mattbk @mattbk@mspsocial.net

"So for the #Tusky case, the misunderstanding of mass censorship and ignorance of developer liberties in context of FLOSS make cries of “censorship” and “violates free speech” a strong signal for lack of sincere thought."

https://cjslep.com/c/blog/on-tusky-rickrolling

I hate how so many on the left are useful idiots for right-wing climate change denialists…

We absolutely need more mass transit, including increased service intervals to make mass transit systems more reliable and faster for riders - Elon Musk’s open disdain for mass transit is, quite frankly, shit, and fuck his high speed tunnels for private cars. We also need infrastructure that prioritizes walking and bicycling, and more and better electric-assisted bicycles (a category proven to get people riding more than they would have otherwise). And, there’s areas where we need to just straight-up ban cars to make our communities more livable.

However, you’re going to run into huge problems actually doing this in the US. There is a sizable contingent of people who actively oppose mass transit serving their area, because they are that racist, and they vote. There’s also way too many people that just refuse to pay taxes for mass transit… and they vote, too. There’s people who insist on a god-given right to drive everywhere. (These kinds of people are why I’m sympathetic to some forms of totalitarian regime, but I suspect many people on here are not.) And, as long as suitable alternatives aren’t pervasive in the US - or hell, even if they are and there’s people not using them - you need to reduce the impact of the private cars that you have as much as possible.

The studies saying that BEVs are just as bad as ICE cars for pollution are faulty. They tend to use production emissions estimates that overstate emissions while comparing to actual ICE production emissions, they tend to assume the worst case electric grids while comparing to optimistic fuel economy (I could swear I’ve seen studies that have even done a well-to-wheels analysis on the BEV but only a tailpipe analysis on the ICE car), and they tend to vastly underestimate the lifespan of the BEV (to be fair, this is skewed massively downward by Nissan LEAF unreliability).

Oh, and a lot of those faulty studies are promoted by business interests that stand to lose big if BEVs displace ICE vehicles. Think oil companies (that wish to keep us all addicted to oil) and ICE automakers (especially the Germans, who are trying to convince EU regulators to let them keep cheating with diesels).

Back to battery longevity, as I understand, with three exceptions, Tesla’s battery longevity, even in the face of frequent fast charging, has been excellent. (Those exceptions are the 70 and 90 kWh Model S/X packs, which do actually have notable degradation, and have to have charge power derated fairly early in their life to protect them, and the 80 kWh Roadster 3.0 retrofit packs, which are absolute garbage.)

Tesla’s labor practices are rather unsustainable. While I believe that the Reveal pieces on Tesla factory safety were full of bullshit, it’s undeniable that Tesla overworks its employees, and rapid strategy shifts (some of which are reversed, even!) result in layoffs that are rather harmful. Honestly, I hope their employees do unionize under a non-UAW union. (Fuck unions that protect Nazis that are actively threatening black workers.) I’m even more in favor of worker-owned businesses, and my hope (although not my expectation) would be that if Tesla were to go private, that they would move towards such a structure.

At the same time, though, I so often see opposition to Tesla used as an excuse to keep buying ICE cars from traditional automakers… and that’s not doing anyone any good. That is literally being a useful idiot for the climate change denialists.

Oh, and this is the least important point, but… as far as actual car enthusiasts not buying them… come on, that’s ridiculous. And the Model 3 isn’t too shabby on the track, either - Randy Pobst got a Model 3 Performance with Track Mode around the Willow Springs Streets circuit in 1:21.49, which is, uh, fast - for comparison, in a 2015 BMW M4 (which is very much competition for it), he did a 1:22.94. In a Porsche Cayman GT4 (which is far more track-oriented) he did a 1:21.74. OK, sure, that’s a one-lap time, but one point that some reviewers have made is that the Model 3’s sustained performance holds up better than some ICE cars on the track…

📈 In other news, the number of active Liberapay users has just surpassed last year's peak. We had 2091 users sending and/or receiving money on July 11th last year, we have 2114 today. https://liberapay.com/about/stats

arkansas black apples, painted by ellen isham schutt, 1909

@switchingsocial Do you have an alternative to trello ?

Reasons why I could take over Sunbeam:
- I'm very cool
- I have lots of clout
- I know nothing about ecology politics anarchism OR plants
- sun's in my @
- all drama flies over my head and I can't see three feet ahead of me

Over the past 6 months or so, a few members have asked us if we accept donations via #Liberapay.

We moved away from them because they were having issues; it looks like those issues are now fixed (we hope). So we’re happy to announce that Fosstodon is now accepting Liberapay donations again. 😁

https://liberapay.com/fosstodon

Error pages should list alternative account(s) of admins
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/11048

Currently the error page is just the sad elephant gif, right? But when the site is down and all the pages are sad elephant gifs, there is no way to look at /about to get alternative contact details for admins.

The sad elephant page should say "Here are the alternative accounts for admins, so you can see whether they know about the downtime and check for instance status updates."

#mastodon #meta #github