Jon Asby
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Jon Asby
@jonasby.bsky.social
British dev in DE, Prenzlauer Berg
Reposted by Jon Asby
who is that you hear screaming? it is me, I'm the one who is screaming. many thanks to ashley judd for sharing with me her memories of working on michael mann's HEAT; at @vulture.com:

www.vulture.com/article/ashl...
January 1, 2026 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
8/ There have been numerous complaints about this practice, which appears to be taking place in many different units on many different fronts in Ukraine. It's possible that some men are deliberately being sent to their deaths so that their commanders can steal their salaries.
December 8, 2025 at 8:52 AM
One of the things AI coding agents are bad at is telling you you're trying to do something that doesn't really make sense and you probably meant to do this other thing that everyone else does because it makes more sense. Several gigawatt datacentres could be saved
December 7, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.
December 2, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
feel this in my bones
The engineer-manager pendulum model no longer accurately reflects how engineering leadership operates.

Most of us aren’t just an IC or a manager. Technology has forced us to live somewhere in the middle.

I wrote about what this actually looks like now:

www.modernleader.is/p/pendulum-r...
The engineer–manager pendulum is breaking
The hybrid era of engineering leadership is here, and the traditional IC/manager model is no longer suitable.
www.modernleader.is
November 27, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
i’m not crying you’re crying

xkcd: Fifteen Years

Fifteen Years
xkcd.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
If CO2 emissions go to zero in 2050 (top), the sinks (green) will bring atmospheric CO2 back down (middle), & temperature will stabalise at ~1.7°C (bottom).

Going to zero today will keep us <1.5°C

Constant emissions leads to 2.6°C, rising rapidly thereafter.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 14, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
A very deluxe chessboard, mid 16th century

(Schloss Ambras Innsbruck)
November 5, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”
Yale lab reports mass killings in Sudan, calls for student activism
The Humanitarian Research Lab was told this week that over 10,000 people in Sudan were killed within three days.
yaledailynews.com
October 31, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
As the single most important news story this year, I can't wait to see the detailed and central coverage this will get in every media outlet we have
‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head
Exclusive: ‘Devastating consequences’ now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30
www.theguardian.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
Most of these topics are facets of the same root cause: the majority of the work lies in determining what to do, which cannot be estimated, rather than doing it, which can be estimated easily.

To that end, KISS: all work is Small or Large, and if you aren't sure, call it Medium and move on.
October 21, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Quite the thread
1/ Large numbers of elderly Russian men are being attracted by fat recruitment bonuses to join the war in Ukraine for the financial benefit of their families. "I've lived my life, we'll get an apartment for my son now, so what if I get killed?", asks one. ⬇️
October 15, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
29/ As soon as they sign the contract, the recruits are taken away to buses for transportation to their units and training camps. Many will receive only a few days' perfunctory training before dying in Ukraine within a couple of weeks of being recruited.
October 15, 2025 at 4:34 PM
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Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
October 5, 2025 at 9:08 AM
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Telling graphic on the gender pay gap in east & west Germany 35 years on, on Unity Day www.ostbeauftragte.de/ostb-de/aktu...
October 3, 2025 at 11:47 AM
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there should just be one snake that's long enough to always be everywhere snakes are needed
October 3, 2025 at 3:31 AM
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It's absolutely astonishing: In just about 13 years, Norway has skyrocketed from virtually no sales of zero-emission battery electric vehicles to nearly 100% of all new passenger car purchases.
September 23, 2025 at 5:47 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
Everything we've made will break, buildings and streets will crumble, and cities will be abandoned. But the CO₂ we emit into the atmosphere will persist for centuries, and the climatic impacts will last longer than human civilization has existed. This is our legacy for the future.
July 29, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
So, right now, the only reliable way to diagnose endometriosis is with exploratory surgery. But finally, real scientists (instead of male scientists), are on the job & of course they’ve identified multiple markers in menstrual blood that point to noninvasive testing.

www.science.org/content/arti...
Driven by the pain of endometriosis, this scientist is uncovering clues to its causes
Katie Burns is helping reveal the immune system’s role in the long-neglected disease
www.science.org
September 10, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Reposted by Jon Asby
wrote a little bit about the greatest to ever do it
Thank You, Melvyn Bragg | Defector
Melvyn Bragg, host of the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time since its very first episode back in 1998, has greeted me in the same delightfully brusque manner hundreds and hundreds of times. Hello. In ...
defector.com
September 8, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
IEA says:
1. China's oil demand peaks in 2027 due to EVs.
2. Global demand for combustible petroleum fuels FALLS by 2028.
3. Global oil demand, including for petrochemical feedstocks, peaks and begins to fall by 2030.

See IEA Oil 2025 Analysis & Forecast iea.li/40auS5I

Petrostate politicos freak!
August 30, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
Last year the EU paid €21.9 bn for Russian fossil fuel imports while at the same time providing Ukraine with €18.7 bn of financial aid.

energyandcleanair.org/publication/...
EU imports of Russian fossil fuels in third year of invasion surpass financial aid sent to Ukraine – Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
energyandcleanair.org
August 27, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
Dolly Parton has sent my daughter a new book every month for years as she does for thousands of children. She help fund the development of the Covid vaccine. She’s not a billionaire. I think as non wealthy people it’s hard to even imagine how much billionaires *could* be doing with their money.
August 13, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
Civilization, visualized

Positively mesmerizing: www.chronotrains.com/en/explore/2...
August 10, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Jon Asby
behold the "HTML bomb"

It's a counterattack for AI companies that persistently scrape and rescrape your web site, even when you tell them not to

when a scraper grabs it, it becomes a 10-gig HTML page and 💣 goes the scraper

Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: buttondown.com/clivethompso...
August 5, 2025 at 10:32 PM