Andy

@ andrewrgross @slrpnk.net

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1天前

my argument is foolproof
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Andy @slrpnk.net 1天前
Could you throw this back in the fryer? I think I see a few uncompressed pixels.

5天前

Trump wants to bring Japan's 'cute' tiny cars to America — but it may not be easy

I think this is what it looks like when Trump is exposed to something that hasn't yet been assigned a position in our culture wars.

Yeah. Of course light duty electric vehicles are great. Everyone who has driven a golf cart knows that. You know what else are? Modern trains. You know what else? Bikes. And also ropeways, passenger ferries, funicular railways, and -- oh, right -- walkable streets!

Driving a one-ton box a half mile by yourself in traffic is pretty much beat by almost any other way of locomoting. The only reason we don't have these is that urban planners are appointed and promoted based on how car-horny they are.

1周前

Global ‘mistakenly’ posted ’60 Minutes’ segment, CBS News says while issuing takedown order

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Andy @slrpnk.net 1周前

I feel like the biggest problem in getting people to react to torture is that it's so unrelatable.

I think a lot of people hear "stress positions", "24 hour lights", "pitch blackness", and they think, 'Well I've been tired before. I've been stuck in a hot airplane with the lights too bright. I've been in the dark before, these are minor discomforts.'

And I don't think they understand that the point of all torture is to induce suffering. If the people doing this aren't slicing someone's body parts off with hot knives, it's because you can get the same effect by telling someone to kneel on the ground and not letting them up for a full day, but there's less mess.

It makes me really sad that I think people are often able to get away with torture because a key part of modern torture has been finding techniques that minimize visual signs of damage and have no similarity to things most people have experienced, and thus sound benign.

Not mentioned in all of this is that torture is -- to many people's surprise -- actually very damaging for torturers too. The prison guards at this place are probably at an extremely elevated risk of intimate partner violence and suicide.

Fuck all it, especially weak-ass complicity in this fascist bullshit.

1周前

What wisdom from someone else has stuck with you?

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Andy @slrpnk.net 1周前

This is really deep.

I also gotta say: I reserve more respect for anyone who changed their attitudes to something I admire than someone who always held them. Me? I'm pretty progressive. But it's not like I can take credit. I share similar views to most people with my upbringing. Holding these beliefs is about impressive as a ball rolling down a hill.

Questioning your beliefs and going somewhere else? That's an achievement.

1周前

What wisdom from someone else has stuck with you?

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Andy @slrpnk.net 1周前

Get ready, because this is kind of cheesy stuff, but these two pieces of sports advice, taken together, have guided me for years.

First: a mentor of mine who was a pool shark taught me that when you're playing pool, there is always a best shot to take. Sometimes, when you've got no good options in front of you you want to just do nothing or quit. But no matter what, billiards offers a finite set of options of where to try and aim the cue, and if you rank them from best to worst, there is always a best. When you're in a bad situation, you find it and you take the best option. Often, that's either a harm reduction strategy, a long-shot that feels impossible, or a combo of both. But if you always do this you'll usually suffer far less harm in the aggregate, and if you take enough long shots you'll occasionally achieve a few incredibly improbable wins.

Second: A kayaking instructor taught me -- and this I'm told is true in many similar sports -- you go where your focus is, so to evade a problem, focus on the way past. If you see a rock, don't stare it it, you'll hit it. It doesn't matter if your brain is thinking "I gotta go anywhere except that rock!" If you're looking at, you're heading into it. If you don't want to hit the rock, instead you have to look at wherever it is you DO want to go. It takes a bit of practice, because your brain sees "rock!" more easily than "smooth water flowing between two rocks". But that's how you get down a river, and it's also how you work through almost any other problems in life that are rushing at you: don't focus ON them, focus on whatever is the preferred alternative. This is especially useful if the alternative is sort of a non-thing, like an empty gap between two problems. And it often is.

Taken together, you get the basic approach that has steered my problem solving throughout adulthood. And it really works.

2周前

Japan eyes adding Japanese proficiency to permanent residency requirements

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

They wanted to add a test to confirm you're a Japanese supremacist, but realized this test was easier to administer.

2周前

US sanctions two ICC judges for rejecting Israel's appeal against Gaza investigation

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

This is nuts.

I'm gonna set this next to "declaring opposition to fascism an FBI flag for investigation" on the shelf of ways to really say the quiet part out loud.

It's particularly wild to me because there's no specific benefit to the US here. Sanctioning them clearly achieves nothing. They're just going on the record as being opposed to the basic concept of war crimes prosecutions.

2周前

Everyone is so close to grasping your unique vision!

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

Real

2周前

Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

Yeah, a common them I come back to is cycles of mistreatment: people who were push from their homes pushed people from their homes.

2周前

Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

Chill, man. I'm not here to fight.

I'm also not going trying to white-wash anything. War and tribalism are indeed ancient, and historical echos can certainly be found. But my point is this: the regional conflict between Jews and Muslims is most certainly not a persistent, perpetual, irrational animosity that has stubbornly raged on for millennia. It is true that it is informed by a long cultural relationship. But the violence is modern. It's caused by political forces, and it can be ended by changing those political forces.

Prior to the Zionist movement and the Arab nationalist movement of the twentieth century, Jews and Muslims (and many other groups) cohabitated Israel-Palestine (or Trans-Jordan or whatever you want to call it). They did in fact share the land peacefully in the nineteenth century.

https://www.972mag.com/before-zionism-the-shared-life-of-jews-and-palestinians/

2周前

Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

True. It definitely has a long history. My point though -- as you said -- is that it's really a persistent myth that these people are just oil and water. Their conflict is far more material than that.

It certainly isn't intractable.

2周前

Live updates: At least 11 dead in shooting at Australia's Bondi Beach targeting Jewish community, officials say

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Andy @slrpnk.net 2周前

I must politely reject this assessment. There have been decades and centuries of peaceful coexistence. It isn't as though this is a persistent condition.

Prior to 1948, there were a lot of Christians and Jews living in Palestine without major conflict.

The modern ethno-religious tensions are the product of modern political events, not some mystic curse.

3周前

I used to report from the West Bank. Twenty years after my last visit, I was shocked by how much worse it is today

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

I think the most important takeaway here is that for those of us in the imperial core, the urgency has never been greater to understand the architecture of power and find the weaknesses in its ediface.

The opportunity (and associated responsibility) to pursue shared liberation is greatest for each of us on in America and Europe.

Divest everything. City governments, schools, business, whatever. My city -- Oakland -- has had great success at this. And each institution that joins the efforts is another crack that will eventually bring end the occupation. We can do it this decade!

We have to have hope enough for ourselves and those with far fewer options.

3周前

California's cap and trade gets a new name [Cap & Invest] and a new mission beyond cutting carbon pollution

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

Alright, I just wasted a bunch of time I should've been working looking into this, and here is the HSRA's most recent report on the subject: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Sustainability-Report-2024-FINAL-A11Y-20240916.pdf

From the relevant section, pg 58:

With high-speed rail, the annual GHG emissions reductions are projected to be 0.6 to 3 million MTCO2e. based on 2024 Business Plan ridership models. This reduction is equivalent to the annual carbon emissions associated with the energy use of between 77,000 and 372,000 homes – more than the housing stock of San Jose. The cumulative reductions in well-to-wheels emissions over the first 50 years of operations are projected to be between 29 million and 142 million MTCO2e.

I wish they'd provided a percent reduction in vehicle emissions, but according to another source (https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/ghg-inventory-data), in 2023, transportation emissions in California were 137 million metric tons of CO2. The average of the range comes out to around 1.3% of that range.

That's interesting. I wonder what fraction of transit emissions are from passenger travel across the state, vs commercial hauling and inner city traffic. I still think this is an obviously necessary step, but I'm curious what other actions are needed to take care of the other 99% of transit emissions. Perhaps urban public transit and bike infrastructure.

3周前

California's cap and trade gets a new name [Cap & Invest] and a new mission beyond cutting carbon pollution

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

First: fuck this bullshit. This is such a common problem with market-based solutions. I'm a big proponent of them, but you really need to keep politicians from doing this. The goal is phasing out fossil fuels. The money absolutely should be going to projects that fulfill that goal. This is not a piggy bank.

Second:

"While supporters ballyhoo the bullet train as something that would have a major impact on emissions by reducing auto traffic, the High Speed Rail Authority’s own projections indicate that, were it to be fully completed, it would reduce automobile emissions by scarcely 1%. Meanwhile construction actually increases emissions."

This doesn't quite pass the sniff test. You're telling me that if you built a zero-emissions mode of high speed transit along one of the most trafficked routes in the state that there would be no change in emissions? Are the ridership projections zero? Did the model say that for every driver who choses to take the train instead of driving, a new driver will take their place? Is this factoring in the effect on airline emissions from people who train instead of fly? This just sounds like that monologue from Landman where Billy Bob Thorton's character confidently declares a bunch of facts about climate reduction that the writer thought sounded good.

3周前

Fits surprisingly well

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

That was a great ep and this is a great meme

3周前

What movie trailer was better than the actual movie?

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

Holy shit, really?

That is Sony levels of stupid.

3周前

What movie trailer was better than the actual movie?

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

View from the Top.

I saw it when I was in my twenties with a friend because we (two mostly straight guys) thought we were going to see the latest silly Mike Myers movie. And then it turned out that he was barely in it! They just took all his scenes and put them in the trailer! The actual movie was a very dull romcom staring Gwyneth Paltrow and some guy who I don't remember being in the trailer at all.

When it ended, we walked out of the theater and just said to each other 'What the hell was that?'.

Also, I think Shallow Hal kind of falls in this too. I don't recall the trailer being great, but it had to be good enough that it got me to see that terrible movie.

Also, I don't know if this qualifies, but I remember that The Cable Guy staring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick was the first time I saw a movie and realized that a trailer can be misleading. They deliberately promoted it like The Mask and Ace Ventura. I think I was like 12 when I saw it, and it creeped me way the fuck out.

It wouldn't surprise me if it's actually a better movie than people remember, but the misleading promotion was a great way to ensure the movie didn't find its audience.

3周前

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

Please desist

3周前

Permanently Deleted

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Andy @slrpnk.net 3周前

Ulgh.

Blocked