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Rob Lion

@rnlion

Mechanical engineer building particle accelerators, formerly quantum computers. Technology and infrastructure history; reverse engineering. Cats. He/him. Also @rnlion@Twitter and @rnlion@tacobelllabs.net

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From the DataHoarder community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the DataHoarder community

If you too, are like me, annoyed that you were unable to watch them all before they were taken down. The Data Hoarder Reddit saved them. If you scroll down you can find the torrent link.

14.03.2026 16:29 πŸ‘ 283 πŸ” 78 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 5

Everyone should pay taxes. The more you make the more you should pay. Exempting people under any amount of income will only encourage innovation in getting around th cap.

13.03.2026 18:39 πŸ‘ 23 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Katie Porter:

0% state income tax for California families making under $100,000. That's thousands of dollars back in your pocket where it belongs.
As Governor, I'll work the issue at both ends-lowering taxes for those who are struggling and raising them on the biggest corporations that can afford to pay.

Katie Porter: 0% state income tax for California families making under $100,000. That's thousands of dollars back in your pocket where it belongs. As Governor, I'll work the issue at both ends-lowering taxes for those who are struggling and raising them on the biggest corporations that can afford to pay.

I hate saying things like β€œa memo went out” because it’s quasi-conspiratorial and unnuanced but something, like, HAD to have happened in the last couple months for several big Dems to suddenly rally around this (bad) idea, right? I truly had not heard it before then

13.03.2026 18:17 πŸ‘ 791 πŸ” 87 πŸ’¬ 54 πŸ“Œ 73

In your time on this earth you will chance upon works of art. And for some, you'll conclude with desperate rationale that they are the mere capstones of creative lineages unbeknown to you. The alternative explanationβ€”that someone invented them from whole clothβ€”your ego as an artist will not permit

12.03.2026 19:32 πŸ‘ 339 πŸ” 83 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The folks going "what are PhD students even for if we have effective LLM agents" are really telling on themselves

14.03.2026 01:14 πŸ‘ 209 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 1
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Piaggio Ape - Wikipedia

As fanciful as Richard Scarry can get, this is straightforwardly a en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio... , literally a three-wheeled Vespa scooter with a cargo bed.

I don't know what it would take to import one and get it road-legal here, but they've been in production in Italy for nearly 80 years.

14.03.2026 14:05 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The odds of this turning into an abject humanitarian disaster and a permanent stain on a very stained ledger of US foreign policy is just sitting there on the table all the time every time they decide to do yet another wave of aerial bombing, which is incredibly postwar brained

14.03.2026 01:30 πŸ‘ 209 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

It is very easy to read statements like this as a joke.

This is not a joke.

We have proven with AI, completely by accident, what knowledgeable people have been saying for decades: the environment that rich people live in gives them a very specific personality disorder.

13.03.2026 16:42 πŸ‘ 6259 πŸ” 2499 πŸ’¬ 36 πŸ“Œ 33

I dunno man, I think precipitously canceling people's funding caused a lot of damage to other people's careers and lives and reputations and maybe they should live with the blowback. They come from a media ecosystem that makes public lists of insufficiently bigoted professors.

14.03.2026 01:09 πŸ‘ 890 πŸ” 240 πŸ’¬ 14 πŸ“Œ 5

he still doesn't seem to understand that when you put someone in a no-win situation, and also prove yourself completely untrustworthy, then they definitionally have nothing to lose. whereas you have a lot to lose and literally not one coherently defined thing to win. deals master

14.03.2026 00:47 πŸ‘ 1243 πŸ” 173 πŸ’¬ 23 πŸ“Œ 2

THIS.

Charging for water isn't anti-agriculture.

It's a basic guardrail that keeps lowest-common denominator bulk goods, that can be grown just about anywhere, from crowding out more financially rewarding types of farming.

That brings MORE MONEY to farms & rural areas.

13.03.2026 21:58 πŸ‘ 392 πŸ” 83 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 3

I'd really love to see the @katewagner.wehwalt.net McMansionHell interpretation of this window layout.

14.03.2026 13:51 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Photo of 4 apples, two are large and two are tiny. 
Text says:
2 Apples + 2 Apples = 4 Apples
It's simply a mathematical fact

Photo of 4 apples, two are large and two are tiny. Text says: 2 Apples + 2 Apples = 4 Apples It's simply a mathematical fact

Here's a meme style version:

14.03.2026 00:13 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

every quantitative measure is actually a stack of qualitative assumptions in a trenchcoat

12.03.2026 12:13 πŸ‘ 768 πŸ” 203 πŸ’¬ 16 πŸ“Œ 31
Graph showing warning period results

Graph showing warning period results

SF Chronicle piece: 
Speed cameras generated tickets sent to more than 16,500 drivers in San Francisco in August, the first month those tickets came with fines, according to data from SFMTA β€” more than 600 a day.

That’s good for more than $1.2 million in fines, if they are all paid in full.

The speed camera citations come at a critical time for street safety. Speeding is the leading cause of deadly collisions, and last year, 42 people were killed in car crashes in the city β€” the highest number in almost two decades. At the same time, San Francisco police have come under fire for what critics say is a lack of traffic enforcement after ticket numbers plummeted during the pandemic and have stayed relatively low.

SF Chronicle piece: Speed cameras generated tickets sent to more than 16,500 drivers in San Francisco in August, the first month those tickets came with fines, according to data from SFMTA β€” more than 600 a day. That’s good for more than $1.2 million in fines, if they are all paid in full. The speed camera citations come at a critical time for street safety. Speeding is the leading cause of deadly collisions, and last year, 42 people were killed in car crashes in the city β€” the highest number in almost two decades. At the same time, San Francisco police have come under fire for what critics say is a lack of traffic enforcement after ticket numbers plummeted during the pandemic and have stayed relatively low.

Compellingly, San Francisco saw a *huge* (~75%) drop-off in speeding just two months after the cameras went in, even when they were still sending warnings!

Now, SF has gone from 12k warnings/day at the start of the program to just 600 tickets/day. A 95% drop in illegal speeding!

13.03.2026 17:15 πŸ‘ 122 πŸ” 15 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 7

this is about as baffling as that grammarly baffling decision; post subscribers, almost by definition as newspaper readers, are going to be *intensely* curious about how and what, exactly, determined this

14.03.2026 01:59 πŸ‘ 125 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

Sewers being built in Paris, 1920s.

14.03.2026 02:03 πŸ‘ 119 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image Post image Post image

Hey so you know that joke "I read Playboy for the articles?" They were not joking this stuff is more text-dense than basically anything today and this is a fluff article about Google.
Playboy, September 2004

14.03.2026 01:49 πŸ‘ 217 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 19 πŸ“Œ 9
Preview
I Am Fighting Back Against the Trump Administration by Moving to Portugal β€œMore people moved out of the U.S. last year than moved in for the first time since the Great Depression as a record number of citizens moved abroa...

"I draw inspiration from those who came before me in the fight against tyranny when I say, 'Give me liberty or give me the chill life of an expat in a foreign city that has a similar climate to San Francisco.'"

07.03.2026 15:30 πŸ‘ 123 πŸ” 18 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

I knew it was made later than it seems. The rims on the car are reproductions. They weren't made until the late 80s and weren't popular until the mid 90s. Cars in the 50s had drum brakes on all four wheels. Disc brake conversions were popular in the 80s but the original rims didn't work.

13.03.2026 16:17 πŸ‘ 72 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 8 πŸ“Œ 0

This happens with*everything* now. No matter how grave the crime or one-dimensional the injustice, after four days the hivemind of American punditry decides that the Real Story is how the people upset about it are the real villains.

05.02.2026 23:34 πŸ‘ 4194 πŸ” 741 πŸ’¬ 44 πŸ“Œ 37

incredibly 'the unix way' to have a directory named 'etc' for stuff that the first draft taxonomy couldn't sort better then never revisit it

13.03.2026 15:33 πŸ‘ 12 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 0

Think of the pallet wrap! llpde is the linchpin of global trade. Shipping companies are going to start skimping. Means increased β€˜cargo shift’ damage. Spike in β€˜damaged on arrival’ insurance claims for electronic goods and fragiles.

13.03.2026 15:45 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

Ok now it’s several plastics suppliers all saying 7-10% increase effective immediately

So anything you see that is mostly plastic, which is most stuff these days, is now 7-10% more expensive

I should note I did not get plastics notices in the past when oil spiked

It was always steel/metals

13.03.2026 15:09 πŸ‘ 134 πŸ” 29 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 13

First fall out of the inflation from the war:

My label company says the polyethylene market has skyrocketed bc of oil issues elsewhere, people are buying American polyethylene

So my label pricing has jumped 10%

In my work it’s wild how often the packaging costs more than the food packaged

11.03.2026 15:22 πŸ‘ 85 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 2

But seriously, how fucking dumb do you have to be to run a dark money influence op on a professional influence op researcher and her influence op former reporter boyfriend? Just insane dummies. Vote Kat and she'll out this shit in Congress constantly.

13.03.2026 14:43 πŸ‘ 3675 πŸ” 342 πŸ’¬ 39 πŸ“Œ 11

Is that a lower-case "2"?

13.03.2026 15:53 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
How Crows Gave Earth's Biggest City the Middle Finger
How Crows Gave Earth's Biggest City the Middle Finger YouTube video by Casual Geographic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxTi...

Crows in Tokyo learned to construct fake dummy nests to distract municipal workers whose job is to remove nests

13.03.2026 12:24 πŸ‘ 67 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 5

anthropic is going to win because they are not a supply chain risk. palantir should be declared a supply chain risk because we cannot have people openly dedicated to overthrowing democracy in charge of our intelligence backends.

13.03.2026 05:34 πŸ‘ 421 πŸ” 50 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 0

Third: β€œSΓ‘nchez is adamant she and her daughter have been living in their home since moving in. As for the location of her carβ€”she says she loaned it to a family member in Chicago last summer.”

She owns a home in the school district and pays taxes there. Yet the location of her car matters more🧐

13.03.2026 10:48 πŸ‘ 89 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 1