iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 27m

Almost feels like each word needs it's own quotation marks: "ground" "beef"

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 1h

Figured it out. It hates DuckDuckGo and refuses to load the content because of the builtin ad block.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 1h

Fascinating, I'd always assumed the outlet was just a click farm with no actual content on it.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 1h

Strange, this is literally all the article content it will serve me on my phone

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 2h

Is there an actual article about this, instead of just the Interesting Engineering lede?

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Columbia Climate School @climate.columbia.edu · 2h

💡 Today I Learned (TIL): Hudson Defee, MS in Climate Finance The TVA was a massive energy program that had a profound impact on the environment and on society, and it offers important lessons for our own moment as we work to address the shortcomings of grid infrastructure.

Tennessee Valley Authority electricity sign at Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. Credit: Billy Hathorn, Wikimedia Commons

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13h

New from @timnitgebru.blacksky.app and me: "It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender

The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 22h

Of course there's a word for it.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 22h

It's so easy to mock too: - Sooper Dooper Intelligence - Stupor Intelligence - Super Idiotic - etc.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 22h

Who wouldn't want a photo of your dog?? 🤔

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Justin Gundlach @justingundlach.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is a meaningful accelerant for building electrification and a good reclamation of "choice" from the gas utilities that have long tried to make an exclusive claim to that term.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Coming back to add onto this comically long thread: Remember, all the math here is built around a wind of that size operating on the low end of it's capacity factor. If it doubled or tripled, which energy carrier system is going to be able to keep pace? My money is on the magnesium.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I am hiding the ball a bit here, because I'm not accounting for the refinery itself out in the ocean with the renewable energy harvesters. It would need to be able to reliably do its job on the open ocean basically non-stop at an acceptable operating cost.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This also plays into distance from port. A ship which can only carry 12.5 GWh of sellable energy is going to have much tighter margins when it comes to distance traveled than an identically sized ship carrying 206.27 GWh. Exact ranges are hard to pencil out, but orders of magnitude tend to matter.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This all matters because sending a ship to do anything takes time and money. Sending a ship once a week to serve one wind farm costs a lot more than sending it out once every 5.5 months. That affects the cost of energy and the scale of the infrastructure. One ship for one wind farm, or twenty four?

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Now because the refiner is only about 68.7% efficient, we need to put in more energy than we get out; approximately 300.25 GWh. Using our 10.5% productivity assumptions above, that's the equivalent of 169 days of Revolution Wind production. That's five and a half months.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Instead of charging batteries, let's assume we're recycling magnesium ash back into fuel. 50 kt of ash translates into roughly 30 kt of recycled fuel. That fuel stores 206.27 GWh of energy. 16.5 times as much as the batteries!

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A ship carrying 50,000 tons of nothing but 250Wh batteries could store at most 12.5 gigawatt-hours. Assuming Revolution Wind only made ~10.5% of its max power on average, that's juuust over 7 days of productivity. So you'd need to swap or drain the batteries every 7 days, probably with another ship

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For scale: Revolution Wind, an offshore wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island has a nameplate capacity of 704 MW. To soak up an hour of the farm operating at *half* capacity, you would need 1,408 tons (1.4 kilotons/kt) of batteries sitting connected to the farm.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If we could free renewables from the expensive technical leash, then a huge amount of the earth's surface becomes viable for renewables harvesting. Batteries are one option, but their capacity creates some problems. If a 1kg battery can store 250 watt-hours, you need 4 tons to store a megawatt-hour.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This tends to mean that any ocean-based renewables are "offshore" projects. Close enough to the shore that a underwater cable pencils out on the balance sheet. This not only limits the amount of harvestible energy, it make projects vulnerable to NIMBYs and political headwinds.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

However, most of it is currently off limits to renewables, for expensive technical reasons. The big one is that right now renewables need a place to dump all the electricity they generate, and generally that place is an electrical grid. Underwater cables are expensive, especially big long ones.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thinking about how magnesium fuel recycling really opens up possibilities for open ocean renewables harvesting. The ocean is great for renewables, because there's lots of room, good access to wind, sun, waves, etc. There's also generally less people complaining about property values and zoning.

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Not implying we're there yet, but what are the thresholds for developed vs. undeveloped?

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

First from his job. Then from a cannon.

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alexvonwitzleben.bsky.social @alexvonwitzleben.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

#DonaldTrump 's war - Someone buying an electric #Peugeot2008 today could recoup the extra costs of the electric variant in just three years despite the electric equivalent of the Peugeot 2008 costing €12,000 more www.brusselstimes.com/2336668/elec... #ElectricVehicles #ActOnClimate

brusselstimes.com

Electric vehicles becoming cost-effective faster due to rising petrol prices

The time to recoup extra costs for all electric vehicles has fallen as petrol and diesel prices continue to increase.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Unhinged proposal for the rich nations: Any interest on the outstanding balance of the loans is proportional to the degree to which global average temps are under 1.5°C (or lower). Planet saved? Great, *now* you can start charging interest. Otherwise, sign the damn checks and put your back into it.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Same. It's a miracle I've made it this far tbh

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Good thing I'm not* raising a 4-month old who will need a structured, minimally chaotic environment soon. *(actually totally am)

static.klipy.com

Stressed Girl Laughing

ALT: Stressed Girl Laughing

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Damn, I always forget those bits.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Me trying to separate out the home improvement projects from the work-from-home projects, from the art projects, crafting projects, writing projects, and tinkering projects that also happen at home.

static.klipy.com

Charlie Day's Pepe Silvia Conspiracy

ALT: Charlie Day's Pepe Silvia Conspiracy

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

See, this is why we bring iced coffee to interviews. Gotta stay locked in.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Time for this classic again.

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Jay Edidin @edidin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I am an AI doomer inasmuch as I feel strongly that AI is doomed and that it is our responsibility to accelerate that doom.

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mattie lubchansky @mattielubchansky.com · 29/09/2026

awoke this morning with a Vision

that diagram showing the SUV blind spot in the front but it's lowly worm driving his little applemobile

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

One (through)hole, two apetures, and a infinite continuum of potential cross-sections.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Thank you for your sacrifice.

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Kell Compost 😷 @compostwitch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As a card-carrying sayer of "it's more complicated than that", sometimes it's not!!!!

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Just got a home battery install (midcoast region), and it's perverse how I'm kind of looking forward to some decent storms this winter.

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Why are progressive politicians so reluctant to admit that conservatives are wrong about something

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Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

AI Won't Solve Humanity's Problems Because Our Problems Aren't Caused By Lack Of Intelligence "Humanity’s problems are not caused by a lack of intelligence, our problems are caused by greedy plutocrats like Zuckerberg." www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ai-wont-so...

caitlinjohnst.one

AI Won't Solve Humanity's Problems Because Our Problems Aren't Caused By Lack Of Intelligence

Video reading by Tim Foley:

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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Haven't thought this out all the way through, but now would be a good time for an aggressive humanitarian movement to combat the death cults, the rise of AI, and otherwise anti-life impulses coursing through our politics and society.

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Matt McMuscles @mattmcmuscles.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We actually don't hate this administration enough

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Jeremy Whitley @jeremywhitley.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It's me, here to talk about my banned book about talking dogs again. Also, my not banned book about that is a gay romance. Go figure.

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ACTupper @actupper.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A minor note: The Hyundai Venue is internal combustion, not an EV.

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