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Drunken Idaho

@carrolleventyr.bsky.social

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Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · Nov 21

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Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 3h

Biological life

The Economist @economist.com · 3h

Biological life depends on two families of large molecule: nucleic acids and proteins. The first of our collection of primers explains what they are and how they work

Nucleic acids and proteins

Big complex molecules are the unique stuff of life. This is how they work

econ.st

Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 3h

Could you please explain the difference between “biological life” and other types of life

Reposted by Drunken Idaho

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 20h

lying

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 21h

How OpenAI put itself at the centre of a $1tn network of deals on.ft.com/4q0tjCV

How OpenAI put itself at the centre of a $1tn network of deals

The company behind ChatGPT has signed agreements with many of the largest tech groups, adding to a growing web of financial dependencies across the AI world

on.ft.com

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Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 11h

Even if true, what’s the argument? Civilization-ending pandemics are a growth market?

Reposted by Drunken Idaho

Sarah Edwards @eddysarah.bsky.social · 1d

A local theater is producing ten staged readings of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” across ten months. I wrote about the play, and project, here, for @indyweek.bsky.social.

Burning Coal Theatre Produces Powerful Series of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" Readings Across Ten Months

First produced in 2005, the play draws text directly from the diaries and emails of the young American activist Rachel Corrie.

indyweek.com

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Reposted by Drunken Idaho

Screamer Jim @screamerjim.bsky.social · 22h

We continue to be hostages to the most illiterate men on the planet

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onion person @junlper.beer · 11h

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social · 17h

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

Sophie Sherry @sophiesherry.bsky.social · 20h

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door.   It wasn’t the feds — it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’

During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

chicago.suntimes.com

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ceej @ceej.online · 1d

interesting! three people who are all going to hell

max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · 1d

New: Bari Weiss booked Hillary Clinton, Mike Pompeo, and Antony Blinken for a roundtable on Gaza, her first major move at CBS.

Notably on a CBS call today in which the panel was floated, one producer also repeatedly emphasized the need to hear from Palestinians in Gaza (Weiss did not respond).

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Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 1d

Awful

Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 1d

High functioning crackhead

Reposted by Drunken Idaho

jeff com-BOO-ters @helldude.bsky.social · 2d

portland frog you smoke too tough. your swag too different. your rubber suit is too bad. they’ll kill you portland frog

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 1d

Tomorrow: The AI Bubble is built on impossible promises. GPUs die in 5 years, nobody has built a 1GW data center, and they have the power to do so. Stargate Abilene won't have enough power before 2028.

Here's a link for $10 off premium.

edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

Everybody is very casual with how they talk about Sam Altman’s theoretical promises of trillions of dollars of data center infrastructure, and I'm not sure anybody realizes how difficult even the very basics of this plan will be.
Nevertheless, everybody is happily publishing stories about how “Stargate Abilene Texas - OpenAI’s massive data center with Oracle - is open,” by which they mean two buildings, and I’m not even confident both of them are providing compute to OpenAI yet. There are six more of them that need to get built for this thing to start rocking at 1.2GW - even though it’s only 1.1GW according to my sources in Abilene.
But, hey, sorry - one minute - while we’re on that subject, did anybody visiting Abilene in the last week or so ever ask whether they’ll have enough power there?
Don’t worry, you don’t need to look - I’m sure you were just about to, and had simply been busy! - but I did the hard work for you and read up on it, and it turns out that Stargate Abilene only has 200 megawatts of power - a 200 megawatt substation that, according to my sources, has only been built within the last couple of months, with 350 Megawatt of gas turbine generators that connect to a natural gas power plant that might get built by the end of the year in the event that one of the multiple construction firms involved . Said turbine is extremely expensive, featuring volatile pricing (for context, volatility fell in Q2 2025…to 69% annualized, meaning that if you had these prices across the entirety of a year you’d see swings of 69% up or down) and even more volatile environmental consequences, and is, while permitted for it (this will download the PDF of the permit), impractical and expensive to use long-term.
Analyst James van Geelen, founder of Citrini Research recently said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that these are “not the really good natural gas turbines” because the really good ones would take seven years to deliver due to a natural gas turbine shortage.
But th…

$Stargate Abilene does not have sufficient power to run at even half of its supposed IT load of 1.2GW, and at its present capacity - assuming that the gas turbines function at full power - can only hope to run 370MW to 460MW of IT load. I’ve seen article after article about the gas turbines and their use of fracked gas - a disgusting and wasteful act typical of OpenAI - but nobody appears to have asked “how much power does a 1.2GW data center require?” and then chased it with “how much power does Stargate Abilene have?” The answer is not enough, and the significance of said “not enough” is remarkable. Today, I’m going to tell you, at length, how impossible the future of generative AI is. Gigawatt data centers are a ridiculous pipe dream, one that runs face-first into the walls of reality. The world’s governments and media have been far too cavalier with the term “gigawatt,” casually breezing by the fact that Altman’s plans require 17 or more nuclear reactors’ worth of power, as if building power is quick and easy and cheap and just happens. I believe that many of you think that this is an issue of permitting - of simply throwing enough money at the problem - when we are in the midst of a shortage in the electrical grade steel and transformers required to expand America (and the world’s) power grid. I realize it’s easy to get blinded by the constant drumbeat of “gargoyle-like tycoon cabal builds 1 gigawatt data center” and feel that they will simply overwhelm the problem with money, but no, I’m afraid that isn’t the case at all, and all of this is so silly, so ridiculous, so cartoonishly bad that it threatens even the seemingly-infinite wealth of Elon Musk, with xAI burning over a billion dollars a month and planning to spend tens of billions of dollars building the Colossus 2 data center, dragging two billion dollars from SpaceX in his desperate quest to burn as much money as possible for no reason. This is the age of hubris - a time in which we are going to watc…$

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Reposted by Drunken Idaho

More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 1d

BREAKING: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the US has finalized a plan to give $20 billion to Argentina.

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Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 1d

shot an essayist just to watch him die

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Reposted by Drunken Idaho

CNN @cnn.com · 1d

Pope Leo XIV, writing in the first major document of his pontificate, has denounced the “dictatorship” of economic inequality while insisting the Catholic Church is committed to supporting “rejected” migrants.

Leo XIV speaks out on ‘dictatorship’ of economic inequality and support for migrants in first major text | CNN

www.cnn.com

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The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · 2d

I joked about it but it may actually be worthwhile for every Dem who gets on tv to start saying Stephen Miller is the real president

Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 2d

U.S. Northern Command says that elements of the Texas national guard are now “employed in the greater Chicago area.”

The statement claims that they’ve been deployed to protect ICE and federal property.

U.S. Northern Command &
@USNorthernCmd
X.com
Effective today, elements of the Texas National Guard, under Title 10 authority and command and control of U.S. Northern Command, are employed in the greater Chicago area.
These soldiers are employed to protect U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other
U.S. Government personnel who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.
For the latest information on our Federal Protection Mission, please see the link below:

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 2d

There's an undercurrent of conversation about the need for Democrats at the national level to pivot to the center. That didn't work out for the last national Democrat, our friends at @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social point out.
prospect.org/politics/cen...

Centrist Democrats Have Already Forgotten About Kamala Harris

Pivoting to the right didn't work in 2024. It won't work now.

prospect.org

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Schrödinger's Sneetch Belly @rtodkelly.bsky.social · 2d

"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"

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Ahhhhh @nerdjpg.com · 3d

Welcome to the capitalist innovation museum we got

- scam machine
- psychosis inducing machine
- weapons of mass destruction
- button you push that makes the planet hotter
- markets that intentionally starve people
- clothes that fall apart after washing them 1 time
- medicine you can’t afford

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

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Drunken Idaho @carrolleventyr.bsky.social · 3d

Awful

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d

thank you brett kavanaugh!

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 3d

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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New Door Books @newdoorbooks.bsky.social · 4d

In @literaryhub.bsky.social, @devintoshea.bsky.social describes how movies are popularizing the classic #Pynchon theme: "The war between the powerful and the powerless."
lithub.com/thomas-pynch...

Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time

Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptations of Thomas Pynchon’s novels—first Inherent Vice in 2014, and now One Battle After Another in 2025—may be tipping the scales, with more first-time Pynchon readers f…

lithub.com

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 3d

Cool :)

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 4d

JPMorgan Chase reports that $1.2T of debt is now tied to AI-related companies, making it the largest segment in the investment-grade market (Caleb Mutua/Bloomberg)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

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