Derek Kopon

Optical Engineer and Astronomer living in Cambridge, MA

[Aaron Siri @AaronSiriSG]

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision reflects that the capture of government by big industry is nearly complete. It affirmed the right of chemical companies to injure, maim, and even kill you and your children with their pesticides, herbicides, etc., with near complete impunity.

This means you can expect increasingly toxic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, etc., because the more toxic they are, the better they will kill weeds, pests, etc. And farmers that then use the most effective products, no matter how harmful to humans, will have a competitive advantage. The result will be that the farmer who adopts the most effective products (meaning most toxic) will have the largest crop yield. Other farmers, to compete, will then also be forced to adopt the more harmful product. With that, the race to the bottom has begun.

I expect that in the coming decades we will look back and wish to return to the “safer days” of glyphosate. So, bottom line: your government has abandoned you and your children. Think about this decision: 7 out of 9 Supreme Court judges sided with the chemical company against the public, and Trump’s DOJ intervened in the case on the side of the chemical company. Anyone who thinks this administration cares about you over industry profit is, at this point, delusional.

Shame on the DOJ, shame on the Trump admin, and shame on the Supreme Court for letting chemical companies get away with injuring, maiming, and killing Americans with their products instead of just allowing normal market forces to protect us and our children. Now, in addition to vaccines, we can add pesticides, etc., to the list of products that can injure and kill with near complete immunity.

Below is the decision and, in a nutshell, it holds that failure to warn claims brought under state law (which is the primary type of claim one would bring for harms from a pesticide, herbicide, etc.) are preempted by the EPA-approved label such that, if the harm is not on the label, your claim loses (since EPA didn’t add it to the label as a harm), and if the harm is on the label, your claim loses (since it has been disclosed on the label). Meaning heads or tail they win, and you and your children lose.

https://t.co/KGl3RCQqTt

[Cairo Smith @cairoasmith]

There's a common misconception that Brutalist buildings were unpainted, but thanks to microscopic analysis of the exteriors we can now recreate what they looked like in their prime.

[Baba Banaras™ @RealBababanaras]

After 48 years of travel, NASA 's Voyager 1 is nearing one light-day from Earth, almost 16 billion miles away. A proud milestone for humanity, and a humbling reminder of how small we are in an infinite universe.

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

Now that the budget bill has passed Congress, we can see what the projections look like for deficits, government debt, and debt service expenses. In brief, the bill is expected to lead to spending of about $7 trillion a year with inflows of about $5 trillion a year, so the debt, which is now about 6x of the money taken in, 100 percent of GDP, and about $230,000 per American family, will rise over ten years to about 7.5x the money taken in, 130 percent of GDP, and $425,000 per family. That will increase interest and principal payments on the debt from about $10 trillion ($1 trillion in interest, $9 trillion in principal) to about $18 trillion (of which $2 trillion is interest payments), which will lead to either a big squeezing out (and cutting off) of spending and/or unimaginable tax increases, or a lot of printing and devaluing of money and pushing interest rates to unattractively low levels. This printing and devaluing is not good for those holding bonds as a storehold of wealth, and what’s bad for bonds and US credit markets is bad for everyone because the US Treasury market is the backbone of all capital markets, which are the backbones of our economic and social conditions. Unless this path is soon rectified to bring the budget deficit from roughly 7% of GDP to about 3% by making adjustments to spending, taxes, and interest rates, big, painful disruptions will likely occur.

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@BehizyTweets Let me guess, they’ll be privatized?

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@LynAldenContact I’ve heard Mazdas are underrated

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

It's projected to take the City of Boston 20 years to build a single train station.

So here's a thread on how long it took to build other things.

It took six years to build the Transcontinental Railroad from Omaha to Sacramento, including hundreds of stations along the way.

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@DIFA_USA Who is paying for these ads? Is this a campaign finance violation?

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@LynAldenContact @BitPaine Best intermittent fast protocol?

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@josephwang Over-calibrated?

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

What would happen if a pulsar entered our solar system

[mar @amarchism]

Donald Trump choosing his cabinet

[Jeffrey Gundlach @TruthGundlach]

Making price controls a centerpiece of a policy rollout is naive at best, since it reveals utter ignorance of world economic history. This should be disqualifying for any Presidential candidate, full stop.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT:

He’s not wrong.

[Jon Bruner @JonBruner]

There are billions of Christmas tree lights in the world. We CT scanned a few and found that they’re much more complex and intricate than they seem. Let’s take a look… 💡🧵

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@johnhawkinson No invalid ballots out of 21,000 seems statistically unlikely

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@TXMCtrades Canadians weren’t investing in it because the BTC spot price wasn’t going up. Now that the BTC price will go up after the ETF is approved, people will invest in it because the price will be going up from people investing in it.

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@TuurDemeester @CryptoMan_Ram Lol

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@bgreene Disagree

[Derek Kopon @KoponDerek]

@biancoresearch But I’m not sure that’s how things actually work