and “Hands off women’s rights”

Solid crowd and lots of support from onlookers to the march through the French Quarter on #InternationalWomensDay. #NOLAsky

Crowd at New Orleans Stand Up for Science

Man holds sign saying “Got smallpox? Me neither. Thanks, Science”

Woman at StandUpForScience rally in New Orleans holding sign saying, “Got the plague? Me neither. Thanks, Science.”

Crowd gathered at Stand Up for Science rally in New Orleans 3/7/2025.

Hundreds turn out to #standupforscience New Orleans #NOLAsky.

This whole thread, from the department of bad-but-maybe not-as-bad-as-it-we-thought-it-might-be news. Things are grim but the clean energy transition is unstoppable. Every tenth of a degree matters. We can keep pushing.

This thread.

One of Texas' dirtiest coal plants will swap to solar with help from US grant | Bauaelectric EV News A coal plant in South Texas will shut down and convert to a solar + battery electricity generation facility, with the help of a $1.4 billion grant from the US Department of Agriculture meant to help c...

Good morning with good news: SMECI in Texas will convert its 410 MW coal plant to 400 MW solar & 200 MW batteries!

Solar & batteries will operate by 2027! The coal plant would have run to 2037!

The IRA funds a $1.4 billion grant for this conversion.
bauaelectric.com/news/one-of-...

#energysky

Coal's share of Texas's electricity plunged from 37% in 2000 to 13% in 2023. How? Mainly by huge growth of wind, solar and batteries.

What about gas? Interestingly gas was 51% of Texas's electricity in 2000 and still 51% in 2023.

Gas has not been replacing coal in Texas. W&S&B have.

#energysky

English is three languages in a trench coat beating up other languages for spare adjectives.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens theonion.com/no-way-to-pr...

If you don't want AI to pop up first on all your Google searches you can type "-AI" at the end of the search and the AI disappears.

A Light-Filled Desert Wonder Aaron Betsky on why the Burton Barr Phoenix Central Library deserved a Twenty-Five Year Award.

The tensegrity-supported roof of the Phoenix Central Library (Will Bruder) is pretty interesting. www.architectmagazine.com/design/a-lig...

Hi, I’m a nerd architect who works with clients and other architects to accelerate decarbonization and a maybe better world. Microgrid affordable housing, policy to decarbonize universities. Focus on the hot humid South, especially beautiful messed-up Louisiana.