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Cake day: July 13th, 2025

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  • The basis of the complex was a 20-foot container, which, thanks to the sliding structure, increases its area by 10 square meters. This allows you to place two full-fledged surgical tables and simultaneously perform two operations. One such point is able to stabilize up to 50 patients per day, including the seriously injured.

    The module is fully autonomous: it is equipped with batteries, an inverter, a diesel generator, a 300-liter water tank, a boiler, heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems. In addition to medical equipment, the complex is equipped with a Starlink terminal, an electronic warfare system and a radio station.

    “We developed this module based on the principle of an ambulance — each item has its own place. It can be deployed in 15–20 minutes and immediately receive patients, and 13 people can comfortably stay inside at the same time. We expanded the container by 25 cm on each side, which made it possible to place a water tank, a water supply and water heating system, as well as a cabinet with a built-in refrigerator for blood plasma and a safe for potent drugs,” said Serhiy Nechytailenko, the head of the Keep Life project.

    The cost of creating one such complex is UAH 8–9 million. This is a truck and the module itself, which is equipped with all the necessary technical and medical equipment. For comparison, the commercial cost of a similar project “from scratch” would reach UAH 20 million, and European analogues cost many times more.

    “Ukrainian manufacturers have created a high-quality analogue that is 5 times cheaper than German or French models. I was once again convinced that we have very talented people who, in wartime, mobilized forces and organized a very cool thing. This is extremely important today in the hot phase of the war, and the state should pay attention to such developments,” says Volodymyr Nakonechny, head of the Podilsky District State Administration (RDA).

    9 million UAH is about 215,000 USD


  • The Vermont law imposes a one-time fee on fossil fuel companies for emissions between 1995 and 2024. A company qualifies as a payee if its extraction or refining of fossil fuels caused at least one billion metric tons of carbon emissions over the last two decades.

    Her position oversees the wonkiest aspect of the 2024 law: determining how much climate change has cost the state. The assessment relies on attribution science, a type of modeling that connects events like heat waves and floods to climate change by determining how greenhouse gas emissions increased the likelihood of the event.

    The law faces major pushback in a pair of lawsuits filed in May by the federal government and 24 states, led by West Virginia, who joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby for oil companies. The suits claim that the Vermont law interferes with federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

    In November, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group pushed back. The progressive advocacy organization told the courts that the law does nothing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Rather the law asks polluters to pay for their pollution, much like the original 1980 superfund law asked polluters to pay to clean up contaminated sites, according to the group’s amicus brief.

    “Nothing in the Act requires emitters and polluters to change their behavior or mitigate their emissions,” the VPIRG brief reads. “The Act only asks polluters to pay an equitable share of the bill to help Vermont adapt to climate change.”

    “Irrespective of what happens in that case, the work that we’re going to do is incredibly important because we’re going to be defining, really, what the impacts of climate change have been in Vermont,” Minter said.





  • This article is framed from a capitalist CEO, and while it touches on reality, feels incredibly lost in it’s point.

    Cassandra Cummings, CEO of New Jersey-based electronics design company Thomas Instrumentation. …

    Both the cellular and internet infrastructure has to operate to be backwards compatible in order to support the older, slower devices. Networks often have to throttle back their speeds in order to accommodate the slowest device

    I’d Boohoo, if they actually were thinking about rebuilding the network stack to consider something like MultiPathTCP and reframed the devices to actually use all the networks they were on rather than a single one… But no they want you to by a single provider and depend on that plan… For the economy.

    Further Telecoms choose not to upgrade towers (to save costs). In 2023, AT&T/Verizon spent $10B less on network upgrades than projected. Because they were being profit-driven underinvestment.

    She does go on to say:

    To ease the transition to new technologies, she says there should be designs that are repairable or modular rather than the constant purge and replace cycles. “So perhaps future devices can have a partial upgrade in say ethernet communications rather than forcing someone to purchase an entirely new computer or device,” Cummings said. “I’m not a fan of the throw-away culture we have these days. It may help the economy to spend more and force upgrades, but does it really help people who are already struggling to pay bills?” she said.

    So slightly redeeming.

    The article also makes note of repairing:

    He adds that when people hold onto their phones or laptops for five or six years, the repair and refurbishment market becomes an active part of the economy. But right now, in both European, American, and global markets, too much of that happens in the shadows.

    But this attempt to point out that productivity is lost on old devices:

    The price to the organization is then paid in lack of productivity, inability to multitask and innovate, and needless, additional hours of work that stack up. Workplace research conducted by Diversified last year found that 24% of employees work late or overtime due to aging technology issues, while 88% of employees report that inadequate workplace technology stifles innovation. Kornweiss says he doesn’t expect there’s been any improvement in those numbers over the past year.

    There’s a disconnect between the numbers and behavior. Many workers report that aging devices stifle productivity, but like a favorite pair of shoes or an old sweater, they don’t want to give them up to learn the intricacies of a new device (which they’ll learn and then have to replace with another). Familiarity can trump productivity for many workers. But the result of that IT clinginess is felt in the bottom line.

    Fails to point out the waste of resources and it’s impact on climate, health, and the economy; loss of privacy and it’s impact on democracy, health, and yes the economy; and also how often new things don’t actually help productivity…

    Some how the “Upgrade to help the economy” falls flat when you consider Windows 11 and it’s non-upgrade upgrade. Or MS Office which is still producing Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc decades later with the same shortcuts. Your ‘productivity lag’ is your boss refusing to train you not your laptop

    I mean if upgrade = economy, why does Apple sit on $165B in cash? They should spend it — not you!

    Profit-driven innovation that wants to sell us the same iPhone with a new camera, is not helping the economy. We need real innovation that disrupts big tech as much as it disrupts everything.

    Oh and that ‘business equipment investment’ from the fed was about factory robots and large capital investments, not phones.



  • What the fuck is with this article? All over the place. Horrible read. Two relevant paragraphs.

    Eight Senate Democrats caved to Donald Trump and voted to approve a budget deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown, angering their colleagues in Congress as well as their own party’s base.

    These eight senators, including independent Angus King who caucuses with the party, are all either retiring or up for reelection years from now. They likely feel that they won’t have to pay an electoral cost for failing to stand up for Democrats’ goal of extending health care subsidies, instead settling for a future vote on the matter.

    The full list of these Democrats is below:

    Senator Richard Durbin (Illinois, retiring) Senator Angus King (Maine, term ends in 2030) Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada, term ends in 2028) Senator Jacky Rosen (Nevada, term ends in 2030) Senator Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire, term ends in 2028) Senator Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire, retiring) Senator John Fetterman (Pennsylvania, 2028) Senator Tim Kaine (Virginia, 2030)








  • Beyond my frustration at this being buried in a video podcast, I also would rather promote why people should be worried about privacy in a concrete and direct way.

    The Cascading Impact of Privacy Loss

    Concrete Example: A 10-Year Timeline

    Year 0: You’re a healthy middle-class person who “has nothing to hide”

    Year 3: Your insurance premiums inexplicably rise. You don’t know your fitness tracker data was sold and correlated with your grocery purchases.

    Year 5: Passed over for promotion. Algorithm flagged social media posts about work stress as “low resilience indicator.”

    Year 7: Attend peaceful protest. Face-recognition adds you to databases. Now randomly selected for “additional screening” at airports.

    Year 9: Can’t get affordable loan. Your zip code + purchase history + social network = high risk score. The specific formula is proprietary.

    Year 10: Chronic condition develops. Can’t get treatment covered - insurer says it’s “pre-existing” based on data you didn’t know they had from a DNA test you took for fun in Year 2.

    Your lifespan: Statistically reduced by 5-10 years compared to privacy-protected cohort.


    Privacy isn’t about “having something to hide.” It’s the immune system of human dignity, economic fairness, political freedom, and literally - survival.

    Without it, you become a data object to be optimized for others’ profit and control, not a human with agency over your own life.



  • From the NYT article:

    According to the patrol report, one officer described what sounded like pebbles hitting his motorcycle and the area around him, and two others saw a two-inch piece of shrapnel hit the hood of their patrol vehicle, leaving a small dent. The report says shrapnel was also found on the road near the motorcycle.

    Mr. Newsom had warned that the Marine Corps’ plans to fire artillery shells over Interstate 5, the West Coast’s main north-south artery, could pose hazards for motorists on the stretch between Los Angeles and San Diego. The closure he ordered on Saturday caused significant backups on the portion of the interstate, which is used by approximately 80,000 people daily.

    “We love our Marines and owe a debt of gratitude to Camp Pendleton, but next time, the vice president and the White House shouldn’t be so reckless with people’s lives for their vanity projects,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement to The New York Times.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/us/politics/shell-interstate-5-marines-california.html

    (My emphasis added)



  • A close look at the cases that the administration has brought in court shows that the government’s charges, mostly of assaulting or resisting federal officers, are faltering as they come up against video evidence or lack thereof. In at least four cases that were brought in connection with protests against Midway Blitz, Chicago federal prosecutors either withdrew charges or had a judge declare that they failed to meet their burden of probable cause, per a TPM review.

    These cases are important not only because prosecutors are withdrawing them in their initial stages. The administration has sought, largely successfully, to portray these operations in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, and elsewhere as focused on immigration enforcement. They involve large numbers of federal law enforcement officers ostensibly charged with related missions: CBP patrols the border; ICE is responsible for enforcing immigration law (as administrative as it may be). Showy missions like the Blackhawk helicopter raid on a South Side Chicago apartment building use pyrotechnics to reinforce that impression.

    But the reality is that these overbearing operations also affect U.S. citizens. They involve federal law enforcement taking aggressive steps against people who record their actions or who stage protests. The increased threat of facing charges after appearing at a protest can have a chilling effect as well.


  • Like other affected federal workers, controllers are worried about how they will pay their bills during the shutdown when they won’t get paychecks. Duffy and the union’s president have acknowledged the unfairness of their situation, which only adds more stress to their already stressful jobs.

    NATCA President Nick Daniels said controllers might have to take time off to work a second job just to make ends meet during the shutdown. But Duffy said that right now, he thinks the controllers who are missing work are “lashing out” in frustration.

    “It’s going to eventually be that when people don’t have money, they have time to start making life choices and life decisions. And it shouldn’t be waiting for air traffic controllers to break because of having to take out loans, credit card debt, paying bills, gas, groceries, mortgages. Those things aren’t going to stop,” Daniels said.

    So… What if they are actually sick…? I mean not getting paid and still having to show up let alone the stress of being a air traffic controller seems likely to make people prime candidates for low immune systems. Oh, but that’s right sickness doesn’t exist under RFK, right?


  • While the article itself is a great intro into the engineering history of conductors, this is what the title refers too and is sensationalist at the least. IMO scientists are searching for a bunch of things and don’t necessary think of it as a holy grail.

    This non-peer-reviewed preprint, boldly titled “The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor,” ignited a firestorm last month—both online and in physics departments around the world—as experts and laboratories rushed to recreate the material and reproduce these amazing results. But even from the very beginning, most condensed-matter physicists, including Mason and Greene, were skeptical.

    “Even though they’ve shown levitation and resistance versus temperature curves in their paper … none of those measurements seem to have the reliability that a typical paper reporting superconductivity would have,” Greene says. “For example, one of the papers shows electrical resistance versus temperature, and when it comes to superconductivity there’s a very sharp drop in the resistance … the drop is much too sharp. It wouldn’t happen that quickly.”

    Greene and Mason also mention some graph inconsistencies that make it hard to discern if this material is even a superconductor at all.

    “I think one thing that’s exciting about this paper is that they were very clear about how they made the material. It’s a material that many people can make and reproduce,” Mason says, but he also points out a few red flags. “The resistivity plot is troublesome to me … if you took their plot of a superconductor, and just put gold on the same plot, gold would look like there was also zero resistance.”

    At first, for every validation study that showed promising results, another study took the wind out of Ahab’s metaphorical sails. Finally, two weeks after its arrival, the International Center for Quantum Materials—an influential Chinese superconductor lab—confirmed that LK-99 wasn’t a superconductor at all, but instead displayed a kind of ferromagnetism.

    So for now, the dream of room-temperature superconductors is on pause. But despite LK-99’s unfortunate fate, the dream has never been so tantalizing.




  • John Durham, the former special counsel who spent nearly four years examining the origins of the FBI investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and its alleged ties to Russia, told federal prosecutors investigating James Comey that he was unable to uncover evidence that would support false statements or obstruction charges against the former FBI director, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

    Federal prosecutors in Virginia met remotely with Durham in August to understand the findings of his investigation, according to sources familiar with the meeting, and his conclusions raise the prospect that Durham – who was once elevated by Trump and other Republicans believing he would prosecute high-level officials involved with the investigation of the president’s 2016 campaign – could now become a key figure aiding Comey’s defense.

    The prosecutors also met with a team of lawyers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., who had investigated Comey for years – including calling him to testify before a grand jury in 2021 – but were unable to identify any chargeable offenses committed by Comey, sources familiar with the meeting said.