Tootfinder

Amid this news madness, I've thoroughly enjoyed being subscribed to the daily #CarbonBrief. Instead of compulsing the news, I try [and often fail] to focus on the most insightful items in my news feeds. This analysis of the latest UK auction for #WindPower was excellent:

"Aspiring American authoritarians will only win if they are allowed to do so. None of this has to happen. Both of these terrible possibilities, land war and self-terrorism, are signs of weakness rather than strength. They can be prevented, but only if we name them, and use their horror as the first step to describe something much better."
http…

Land War or Self-Terrorism?
Trump's Likely Next Step

Okay, my obscure background as an erstwhile DC land use lawyer is finally relevant.
There are several agencies that oversee any projects at the White House, including the Commission of Fine Arts, the Commission for the Preservation of the White House, the National Park Service, and the National Capital Planning Commission.
Guess who apparently hasn't filed for approval from any of them?
-- Jamie Baker Roskie
Considering that Trump has one of his cronies running N…

"Amazon could lose over a third of forest cover by century's end"
#Amazon #Trees #Environment

Amazon could lose over a third of forest cover by century's end
A new LMU study estimates that land use changes in conjunction with climate change could lead to the loss of up to 38% of the Amazon rainforest by the end of the 21st century.

And I am convinced that Darth #Putin has explosive material in his hands that he can use to blackmail Darth #Trump, material that would not only get him impeached, but also land him in jail (without an attached golf course) for the rest of his life.

Here's a wild stat: We could power every car and truck as electric vehicles just by putting solar panels on land we currently use for biofuels.
Solar is vastly more efficient than biofuels for energy generation. The real question is how we use our land—solar for transport, biofuels for aviation, or letting some return to nature.

Putting solar panels on land used for biofuels would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks to go electric
The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to liquid biofuels. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy?

Canadians.
Is it time for Canada to ramp up its own defense industry?
We may not be capable of building the really large stuff. But I am thinking a focus on the essentials, mainly defensive or dual use.
Drones. (Land, sea and air)
Air Defense systems.
Armoured Personnel Carriers (we already do)
Ammunition
Artillery.
Small Arms.
We already produce some of this. We could produce more. Do we produce Air Defense systems currently?
Unfortunately the world is in need of more, not less, arms.
#ukraine #russiaukrainewar #canada #canpoli #cdnpoli
https://mastodon.social/@MAKS23/115752916537770053

"Permitting Parking in Driveways" is at Monday's SFBOS land use committee.
I plan to comment against this. It seems to allow driveways to be unlimited width and to remain even after garages are converted to ADUs. This is nakedly an inducement to more driving at the expense of green space, stormwater drainage, active transportation, and public transit.

So, it looks like the US Israel are proposing to construct what Apartheid South Africa called "homelands", but which are actually very large concentration camps...
They euphemistically call it "Green Zone".
Which, in addition to being a concentration camp is one that is intended to be a no-mans land between to protect Israel.
Moreover, the remaining "Red Zone" is the area that the trumps jarad-k Saudis Emirates want to bulldoze and use to build…

#idw Growing Land Use Pressure Puts Mount Kilimanjaro’s Biodiversity at Risk
Rapid population growth is driving sweeping land use changes that have become the chief cause of species decline on Mount #Kilimanjaro. These are the findings of an international research team led by the University of Bayreuth,…

Growing Land Use Pressure Puts Mount Kilimanjaro’s Biodiversity at Risk

Jets need Heisman favorite Fernando Mendoza to be answer to their QB woes https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6885343/2025/12/13/fernando-mendoza-jets-heisman-trophy-2026-nfl-draft/

"Italy clears 710 MW of solar in Puglia, challenges regional PV rules"
#Italy #SolarPower #Energy #Renewables

Italy clears 710 MW of solar in Puglia, challenges regional PV rules
The italian government says it is fast-tracking utility-scale solar, approving about 710 MW of mainly agrivoltaic projects in Puglia while moving to curb regional limits on where PV plants can be built, sharpening tensions over land use and energy policy.

#30DayMapChallenge 🗺️ Day 6️⃣: Dimensions
I decided to use time as my third dimension and created a simplified animated map showing the Earth’s terminator (the line dividing day and night) around the #Philippines 🇵🇭 at 6 p.m. throughout the year.
Since the Philippines is very near …

oooof. this incumbent running for re-election to the SF Bike Coalition board is literally a landlord lawyer.
if you're a member, the voting details are here and there are 10 candidates for 8 seats. https://sfbike.org/news/meet-the-candidat…

Versucht, eine Recherche im Landnutzungsmodul von #Copernicus zu machen. Dazu die eingebaute Hilfe-KI benutzt und insgesamt 3 Fragen gestellt. Nicht nur, dass mich die Antworten leider nicht weiter gebracht haben und ganz andere Schwerpunkte hatten, als meine Fragen. Der Hammer ist aber die Zahl der Abkürzungen. Bei 3 Fragen habe ich ca 200-300 Abkürzungen als Antwort erhalten. Kein Wunder, …

🌞 Dual use of land for solar energy production and cultivation found feasible in Finland
... few people realize what a win agrivoltaics are for farmers and the environment!
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-dual-solar-energy-production-cultivation.ht…

Dual use of land for solar energy production and cultivation found feasible in Finland
Open farmlands are ideal locations for installing solar panels, but the most common method, which involves covering a large area with south-facing panels, prevents the field from being used for simultaneous farming. The panels can also be installed vertically, allowing crops to be grown in the same field. However, this solution is still rare in Finland.

"Canal-top PV for Afghanistan’s massive irrigation project"
#Afghanistan #SolarPower #Energy #Renewables

Canal-top PV for Afghanistan’s massive irrigation project
A team of scientists has simulated covering 20% of the Qush-Tepa irrigation canal with PV panels. To this end, the researchers developed a framework, termed an integrated techno-economic-environmental assessment, that can be applied elsewhere. “It explicitly quantifies energy production, water-evaporation reduction, land-use savings, and economic performance within a single analytical structure,” one of the researchers said.

Southeast Asia's greenhouse gas emissions demand urgent regional action #Asia

Southeast Asia's greenhouse gas emissions demand urgent regional action
A new regional assessment shows that Southeast Asia is a major net source of greenhouse gases, with land-use change and rising fossil fuel use overwhelming natural carbon sinks, reservoirs that store carbon-containing chemical compounds for a long period.

According to the movies, Aliens only land and attack in the USA.
So if they ever do it, we could use that right now. Make them annoy something else for a few years.

Looks like blockchains have finally found a serious use case, just maybe not the one predicted/hoped for...
This article is about #Glassworm, the latest major exploit in JavaScript-land, targetting VSCode and using #Solana as command infrastructure and Google Calendar events as backup. It'…

GlassWorm: First Self-Propagating Worm Using Invisible Code Hits OpenVSX Marketplace | Koi Blog

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation | Steady State Manchester
https://steadystatemanchester.net/2025/10/27/manchesters-local-plan-responding-to-the-consultation/
Our draft response notes some glaring prob…

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation
Local Plans are what guide the pattern of a land use and and building across a council area.  In the case of Greater Manchester (excluding Stockport), the Joint Strategic Plan, Places for Everyone …

But there's money to be made in supporting the #NetanyahuAdmininstrations crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and land theft. You want to let somebody else make that profit?

But there's money to be made in supporting the #NetanyahuAdmininstrations crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and land theft. You want to let somebody else make that profit?

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation
Local Plans are what guide the pattern of a land use and and building across a council area.  In the case of Greater Manchester (excluding Stockport), the Joint Strategic Plan, Places for Everyone sets the scene, as does the government's National Planning Policy Framework.  That means that there are some very real constraints on what can be put into a so-called Local Plan (not very local - in the case of…

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation
UPDATE!  11 Nov.  We have now submitted a revised version.  It adds some answers to questions we didn’t address in the previously published draft, and has some additions to some of the other …

The Bills might be in trouble, plus drama in Laker-land https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6824633/2025/11/21/bills-texans-josh-allen-the-pulse/