At some point we may need a unified notion of a mental state that coherently distinguishes and aligns meat brain learning and neural network learning.

bsky.app/profile/stev...

And speaking of solar radiation control, Stardust Solutions is opening up a bit.
bsky.app/profile/alex...

Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For First things first: Meta is a terrible company that has spent years making terrible decisions and being terrible at explaining the challenges of social media trust & safety, all while prioritiz…

This thoughtful analysis explains why legislators who care about safety and privacy should be worried about the verdicts, not cheering them.
www.techdirt.com/2026/03/26/e...

I asked Rep. Zach Hall if he follows the @volts.wtf podcast and his response was yes, it's basically required listening for the state House Environment & Energy Committee.

Can "second life" EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage? Colin Campbell explains how Redwood drains every drop of capacity from used batteries before they are recycled.

There is a good discussion of Redwood's approach in this Volts episode.
www.volts.wtf/p/can-second...

News media never present the established and consistent fact that Democratic administrations have better economic outcomes, instead always presenting the issue as voter polls showing more trust in the GOP on economic issues. The information environment perpetuates a backwards view.

Washington’s HB 2296 could improve home solar economics, but advocates say recent amendments are cause for concern The bill, which is being considered in Senate committees after passing the state House, requires utilities to allow meter-mounted devices to connect between retail electric customer meters and meter s...

“What began as a proposal for a streamlined process using NRTL testing and national standards as a baseline has turned into a convoluted proposal from the utilities.” pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/03/03/w...

This is the same reason the GOP undermines the ACA and refuses Medicare expansion: Obama's name was attached, and the party's core value is hatred of anything done by Dems.

An analogy is how commercial planes mostly fly themselves, leaving pilots to infrequent emergency interventions and reliance on fly-by-wire hardware. Troubles surface later, to the greater surprise of low-awareness operators. Regular problem solving replaced by rare forensic post-mortems.

The accident rate from avalanches is far more likely to increase due to the growths in population size and the popularity of backcountry sports than due to climate-related changes in snowpack susceptibility.

Putting a light rail station in the middle of I-90 instead of near the Issaquah Transit Center would be less convenient to residents and discourage transit-oriented development. That would make light rail far less valuable to Issaquah for decades, even if it gets the line built a few years earlier.

The bill is pandering to a moral panic, no different than scares about penny dreadfuls, comic books, rock lyrics, satanic cults, and violent video games. It allows congressional reps to also flaunt their ignorance of computer algorithms and of research on the effects of social media on kids.

i’d also be super interested in talking to people at these companies about the vibe after your bosses ate popcorn with the president during a political assassination. signal in bio.

By referring repeatedly to the "success" in getting things "done" and repeated quotes of Trump, with no reference to the laws broken, the lies told, or the damage caused, this episode is not so much journalism as an encomium to Project 2025 and the Trump administration.

Fear of power going back into the grid, concern about lack of equipment standards and testing, and insistence that utilities must have a say for each connection.

14 minutes into the bill’s discussion, utility reps and others push back with “Oh no, scary!”

I suspect that new Washington state rep @electzachhall.bsky.social listens to @volts.wtf

Balcony solar! 1h 1m into the hearing video at tvw.org/video/house-...

app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?...

Also generation on agri lands. app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?...

CATO INSTITUTE:

Despite DOGE slashing jobs, government spending in every month of 2025 “was greater than in every other year .. An observer who did not know when DOGE started could not identify it” on a chart. 🤡

www.cato.org/blog/doge-pr...

The podcast Science Vs has good episodes examining (and mostly debunking) all of these.

Operation Mincemeat perform 'Born to Lead' | Olivier Awards 2024 with Mastercard YouTube video by OfficialLondonTheatre

Some were born to lead. youtu.be/FJRhdPsVqsA

The power that Dems should be negotiating towards is undoing the obscene 2026 ICE funding that the administration will use to undermine the midterm elections.

Because you won't solve the climate crisis without first solving American fascism, and you won't be taken seriously on social media if you hijack other people's threads for your own priorities.

Republicans will be willing to cave on healthcare since they know it will help them electorally to do so, and Democrats are not asking for Republicans to yield at all on power or lawbreaking.

The writeup shoehorns evolution into simulated annealing, then still handwaves over the hard questions with “and the bodies are really different.”

When rightwing media attacks "blue cities", it's 100% about visible homeless people and appearances, and 0% about overall life for the residents and the future of the cities. So this is essential to positioning Newsom for a national run.

Given a lawless administration and a Congress that refuses to defend the Constitution, pursuing bipartisan legislation as usual on minor issues is a veneer of normality but the abdication of leadership.

Perhaps a more compelling example, say iteratively composing survey questions (can be humorous) or cooperatively completing a loan or housing application.

If compliance is a goal, do I need to trust the Gumnut back end?

♫ Seldom do you see
Honest men like me
A gent of good intent
Who's content to be...
Master of the house ♫

Anxieties are catalyzed by pro-fascist media. You cannot alter human nature, but you can reduce the preponderance of fearmongering and disinformation.

When you visit someone's home, you can just go ahead and use their microwave, their washer and dryer, their tv.

But if you want to make coffee, expect a 20 minute instructional course with an exam before you have license to proceed on your own.