FoxyLad

#RepairRevolution on this Sat 19th Sept, St Margaret's Presbyterian Church - Frankton. Bring your broken stuff, and we'll do our best to fix it. Small appliances, toys, clothes and just about anything else. #RepairCafe #Queenstown #Tahuna

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social The bad guys rely on this asymmetry. They have effectively unlimited time and money to throw at this (like finding sympathetic astromomers) and you don't. And ninety-nine concerned people out of a hundred will throw it in the too hard basket. But it seems to me that you are that hundreth person, and you are not only qualified but have the guts to fight this battle. And I reckon you'll win it too. Why? Becasue a very old friend who I hadn't seen for twenty years came to visit the other day. And she couldn't stop talking about this amazing lecture she went to in a tiny hall on Stewart Island. And she's now back in the UK spreading your story. So look after yourself, and your goats. You can only do what you can do, but never doubt that what you you do is working. P.S. I rekon your new goats will live longer than the bad guy's insane ideas.

@lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz @futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz I used to believe that AO's smallness and transparency prevented corruption, but the current lot are waking the cynicism in me. If I had any sway with Green strategists, I'd be hammering this message. The Greens are tarred as lefty hippies, but they could turn that to their advantage because lefty hippies are the least susceptible to corruption.

3,000 trees planted in record time, thanks to roughly 120 awesome beech party-goers! And thanks for all the boosts - you spread the word exponentially further than I could.

@futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz @lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz I admire your persistence - I wrote to my MP about this, and didn't even get an underling's reply. I think we need to start talking about the corruption that this government is instigating. The largess they have given to big tobacco, big banking and big oil has to have it's quid pro quo, and our citizens will be paying the price for decades. Oh for some investigative journalists with the resources to follow the money.

@bardmoss@autistics.life @jeffowski@mastodon.world And the next passage says that women have to give two turtledoves to the priest every time they have a period. Personally I quite like the idea of these bible literalist pastors getting swamped with turtledoves.

@KiwiEV@mastodon.nz If the oil companies were not corrupting all parties except Green, we'd have done this years ago. It would have been so on-brand for NZ to have lead the world on this, like we did with the anti-nuclear legislation. I weep for the political courage our leaders had a generation ago.

@phil_stevens That's a new angle - escape the wild weather in Te Ika a Maui with a quick trip south to plant beech trees!

@AnneTheWriter1 Icy what you did there!

@phil_stevens Exactly right! Can you make it on Sunday?

@dznz@cloudisland.nz Or just go cold turkey. I'm mentally healthier and getting more work done after quitting twitter. The fediverse now has more than enough going on to entertain/inform me, and most of the people I really cared about on the other place are here now.

@pietkuip@mastodon.nl @sundogplanets@mastodon.social Thanks for checking my geometry, and the comparison with the ISS gives an easy confirmation for those who can't understand the geometry. And the geometry has another drawback: the added light will be at a very low angle, and most solar farms are So their solar power value proposition is actually "Provide a fifth of the power for two extra hours each dawn/dusk".

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social I've always had a bad feeling about this idea, but I just tried to sketch out how it could work. If the satellites are at 625km, that's only a tenth of the radius of the earth. Doesn't that mean the time they'll be in the sun and their target won't is very short? And probably at a very low angle of incidence? I think this means that you'd need hundreds for each target to get anything like steady illumination, particularly at midnight. And even if they could perfectly reflect the power to earth, it can never be more than the sun's flux on the mirror, which is only 2,290sqm (for their bigger mirrors). The cost of a second 2,290 solar array and a battery to get you through the night is going to many magnitudes less than launching hundreds of complex satellite mirrors into orbit. So what about illumination, their other "product"? I can't see anyone paying for hundreds of satellites when $5 LED head torches are right there. Even if they could illuminate an entire city (limited flux on the mirror makes that impossible), a city's street lighting system will still be magnitudes less expensive. All of which convinces me that this will never happen. They may dupe enough investors to launch a test satellite, but the company will go bust five minutes after they release the actual performance stats. At the end of the day, Reflect Orbital is a scam on people who flunked science in school.

@infobeautiful@vis.social presumably the money the rich borrow attracts interest. I'm not financially smart enough to work out how this changes the equation - can anyone comment?

@narf@vis.social There are. But not many, and like mine, they tend to be small. But why not start your own? That way you can do things*your* way, which in my experience is usually better than *their* way. The software business is uniquely easy to get started in. Hardly any startup costs, WFH means no rent, and a domain name costs less than your dinner. And right now you will find a lot of awesome people to work with, who will stick with you when the big companies realize they need them back. But what should you build? So much software is awful - and getting worse. Pick one, do it better, listen to your customers, price generously and you'll have a loyal customer base in no time. For us it was parent teacher interview bookings, and now we have 3,500 customers in 35 countries. If I can do it, you can too.