jnmandal
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jnmandal.bsky.social
jnmandal
@jnmandal.bsky.social
International relations nerd turned programmer. Being a peasant is cool, actually

agrarianism, politics, distributed computing, chestnut trees
Would you believe this is (technically) a photo of the Chicago skyline
October 16, 2025 at 1:12 PM
There's been no rain in my area for several weeks but this year I was growing a landrace tomato that is supposedly selected for semi-arid conditions. So I have just continued to prosper -- huge yields now. Getting about 1-2 of these baskets per week still
October 3, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Going to make an effort to share more on here. Effectively this means I am going to brag about my garden for a bit but hopefully I will develop more nuanced posting soon
October 3, 2025 at 1:29 AM
Running a live stream of my new flock of chickens (currently about a day old). Figured someone would want to watch www.twitch.tv/jnmandal
jnmandal - Twitch
Baby Chicks!
www.twitch.tv
August 27, 2025 at 3:13 AM
Absolutely absurd headline to wake up to
May 10, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Update: the state of the homestead is strong
April 1, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reading the replies to this and seeing a bunch of people think this is referring to Michigan residents. Yeah, don't trust rando bsky people in anything they say about economics. Ever.
MICHIGAN LONG-TERM INFLATION EXPECTATIONS HIT 32-YEAR HIGH
March 28, 2025 at 6:23 PM
But what about the soft landing?

www.axios.com/2025/03/20/u...
U.S. once again hits new low in World Happiness Report
The U.S. ranked one spot lower than it did the year before, a new record low.
www.axios.com
March 20, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Funny hallucination from chatGPT.

It has no idea how `_` is supposed to work in elixir/erlang. Add another to the massive list of why generative AI can't really replace human comprehension for most things
March 19, 2025 at 3:04 PM
You know you have found your tribe when you get a text like "yo you home rn?" and the context is that they want to drop off some homemade kombucha for you to try
March 13, 2025 at 2:05 AM
So true. But also perhaps one of the best ways to suss out what is a worthy or interesting topic for discussion?

Put differently: this is probably why random discussions, and in a larger sense, the communities that facilitate, them are super important.
Any random tech discussion: this off-hand comment someone made is a perfect opportunity for a very opinionated rant that could run for hours

Preparing a tech talk: it will take many weeks to properly structure ideas into a coherent narrative worth sharing with others
March 12, 2025 at 2:43 PM
It's 70°, sunny, and so close to equinox. Yet my hens are still not laying... Today, I deep cleaned the enclosure and rearranged all their furnishings; now I'm growing them wheatgrass fodder. If situation doesn't improve I will slowly transform into a Facebook chicken wine mom
March 12, 2025 at 2:45 AM
This is not the intellectual company I was hoping for but I am unironically giving a talk later this week about why this is true. Distributed agriculture is a reasonable and proactive solution for the long emergency we are living through
Trump’s Sec of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says the solution to high egg prices for Americans is to get some chickens and raise them in your backyard.
March 4, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Poll taken from before Zelensky meting at the WH. Looks like its basically a dead-tie when accounting for margin of error. Interested to see how this changes after the fact

www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-e...
March 3, 2025 at 10:35 PM
March 3, 2025 at 9:16 PM
I know its incredibly tempting to rush in and dunk on this but believe me GDP was never a good metric for stuff we care about. It was always part of an economic death cult.

When the admin tries to de-legitimize GDP as an indicator, its fine. Let it die. Focus on real outcomes instead
Some context for the un-emBloomberged masses of Bluesky: today's GDPNow estimate is literally the worst number excepting COVID that has happened since the indicator existed
March 3, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Yesterday I was hating on realists but I think its worth going through an exercise here. When thinking big picture about whats going on within the US, perhaps we should mostly consider these three things. That is what I find myself doing at least.
March 3, 2025 at 1:21 PM
A week into bluesky -- as someone who enjoyed early twitter, I thought it would feel the same.

There are similarities but this is by far most dogmatic online space I've ever seen. A lot of echo, not as much fact. I suppose this is to be expected given the impetus and prevailing forces.
March 3, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by jnmandal
The Palestinian-Israeli documentary No Other Land just won the Oscar for best documentary

And they still can’t get a US distributor
March 3, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Legitimately reads like satire. This could be the onion
New: Last month, a group of moderate Democratic consultants, campaign staffers, elected officials & party leaders gathered in Loudoun County, Virginia, for a retreat where they plotted their party’s comeback.

We got their takeaways. t.co/bEwlg4jbtM
March 2, 2025 at 7:56 PM
The ephemeral late winter compost stalagmite (exceedingly rare occurrence!)
March 2, 2025 at 7:28 PM
People comparing Ukraine to Palestine are reaching. A good proxy is probably Pakistan
March 2, 2025 at 3:24 PM