Mastodawn

The madness of the UK's energy system is summed up in the £55m paid to wind farm operators in the last couple of months to cease generation (temporarily) because the energy interconnection (distribution) system was unable to handle the electricity transfer from generation to use; at the same time £217m was paid (mainly to gas-based generators) to make up the shortfall in renewable energy the congested network caused.

The network build-out needs to be accelerated!

#energy
h/t Observer

Mud Road 15h ago

Lo and behold

I'm as fascinated by the Artemis II mission as many other people, but as scientist I'm frustrated that experts interviewed about it in the media are rarely asked to justify the truly astronomical cost. So far the program is reported to have cost $93Bn, with the direct costs of this mission alone amounting to more than $4Bn. I'm perhaps particularly sensitive to this because I'm frequently asked to justify funding three orders of magnitude smaller that we have used to improve knowledge of how the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to climate change and contribute to future sea-level rise.

Mud Road Mar 14

Charlie Stross Mar 14

Today's eldritch coffee is The Great Race of Yith (from Lovecraft's "The Shadow out of Time"):

Mud Road Mar 14

dmi 💽 Mar 14

judging online information quality based on site where it appeared: a comprehensive guide

- "How To (...)" in the title, cookie banners, lots of side-information written in a way that wastes your time: SEO slop, don't bother. You might as well make a wild guess, same likelyhood it'll be correct

- official docs for $x, autogenerated by a rube-goldberg machine and automagically pushed into whatever-pages by a fully-skidoodled, post-quantum CI pipeline: describes everything, except the exact fact you're looking for.

- no HTTPS, tilde in the name, DNS with 4+ dots, likely hosted on some dusty uni server, white background with absolutely no CSS: one of the best resources on the subject. you question how it's even still online

- site titled "Garry's blog", default wordpress favicon, last update either previous month or 12 years ago: golden. crystal-clear exposition, good examples and screenshots framed so well you don't even need arrows pointing places. likely used as a cheat-sheet daily by everyone in the community

Mud Road Mar 14

Alfie Kohn Mar 14

Kids are not encouraged to be learners so much as "trained exam-passers," as Julian Barnes put it. Here, for example, is a good account of formulaic templates, cutesy acronyms, and other gimmicks that teach kids to write badly....but score well on tests: https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-politics-of-the-paragraph/.

And every example of good scores for mediocrity - or poor scores for impressive thinking - reminds us never to judge kids (or schools) on the basis of standardized tests.

The Politics of the Paragraph

The tale of a high school English teacher's journey into—and out of—formulaic writing programs as her school struggles with high-stakes exams.

Rethinking Schools

Mud Road Mar 10

Fuck sake Australia.

Mud Road Mar 7

Uncle Duke Mar 7

sometimes all it takes is a little subtle messaging to improve your pet’s behavior

Mud Road Feb 25

'i am no man' Charlotte Eowyn!Feb 25

It is 222 A.D. You are the transgender Empress Elagabalus, "call me not a man for I am a woman". Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1776. You are "Public Universal Friend", a transmasculine nonbinary Quaker. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1906. You are Karl M. Baer, a trans man undergoing sex reassignment. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1930. You are Lili Elbe. Transitioning is new and experimental. (to be fair you did get a uterus transplant.)

It is 1966. You are in Compton's Cafeteria with a bunch of other trans people when the owners call the cops to throw you all out. You riot. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1969. You are Marsha "pay it no mind" Johnson. You are in a mob-run gay bar when the cops attack. You throw a brick. There is a bit of a scuffle. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 2026. You are a transgender adult or child listening to the NYT and British Guardian claim this is the first generation anyone has tried transitioning in. Transitioning is new and experimental.

Mud Road Feb 19

marnanel Feb 18

May Lent bring you as much patience as whoever is working Bedford council's social media

https://www.facebook.com/BedfordBoroughCouncil/posts/pfbid0aJ7obzLNb3ka4QJGExKWqSKr4iCgMthG5poqCU3Cw5UMkYpxbPEjmVvGkhKLBsPpl