tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

The other side of the misunderstanding of fascism is the misunderstanding of Leninism. This political party which formed governments in USSR and China wasn't something that Lenin made in a laboratory.

As a historical phenomenon 'Leninism' really refers to Lenin's skill in opportunistically making use of the enormous forces that the Russian popular revolution unleashed. His party successfully channeled, dominated and then destroyed these popular forces.

I propose the idiom “leave the wolf,” possibly accompanied by “Why do we need a wolf?,” after this comic:
https://xkcd.com/1134/

Not kidding about SLIM landing on its head... here is picture! This was taken by LEV-2 (SORA-Q) that adorbs transformer robot carried by SLIM that looks like a ball and then springs open to roll wild across the lunar surface and take photos as the mood takes it.

Clearly, it found this pretty funny and it autonomously selected this shot to send back to Earth.

There's a press release here that HQ can't be bothered to post the English.

https://www.jaxa.jp/press/2024/01/20240125-4_j.html

We have two new adopted missions!

#LISA will capture the ripples of spacetime, all the way from from supermassive black holes colliding to the gravitational ‘ringing’ from the initial moments of our Universe ▶️ https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Capturing_the_ripples_of_spacetime_LISA_gets_go-ahead

And #EnVision will head to #Venus, to study it from the atmosphere to the inner core: ▶️ https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/We_re_heading_for_Venus_ESA_approves_EnVision

#astrodon #astronomy #ESA #space

Ukraine’s Main Intel Directorate officially comments on today’s failed prisoner exchange, saying it did its part and delivered Russian POWs to the swap location but Moscow never told Kyiv to hold its fire against transport planes in Belgorod’s airspace. https://t.me/DIUkraine/3356

Just like human beings are simply the only remaining example of what used to be a whole variety of hominids, 'Nazism' and fascism are just the most successful of a whole range of racist national-conservative movements with socialist and liberal elements that rose throughout the 100 years between the revolutions of 1848 and their defeat in 1945.

So when we try to understand current racist national-conservative politics we're hamstrung, because we're constantly comparing it to some ultimate form.

🚨 new web app 🚨

future renewable power system running on today's market data 🌬️ ☀️, scaled up

https://model.energy/future/

- updated each day 🕰️
- wind, solar, hydro, batteries, hydrogen storage 🔋
- Germany as an island 🏝️
- coming soon: interconnectors, new electric demands 🚗

If every Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim voter stayed home on election day, Trump should still not win. But he would win.

If every Black voter joined the Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian voters in staying home on election day, Trump should still not win. But he would win, by a landslide.

Please stop angrily telling people whose families are being killed, that "Trump is worse!" Please focus that energy on your own family members who you know will vote for Trump, and who outnumber those that won't.

An update from the JAXA SLIM team (on twitter):

- SLIM was indeed powered down at 17:57 UTC (which is exactly when AMSAT-DL reported loss of signal; see post 27 in this thread). Battery level was 12% at that time.

- Telemetry shows that the solar panels are facing west and there is hope that later in the lunar day, the system may revive. Many of us concluded that from the webcast images.

- No mention of SLIM being upside down.

- Lots of data received before shutdown.

#JAXA #SLIM
33/n

"I have inherited tons of money from Nazis and that gives me a unique understanding of antisemitism in the way that its victims don't" wasn't on my bingo card but here we are.

https://portside.org/2024-01-20/german-elites-are-redefining-antisemitism-so-they-can-be-victims

@cstross @nyrath This season, the same people are really nervous watching "Napoleon" that he will be killed in battle.

As an educator, it’s my job to do my best to make sure that every student is seen, valued, and safe in school •so that it is possible• for them to be challenged, both intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

Flatten that out into that one word, and it’s my job to “make students comfortable so it it possible to be uncomfortable.” And that’s catchy — but it’s nonsense, because we’re not talking about a single dimension here!

6/

At the top of this page, you see the totals for the company that were on the top 100 table. Below that are a number of links to other information you can find out about the company, such as: a list of all of the company's monetary penalties over $5,000 under all U.S. laws since 2000, a list of the company's subsidies, information on the company as a supplier of fossil fuels rather than as a direct emitter of greenhouse gasses, and information on the company as a toxic air polluter and toxic water polluter. This project is able to link back and forth to all of those other sources of information with the same company definition because I work on all of those other projects.

Below that is the main part of the information: the facility display showing everything in the GHG emissions database that Southern Company owns. In particular, you can now see that that 25% of company emissions comes from the James H Miller Jr plant in Quinton, Alabama. The link on the city name takes you to a mapquest map of the area around the facility, the link on the name is supposed to take you to whatever information EPA has on the facility but it doesn't because EPA evidently changed its link style and I have to fix it. 2/n

PSA for visual artists:

Nightshade is out!
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/

Nightshade is an ML-poisoning algorithm that causes models trained with treated images to malfunction. Use in conjunction with Glaze to protect your work and give a big "fuck you" to the capitalists stealing your shit for their own profit.

#mastoart

Big news in bug math. This is the first year since 1803 when both 13-year cicadas and 17-year cicadas will emerge from the ground simultaneously in the US!

13 and 17 are both prime. It's believed cicadas evolved to have prime-number life cycles to avoid predators that emerge more frequently, like once every 4 years or 5 years or... whatever. By showing up infrequently, with a prime number life cycle, they can starve out those predators.

And since 13 and 17 are both prime and 13 × 17 = 221, both kinds of cicadas emerge simultaneously only once every 221 years. And

1803 + 221 = 2024

so now they'll both emerge simultaneously and we'll have 𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑠 of cicadas!

Also, this year the two kinds can interbreed!

The last time the Northern Illinois Brood’s 17-year cycle aligned with the Great Southern Brood’s 13-year cycle, Thomas Jefferson was president.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/science/cicadas-emergence-broods.html

Samma dag som en skollobbyist tar klivet från SVT till politiken meddelas det att ÖB blivit entreprenör.

Det är hög tid att göra upp med lobby-Sverige, skriver Leonidas Aretakis.

https://www.flamman.se/ob-raggar-kunder-med-baskern-pa/

X Community Notes now means that opinion/analytical criticism can’t be tweeted without a stamp of disapproval from the EU, the Council of Europe, and Chatham House.

JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is getting ready for landing on the lunar surface tomorrow Friday Jan 19 at 15:20 UTC.

The spacecraft, nicknamed the “Moon Sniper,” will demonstrate precision landing in a target area less than 100m in diameter, using real-time image recognition technology.

The spacecraft will land on a sloping surface near the crater Shioli.

SLIM carries a number of science instruments and will also deploy 2 rovers.

1/n

As of yesterday? Trogdor, the Burninator, is old enough to buy alcohol in the united states.

The next paper examined with simulations how competitive expectation-based updating is relative to a simple, fixed trust strategy with respect to accuracy vis a vis a single source. The surprising answer to that is “not very”: accuracy gains are minimal and come at the cost of order effects. This counterintuitive result makes sense with the benefit of hindsight (see paper)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12374

5/9