I think this Musk to require people to pay to tweet idea is great

It’ll kill X/Twitter even faster, which by now is the best outcome I think - as it’s not to be saved

His supposed rationale - that it’s to stop bots - is laughably funny. Twitter has more of a bot problem today that 12 months ago *because of Musk’s decisions*. Now this is to put it right? 😂

By prioritizing workers and the middle class, Biden has created the best economy in decades—for everyone. “Inflation is low, unemployment is low and there’s virtually no hint of a recession. But many Americans, according to surveys, are convinced the economy is terrible.”

How do journalists explain this paradox? Either it’s an unfathomable mystery, or it’s Biden’s poor messaging.

The obvious explanation—that journalists are failing at THEIR job—escapes them.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/15/trump-biden-mainstream-politics-news-coverage

"Doctor, My Eyes" Performed by Jackson Browne & Musicians Around the World

https://www.openculture.com/2023/09/doctor-my-eyes-performed-by-jackson-browne-musicians-around-the-world.html

Everyone should get a COVID booster this fall, CDC says

Not everyone is at the same risk, but advisors called for simplicity and equity.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/everyone-should-get-a-covid-booster-this-fall-cdc-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Evolution doesn’t look how it’s depicted in pop culture. We often picture the famous “March of Progress” illustration where a series of apes stand in line leading to a modern human.

But evolution is not linear. It branches & divides without an intended direction or endpoint through natural selection.

Illustration by @keesey #science #history

Texas' grid operator just spent $31.7M in the middle of a heat wave and energy shortage.

No, not to provide fresh shelter to the homeless. Nor to install booths with free fresh water. Nor to increase the number of public spaces (outside of shopping malls) where people can gather, instead of burning energy to keep their homes cool 24/7. Nor to boost its investments in renewables and pivot away from the oil that it keeps digging.

No, the government just gave that money away to Riot Platform (a business that runs a bunch of Bitcoin mining servers) to convince them to turn off their energy-hungry machines, so everybody else can also use energy to keep themselves cool. Btw, that's more than twice the mining profit that they make in one month.

Let that sink in. Even a life-threatening heatwave can't get miners to behave cooperatively and turn off their machines, whose only purpose is as pointless as randomly guessing a number whose SHA256 hash satisfies a certain arbitrary numeric constraint - and they skim some profits out of these pointless puzzles just because someone decided that putting up a system with such perverse financial incentives was a good idea.

In order to get them to behave as someone who's not a complete selfish sociopath and evolutionary failure, the government had to compensate them (by a 2x factor) for the losses that they would make by temporarily turning off their gamgling den, while everybody else will probably just get a regular rolling blackout without any compensation.

I guess that today's capitalism is that system where it's actually ok for the government to spend public money - as long as that money goes to those who need it the least and create the least amount of net value.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-cryptocurrency-riot-texas-power-grid/

We passed 20,000 followers in this week on #mastodon!

In less than a year, we've accumulated 29% of the followers we got in 9 years of regular posting on the #birdsite, and we get far, far more engagement with our content here.

Thank you.

We will continue to post regularly here because we have found it is a community that values our kind of thoughtful journalism, written by experts for the public.

If you know folks who haven't discovered us yet, we'd really appreciate a boost #Newstodon