@mariyadelano@hachyderm.io2025-11-14 21:05:53
So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-10-13 06:16:23
Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2025-12-14 02:21:41
For #Caturday, a reminder that Widget remains available for adoption in the NYC metro area. She would prefer a calm house without kids (we are not a calm house). She's super affectionate! #CatsOfMastodon
@detondev@social.linux.pizza2025-12-10 14:39:26
Kimi Onoda, Japan's new Minister of State for Economic Security, is a 43 year old half-Irish ex-game industry PR femcel with an extensive history of defending her exclusive attraction to anime boys on twitter
@hikingdude@mastodon.social2025-10-05 07:50:30
One reason why we chose #Baiersbronn for our last vacation was the #Landesgartenschau (#Garden show?).
It would have been a gem for flower and garden
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-04 21:37:04
Leading up to the government shutdown on Wednesday,
congressional Republicans and Donald Trump have
repeated misleading claims
that Democrats were trying to pass a resolution that would provide
“free healthcare for illegals”.
It’s become a well-rehearsed refrain fueling GOP lawmakers.
At the White House on Wednesday, the JD Vance said the Democrats’ spending plan
“would have undone” the work of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)
– which en…
@NFL@darktundra.xyz2025-12-12 11:11:44
How Buccaneers' loss to Falcons impacted Panthers, NFC playoff picture https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6883695/2025/12/12/buccaneers-falcons-panthers-tnf-nfl-playoff-picture/
@pre@boing.world2025-11-22 10:39:50
Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
--
Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin
@stefan@gardenstate.social2025-10-03 13:02:28
@Carwil@mastodon.online2025-10-29 16:42:26
The Trump administration is not attacking the "excesses" of "woke" scholarship. They're at war with the very idea of power analysis, with the feeling of deep empathy with the oppressed, with ethical commitment to make a just world.
