dusty.ninja

It’s Official:
#Hawaii Is the #Happiest #State in the #US.

https://www.sunset.com/lifestyle/wellness/happiest-states-in-us-2025?utm_source=livingsimply.com

So: "phytomining"!

you take land where metals (like silver) are mixed into the soil

you seed the land with "hyperaccumulators" -- plants that suck up metal as they grow and incorporate it into them

some of these plants wind up being fully 1% silver

when the crops are mature, harvest and burn them

voila

you have a bunch of useable silver

Item #7 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-42-phytomining-adversarial-poetry-and

Linus Torvalds calls a spade a spade

Secret Panel HERE 😤 https://tapas.io/episode/3076990

In case anybody thought Europe was doing better. This is real bad.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Berlin-Police-can-secretly-enter-homes-for-state-trojan-installation-11103284.html

I love that Cloudflare periodically provides us with examples to convey to the youngsters what it felt like when you were in the middle of chatting to your friends online in the 1990s, and someone picked up the phone.

SPOTIFY WRAPPED

You listened to 0 songs. That's 0 seconds of music! You don't have a Spotify account.

When I moved in three winters ago I noticed a pattern during snowstorms: everyone would shovel their own section of walkway and nothing else -- sometimes just from the door to the street and not the public crossway or they'd just shovel their driveway and nothing else. This lead to there being a 20 foot section of sidewalk that was clear, then 20 foot not clear, then maybe another clear section down and on and off again all the way down the street, forever. The sections that were not cleared would freeze and become impassable, school kids would wipe out on them, the mail carrier would have to navigate through yards, etc. And through all of this I was watching some people clear their short sections of walkways with gas powered, self-propelled blowers.

So I started shoveling the entire block each and every snow. Sometimes my idiot self would use an actual shovel so I could be a total dork and do it while partialing (gets lots of car honks, cheers, and photographs. I apparently made the village Facebook group a few times with people thanking whoever it was doing this anonymous work), other times I'd use a handheld electric snow thrower thing and just wear my tail so that anyone viewing security cam footage to see who did the work was a weirdo. But I always went from one corner all the way to the other. Then last winter I started doing both sides of the street as well as the block south of mine because I expanded my arsenal of batteries to two. I did this over and over again regardless of how much snow or time or took - sometimes it needed several clearings in a day/night - because it was a decent replacement for my gym and actually resulted in something tangible I could see -- a clear path three blocks long with no interruptions. A thing of beauty. Each time I'd be sore as hell but feeling wonderfully accomplished.

Now and then my neighbor would see me doing his portion and would tell me that I didn't have to do that, he'd handle it later, etc. Did it anyway. And then it started to click for others. Last winter I noticed someone up the street from me began clearing half of the block to widen the path I'd created. Then my neighbor began to clear the south side of my block to complete it. Across the street someone now widens my path for a row of five houses. With the storm yesterday I did my paths and then returned home to find someone had cleared the south block after more snow accumulated. This morning, I did it again. A few hours later: engine noises. Four snow blowers out there making sure the path was completely clear block to block, end to end including cross streets. Someone has taken to start clearing up to some people's doors as well. It's incredible.

I did this because some people don't care but also I know some people simply can't due to age or physical ability and it's cool as hell because now I feel like we have an secret, unspoken group of Guardians of the Neighborhood thing going. I freaking love it.

Hey everyone else: 3200-3300 Maple Ave blocks are putting you all to shame. Step up.