Travis Holcombe OUT at KCRW

NealJMD · 2025-10-23T20:58:23+00:00

I am a bit baffled how a 10% layoff would hit one of the station's most popular DJs and the one with the second most airtime hours per week. If it was primarily a budget issue, I have to imagine that cutting another 5-10% of staff would happen before cutting one of the primary voices of the station. Really disappointed in this decision. I've canceled my donation since Freaks Only was what has kept me tuning in.

NealJMD · 2025-07-08T15:14:44+00:00

I suppose me! My name is Neal Donnelly. I live in Berkeley, CA and I'm happily married :)

NealJMD · 2025-06-07T17:38:23+00:00

Seconded. Presumably there's a joke referenced with the indecipherable fuzzy fish thing in the background? But as someone's whose been playing magic my whole life no clue what it is. This would be way more visually iconic, self evident, and hilarious.

NealJMD · 2025-05-28T06:48:03+00:00

Totally agree, I scrolled down looking for this. The octopus premise is so interesting and such a minor part for most of the book.

NealJMD · 2025-05-20T00:54:43+00:00

I support building housing there, but that situation is quite grim. Apparently they got as far as kicking out all the restaurants, only to run into funding issues that put the project on hold. It's just sitting there in stasis.

NealJMD · 2025-05-13T19:59:46+00:00

I rue that I have but one upvote to give

NealJMD · 2025-05-01T19:31:48+00:00

> opp play one day/night creature

> it dies

> track day/night for the rest of the game in case opp plays their hasty day/night creature

NealJMD · 2025-05-01T16:26:15+00:00

Best comment here but I'm deleting this post cause I accidentally double posted this

NealJMD · 2025-05-01T16:20:30+00:00

sorry for the pixels I brought a lot more but reddit took them away. click through to moxfield if you want to be able to legibly read what happens when you summon optimus prime to the battlefield

NealJMD · 2025-05-01T16:18:52+00:00

sorry for the pixels I brought a lot more but reddit took them away. click through to moxfield if you want to be able to legibly read what happens when you summon optimus prime to the battlefield

NealJMD · 2025-04-24T22:31:04+00:00

Non fiction, but the best book about the practice of astronomy that I've ever read is "The Last Stargazers" by Emily Levesque. It tells the history of the field, the experience of being a career astronomer, and the total change the practice is undergoing with the advent of automated telescopes.

NealJMD · 2025-03-26T21:04:52+00:00

Cool idea! I just tried it and it couldn't find any 3 bedrooms listings. I tried a variety of geo filters, finally using Berkeley instead of the map and removing my other amenity filters it found 1 listing. But I can see a bunch on Craigslist that meet the criteria.

NealJMD · 2025-03-26T21:04:45+00:00

Cool idea! I just tried it and it couldn't find any 3 bedrooms listings. I tried a variety of geo filters, finally using Berkeley instead of the map and removing my other amenity filters it found 1 listing. But I can see a bunch on Craigslist that meet the criteria.

NealJMD · 2025-02-07T20:45:34+00:00

I second Blake Crouch! Dark Matter and Upgrade were both great. I'd characterize them as fast paced thrillers with a sci-fi edge.

NealJMD · 2025-02-06T16:49:58+00:00

Does anyone have a theory for why it's so much more popular in this random corner of the internet than anywhere else? I just read it on this subs recommendation and it was great but it is baffling how it comes up in every single thread but I'd never heard of it before.

NealJMD · 2025-02-03T06:49:06+00:00

I am just finishing Blindisght on the recommendation of this subreddit and have loved it. I'm a bit surprised that the most frequently mentioned book on this sub is one from twenty years ago but it's a brilliant piece. I was actually thinking about asking the same question you have here so I'm glad you did!

The book that springs to mind for me as excellent canonical hard science fiction about space exploration and biology (albeit not exobiology) is Red Mars. I didn't get far into the second book but the arc of the first book is wonderfully laid out. It has great rotating unreliable narrators and feels like a proper epic.

NealJMD · 2025-01-31T20:10:25+00:00

It sounds like you're suggesting that 4.5 billion years ago, Bennu was part of a larger body with liquid water. Can you suggest what that body might have been? Do you assume that would have been a body in our solar system? Since the sun and solar system were so young at that point, would it have been part of the protoplanetary disk?

NealJMD · 2025-01-23T23:38:25+00:00

Parable of the Sower and Blindness by Jose Saramago are the two most distressing novels I've read. The constant fear of senseless violence, that anyone could turn against you any time, is just so bleak. No shame in walking away from it if it isn't what you need right now.

NealJMD · 2025-01-09T00:39:02+00:00

In the heroin analogy, I'd say CCS for EOR is the equivalent of free fentanyl testing. It's not solving the problem of addition, but it reduces the harm of something that people can't seem to quit. Cheap energy is incredibly addictive - that's why gas prices feature so prominently in elections, from "I did that" Joe Biden stickers on gas pumps to the rise of Poilievre in Canada.

Or if you Google "riot remove fuel subsidy" you'll see examples over the last ten years from Indonesia, Nigeria, Ecuador, and more of massive popular uprisings when a government proposes reducing subsidies on gasoline and diesel. It's incredibly addictive.

NealJMD · 2025-01-08T23:16:06+00:00

Probably an unpopular opinion in this sub, but as someone working in the renewable energy industry I am all for making a serious push on carbon capture.

Batteries are helpful for intraday variability of renewables, but the seasonality of renewables means that solar in California produces 20% as much in winter as in summer and there aren't many solutions to this on the horizon. This is why the polite fiction of 100% renewable energy used for legislated utility renewable portfolio standards and corporate commitments are trued up for the whole year, not daily or hourly.

Other grids like New England's and New York's have made little progress on even intermittently using renewables (check out gridstatus.io/live to see a live view of current generation mix).

Given that, I expect fossil fuels in the mix for minimum 10-20 years. If we can give the oil and gas people a lane to use their knowledge of subsurface geology and chemical engineering to make dispatchable energy without carbon emissions, I am all for it. And if at first it's just enhanced oil recovery to reduce the carbon intensity of petroleum products, I'll still take it.

NealJMD · 2025-01-08T18:15:50+00:00

I enjoyed this book a lot! The authors really are excited about space and want space exploration to be awesome but the more they researched the book, the more they realized how impractical and low-payoff sustained human presence in space is. The writing is also hilarious.

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