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John Conor Ryan

@johnconorryan.bsky.social
2.1K followers 971 following 2.5K posts

Co-founder: Calx.info English, Irish. Californian. Physicist, writer, learning to play jazz on cello. Co-steward of getdweb.net/principles ... values for the Web we deserve.

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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 9h
Here's what Meta / Facebook did: www.reddit.com/r/artificial...
reddit.com
From the artificial community on Reddit: Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Russian 'Shadow Library,' Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal
Explore this post and more from the artificial community
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
And fax machines were super important because they could send you a wee map showing how to walk somewhere from each of two train stations, in the absence of street names.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A non-date reason to go to Nizwah
View through a slot canyon toward the Jebel Shams, somewhere near Tanuf.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I found a pic!
White guy (me) leaning over bins of dates at the dates-only part of the souq in the ancient town of Nizwah, in central Oman.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Bucket lists are a ridiculous concept BUT you should obviously make one, and put atop it going to the dates-only section of a souq in date-growing country. Muscat has a great one. And Nizwah. Or the al-Housn souq in Salalah, conveniently near the Queen of Sheba's palace.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
In DC, a few years ago, in the Willard lobby Rep. Rohrabacher stopped by to shake hands. One man introduced him to the group as GOP member for Moscow. (And later said he'd hoped for that opportunity for years.) Be prepared
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Lawrence Wilkinson @lhwilkinson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Chaos that scales- "The Network Always Beats the Castle": an argument that that organizations are about to change completely (Plus- James H. Wilkinson) Trying to peer over the horizon: roughlydaily.com/2026/09/27/s...
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Lawrence Wilkinson @lhwilkinson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Physicists are questioning fundamental assumptions about how physics ought to be done: "Cosmic Paradox Reveals the Awful Consequence of an Observer-Free Universe" @quantamagazine.org (Plus- Enrico Fermi) Keep an eye out: roughlydaily.com/2026/09/29/a...
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The range, 20–50% of world product, is itself a scandal. Calx aims to narrow it: a MECE taxonomy in physical units (tCO2e, DALYs), use-once tagging to kill double counts, expert review, multiple valuation methods, and open work. What humans cause, humans can count and fix.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
An accounting boundary works like an event horizon: costs don't vanish, they just leave the books. Harms fall hardest on the nearest and weakest, and they grow by feeding: once dumping costs is cheap, firms that don't get outcompeted. Unlike a real black hole, much of what's lost is gone for good.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The pile: agrifood hidden costs $12.7T (FAO), fossil subsidies $7.4T (IMF), air pollution $8.1T (World Bank), lead $6.0T (Lancet), land degradation $6.3–10.6T, plastics >$1.5T, tobacco $1.4T. Squeeze out overlaps and it's hard to land below $20T, easy to exceed $35T.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
We know a black hole's mass to a few percent, but not our own harms within a factor of 3. Uncounted industrial externalities cost roughly $30 trillion a year, about 30% of the global economy. No one seems to have totaled them. #econsky www.calx.info/ledger/f3eu0...
calx.info
Measuring the Black Holes — Calx Analytics
Sagittarius A* is nobody's fault. There was no meeting at which it was approved (but that might make for a cool scene in a sci-fi movie). In contrast, each item and action that contributes to the exte...
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
There's that one time I did that in public and the guy came back later, quietly, alone, and thanked me. And then stood there quietly.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The US auto industry's history has such examples as the Ford Pinto (whose gas tank would explode), or the Chevrolet Corvair ("unsafe at any speed"). The Chinese firms that in 2008 adulterated infant formula with powdered melamin. / wrap
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Examples: The idea that corporations will, in their own self-interest, not ship unsafe products, as this author notes. Coal's human health harms alone exceed the industry's gross revenues - let alone the costs of contributions to the climate crisis. The entire tobacco industry. / more
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
To which I add: One of the strange things about GDP is that a company that ships an unsafe product, one which ends up putting users in hospitals, and then in mortuaries, is generating more economic activity than a firm that ships a more expensive product that keeps its users relatively safe. Weird.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Junko Yoshida quoting and noting the absurdity of Jensen Huang naively (?) asking if any successful firm had ever knowingly launched an unsafe product to market. (pause for gasps & laughter) @junko-paris.bsky.social isn't really here. His article is junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com/p/jensen-hua...
junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com
Jensen Huang, or Jensen von Frankenstein?
Nvidia’s CEO asked during the recent podcast with Ezra Klein: “Would any multi-hundred-billion-dollar company, a $1 billion company or a $100 million company, ever ship products that are unsafe?”
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
+1 And: doing the 75% builds the muscle to tackle the rest, and gets us to a point where the goal line - pushing carbon footprint down below the level at which natural systems suffice - is in comprehensible reach.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Extra fortune cookie for the interviewer?
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
#econsky We @calxanalytics.bsky.social are busy building a different frame for, you know, the whole economy. Here's a post that sets out part of the thesis. Comments and wisdom and support welcomed. www.calx.info/ledger/weall...
calx.info
We All Live Downwind — Calx Analytics
We all live downwind. Literally, from a factory or a freeway shedding microplastics with every mile driven. Metaphorically, in a world shaped by the consequences of others — a warming climate, an emptying ocean, harms we inherit rather than choose. The costs are real; the accounting is incomplete.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Our analysis (at calx.info) agrees. The global coal industry has revenues of ~$800Bpa. Climate harms are $3.5Tpa. Non-climate harms are close to $2Tpa. Neurological damage (airborne Hg) is close to its global revenue. Shutting down coal is a win-win-win.
calx.info
Calx Analytics
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Our analysis (at calx.info) agrees. The global coal industry has revenues of ~$800Bpa. Climate harms are $3.5Tpa. Non-climate harms are close to $2Tpa. Neurological damage (airborne Hg) is close to its global revenue. Shutting down coal is a win-win-win.
calx.info
Calx Analytics
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Modern electric stoves *do* heat slowly (at least ours does) but then hold temperature accurately; old gas stoves heated rapidly but the temperature was anyone's guess.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This has been a revelation. I have pots from 20 years ago that had black-caked-burnt bottoms. Two years cooking with induction and washing has taken the old deposits off: they're now shining steel. And then I think of the oil char fragments I inhaled and wish I'd switched earlier.
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eb99 @eb99.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I think it's more comforting for some people to think of OBL as some evil genius or tragic victim of imperialism rather than a bog standard delusional ideologically extremist billionaire failson who thought he could accellerationism his way to a theocratic utopia
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
YMMV. Here in California, the grid is nearly fossil-free, so (overdue) spending on grid efficiency and resilience is a net +++.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
If you still need some, I have a specific mathematical note on what Malthus got wrong.
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Jeremy Clift @jpclift.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Why do readers still line up to meet authors in a digital world? Because a signed book is more than a physical object. It becomes a memory—and a brief moment of real human connection. #books #authors #signing #scifi #worldcon Blog: www.jeremycliftbooks.com/post/the-mag...
jeremycliftbooks.com
The Magic of Meeting an Author in a Digital World
For years we have been told that physical books are on their way out. First electronic books would replace them. Then smartphones would destroy our attention spans. Then streaming entertainment would ...
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The word “Cambridge" appears 45 times in the $17 billion Meta child-harms settlement, notes Jason Kint. Buried inside: a $459,293,017.80 payment resolving Cambridge Analytica claims across at least 46 states and two territories.
techpolicy.press
The $459 Million Cambridge Analytica Reckoning Buried in Meta's Teen Safety Settlement
Tucked inside the landmark settlement is another settlement, writes Jason Kint.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 26/08/2026
Had not seen this, but amazing work @davidjbier.bsky.social www.cato.org/sites/cato.o...
cato.org
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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
the inevitable tuesday morning phone friendly version tinyview.com/this-modern-...
tinyview.com
The manliest men
TMW cartoon for Aug. 25, 2026
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Who'd have predicted that Monsanto had intervened in the crafting of a major paper that indicated Glyphosate to be safe? /s Major retraction announcement: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
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Lawrence Wilkinson @lhwilkinson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
No, we don't "have time": "The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate" @ghostpanther.bsky.social @currentaffairs.bsky.social (Plus- Pascal and his wager) Facing up: roughlydaily.com/2026/08/19/t...
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Salesforce employs about 10,000 people in San Francisco (~12% of its global work force). Article says it's laying off *dozens*. So, likely <100. That's not what "rock" means.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The US would not have caused the war if *anyone* senior in the regime had read *any* of the expert briefing books.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
(Clears throat) and then there's the long tradition among Irish Catholics of not-entirely quiet suffering. Please imagine here an endless thread of plaints. 1/n
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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I wrote about the Nolan Odyssey for the LRB. I'll summarize some of my main points below, in case you don't feel like reading all that. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man
As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Moonrise, Boston
A full moon looking like a summer peach appears between two modern buildings (in Boston) across a body of calm water (the Charles River)
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The summary, such precise writing, well done.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
A new summer sport is born: the competitive bread yeet. Germans and Danes would throw their dense-as-rock rye loaves in discus fashion, complete with the twirling. Pooris should be tossed high, so the winds can take them sailing.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
A much more thoughtful note than the shallow apology for the absence of strategy offered by Douthat in today's NYT, where the US = dispensable is interpreted as they (foreign nations) can't take the US for granted. The death of an empire, ruined by it's insane emperor.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Actual study www.documentcloud.org/documents/28... Our old gas stove died and we switched to induction. The thing I noticed: the black tar coating the bottoms of the old pans is going away as there's no new tar, and cleaning is getting to the shiny metal. There's no new black deposit.
documentcloud.org
Asthma Gas Stoves Project (1)
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 22/07/2026
Here's a sentence that stopped me in my tracks last week: "The statement that 'the cemeteries are full of indispensable people' is just as true of nations, and in particular the US": crookedtimber.org/2026/07/16/5... 1/
A vintage world map. The US has been obscured by a roiling black cloud from which squirm many questing tentacles. A large area around the US has been discolored.
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Silverman on Security @silvermansecurity.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
I've seen really sharp folks over the past couple of days remark on here that they're surprised by Iran's hardline response to Trump & his Team Clown Shoes diplomatic overtures, to keeping the Strait of Hormuz, & the Iranian response to renewed US strikes. There's a reason for the befuddlement. 1/
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Milton Friedman may have been solid on economics but was a terrible, awful philosopher. This, on "the great achievements of civilization . . ." would be laughable from a semi-literate high schooler. His naive nostrum on externalities is perhaps the most damaging single sentence in world history.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I, an older man, just had my first pedicure, after a trip hiking ripped a toe nail. Went to a place near the fire and police station, where their hard-booted stalwarts (& local hikers) get their feet worked. Turns out that mornings are mostly for manly men. Afternoons are mostly for women.
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Hyperallergic @hyperallergic.com · 17/07/2026
As Longaberger’s iconic headquarters sit empty, the baskets survive as artifacts of a national identity that commodified craft and packaged settler colonialism as heritage.
hyperallergic.com
How a Basket Empire Wove the Myth of America
As Longaberger's iconic headquarters sit empty, the baskets survive as artifacts of a national identity that commodified craft and packaged settler colonialism as heritage.
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The Mitch McConnell mystery is solved. But it doesn’t look good for America | Moira Donegan
The senator is alive, a key requirement to maintain one’s job in the US Senate
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John Conor Ryan @johnconorryan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
What is offensive about the gerontocracy is how transparently it reveals the rot at the core of the American political system, how plainly it demonstrates that our elected leaders do not serve the people, but serve only their own gratification, only their own power. @moiradonegan.bsky.social
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Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"Cooling is where physics separates the science from the fiction. The governing equation for radiative cooling, the only type of cooling available in space, is known as the Stefan-Boltzmann Law." A midrange 100 MW data center would need 200,000 sq meters of cooling. spectrum.ieee.org/orbital-data...
spectrum.ieee.org
The Real Cost Of Cooling GPUs In Space Might Shock You
Shedding heat will require ingenious new designs
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