Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

When I said #California was over reacting and not following the science WRT #Covid, I was pilloried on social media. But you know who now thinks I was right? California Governor Gavin #Newsom: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/newsom-covid-california-00114888

@raymondpert https://social.quodverum.com/@darulharb/111040817593554633

@raddude12 The way I would interpret that situation is that having the thin blue line sticker is mostly about convincing cops they'd like to pull someone else over. It works like police officers benevolent association sticker without the $200 contribution.

@AlisonW So which form do you not have in the UK, the raw pressed unfiltered beverage or the boiled and filtered one? Usually when Europeans go off on something like this it is because their country in completely missing a product found in North America.

@John

I'm posting about court opinions without a law degree from an anonymous account on a fediverse server that regularly gets fediblocked because it has an open policy on political speech. I *am* that kind of rando.

@FlowVoid

@John

The classical response to such an argument is to say that if something like vaccines are self-evidently good then we should not fear the promulgation of contrary opinions because their error will be self-evident.

However, "Killing unborn children is bad, because it is bad" and "Women having making medical decisions without government interference is good, because it it good." "The right to defend one's self using firearms is good, because it is good." "Giving people access to guns to kill other people is bad, because it is bad."

@FlowVoid

@John

Judges overseeing trials have a duty to remain impartial. The executive and legislative branches have no such duty. In fact to the contrary they have a right to express opinions. (Walker v. Tex. Div., Sons of Confederate Veterans)

For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren can publish a letter to Amazon demanding they remove books containing misleading or false information about the Covid pandemic. (Kennedy vs. Warren 9th cir) The government and it agencies are also free to publicly or privately identify and request removal of information it finds objectionable.

What the government is likely to have done, and cannot do is to actually force the removal of content. Amazon, the court found, could have kept those books on sale and not suffered any official consequences. In this case, the court finds it likely that the requests could not have been refused.

Whether, the government should have taken certain anti-trust or Section 230 reforms* is open for debate. But when government agencies tied decisions on such actions directly to companies compliance with the government's preferred content moderation regime it crosses a line.

We have a tendency to get sucked in to eschewing #FreeSpeech protections when we agree that the speech is objectionable, and the platform where the speech is hosted is also monopolistic, but we cannot always be assured that our speech will be well liked. If we want to protect minority voices then we cannot allow the government to pick and choose which speech may have a platform.

* - My reading of *Warren* is that if the only threat had been legislative reforms the government would have been acceptable because the Executive branch does not have the ability to unilaterally enact legislation. It can unilaterally bring [SLAPP lawsuits](https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1019/slapp-suits).

@FlowVoid

@EpicKitty @lowqualityfacts it looks like you have a new friend!

@John

If you read [the ruling](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca5.214640/gov.uscourts.ca5.214640.238.1.pdf) the court found that the government interfered with social media companies process of content moderation and did so through coercive application of government authority. The government identified specific posts and accounts it wanted removed and did so while threatening regulatory penalties that would be imposed if the social media companies did not comply.

The court (using a four factor test established by both the 2nd and 9th circuits) found that this went beyond a request and became government interference in free speech.

@icanbob

50m is not very high. Pyramid lake is 780m above LA, Shasta is dam is 184m, Oroville dam is 237m. A proposed project to divert water from the Klamath River over the Trinity Alps would Raise water almost 1500m.

You talk about a weeks storage, but that is not what we need, we need to move power production four hours. Peek production is from 10am to 2pm while peek demand is from 4pm to 8pm which interestingly enough also matches the peak demand for water.

Further, this water has to move anyway. The good people of Los Angeles are thirsty and 66% of their water comes from outside the LA basin. 450 billion litres of water must get pumped into LA every year anyway. This water can find an additional use as short term power storage.

@mackaj

@JamesGleick StarLink requires constant launches. At the moment only SpaceX can afford the 12-18 launches per year it takes just to keep Starlink going and only because their internal launch costs are even lower then their industry leading commercial launch costs. A significant chunk of Starlink launch costs are written off as SpaceX R&D costs. Every time a booster sets a new launch record it is with a Starlink payload. First several reused fairing were on Starlink missions. The less expensive second stage with the reduced engine bell was tested on Starlink launches. I don't think there is any way that Starlink is a viable system outside of the Falcon9 and soon Starship development programs. There is a reason that every other satellite internet system has gone bankrupt.

@hankg @JamesGleick Starlink satellites are in a very low orbit that is designed to decay to reentry in about 5 years. People may not like that they are there now, but the program was designed to avoid having any malfunctioning satellites to become permanent space junk.

@JamesGleick Nationalized by which nation? and from which nations budget will the 12-18 launches a year to keep the constellation intact be coming? You do remember that those satellites are in such low orbit that they reenter in about 5 years? That way even when they fail they don't create space junk. Is that same country also going to nationalize the Falcon9 launch system?

@RuthWarkentin @OgieOgilthorpe And please keep in mind as we learned with Trevor Bauer, he is not suspended right now. He is on paid leave while the league investigates. If he wants these games to count towards a future suspension, he has to give back the money. Even if a starting pitcher only goes every 5 days he loses 1/162 of his salary for every game suspended.

@giamora In California, I pay a road use tax every year when I register my Tesla to make up for not paying gas taxes. Pretty easy in fact.

@mackaj @icanbob Report from the US West: In the summer our [duck curve](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880) *is* hitting zero. Texas, (who for regulatory reasons has an isolated grid) is also seeing hour-ahead prices go briefly negative. With California [adding 5 Gigawatts of solar per year](https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/california-solar) we will consistently have excess power on the grid in the near future.

As I said earlier in the thread, in the arid west we can kill 2 birds with one stone by pumping more water through the California Water Project which will both reduce the demand on Colorado River water and provide energy storage. (Water goes up the hill at peak solar production and back down the other side at peak demand). It may also be time to thing about adding infrastructure to pump water over the Cascades, Trinity Alps, and the Sierras so we don't "[run out of water](https://mastodon.social/@Hypx/110987599493751453)" to pump. We also my need to think about municipal desalination which becomes practical in this scenario.