The Electric Monk

Map of the city of San Francisco, CA overlaid with colors indicating fiber-optic (“glass wire”!) internet availability. The colors appear to be anti-correlated with electrical undergrounding.

Oh, yes it certainly seems like it. That glass wire gets everywhere.

Maybe you’ve posted it elsewhere, but what was your reason for expecting this?

Map of the city of San Francisco showing lines in blue to indicate the streets where undergrounding of overhead utilities has been completed. Blue appears to cover about 1/3 of the area fairly densely.

Correction: Reading further, the 4000km is the statewide number. I haven’t found the right number for SF, but they do include a handy map of streets undergrounded to date, for those interested:

Also:

San Francisco alone has undergrounded over 4000km of overhead utilities in the past 50 years (2/3 of Netherlands’ total project), and has ~750km to go, at an estimated cost of $50-100M.

Here is their undergrounding master workplan from 2020, with much info (pdf):

sfpublicworks.org/sites/defaul...

Why doesn’t the U.S. bury its power lines? Hurricanes Michael and Florence have knocked power out for millions of people. Burying power lines could help but the costs are high.

The US has ~20% undergrounded, and is trying to increase that for reasons even beyond aesthetics.

But we also have 8.8Gm of distribution lines (26m/person) compared with Netherlands’ 6000km (0.35m/person).

Many articles out there for the curious. Here’s one: theconversation.com/why-doesnt-t...

Sid Phillips, child villain of the 1995 movie Toy Story looks into the camera while holding a large magnifying glass in his right hand. A window, letting in sunlight to the wood-paneled room is behind him. Sid has his right eye closed, and a vicious sneer on his face as he prepares to melt his helpless victims (offscreen). He is wearing a black T-shirt with a large white skull printed on it.

Well, I believe we now know what cartoon villain Sid Phillips grew up to be.

Finally, substantive AI critique in only two words.

Scale this down by a factor of a million, and you get an Onion headline:

Local teen making minimum wage spitballs ways to spend $1M over the next 5 years.

the arc of the universe only bends towards justice if people consistently keep bending it that way and never let up.

Don't forget that your homeless neighbors, the people living in the streets & out of their cars around you that you see every day, are part of your real world community.

@theradr.bsky.social I believe this is your gem of wisdom

The deportation order is based on Vedam’s conviction for murder—a crime he did not actually commit and for which he’s now been wholly exonerated. He entered the US at 9 months old and was a legal permanent resident before his conviction. We are so, so, so far from the light of justice.

It's been really, really nice seeing the Catholic social justice tradition in the US feel like it's empowered to spread its wings again without risking censure after a long time of being suppressed by US Catholic leadership, and it's exactly what I was hoping for from Pope Bob.

A comic strip in six panels. The panels inerlock like a jigsaw with knobs and sockets. Two stick figures walk right to left through all the panels. Panel 1: Person 1 says "I hear you're working on a new theory." Panel 2 & 3: Person 2 says: "Yes, I'm calling it the jigsaw model. I think it could change our whole View of reality." Panel 4: Person 1 says "When Will you publish?: Panel 5: Person 2 says "But a couple of things are still bothering me." (this piece/panel is a bit squint) Panel 6: This piece is rotated ninety degees and fits to the others very badly. Person 2 is saying "Soon. I feel like I'm really close" A second look at the whole comic shows that the last two panels read in the wrong order because the jigsaw has been put together incorrectly.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

If someone merely acknowledging the humanity of your enemies enrages you, you’re the baddies.

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

We’re not dealing with brilliant strategists cleverly laying traps, we’re dealing with impulsive whiners whose advantage is contempt for laws, norms, and morality.

They’re not pulling some elaborate trick, they’re just willing—even eager—to do things regular, principled people consider off limits.

People once again need to internalize that "generative AI" is a small subset of machine learning, that machine learning is a critical tool that you cannot run a site without past a certain volume Bluesky has long since exceeded, and that it is FAR more reliable than user reporting.

See that small, moving splotch?

That's 3I/ATLAS, a comet that formed in a different star system, photographed from Mars orbit by the ESA Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter.

A comet from a DIFFERENT SOLAR SYSTEM photographed by a ROBOT ORBITING MARS

last Friday

Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims officer said 'Do something b-----' before shooting Body-camera video appears to contradict the government's claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed. A judge ordered Martinez and a co-defendant released pending trial.

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed.
trib.al/9Sxu9IN

If you automatically assume that anything any media outlet reports is a lie if a cop is the source you’re likely to be far better informed than someone who automatically assumes it’s all true.

Printed text, saying “Even with a support tool, it's a two-person job to floss a mouse.”

No context science, part the first

Secretary Hegseth is ordering the code red. I believe he has missed the point of A Few Good Men.

That’s also the first time we met, in the Stardust’s Tony Roma’s.

Also: when a government acts brutally and lawlessly and immorally, but tells you that pointing those things out incites violence and terrorism, that government and its agents are entitled to no respect or credence.

You are right. My apologies.

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Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

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Our SC backyard is Bortle 4 per the dark sky maps, but there’s a nice patch of Bortle 1 just up the coast.

Cropped screenshot showing autocorrect revert option from “gargantuan” back to originally-typed “garhjm”

It is maddening, but I don’t know that this screenshot shows it. At least on iOS, that arrow symbol indicates that “glorching” is what they typed, accepted the autocorrect to “glitching”, and then hit backspace. E.g.: