Colin Foster

Colin Foster

@colinfoster.net

Software. Tools. Epistemology. Birbs. Support independent news: https://www.unfettered.ca

148 followers332 following235 posts

Colin Foster reposted

Phil Lewis
@phillewis.bsky.social

Students from North Carolina A&T can be seen marching back to their HBCU after voting on the first day of early voting in the state. The Guilford County Board of Elections voted to remove the school’s on-campus polling site. (video via Todd Simmons) greensboro.com/news/local/g...

Colin Foster reposted

Mychal Threets
@mychal3ts.bsky.social

I have a duty to the children to raise my library voice and say, "Free Palestine." It is not too dangerous to say. It is human decency. Palestinian people are worthy of tomorrow. We are human.

Colin Foster reposted

Lydia Kiesling
@lydiakiesling.bsky.social

You have to be a better reader than a lot of people are lately to glean from this article the extent to which Finland's housing-first policy was wildly successful until a racist right-wing government derailed it by gutting funding and services. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

theguardian.comFinland tried to end homelessness. What can we learn from its runaway success – and recent failures?The Housing First policy led to the number of homeless people in Finland dropping by half. Those with firsthand experience explain why it worked

Colin Foster reposted

A.R. Moxon
@juliusgoat.bsky.social

Replying to @juliusgoat.bsky.social

There's something that is so much more persuasive and inspirational about just knowing what your business is and being about it, rather than chasing around people who are opposed to any changes and openly pandering to them by validating their worst impulses. Is this obvious? It seems obvious.

Colin Foster reposted

Philip Bump
@pbump.com

A central part of why it seems like powerful, rich people live in a consequence-free world is that the social incentives to hold them to account have withered. www.ctinsider.com/columnist/ar... 𝟏𝟐-𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞-𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬

Colin Foster reposted

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
@weeklyshowpodcast.bsky.social

🚨 New episode on YouTube with Cory Doctorow @doctorow.pluralistic.net! 🚨 We discuss: ➡️ The Real AI Threat ➡️ The Reverse Centaur ➡️ Capital vs. Labor ➡️ 107 Days till the Midterms? Watch now: youtube.com/watch?v=-dAIJRjb-Bw&feature=youtu.be

youtube.comAI and the Enshittification Era w/ Cory Doctorow | The Weekly Show with Jon StewartYouTube video by The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Colin Foster reposted

Greg Sargent
@gregsargent.bsky.social

Yep. @polphilpod.bsky.social and I made this point in this essay on Elon Musk's real fascist worldview, which all of you should read if you haven't yet, because (we immodestly insist) it breaks new ground. Also see the interview with one of the authors of "Muskism." newrepublic.com/article/2119...

Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social

You don't engage in that kind of ethnic cleansing through peaceful and lawful individuated assessments. If you even aspire to that level of population transfer, you expect things like mass detention facilities and the transformation of ICE into a terrorist paramilitary.

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

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Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

Results: CO2 went from 1500 to 1200 over about 2 hours (and should continue to drop). I expected the internal air quality to get a bit worse but Internal PPM stayed the same. I guess the furnace recirculation-fan is keeping up with whatever the external filter misses. 13/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

Alternatives: - I thought about trying to attach the box to the house from its side and have the mouth face downwards to better protect the air filters from rain. - It would be nice to get this moved inside, and into a box where I can replace the filters without re-taping. 14/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

View full thread
Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

8.) I placed the filters into the box and completely sealed the edges of the filters to the edge of the box with packing tape. This sometimes took 2 rows of tape but the important thing was to make sure air had to travel through the filters to get to the HRV intake vent. 11/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

9.) I removed the internal air filter from the HRV since the external filter was much more efficient and it might make things a bit easier on the fan motor. I turned the HRV back on, onto the 'medium' setting. 12/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

View full thread
Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

6.) I stacked the two air filters together and taped their edges. (The tapered shape of the box I was using meant I could have gotten one 16 x 25” filter and one 16 x 24” filter but 16x24” was what they had.) 9/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

7.) Since I had some window screen mesh available, I cut a piece to the size of the filters and used thumbtacks to attach that to the filter. The hope is to prevent large floating debris (dandelion fluff, etc.) from clogging up the fine mesh of the air filter. 10/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

View full thread
Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

3.) I cut a square hole in the bottom of the box that’s was about the same size of the air filter cover coming out of the house. 4.) I positioned the box over the vent and attached it to the wall, with tapcon screws and washers (to help distribute the load on the plastic box). 7/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

5.) I used packing tape to completely seal the box to the edges of the air intake vent. I also needed to seal some ventilation holes the manufacturer had added to this particular model of storage box. 8/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

View full thread
Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

Here’s what I did: 1.) I traced the HRV vent line from the inside to determine where it exited the house, and then confirmed that by turning on/off the HRV to see if air was being drawn into that vent. 5/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

2.) I figured out how I would support the box once it was attached to the vent, so I could know where to cut the hole in the next step. I didn’t want to box to just rest on the ground to avoid having rain splash into the filters. I decided I’d just bolt the box to the brick wall of the house. 6/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

View full thread
Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

An HRV fan motor is not designed to have to pull air through dense material (like the *two* furnace air filters we wanted to add). But since a 16” x 24” filter has a little over 10x the surface area of the round 6” vent the HRV uses, this hopefully removes any extra strain on the HRV fan. 3/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

Parts: - Two 16 x 24 x 1 Furnace Filters (MERV 11+ or MPR 1500+) - Plastic storage box (I used Canadian Tire Part# 142-6045-0. Whatever you use make sure the filters fit inside the mouth of the box as in the 2nd photo.) - Packing tape - Window screen mesh and thumb tacks 4/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

We built an external HRV air filter that’s currently taking our outdoor smokey air @ 400ppm down to around 30ppm. (Measured using an AtmoTube placed inside the HRV ext-in quadrant.) In case it’s of interest to anyone else, here’s what we did. (Sorry I didn’t take more pics.) #firesmoke 1/14

Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

Why: We had our HRV off, and furnace recirc fan running with a MERV 13 filter to gradually bring internal air pollution down to ~20ppm, but with HRV off our CO2 levels were up. We could get CO2 down by turn on the HRV but that would bring in the smoke particles we’ve been trying to filter out. 2/14

Colin Foster reposted

Taylor Lorenz
@taylorlorenz.bsky.social

What these people are actually supporting is total and complete removal of anonymity from the web, and cutting off millions of vulnerable kids lifelines and ability to get news and information abt the world, all for zero benefit and lots of harm

pewresearch.orgMajority of Americans support banning social media for kids under 16Across major demographic and partisan groups, more Americans support than oppose banning those under 16 from using social media.

Colin Foster reposted

Kevin M. Kruse
@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

My God, this thread:

Crystal Fleming is on sabbatical@alwaystheself.bsky.social

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

Colin Foster reposted

Richard Meredith
@rtm223.me

"We're shipping so much more code with AI!" "Good, stable code?" "Oh heavens no. No no no. not at all. We couldn't possibly"

Sue Smith@suesmith.lol

"The AI engineering impact data shows that output is up. It also shows that the work required to ensure that output is safe, correct, and maintainable has not decreased. It has increased substantially." Aye, if only any of us had been saying this from day one 🤡 www.faros.ai/blog/ai-acce...

faros.aiThe AI Engineering Report 2026: The AI Acceleration Whiplash - Ten TakeawaysWhat two years of telemetry data from 22,000 developers reveals about AI's real impact on developer productivity, code quality, and business risk in 2026.

Colin Foster reposted

Robert Reich
@rbreich.bsky.social

Hawaii just passed the first state law in the country banning corporations from making political donations in state elections. Now a Koch-backed legal group is suing to overturn it. Big Money won't get out of our politics without a fight — one that we the people must win. (via @levernews.com)

Colin Foster reposted

Jon Douglas
@atranscendedman.bsky.social

Hiroshima University studied 6.2 million matched people in Japan. COVID was linked to 4.14 times higher TB treatment risk, rising to 14.7 with prior TB. This points to possible reactivation, not proof of cause. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.comCOVID‐19 as a Potential Trigger for Tuberculosis: Insights From a Large‐Scale Japanese Insurance Database AnalysisIn a nationwide propensity score–matched cohort study using Japanese insurance claims data, prior COVID-19 was associated with a fourfold higher risk of subsequent active tuberculosis treatment initi...

Colin Foster reposted

Will Stancil
@whstancil.bsky.social

We are collectively experiencing a slow drift in our mental habits, one that is mostly invisible to us because we experience it as the world becoming more orderly and making more sense. But its effects on us and society have been profound and will get worse.

Colin Foster reposted

Arrête Mark Carney ⚜️
@lalegault.bsky.social

The single law maker standing up for Canadians in this surveillance-AI hellscape is Premier Kinew who is rejecting data centres. “I reject the idea we have to be slaves* to surveillance capitalism in order to participate in the modern economy.”

Colin Foster reposted

Jenny Cohn
@jennycohn.bsky.social

OMG. “I found a second vote.gov — and it’s registered to the White House *** Either DOJ lied to a federal judge, or the studio is building a replacement for the country’s voter registration site without telling the agencies whose work it would replace.” 5/26/26 … 1/

open.substack.comI found a second vote.gov — and it's registered to the White HouseThere is a moment in every investigation where the thing you have been looking for finds you instead.

Colin Foster reposted

OpenMedia
@openmedia.org

#BillC22 is going to change your rights to #privacy. Friends from OpenCivics put together a quick walkthrough and explained why we need Canadians to stop it together now! 👉 dontsurveil.me/c22.html #cdnpoli @openmedia.org

dontsurveil.meCanada is about to end private digital conversation — Bill C-22Bill C-22 would force every messaging app in Canada to build a backdoor — and track all your activity for one year. Apple says no. Signal says they'll leave.
Colin Foster
@colinfoster.net

Lewis Carrol taught mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, for twenty-six years. “Alice in Wonderland” is an extended joke about base-numbering systems, non-Euclidean geometry, and abstract identity, smuggled inside a story about a small girl falling down a hole. storica.club/blog/alice-i...

storica.clubAlice in Wonderland is mostly math jokes — StoricaCharles Lutwidge Dodgson taught mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, for twenty-six years. He wrote textbooks defending Euclid and treatises on symbolic logic. The children's book he is now famous fo...

Colin Foster reposted

Phil Lewis
@phillewis.bsky.social

There's a major civil rights protest taking place in Selma, Alabama, right now in response to the SCOTUS decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing attack on Black Americans’ political power (video: defiancedispatch/IG)

Colin Foster reposted

Sherrilyn Ifill
@sifill.bsky.social

Feeling overwhelmed with all of this. LISTEN. Another Louisiana resident (Marshawn is the only name we have) testifies against the state’s racial gerrymander, speaking truth to power up and down the hearing room and predicts how this story will end. Speak your truth, fight and believe.

Colin Foster reposted

The Empty Mary Gillis
@marygillis.bsky.social

It's always so telling which politicians don't see themselves as stewards of the public good, but as its auctioneers.

Toronto Star@thestar.com

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is looking at offering Canadian sea ports for sale. Read more from Star Ottawa Bureau Chief Tonda MacCharles:

thestar.comCarney government signals it’s open to selling Canadian portsBuried deep in the pages of a discussion paper released Friday is the announcement that the government is open to and seeking a report on the potential amalgamation of certain