The Somethingsomething of Everysecondtuesday

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When people discuss "energy," they're often thinking about electricity, but most of the energy consumption in the US is from fuel burned for heat or transportation, not to generate electricity.

This chart is from 2023; it's a little outdated, but it's still reasonably accurate in 2026. It's published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; it shows the flow from generation of energy to consumption (or waste). It estimates the total energy production from not just power plants but stoves, cars, trucks, jets, industrial boilers, etc, and aims to encompass everything in the US. Note that the units are in quadrillion BTUs; BTUs are a unit of heat, and direct electricity production has a conversion factor applied here.

The four bottom categories are greenhouse gas generators.

A couple things that are notable to me:

Transportation is the biggest sector for consumption. Within that sector, personal vehicles account for more than half of energy use. Note that "light trucks" includes SUVs - this is a "personal vehicle" category. Shipping-type trucks are next, followed by airplanes. As a fraction of total energy, individual people's cars make up 15% of energy use in the nation.

Similarly, the industrial sector's energy is almost entirely fuel- and heat-based. The most recent manufacturing energy study is from 2022, when the consumption was around 20 quadrillion BTU vs the current 26 quadrillion BTU. About 35% of the energy use in that sector is turning fossil fuels into feedstocks for plastics, other chemicals, and/or fertilizer; much of the rest is process heat.

it's crazy to me how much of the energy use is paper products!

Another note is on residential energy consumption. It's a pretty small sector and it's about half electricity, half direct heat. I often hear electricity production in the press described in terms of "number of homes powered", usually assuming the ~1 kilowatt of electricity being used on average by the average home, but that doesn't capture the actual energy use across the nation (which is about 2x higher). It also isn't necessarily a great mental benchmark for overall energy impact, because electricity for homes is only about 5% of total energy consumption in the US.

The other big note is on the "rejected energy" vs "energy services" on the right. Most of the energy released when fossil fuels are burned is wasted as unused heat! This is especially true for cars, for which only around 12-30% of the energy actually goes towards moving the car (and only ~4-20% of that goes towards moving the passengers). It's also true, though, for things like gas stoves, water heaters, and thermal power plants - much of the energy is just waste heat.

All together, there's significant potential to reduce emissions in the US by addressing residential/commercial/industrial heating (whether by improving efficiency with heat pumps, electrifying, or improved equipment) and electrifying transportation.

One other note: datacenters. They don't show up in any of these categories as notable because on a nationwide energy scale, they're not as significant as cars or residential heating or paper (yet). (For completeness, they fall under the Commercial sector by this accounting method). Estimates of power consumption I've found include ~30 GW for 2025, which would be ~262 TWh, or approx 280 TWh in 2025. That's about 0.89 quadrillion BTUs, coincidentally the same amount as the solar contributions to the energy mix in 2023, and less than 1% of total energy use in the US. The best I can say is that it's both a little and a lot - a small fraction of a very very large number.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

This is how it went, right?

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.

Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."

And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -

"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.

Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"

More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.

Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.

Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.

An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.

Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.

The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.

Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?

Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.

You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.

You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.

"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"

Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.

But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.

And you think you are going mad.

And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.

this is not life-threatening, but also who wants weeks of diarrhea and a fucking parasite in them lol. if you suspect you've already had this and it's passed, i would see a doctor. you might need an antiparasitic anyway. if you're actively sick, see a doctor and they might be able to prescribe medication to help you get over it faster.

try to avoid eating raw vegetables, scrub fruit with a produce brush and rinse thoroughly with water. again, don't bother with premade greens or bagged salads. if you buy lettuce, remove the outer 2-3 layers of leaves.

Only high temperatures will kill cyclospora. It resides in what is like a shell, which is highly resistant to water and most cleaning chemicals. The substance it uses to cling to food is so strong we don't even fully know what its limits are. It may be best to avoid fruits and veggies you can't cook. Scrubbing only works if done hard enough and on foods with no hiding places (Like cucumbers and grapes). Peeling the skin off is your best bet at avoiding it however, scrubbing is not guaranteed.

my addition to the trend :)

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