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jwz wrote:

The "Notes" app keeps hypnowheeling. The "Notes" app.

jwz wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKtxMxJI1TM

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Obsolete secret infrastructure like CARTWHEEL tower, only revealed decades later, intrigues me not just for its scale and design, but also for the obvious question it gives rise to. If this stuff effectively managed to stay unnoticed for decades, what newer secrets are hiding under our noses today?

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Despite CARTWHEEL being located in the middle of a residential neighborhood in a busy city and staffed by military personnel, officials went to great lengths to conceal the true purpose of these towers. They hid in plain sight, appearing to be silos or water towers (they even used civilian water trucks to send crews to some of the towers).

It was only after the cold war ended that the details of the network were declassified.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

The upper white section of the tower is actually a plexiglass radome, concealing various microwave and UHF radio antennas.

CARTWHEEL and its cousins were decommissioned around 1990. Most of the towers, mainly atop mountains in remote areas, were demolished or left to rot. However, CARTWHEEL and CORKSCREW (on a mountain near the Appalachian trail in central Maryland) have been maintained in good condition, now repurposed by the FAA.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Captured with the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR Digaron-S lens (@ f/6,3), Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50), Phase One XT camera (1/25 sec exposure).

This unassuming cylindrical tower, at first glance perhaps a grain silo or water tower, was part of a secret "continuity of government" microwave communications network. Built in the early 1960's, a network of similar towers located around the capital region linked the White House with critical sites such as Camp David, Raven Rock, and Mount Weather.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

"CARTWHEEL" Tower, Fort Reno, Washington, DC, 2020.

All the pixels, none of the continuity of government, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49576247768

#photography

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
debcha@saturation.social ("Deb Chachra") wrote:

I’ve been repeatedly pointing people at this over the past few weeks, so putting it here: https://how.complexsystems.fail

Boosted by jwz:
VeryBadLlama@mas.to ("Janel Comeau") wrote:

I have tariffed
the penguins
that are on
Heard Island

and which
you were probably
assuming
did not export goods

forgive me
they were taking advantage of us
so cunning
and so cold

Boosted by jwz:
chockenberry ("Craig Hockenberry") wrote:

About 10% of Apple's $3T market cap got wiped out today.

That $1M inauguration investment currently has a return of -$300B.

Boosted by jwz:
inthehands@hachyderm.io ("Paul Cantrell") wrote:

I know the headline-based gut reaction is “destroy capitalism, oh no, please continue,” but what the guy’s actually saying is wild and truly terrifying:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/03/climate-crisis-on-track-to-destroy-capitalism-warns-allianz-insurer

Boosted by jwz:
violetblue ("Violet Blue") wrote:

New, please share this underreported info: US measles cases up 360% (over 500, 22 states), TX measles vax clinics shut, CDC gutted, FDA delayed Novavax, FDA bird flu response team fired, new #Covid variant + cases rising, and more.

Hope IS a warrior emotion.

And about the daily evil and violence we're trying to survive right now, our work is "to build a life and a world that is not just strong enough to resist it but dedicated to its opposite."

Please join and support: https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-april-3-125822133

Boosted by jwz:
Lana@beige.party ("𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"") wrote:

Ok. I'm a teacher. So let me break this down for you into very very simple ideas and numbers.

Let's say you run a sandwich shop. You sell $10 sandwiches. It's a very good sandwich shop. You sell a lot of sandwiches. In fact, I buy a sandwich from you every single day. In a week, I have spent $70 buying sandwiches from you.

Now let's say I am selling my car. You, the owner of the sandwich shop, need a car. I decide to sell you my car for the very very reasonable price of $700.

So here's the situation at the end of a week. You have sold me $70 worth of goods. I have received $70 worth of sandwiches. In return, I have sold you $700 worth of goods, and you have received $700 worth of car.

Any reasonable, rational person would look at that situation and say "that's a fair exchange". Both parties paid an amount of money equal to the value of the goods they now own.

But Trump is not a rational person. What he has decided this means is that you have somehow cheated me out of $630, because $700-$70=$630. Does this make sense? Fuck no. If anything, I got the better part of that deal. I now have $630, plus a belly full of sandwiches.

But it gets even worse. Then, because Trump's a-brain is filled with maggots, he further declares that since $70 divided by $700 is .10, that MUST mean you, the owner of the sandwich shop, have been imposing a 10% sandwich tariff on me the whole time. Does THIS make a lick of sense either? Also fuck no.

But wait, you're going to love this. Trump's "solution" to this is to decree that going forward, all cars I sell you will be marked up a "reciprocal' 10% to $770. He says this will be good for sandwich sales. Does THIS make any goddamn sense either? Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick no it fucking does not.

This entire idea is complete horseshit for what I hope you can now see are a whole raft of very very obvious reasons. Among them:

1. There never was a "sandwich tariff" to reciprocate
2. There is no rational reason for you to buy a car from me ever again
3. This will not affect sandwich sales at all
4. That's not how numbers work
5. That's not how any of this works

Now replace the car seller with America, and the sandwich shop with an island inhabited only by penguins. I wish I was joking.

Boosted by jwz:
davidho@mastodon.world ("David Ho") wrote:

Happy Liberation Day to all who celebrate the release of money from your retirement accounts into thin air.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes@treehouse.systems wrote:

"Fascist education works by strategically erasing accounts of history and current events that include a diversity of perspectives, narrowing the scope of what can be taught until students are presented with a single viewpoint, which is formulated specifically to justify and perpetuate a hierarchy of value between groups. This narrowing is inconsistent with multi-racial democracy, antithetical to egalitarianism, and carries the possibility of conjuring mass violence.

But this is not the only means by which authoritarian movements attempt to manipulate populations into accepting the supremacy of a single dominant group. They also sometimes employ an even more scorched-earth strategy, destroying any common reality that could serve as the basis for a broad alliance between citizens against power. They seek to accomplish this by destroying the institution of public education itself."

- Jsason Stanely, "Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future"

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

This is British for "these people are fucking morons":

on.ft.com/4ce0MTM

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Sure would suck to work for a computering company is all I'm saying:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:F4bEU%5Fintermediate%5Fservices%5Fby%5FBEC%5Fitems,%5Fpartner%5Fextra-EU,%5Fimports,%5F2023%5F%28%25%29.png

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Anyway, it's probably going to be a couple of days before Europe can build enough consensus on how to respond. I wonder what they might possibly do? Truly a mystery for the ages.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=International%5Ftrade%5Fin%5Fservices%5Fby%5Fpartner

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

And I say all of this from the perspective of someone who thinks we f'd up by giving China MFN status and who is still upset that we failed to make our manufacturing base more competitive, instead allowing our business "leaders" to just screw over the American worker whenever an analyst in Jersey City decided the stonks weren't stonking enough.

Even from that perspective, this is the most pudding-brained, corruption-enabling way to cosplay at solving the problem.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

These people suck. They get hired by telling lies to people who want to hear lies, and everyone else pays the price. Maximally supine, minimally intelligent on any timeline longer than a gnat's lifetime. No wonder so many SV folks fit in.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Just how incompetent are these people?

This audition (nee "whitepaper") took it on faith that the 2018-2019 trade kerfuffle had some positive impacts, particularly for the treasury.

Meanwhile in reality...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%5Fadministration%5Ffarmer%5Fbailouts

And the paper seemingly ignored all employment impacts, while positing there wouldn't be any the second time around. Again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United%5FStates%5Ftrade%5Fwar#Job%5Flosses

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Cherry blossom. This year I didn't forget to catch this short moment when cherries blossom all over our neighborhood.

#darktable

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

And not for nothing, but the Republican effort to groom their entire caucus for spineless capitulation and denial of obvious truths is gonna bake this pain in *hard*. There won't be any course correction because the tangelo fascist had them barricade the exits before lighting the house on fire:

https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/house-quietly-ducks-trump-tariff

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

And y'all, it's no exaggeration that I felt stupider just reading the whole thing. Couldn't tell if they used ChatGPT to misunderstand every single paper they cited (lazy), or if the author was just that delusional (stupid). From the April 3rd perspective, it doesn't much matter...but woof.

Krugman linked this from his piece today, and it's so obvious they're playing with less than half a deck:

https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/where-we-stand-fiscal-economic-and-distributional-effects-all-us-tariffs-enacted-2025-through-april

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Over the weekend a friend convinced me to read the Miran "whitepaper", and that's how I knew this was going to be maximally stupid. I'm not an economist of any sort, never mind an international trade bod, but even I could smell the bullshit. The whole set of implausibilities and ahistorical retellings weren't just internally inconsistent, even the plausible ideas depended on a Trump administration acting in a coherent, thoughtful, disciplined manner.

A *Trump* administration!

Boosted by jwz:
jalefkowit@vmst.io ("Jason Lefkowitz") wrote:

This is why the tariff rates are shockingly high. They HAVE TO be shockingly high, because the point of them is not what they do to the economy. The point is to threaten businesses worldwide with pain -- so much pain that they recoil at the prospect.

And then Don can step in and say, you know I can make that pain go away for you, right? I can give you an exception to the tariffs. All I ask in return is that you do me this one favor...

So the more extortionate the tariffs are, the better they are for Don. They give him personal power; leverage. The rest of us suffer, but who cares about that? He certainly doesn't.

#USPol

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
sarahtaber@mastodon.online ("Sarah Taber") wrote:

Found a fluffy little moth who really wants us to think she's a big scary bee (you can tell bc she still got the moth antennae 😍)

Also she's sitting on what is currently my favorite fig so far for NC, Chicago Hardy.

jwz wrote:

Even the investment bankers have run entirely out of fucks.

Not known for being a particularly sarcastic people, my financial advisor at a major multinational bank just emailed an update with the subject, "They're eating the dogs, they're tarrifing the penguins" that began with: "In yesterday's episode of 'How to Lose All Allies in 65 Days'..."

So that's going great.
https://jwz.org/b/yklv

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
Windspeaker@mstdn.ca ("Windspeaker.com") wrote:

“I question a lot, because I am taking these stories that are supposed to be passed down verbally, but I want to preserve them, and I want to share them. That's a part of how I can be a part of reconciliation. My family is willing to share, and I have the ability to share these a little bit wider.”

#Indigenous #arts #film #animation

https://www.windspeaker.com/news/windspeaker-news/animated-film-explores-strength-found-shadow-demons

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
RickGaehl@mstdn.social ("Rick Gaehl") wrote:

It's spring across the northern hemisphere, the sun is shining, and the magnolia is out in our garden.
Luckily, no-one can put tariffs on any of this...

#Photography #Spring #Bloomscrolling #Gardening