Unfortunately, as long as we leave political offices to be filled by the worst of us this will continue. Voting is only half the battle.

Funny, I’ve mentally annotated mormons my whole life as likely to commit sexual violence and child abuse.

The job of CEO seems the far easier to replace with AI. A fairly basic algorithm with weighted goals and parameters (chosen by the board) + LLM + character avatar would probably perform better than most CEOs. Leave out the LLM if you want it to spout nonsense like this Amazon Cloud CEO.

For carbon sequestration, which also needs to happen.

Agree, but I think virtually all methods typically talked about are nonsense. Using massive fossil resources to design, build, and maintain giant machines or many smaller machines will ultimately do little to slow ecological collapse even if it does reduce carbon somewhat after some years needed to break even on production. The only sequestration method I’ve ever heard about that makes any sense to me is neighborhood scale production and use of biochar (and avoiding buying any sort of purpose made biochar device that required fossil resources to produce and ship to you). I make biochar in my backyard fire pit (which is a low smoke design) with used coffee tins (i.e. trash) and use the resulting biochar and ash in my compost.

Harm reduction is valid.

Agree, Any and all scientifically backed methods to allow us time for degrowth should be considered. I’m not convinced nuclear energy should be a significant part of this though, too many downsides and risks.

So either we get to some near global agreement on how to get out of this situation, or we just keep doing far too little since… what’s the point of trying to improve things if it just means you get annihilated by those that don’t, and things will remain the same despite your best efforts…

I feel like the way out is global and cultural in nature, and I think it’s in progress now, in fact we’re doing it now, talking about this on Lemmy. This wasn’t practical, wasn’t being done outside of “elite circles” before a decade or so ago. This global conversation is going to take some time and have bumps, but it’s happening, this is novel on this planet.

What I hope comes of this, and seems to be happening, perhaps slower than I’d like, is a paradigm shift in the way we think about ourselves, others, our communities, our situation, and our goals. We need a new “mythology” that allows us to live on this planet sustainably, and it only needs to be true enough and could even be done transparently and with purpose.

I feel like our species is in a existential battle and almost nobody (at least on the left-ish) is talking strategy. As if any valid strategy (e.g. “capitalism”, “communism”, “competition”, “religion”, “growth” “zero sum” etc) has been identified by the 1960s and we’re all just battling amongst 20th century ideas for domination.

I’m thinkiing stuff like this (sorry for the poor organization of my thoughts, to lazy to cleanup)

Define some axioms/statements that are mostly true and fairly agreeable, not based in faith, not limited by materialism.

• Most people would be happy to just live and thrive and don’t feel a need to dominate others or hoard resources
• There is a tiny number of people who do feel a need to dominate and/or hoard
• We are all vulnerable to propaganda
• Nobody is inherently better or more deserving than anyone else
• Nobody is entitled to the time or labor of anyone (except a child being entitled to their parents)
• Nobody actually knows the meaning of life or the nature of reality (not even materialists).
• Our own conscious experience is all we can be certain of, nobody knows any absolute truths
• The most logical assumption is that others’ experience is similar to my own
• I don’t want to suffer or be coerced, I don’t feel others are entitled to cause me to suffer or coerce my behavior
• It’s ok to defend myself against those trying to harm or coerce my behavior, dominate or hoard at my or my community’s expense
• If I cause another to suffer or coerce their behavior I should expect a response

–> The goal of these axioms is not to get everyone to agree to them, it’s to blaze a new path that can evolve into the way, to plant a seed that can inspire moving in new directions.

A set of explicit stated axioms allows taking the next steps and figure out how to evolve into a sustainable culture. Clear eyed strategy and goals are why the Heritage Foundation is making progress and the left is not.

Strategy like this could allow a better understanding of who and what the actual threats are and identify appropriate responses to them.

–> The “global agreement” will not be a formal inter-governmental thing, it will be loosely coupled set of cultural evolutions spurred by global conversations happening now.

nuclear energy we would be able to successfully power the majority of the species using that technology

But that energy will be used for what? To mine for more minerals, create more waste, destroy more land, and make more species extinct? Our problem is not a shortage of energy nor is it even a problem of the efficiency or cleanliness of the energy. It’s a problem of our species living far beyond the sustainable bounds of the planet.

I’d like to see a multi-phase federal plan with the clearly stated ultimate goal to phase out tips. This plan should have clearly defined beginning, milestones, and end so that workers and businesses could plan around it and everyone would be on the same-ish page or at least know what’s going on.

1. Stop taxing tips on specific jobs/industries combined with bringing up the minimum wage for all workers to standard (no $2.50/hr wage for tipped waiters, etc).

2. Start an educational program that talks about the history and effects of tipping culture and why this program is good to try to stop it

3. Start a government program that encourages reduced tipping, promoting specific percentages (e.g. 10% for restaurant table service) to consciously try to move the culture, this should go along with an increase in minimum wage that effectively makes up for the reduced tip. Repeat this step if needed to slowly step-down from tipping culture into one based on labor appropriately compensated by the employers.

• This will help people know what to expect on both sides of transactions
• This can reduce negative feelings associated with not giving a large tip because you know this is all part of a plan and the employer is expected be following the law and increasing compensation.
• This will provide cover for business to increase their prices accordingly, and simultaneously the government can put out guidance about how much prices should be expected to rise and how your total bill won’t really change much.

The end goals should be clearly stated, something like

• A person working 40 hours/wk at minimum wage should be able to afford a basic, clean, up-to-standard 1-bedroom apartment, food, and transport, and basic medical care.

Hopefully, culturally, tipping changes to be seen as like " ‘the old way’, weird old people like paying service workers to feel superior".

Why is an ever growing population considered unquestionably good?

If we make more food so we can make more people, it will accelerate the destruction of the planet. No amount of electric cars and vegan diets can do anything but slow down the destruction by a small degree. We can’t just wipe out natural environments to mine and farm for the niceties of modern human life and expect the web of life to continue to support us and we cannot survive without this web of life.

I think our species (in aggregate) is no more intelligent than bacteria on a petri dish, we’re dumb animals with cell phones. An actual intelligent species would be smart enough to avoid outgrowing it’s environment leading to it’s own demise. Population is one of the greatest filters.

Look up “megasites”, these are large settlements not called cities as they lack signs of being dominated by a subset of themselves. One I’ve heard of is called “Nebelivka” but I believe there are at least a few others known and probably others either not yet found or misunderstood as cities.

I mean, they’re on FB, so ya, they probably thought something like that, if their thoughts even went beyond the words themselves.

It’s like imagining what a lizard thinks about you, it’s easy and fun to project your intelligence on it, this is what you’re doing here. You’re projecting your intelligence and logic on others apparently without that capacity. Those FB people didn’t think about what their words meant any more than a lizard wonders about your nature.

Humans existed for well over 200,000 years without government. There is strong evidence of massive settlements that existed for extended periods without any sign of being ruled, just people living and cooperating.

In fact, it’s the formation of governments that could enforce exploitative economic systems that started the ecological collapse of this planet in the first place. Humans without government live in balance with the rest of the world.

The idea that humans, to survive and thrive, require the formation of an entity (government/state) that allows the subset of the population in control of the it to exploit the subset not in control of it is a dangerous fallacy.

Check out Pulsar

https://pulsar-edit.dev/

It’s basically the continuation of Atom. It’s got rough edges though regarding plugins but it’s good enough to allow me to avoid VSCode.

I did what this guy did, works really well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChVxPpnPT-I

The only carbon sequestration that makes any sense is small-scale, on-site or local (so you can avoid transport) biochar production via retort.

–> Biochar if you’re not familiar is similar to charcoal, it’s a form of “carbon black” that is elemental (isn’t going to decompose or oxidize and contribute to climate change) and when added to soil helps plants (by acting as a sponge for water, nutrients, bacteria) while sequestering carbon for millennia in the soil.

For example, a landscaping company that burns it’s waste to fuel a biochar retort and then using the resulting biochar to amend the soil used in the landscaping operations. (Think in cycles)

–> A biochar retort is form of furnace or fire pit that uses the flammable gasses produced by pyrolizing organic materials to fuel itself.

–> Pyrolysis is decomposition of organic material with high heat and no oxygen. It produces gases like methane which are burned in the retort producing particulates, CO2 and water (and that carbon does go back into the cycle) and leaves behind large amounts of elemental carbon black that is not going to contribute to climate change.

Sequestration by millions of backyard gardeners and little landscaping companies doing a little is better than trying to do it on a large scale because the large scale requires (as you note) resources. Hundreds of engineers and architects and workers driving to work for years so they can design and build a large device made of metal (that had to be mined, smelted, and shipped) and likely has an accompanying parking lot and office building would take years to break even sequestering as much carbon as it took to design and build it.

Sequestration as I describe here doesn’t require much. For example, I make biochar using coffee cans in my fire pit .

Q: But won’t burning some of the waste in the retort to heat the biochar contribute to climate change?

A: Any carbon in landscaping wastes, unless sequestered, is going to decompose into carbon dioxide (e.g. composting). Burning doesn’t add any extra carbon, it’s just that burning is a faster reaction than composting (but both burning and composting are part of the short term carbon cycle, biochar is not) . But because this burning is done to fuel pyrolysis it’s part of an efficient process.

The real danger from burning the waste is particulate pollution, but that could be controlled with common scrubbers tech.

Maybe they were talking about Gaza? He seems to be crushing them.

Singapore is more fucked up than aspirational if you ask me. It might look nice but it’s a capitalist place that totally misses the spirit of solarpunk.

Check out “radiative sky cooling”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRnEm-B3AI

There might be some way to do something with this.

Dave!?

Save a slap for the leap seconds creator.

Or, we could collectively realize time is but an illusion and transcend this silly problem.