The Baffler on the Rexas mega-gas station / convenience store.

Leave It to Beaver

In Texas (where else would you expect this?). People need to stop using Amazon.

Planned Amazon data center could become the biggest climate polluter in the U.S.

There have been lots of changes at Google,  mostly as it re-orients to AI.  I have been a user of Google News for as long as I can remember and always found it adequate.  Lately, however, it seems to be harder to control, giving me stories on subjects I don’t want, and most annoyingly, clickbait.

I decided to try a self-managed newsfeed, which is really what I want.  Some reading lead me to Feedly.  You select news sources that you like and it collects the stories and groups them for you.

I was going to wait a week or so before posting, but after one day, I’m more than ready to dump Google News.

I also find I’m spending less time reading news and focusing more on things that interest me. Google (lets face it) is in the business of keeping you looking at their pages.  So I was getting lots of content that was meant to keep me engaged (I’m thinking things like celebrity gossip) that really don’t interest me.  Well, I suppose they must interest me at some level because I do click on some of these stories.  I will now be less well informed about pop culture, but I have a lot more time.

Unavailable in the US. Read it and weep.  From Electrek.

Forbidden fruit: Buick Electra gets 435 mile range and 376 hp for $25,000

A collection of articles from Boston Review.  The last one by Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (and coiner of the word “enshittification”) is a must-read.

What Was the Internet?

Epstein had a big ranch not far from here.  The state of New Mexico is investigating a large number of crimes that happened there.  Initially the federal government agreed to share its information on Epstein with the state of New Mexico to aid in prosecution.  Now they are backing out of that pledge.  Let that sink in.  Federal law enforcement is (still) blocking this investigation.  This time they aren’t just stonewalling victims and the public, but the state of New Mexico.

State of New Mexico sues Justice Department and Todd Blanche, saying they blocked its Epstein probe

From Yale University.  The interesting part:

It took nearly seven decades, after the invention of the silicon solar cell in 1954, for the world to install 1 terawatt of solar capacity, conceivably enough to power the entire United States. After passing that milestone in 2022, the world added its second terawatt in 2024 and its third in 2026, Bloomberg reports.

The World Adds a Third Terawatt of Solar Power

In spite of the photos you see on the news of household waste, the vast majority of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch seems to be from commercial fishing, mostly nets.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not an island of trash: its plastic averages roughly 50 kilograms spread across each square kilometer, and a 2022 study found 75 to 86 percent of the large floating debris by mass came from fishing gear, not household waste

People who have not been convicted of a crime are having their DNA added to the FBI criminal database, in large numbers.  From The New Republic.

ICE Is Using Immigration Arrests to Build a Massive DNA Database

The Surveillance State continues.  At the very least there needs to be privacy laws to restrict access and punish misuse of this data.  From Tech Spot.

Dozens of police officers accused of using license plate cameras to track women