Billy Smith @BillySmith@mastodon.social

Elvis impersonators deserve more credit than they get.

But providing basic guidelines for Far-UVC implementation, without stalling, without hedging- and having your name attached to those solutions would not be a terrible career move either.
Door #2 is a world with Far-UVC proceeds without your input and you become irrelevant.

I get it, being mitigation skeptical, creating perpetual doubt around costly infection control is a great career move- but it's getting people killed.
If we release it to the mass market, and people can just order it- your opinions about it will become less relevant, not more.

Look, Far-UVC can still be your meal ticket for life, you can still make a name for yourself in academia with it- but you have to shit or get off the pot. It's not perfect, we know that- but it's far, far safer than what's in the air, people need it, and you're stalling.

The academics with expertise in this field have visions of years of fat grants to study this- if only they can drag out the process a little longer. Why risk your career with actionable recommendations that might be wrong when you can get paid to sit on the fence indefinitely?

Can we build a perfect bridge or trussed roof with no chance of ever falling? No. That's not how engineering works. We can make it very unlikely. What we can't do is sit around in the rain for years because no one wants to risk their engineering career by actually engineering.

I can source and do quality control on personal Far-UVC, test it, get it certified, make sure it is what it says it is, and stays that way. What I haven't wanted to do is define how best to use it. That's an engineer's job- well was. But they haven't done it- for two years.

Reflecting that in 1976 The Lucas Plan was put together by factory workers to counter proposed job cuts. It was based on notions of socially useful production and included things like heat pumps, wind turbines, energy efficient houses. In 1976!

“I wonder what it would take to spark a revolution, or a coup. The thing with history is that nothing seems likely until after it happens. So if your first reaction is to dismiss this possibility because it’s unlikely, you haven’t studied history. Everything that happens is unlikely.”

— Scott Adams (2007)

@ifixcoinops Honestly this is diningware in general.

With upcoming natural gas shortages this winter, now is a great time to recommend people you know to get hot-water bottles! ♨️

They transfer heat into the body _way_ more efficiently than room heating: although they can't totally replace it, they can reduce overall heating costs by ~⅓ ⬇️

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the-hot-water-bottle.html

I'm going to do a technical test run of a piece I'm now calling Snake Step tomorrow night at the open mic night at Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead, which is at 8pm.

90% sure I'll be doing this.

This is a reworking of something I've previously called Doomstep or Tubstep. The major difference so far is playing serpent instead of tuba.

American dubstep was higher pitched and also more frantic, so I may bring in some of that speed and energy.

The best explination I've ever seen of why the argument against online privacy is stupid:

Three more tourists had to be rescued from the eruption area yesterday. 🤦🏻‍♂️

@Shrigglepuss At a former job, the boss listened to music via speakers plugged into the file server. I timed how long it took me to walk to his office and told the server to cut to the Imperial March just as I walked in...

Summer Melting in Svalbard

The cumulative melting across #Svalbard between June 1 and July 31, 2022, was 1.5 times larger than the previous record in 2018. Since the start of summer about 40 gigatons of #meltwater has poured into the #ocean.

“The melt anomaly is 3.5 times larger than the 1981–2010 average, and 5 times the interannual variability,” Fettweis said. “Only a changing #climate can explain this.”

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150165/summer-melting-in-svalbard

via @Snoro
#ClimateCatastrophe #Cryosphere

Unbelievable, there seems to be some “e-commerce” engine of some sort that just doesn’t work on Firefox. Encountered two different sites today that are clearly using the same backend (both in the onewheel/skating community) and both declined cards (Visa and Mastercard, by two different banks) without ever hitting the payment processor. Both worked on Chromium.

*smh*

Capitalism can’t even do capitalism right.

#mainstream #mediocrity #capitalism #testOnMoreThanOneBloodyBrowserYouBellends

More sanity from my home country: Māori tribal leaders & their advisers call for data sovereignty, to take back control of what is theirs. Cited is "an intergenerational approach to data, as a taonga (treasure)"

Self-hosting is included as a strategy, servers at home & on the marae (meeting house).

This initiative can be seen as a form of infrastructural de-colonisation, reclaiming what has been lost to the digital imperialism of AWS, Microsoft & other 'cloud' giants

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/471967/head-in-the-clouds-call-for-nz-to-take-control-of-data-storage