Friday Links - 1 May

Louder with Crowder starts us off with United Healthcare's (now former) AWFL social media manager is super mad that the WHCD shooter missed Trump

It's remarkable that in this, the two-thousand and twenty-sixth year of our Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump, people STILL don't understand how the internet works. And that if you celebrate someone dying or wishing that they were unalived, other people use their internets to express disapproval with it.

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 28 April 2026: Top Geek Edition

A new AI datacenter planned for Box County, Utah, will use more than twice as much power as the rest of the state combined. (Tom's Hardware)

The datacenter will use 9GW of power once it is completed, and the entire rest of Utah currently uses around 4GW.

The Abode of McThag - 1 Of 57 Um 50

Tennessee did a solid for the law-abiding and passed a bill making it legal to defend property with deadly force.

While it might only be stuff, it's MY stuff.

It's not a case of me valuing my stuff over someone's life. It's them not valuing their life over my stu

Washington Free Beacon - EXCLUSIVE: In Cities Across America, Homeless Services Are Doled Out Based on Race and Sexual Identity

Rolled out in October 2024, the Multnomah Services and Screening Tool awards up to 5 points to non-white, non-straight applicants who speak English as a second language—more than the 4 points it would award a domestic violence survivor with a six-year-old child who has been homeless for over a year.

Moonbattery - Lib Journalists Regard Themselves as Real Victims of Trump Assassination Attempts

There is one thing impressive about mainstream media journalists: their astonishing ability to take themselves seriously.

Meep at Stump - April Awareness: Autism, Cancer, Finance, and Poetry

April is the cruelest month in dropping all sorts of awareness topics on our heads: Autism, Cancer (various types - I covered testicular cancer earlier this month), financial literacy, and poetry… suppose we become “aware” of all this? What are we supposed to do with all this awareness and knowledge?

The Outdoor Wire - NSSF Welcomes ATF Landmark Rulemaking Package

The release of the new rulemaking package is the result of months of NSSF working closely with the ATF and DOJ to identify and fix punitive regulations published during the Biden administration, when the ATF was used as a political weapon to force policies intended to hobble the firearm industry and infringe on Second Amendment rights.

Another Failure of the Victim-Selection Process

What is the DoorDash policy on their drivers being armed? Attempted carjacking ends in fatal shooting of Nashville food delivery driver

According to police, a 44-year- old food delivery driver had stopped to pick up an order from a nearby restaurant. When the driver returned to his Dodge Charger an armed man approached him and demanded the car.

The driver had a gun in his car, which he retrieved, but that was clearly the wrong place of it. Though I suppose the restaurant could have been a gun-free zone; I don't know the law in Tennessee. The bad guy shot him in the leg. The driver returned fire, killing the would-be, bad guy.

The hat tip goes to Miguel Gonzalez and You do not despise the Media enough.

Memphis Action News ran with the following headline, and doubled down in their article.

DoorDash driver accused of killing carjacking suspect outside of Walgreens, police say

Nashville police have not said anything about arresting the delivery driver, but Memphis "Professional Journalists" have to "accuse" the guy defending himself of something. Why? Because guns and gun owners are bad. Or something. Professional Journalists™ won't use the word evil.

In the meantime, self-defense is a human right, and this didn't take place in NYC.

As for my original question... Will DoorDash exclude this guy from their app for defending himself? Will they fire him for refusing to be a crime victim?

Hospital Robot Battery Fire

This was close to being a huge tragedy.

The battery on a 500 pound robotic cart, used to take stuff around the hospital went, into thermal runaway during charging. Charging was on the 2nd floor and multiple carts were all charging in the same location. There were 26 battery-powered carts charging. Stache doesn't say, but I'm guessing that there are more than 26 carts, because that seems like a number that a hospital administrator would not sign off on.

The battery was a 4.2 kilowatt-hour battery. The chemistry was Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide battery, or NMC battery. The batteries typically burn aggressively when they go into thermal runaway, and put out a lot of very toxic gasses.

This is the StacheD Training video Hospital Robot Battery Fire: What Happened at Cedars-Sinai

Now, this incident points to something bigger. Most people think about lithium-ion battery hazards in terms of ebikes, electric vehicles, consumer electronics, but these batteries are now embedded in critical infrastructure, hospitals, data centers, warehouses, logistics operations. And in a lot of these environments, the people working around them have no idea what they're actually dealing with.

And here is a key point:

Anyone working in an environment with large format lithium-ion batteries needs basic training. Not fire suppression training, evacuation and recognition training. Know what off-gassing looks like, that whitish gray smoke, unusual smells. Know that your job is not to fight the fire. Know that you should close the doors, call 911, and get people out.

The video is less than six minutes.

NY Times Has Opinions on American Songwriters

These lists are always train wrecks, but the NY Times list is worse than most.

This is Rick Beato's video The NYT "Greatest Songwriters" List is an Absolute Disaster

Here is just one thought.

Dave Grohl with the Foo Fighters, right? You could say, well, he belongs on there. He's got at least three billion stream songs. We're talking about popularity and been around in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Once for Nirvana, once for Foo Fighters.

No Metallica (biggest Metal band?), no John Fogerty, no Jimmy Webb, who wrote "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston," no Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan, no James, Taylor, no Jackson Browne, no Billy Joel, etc. The list of people not on this list is long.

So who did the New York Times think should be on the list? Bad Bunny. I'm not linking to the NY Slimes. You can find it easy enough, and it isn't even behind a paywall, or it isn't as I type this.