Australians Eat the Sun

Listen to today's newletter at the Stuff Keeps Happening podcast

Solar power in Australia is doing like, really well

Approximately a third of homes in Australia have solar panels, leading the entire world. While there's still a lot of nuance and weird numbers floating around, they're generally in a position to potentially generate more power from solar energy than anything else, and that may soon be a reality.

Starting off with a somewhat uplifting story? In this economy? Possibly a huge mistake, let's see if it pays off.

I feel like that is too much child porn

A Florida man was caught with 2,600 pounds of child sexual exploitation material. Yes–multiple literal tons of child porn. Boxes and boxes of it. Like, a LOT.

I am not an expert, but my guess is that is probably enough child porn. Like, by a huge margin. Like, 2,600 pounds of margin.

Anyway, his ass is very much going to be in jail as he now faces 25 counts of possession of child porn. At 72 years old, he's likely to die in jail.

US Marshal Service pwned

The US Marshal Service which does... something... with justice... got super hacked.

Hackers accessed a machine in what the Marshal Service is describing as a "major incident" and stole information on targets of investigations, as well as employee information. Seemingly also just a bunch of other sensitive documents, administrative or otherwise.

They also used ransomware on the machine, so that's basically just a brick now.

Notably, witness protection information was not affected.

Food security should be a human right, but here we are

Some 30 million (with an "m") Americans are about to lose significant food security assistance as a pandemic-era adjustment is expiring.

Some states have already ended their pandemic emergency assistance which has affected about 12 million people. Today, the remaining states follow suit. The average household on these benefits will be losing out on $95/month of assistance, with some households losing several hundred dollars a month.

This is, of course, on top of the absurd inflation in the price of staple groceries. These families simply wanted bread, milk, meat and eggs. REAL FANCY STUFF HUH?

Reminder: Politicians should not be better off than the people they represent. If their constituents are hungry, they should feel that effect themselves. Don't let them be so comfortable.

Twitter but not Twitter

Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter) is launching a Twitter alternative that looks just like Twitter but also doesn't use existing open systems and instead seems to be trying to still just be its own thing. Said another way: why does this exist?

The thing is called BlueSky, and is supposed to be an open network instead of a single closed platform, but I mean, its starting off as a private beta, and it doesn't use the literal existing web standards for this explicit purpose (a la Mastodon), so idk what this even is supposed to be.

More Stuff

• Buttigieg's jet usage is being looked into after Marco Rubio made a stink about it (but will probably not lead to anything)
• The Mario Movie will be coming out on April 5th, about 2 days earlier than expected
• AirPods manufacturer is being heavily pressured to get out of China
• Telsa to open a new "gigafactory" in Mexico
• Eli Lily caps the out-of-pocket cost of insulin to $35/mo