R.E.B. Becker

@bryan_johnson Constant optimization is a thief of joy.

D.C. is giving itself a hazardous dose of toxins tonight > largest fireworks in U.S. history > dropping 9 metric tons of toxic chemicals on city > air quality 2-8x higher than "hazardous" > toxins 17-57x higher than acceptable levels > chemicals settling into ground, water, food Ave person will inhale: > 81 ug Strontium: deposits in lung tissue > 81 ug Barium: potent gastrointestinal, cardiac toxicant > 27 ug Aluminum oxides: pulmonary inflammation > 27 ug Titanium oxides: pulmonary inflammation > 27 ug Copper: oxidative stress respiratory > 27 ug Antimony, trace compounds: known carcinogen It will be an acute exposure. Also, idk, is there another way to celebrate our 250th?

@LDNRom Hopefully England becomes wealthier in the coming decades so you have more time to enjoy prosperity and less to nourish resentments. Good day, and Happy 4th!

So America turns 250. That's cute. My local pub is 364 years old.

@WillManidis Genuinely an excellent magazine. Subscribed on a lark about two years ago and have enjoyed receiving it ever since. Textbook example of what wealthy patrons should do with excess profits.

Aramco World has the most stunning cover design of any free publication by a state-owned national oil and gas corporation

@MCCCANM lol is this from a leaked CONOP?? You know it isn’t AI either because only a field grade would make it flow right to left

A guide to the 4th of July flyover, from right to left & top to bottom. (I didn’t make this, but don’t know who to credit, sorry).

@HanShawnity Unprecedented material prosperity will do that to you!

It's crazy to think that just 80 years after we literally nuked their cities, Japan is one of our closest friends and is commemorating our Independence Day with a fireworks show, while Palestinians are still mad that their great great grandparents had to move a few miles after losing a war they started and now need to murder as many people as possible for the rest of time.

@HickeyjmJack @JeremiahDJohns To an extremely marginal degree and, more importantly, helping them gives a patina of consent to a policy of rationing. Make them use force if they want to ration. Make them own their own beliefs.

@LethalAidMan @JeremiahDJohns You should help “them” because it helps everyone, in this instance.

This is fascinating to me, because beyond the surface level it illuminates why conservatives are often so full of shit. The baseline here is that there's a heatwave, and Mamdani asked New Yorkers to adjust their thermostats to help the grid. This is regular practice in red and blue areas of the country. Daniel posts a defiant "I'm not gonna do what mommy tells me!" style post. He surely thinks he's a very clever boy here. Now if the message is "This is a free country, and I love my AC, and by god it's my house and no government bureaucrat can force me to change", then fine. Sure. But there is no law being proposed here. No police are bursting down your door demanding to check your thermostat. It's a request from a community leader, a polite ask that you engage in a very small pro-social sacrifice. You would think conservatives would understand the idea that local communities should pull together in times of need. For the 'common good', perhaps. You'd think. And that they'd be happy if no government force was involved, if they could act merely because they had strong moral character and believed in private charitable action. "Nobody should ever ask anyone to sacrifice for the common good, even if it's just a polite request" is just dipshit nihilism. But I suspect Daniel doesn't actually believe in those conservative ideas. Or if he does, they're a distant second to the true guiding star of conservative thought: owning the libs. Given the chance to help people or own the libs, conservatives will always own the libs. Given the chance to demonstrate strong principles or own the libs, they'll always abandon the principle to own the libs. The actual philosophy of the right is merely "We hate the left". And it's sad.

Sweet Land - an ode to America's 250th year. 🇺🇸

Los chinos están instalando aire acondicionado para sus perros y publicándolo para burlarse de los europeos que en plena ola de calor no pueden usar Aire Acondicionado para “cuidar el planeta” y costos eléctricos AJJAAJJAJAJAJAJAJAJA

Tangential to the AC debate, is the role McDonald's has played in bringing AC to the masses, especially in Asia. When McDonald's first came to Hong Kong in 1975, few other spaces available to the working class had AC. The McDonald's were also clean, with much higher levels of hygiene, and people had to wait in line, and they became so popular, especially with the elderly and poor, that many establishments quickly copied them — and so they changed the culture, not only increasing overall levels of hygiene, but creating an expectation and demand for AC.

Always wild this was real and not some adult swim type skit.

Data center water use, contextualized (chart via @axios)

This is like late stage communist problem solving. 1: Ban the metric that measures the thing we dont want measured (SAT/ACT/high school graduate aptitude) 2: Ban the secondary means that indirectly measures the initial metric we didn't want measured (how many students taking remedial classes indicates how many students are not proper high school graduates)

William F. Buckley Jr. in his study. He was found here, where he had been working on a column, when he passed away at the age of 82.

@Hotshot_Movie @lalovestrump @BongmasterD

What an indictment of the city of Los Angeles that all of these great innovative companies are very conspicuously positioned everywhere in the LA area BUT the city of LA.

Average sunday for a sensitive young man

Mood lately