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kevinferret.bsky.social
@kevinferret.bsky.social
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Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
jonathancohn.bsky.social
When Israel's finance minister says very clearly time and time again "Our plan is to exterminate Gazans," why pretend otherwise?

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
Far-right Israeli politicians and settlers discuss luxury ‘Gaza riviera’ plan
Legal experts say scheme to annex territory and forcibly displace Palestinians is tantamount to ethnic cleansing
www.theguardian.com
July 25, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
kenburnside.bsky.social
"The problem with AI isn't that it can do your job. It can't. The problem with AI is that your MBA-brained boss's boss doesn't know how your job works and thinks AI can do your job at fractions of a penny on the dollar, and hears the siren song of 'maximize shareholder value'."

MBA-brain is real.
July 3, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
qasimrashid.com
With a 51-50 vote, MAGAs just voted for:
•$5T deficit increase
•Cut Medicaid for 16M
•Gut SNAP & food access
•Shut down rural hospitals
•Cut taxes for wealthy & raise taxes for working people
•$8B for ICE, $50B for a wall, $59B for concentration camps, $150B for war

MAGA Fascism Will Kill Us All
July 1, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
donmoyn.bsky.social
This speaks to the limits of labels, political & otherwise.

Vought is indeed what we would label as conservative, even as he proposes radical and revolutionary theories of political power.

He is an avowed Christian, even as the story reports him trying to implement cuts that would kill millions.
At the heart of that effort is Mr. Vought, now in his second stint as White House budget director. An avowed conservative with deeply held Christian views, Mr. Vought espouses an expansive theory of presidential power. His approach has sparked a wave of lawsuits and dozens of ongoing federal investigations into the White House and its attempts to cut spending that does not align with the president’s political agenda.
June 26, 2025 at 7:07 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
ketanjoshi.co
This is another trope that helps associate grid catastrophes with energy transition without evidence.

I call it the Object Proximity tactic: they drops (a) the blackout occurred and (b) there's a high share of renewables, and then just waggles their eyebrows meaningfully ->

archive.ph/aaxUT
Spain and Portugal were hit by a huge power cut on Monday that paralysed transport networks and disrupted mobile communications, with authorities warning that obstacles remained before electricity could be fully restored. Hours after it began, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said experts were looking for the cause of the outage, which immobilised the rail system, delayed flights and made traffic lights go dark. Countries including Spain are at the forefront of efforts to rely more on electricity as part of the shift away from fossil fuels, but Monday’s crisis is likely to stoke concerns about power networks’ ability to meet the added demand. Data from the Spanish electricity operator showed that consumption dropped by more than 10GW when the blackout hit shortly after 12.30pm local time, suggesting that it was one of the biggest in recent European history. Weather data showed that temperatures in southern Spain increased sharply between midday and 1pm local time. Higher temperatures can limit how much electricity cables can carry.
April 29, 2025 at 5:40 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
chrisgeidner.bsky.social
Judge Benjamin Settle, a George W. Bush appointee to the federal bench born in 1947, had this to say to the Trump administration tonight about its defense of its anti-trans military ban: www.lawdork.com/i/159798593/...
The government's arguments are not persuasive, and it is not an especially close question on this record. The government's unrelenting reliance on deference to military judgment is unjustified in the absence of any evidence supporting "the military's" new judgment reflected in the Military Ban—in its equally considered and unquestionable judgment, that very same military had only the week before permitted active-duty plaintiffs (and some thousands of others) to serve openly. Any evidence that such service over the past four years harmed any of the military's inarguably critical aims would be front and center. But there is none.
March 28, 2025 at 1:59 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
michaelhobbes.bsky.social
This is what everyone always means when they complain about "polarization"
www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/03/97338/
Matthew X. Wilson: To start, could you say a bit about how you came up with the idea for the book project? Were there any specific events that made you interested in looking back and reflecting on public policy during the COVID-19 pandemic? Stephen Macedo: I was going on leave in 2022, and I knew that I wanted to write a book on the current political moment and the highly polarized politics that we are involved in now. Specifically, about how progressives were not paying sufficient attention to conservative concerns on certain issues in a way that was undermining the strength of progressive arguments and positions. I was planning to focus on abortion, immigration, and COVID. Of the three, COVID—and COVID policy—happened to be the subject I knew the least about.
March 27, 2025 at 12:24 PM
"Abundance" is maybe the new "growth". Considering the US per capita abundance vs actual progress (e.g. education, crime rate, food security, happiness, etc...), more of the same won't fix anything. It's pretending we could have it all without any tradeoffs or efforts required. Bad centrism.
ketanjoshi.co Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Mar 21
Excellent @frontiergroup.bsky.social criticism of the Ezra Klein (and now Trump / Musk) 'abundance agenda' - it is a really shocking misdiagnosis of American's problems to claim they can be cured with 'more abundance'

frontiergroup.org/articles/the...
The idea that material overabundance might be a contributing cause of our ill health and unhappiness, rather than a solution to it, is not new. By the early 2000s, the term “affluenza” had come to synthesize the idea that society’s growing wealth was not making us happier and could, in fact, be making us sick. In his article in the New York Times, Leonhart quotes Stanford psychologist Anna Lembke: “Our brains evolved for a world of scarcity, and the kind of abundance we are experiencing now is a mismatch for our ancient wiring.” What, Leonhardt’s story seems to ask, if we are not living in a world of scarcity at all, but rather a state of abundance? And what if it is our failure to recognize that we have achieved abundance, and adjust our habits and priorities accordingly, that is at the root of America’s social crisis? If that diagnosis is correct, it would mean that the branch of the center-left represented by Klein and Thompson – and the political movement they hope to build – is fixated on solving the wrong problem.
March 21, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
nycsouthpaw.bsky.social
🚶
CALIFORNIA L.A. City Council signs off on police raises amid warnings of financial risk LAPD Chief Michel Moore, left, and Capt. Christopher Zine conduct inspection at a Police Academy graduation ceremony in June. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times) By David Zahniser Staff Writer Aug. 23, 2023 3:06 PM PT LAPD LA City Council OKs nearly $1 billion in police raises and bonuses The City Council has committed to a 4-year labor contract with officers that promises to help grow the LAPD — with an enormous price tag
March 20, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
keubiko.bsky.social
Sorry meant Dragon capsule. The astronauts didn’t even return on the one they sent up yesterday. All a PR stunt to try and make Musk look like a “hero” for this this routine, paid, government contract.
March 19, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
ketanjoshi.co
This is the percentage of nuclear power in the power grids of each of these countries

The fun Q is: what does a 'return' look like? When does it arrive?
a chart showing nuclear percentage
March 3, 2025 at 10:39 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
patrickgaley.bsky.social
I am tired of this horseshit.

BP didn’t “go green”; it kept drilling for oil and gas in repressive petrostates and creaming billions in profits

These analysts actually believed the greenwash, and are now calling for the black pill
www.thetimes.com/business-mon...
BP went green and the share price went red
The company was not rewarded for its plan to cut oil production. It’s time to trim some costs and improve returns to shareholders
www.thetimes.com
February 22, 2025 at 10:26 AM
The only thing that trickles down is the shit. Surprise!
February 20, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
ketanjoshi.co
I have tried this out a bunch of times and pretty consistently, it'll provide a link but the link won't actually support whatever text is being claimed.

All the link does is provide a sheen of pseudo-research on a pile of generated text
chrislhayes.bsky.social Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · Feb 19
Formerly all of these models were useless for my work because 1) hallucinations made them dangerous and you couldn’t trace the origins of a “fact”. Also they weren’t current. But you can now ask for citations for everything with links as it crawls the web and it’s an insanely powerful search tool.
February 19, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
karaswisher.bsky.social
Math is hard
February 19, 2025 at 2:11 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
ketanjoshi.co
News Corp in Australia are running campaigns to try and incite violence towards Jewish people, and film / report on the incidents - this attempt was botched and now the internal documents planning the provocation in News Corp's system are leaked

@crikey.com.au

www.crikey.com.au/2025/02/14/n...
The company’s internal database also includes photos taken by photographer Rohan Kelly, including one of Cairo Takeaway owner and restauranteur Hesham El Masry. The file also has instructions describing the assignment brief: Meet Gussy at Holt Street call on arrival at 9am and head to Newtown for 930am. Undercover Jewish man Ofir Birenbaum sees what it’s like being Jewish in Sydney. Will secretly film with his video glasses. The aim is to walk down main streets in Newtown, Blacktown, Bankstown, Arncliffe (might not do arncliffe it the worst perhaps) and film peopls reactions to this jewish man in their neighbourhood. Needs discreet photos of the guy walking down these streets to accompany the yarn. Speak to pic desk for a brief. A News Corp source told Crikey that by the morning of February 13, the story had no further progress in News Corp’s backend beyond having had photographs uploaded to it under embargo. a man wearing dark sunglasses and a white cap with a large blue star of david symbol on it
February 14, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
kyledcheney.bsky.social
BREAKING: A federal judge has determined that the Trump administration is violating his order lifting the blanket spending freeze on federal grant programs.

He is orderin gthe administration to immediately unfreeze funds, including for NIH and the IRA. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
February 10, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
ketanjoshi.co
seems fine
Initial and latest capital cost estimates and construction time for selected recent nuclear projects IEA. CC BY 4.0. Notes: kW = kilowatt; MER = market exchange rate. The cost estimates do not include interest. Gross installed capacity is considered. Construction time refers to the time period between the start of the construction until grid connection. For plants shown here with multiple reactors, the average construction time is taken. The construction of Hinkley Point C is ongoing. Source: IEA analysis based on publicly available sources. The latest cost estimates for Hinkley Point C considered in this analysis are based on EDF (2024), Hinkley Point C Update.
February 7, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
ketanjoshi.co
The fastest nuclear power plant construction is slower than the slowest onshore wind plant construction

(this is why Australia's opposition party is using it to enable new coal and gas burning over the next two decades)

iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/b6a6f...
development times for various power plants and power line types
February 7, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
klong.bsky.social
I linked DOGE staffer Marko Elez to a deleted X account that advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act, backed a “eugenic immigration policy,” and wrote, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

He just resigned. www.wsj.com/tech/doge-st...
DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts
A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that...
www.wsj.com
February 6, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
justinbaragona.bsky.social
This is all based on a conspiracy theory peddled by MAGA Twitter after Politico missed payroll yesterday due to a tech issue, which they tied to USAID funding getting turned off.

It took mere hours for that to make its way to the White House, which of course lent it credence.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Feb 5
Leavitt: "I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room. I can confirm the more than 8m taxpayer dollars that have gone to subsidizing subscriptions to Politico will no longer be happening. The DOGE team is working on canceling."
February 5, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
maribrighe.bsky.social
If only they were some kind of obvious and direct analogy to an event in history committed by an authoritarian regime that later committed atrocities on a mass scale.
February 5, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by kevinferret.bsky.social
whstancil.bsky.social
This is genuinely an important article. The two main lessons from Hungary appear to be:

DO NOT WAIT

DO NOT UNDERREACT

Authoritarians like Orban and Trump rely on opposition being unwilling to believe that what is happening is actually happening. That’s their window.
www.vox.com/politics/398...
February 5, 2025 at 3:15 PM