Mark Sample

Lately been thinking a lot how the worst parts of the U.S.'s post-9/11 "War on Terror"—torture, detainment, surveillance, a supportive media—are now being deployed right here at home, a version of what Aimé Césaire called a "un formidable choc en retour"—a terrible boomerang.

Screenshot reading: The DOE report’s summary states that CO2-induced warming “appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation strategies could be more harmful than beneficial.” Many of the arguments reflected in the new DOE paper, mainstream scientists told WIRED, have been debunked over and over for years. “I’m a bit surprised that the government put out something like this as an official publication,” Zeke Hausfather, the climate research lead at tech company Stripe and a research scientist at the climate nonprofit Berkeley Earth, told WIRED in an email. “It reads like a blog post—a somewhat scattershot collection of oft-debunked skeptic claims, studies taken out of context, or cherry-picked examples that are not representative of broader climate science research findings.” The DOE says that it is opening the report up to a public comment process. In an email, Department of Energy spokesperson Andrea Woods said that the questions WIRED sent over about the use of research in specific portions of the report were too complex for the agency to answer thoroughly on a short turnaround, and encouraged scientists who spoke with WIRED to submit a public comment to the federal register.

A Department of Energy report drops, and climate denialism is official fed policy

the report: www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...

Here's Wired, noting that it "reads like a blog post" full of cherry-picked half-truths: www.wired.com/story/scient...

Unpaywalled Wired, just in case: archive.is/2MixX

An illustration of a stick figure walking up stairs into the heavens, with a picture of an open cardboard box on a cloud.

Just came across this 2008 onboarding email from Dropbox welcoming me to "the Cloud."

Which is literally depicted as an open cardboard box on a puffy white cloud in the sky, which you reach by ascending a golden stairway (to heaven).

Tomorrow is the final day to declare your intent to submit something to the annual interactive fiction competition!

Narrator: They don’t have a chance.

i

How to Leave Substack. “Unfortunately, Substack willingly platforms, and allows bad actors to monetize, hate speech and misinformation. You should probably leave Substack.” [leavesubstack.com]

EPA announces proposal that would end virtually all of its climate regulations The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to rescind the landmark “endangerment finding,” which says greenhouse gases are a threat to public health. By Jake Spring and Anusha MathurUpdated 24 minutes ago

There is notime.now

No Time to Discourse A speculative atlas that explores climate disaster across North America through interactive mapping and procedurally-generated flash fiction.

Not enough weather for you? No Time to Discourse is a speculative atlas of (endless) North American climate disaster

Sometimes you come up with the stupidest idea that is also brilliant and even better discover no one else has come up with the same stupid brilliant idea.

Former Gov. Roy Cooper makes NC Senate bid official, setting up competitive race Exclusive: Democrat Roy Cooper, who served two terms as North Carolina governor, makes his candidacy official in what’s expected to be a highly watched and expensive race.

Exclusive: NC's Roy Cooper launches 2026 campaign: "I’ve thought about it and prayed about it and decided I want to serve as your next United States senator because even now I still believe our best days our ahead of us." #ncpol

www.newsobserver.com/news/politic...

Itch now blocking all UK IP addresses from accessing NSFW content itch.io/t/5128309/uk...

Vibe learning with AI is the Tech Bro equivalent of "doing my own research"

Sadly, I think that's true. I hope you're doing well otherwise!

God Help Us All An Unfiltered Real-Time Bluesky Firehose of Depravity (the public's images)

Oh, here it is. Most definitely NSFW godhelpallof.us

LOL, yes that is it. I should have searched for "time-to-dong"! Thank you so much. Bookmarking now.

Whoever shared the link on Bluesky made a joke about the seconds-to-dick ratio which was...quite accurate.

It's close, but what I saw was a web app that ran apart from Bluesky, with its own URL.

A few days ago I saw someone made a web app that showed, in real time, every image uploaded to Bluesky. I've lost the link! Anybody know what I'm talking about?

Credit Card Companies Are Hurting the Future of Video Games By going after Itch.io, “we’re really hamstringing the future of arts and communication.”

Credit Card Companies Are Hurting the Future of Video Games

🔗 www.404media.co/credit-card-...

No concessions, no appeasement.

For a 1-bit game on a tiny screen, @scenicroutesoftware.com's The Whiteout is surprisingly somber and satisfying, while still leaving me wanting more. A great game to dive into the #playdate with.

ofc!

Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker? FOSTA/SESTA laws deplatformed sex workers and set the stage to overturn Roe v. Wade.

See @mistresssnowphd.bsky.social's argument here. It won't be long before platforms like Netflix and Max will be cowardly caving into demands to remove LGTBQ+ content under the guise of "protecting" children.

With the Steam/itch news, I've been thinking about @mistresssnowphd.bsky.social's argument that sex workers are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to deplatforming. First they came for the sex workers, now they're coming for LGTBQ+ games.

Those eyes. They would make Junji Ito proud.

A map of southern California with a pop-up box that reads Los Angeles, California Wednesday, November 22, 2028 "It's hotter than Hades," they say. They're right. Hades is the devil's icebox compared to this. The November heat hits Hector fast and hard. Dizziness, swooning. Nonsense thoughts drift through his head. Yeti Tumbler. Harry & David. Repayable Fortitudes.

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to *checks notes* stop protecting the environment against climate change. See the consequences in my project notime.now

@tim-gibson.bsky.social Such a great piece in the Chronicle. Thank you, and to your co-writers as well! I've been sharing it widely.

Absolutely essential reading about the hostile takeover of academia. Here's a PDF of the paywalled article: drive.google.com/file/d/1aeZk...

Oh, yeah! That's worth digging into!