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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12

@saveourfarms.bsky.social

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Astoria resident. Leftist. Love transit, infrastructure, aviation, parks, nature, baseball, hockey

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · Dec 7

One of my favorite power plants. Very photogenic.

The Ravenswood Generating Station in Astoria, Queens, on the East River on a clear day. Home of Big Aliss; when introduced, it was the largest steam power plant in the world. Now provides about 20% of power to NYC. Queensboro Bridge in the background.

The stacks of the Ravenswood Generating Station reflected on the East River on a very grey day, with the Roosevelt Island Bridge on the right. The East River isn’t a river at all.

Beautiful contrast in this photo by me, of a mix of blue sky (narrator: “hey,that’s the name of the site!”) and dark clouds behind the brilliant red and white flat striping of the four stacks of the RGS. A small boat in the foreground speeds by up the East River, which is actually a saltwater tidal estuary.

The four stacks of the RGS as seen from a highrise on Roosevelt Island. In the middle ground is the wonderful cubist architecture of the Eastwood residential complex. Not shown: the East River, which isn’t a river, and, geologically, technically, is a “drowned valley.”

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Reposted by Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12

City Nolan @ndhapple.bsky.social · 13h

Shutting down Indian Point was a massive, expensive mistake: "NY's electric grid operator warns of looming 'reliability shortfalls'" -- www.timesunion.com/capitol/arti...

NY's electric grid operator warns of looming 'reliability shortfalls'

“Taken together, these two reports show the grid is at a significant inflection point,” said Zach Smith, a senior vice president with the New York Independent System Operator.

www.timesunion.com

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 1d

You’re gonna hate that I haven’t read your book, but I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time. You’re a great writer, and Gin and Tacos is a super podcast. You leave us wanting more, of course.

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 1d

I’m sure everything is fine now.

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 1d

Scared the hell out of my writer/editor girlfriend last night, legitimately. She happened to mention Stewart Little and I said “yeah, I remember reading that in high school.”

Reposted by Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12

the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 2d

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible
- among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 2d

My favorite part about those is the base becomes a damn tripping hazard in the middle of the street (perfect place to trip!) if the pole breaks off

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 2d

Feeld might be the worst app name of all time, and that’s really something

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 2d

I love the America I live in, every neighborhood with its own small coal power plant.

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 2d

Definitely

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 2d

Wow, thank you so much, now I don’t have to read the article

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 2d

Buying my Friend necklace today! So excited

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

Holy hell that was one of my favorites growing up. Topographical maps! Drawings of architecture and stuff! Insanely beautiful jungles and waterfalls!

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

(Music starts to play) “oh no, oh, damn, this affects us all!”

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

Want to thank Thomas Jefferson, Teddy R, every president in the 20th century and beyond, the Christians that saw the west and said “yes,” the navy folks that moaned “coaling station,” and every American that likes cheap goods.

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

“Fascism, big win today. Big country. Huge country! We couldn’t have done it without all types of Early White Genocide. Railroads, shoutout to transcontinental capitalism at all costs. War, let’s hear it for ramping up the economy! When! We! Need!

(Crowd goes wild)

utopia deferred @utopia-defer.red · 3d

Can’t stop thinking about how successful suburban sprawl, white flight has been as a system of reactionary control and diffusion of political mass, inertia

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

A paucity of words.

utopia deferred @utopia-defer.red · 3d

Can’t stop thinking about how successful suburban sprawl, white flight has been as a system of reactionary control and diffusion of political mass, inertia

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

Oh, okay, having finished the video and read some comments I’m a little heartened. “They are talking about two wildly different experiences and expectations. The difference is Coates knows they are having different discussions, and Klein has no idea.” Yep.

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

Damn. No wonder you’re “the other Lauren”

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

At this point no one, anywhere, media, Congress, bureaucrats, general public can remember any news from two weeks ago. This hasn’t really been capitalized by… anyone, yet, besides the all-powerful leader of the Republican Party. Fucking Tim Walz captured it over a year ago and that’s it.

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

She doesn’t seem very smart but this makes me think there are smart people around or behind her. So many vacuums to fill on the republican side, from “being able to link two facts together” to “we do need to actually do some stuff, sometimes, and put that on camera.”

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

(Long-ass preface about how I’m halfway through book 3 of the Robert Caro LBJ series): “MTG knows how power flows.”

Home of the Brave @ofthebraveusa.bsky.social · 3d

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "I've been in the Capitol, and there's two things I couldn't find this week: I couldn't find anywhere the Epstein files and also couldn't find the Republican plan to fix the absolutely destroyed health insurance industry."

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

“I’ll admit I’ve made mistakes, in fact my staff has analyzed all my writings and it’s holding at 94% defensible in our current political climate” is something I would expect Klein to say.

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

Coates is a great writer, grounded in reality. Probably what makes him so accessible. Klein is a guy that knows that he can say “hey, I’ll allow that my opponent made a good point!” he comes across as “fair” to a ton more people in a liberal audience.

Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 3d

I feel like I’m I’m a pretty regular guy, and holy hell it feels like Ezra Klein got aholt of a thesaurus when he was 12 and thought “everything is possible.” Yes, a week late to watching the Ta-Nehisi Coates conversation.

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Uribe Down - Custom-painted, hand-rubbed Jaguar XJ-12 @saveourfarms.bsky.social · 4d

John K Samson! That album is so good. Today feels like a Weakerthans day.