When I need my fix of good news I go to iea.org and look at some graphs. I’m always thinking it should be faster but then again there’s hope for climate change and the world is transitioning despite how entrenched the fossil fuel industry is.
Here’s one on the investments being made:
Every generation in human history has been more intelligent and progressive than the last.
This trend is not slowing in the modern era.
Im going to read through but I can’t imagine anything that is uplifiting enough to counter the current weights attached to us.
Renewable energy and battery storage are seeing an absolute collapse in prices such that it is inevitable in the near to mid term future that we will move away from fossil fuel extraction leaving much of it in the ground. This will happen no matter who is in charge politically or who tries to subsidize fossil fuels because money is king and a lot of free energy hits the earth every day.
This, combined with falling birthrates, means we will hit peak carbon emissions and begin to drop back to a new normal, a new economy built around labor rather than capital because of the shift in balance between resources and workers similar to what happened during the black death. It is my opinion that this will begin to happen in my lifetime and will fully come to pass in our children’s lifetime.
Having worked in energy for 10 years (particularly battery storage and solar) you are correct about the prices falling, and in my opinion you are also correct about this dooming fossils.
However, I do not agree with your second point around a new economy arising built around labor rather than capital. The mechanics of value creation can change (eg renewables vs fossils) but what the ruling class will not allow to change without intense prolonged struggle is their own position as the rulers.
You might be right, but my idea on it is that productivity increases have leveled off and population will begin falling in our lifetime. The ruling class loses power historically when the supply of labor is impacted.
one day, before you know it, you’ll be dead and won’t care anymore. in the grand scope of your life this is a small moment, so do whatever makes you happy today.
billionaires are not immortal (yet)
And they have physical bodies!
It’s my HRT birthday today, two years now and it’s really sunny and warm. It’s a nice day :3
Happy HRT-birthday! 🎉
“Nothing lasts forever.”
- public libraries are still there.
- Book (physical) can still be purchased and fully owned, without any risk of them being remotely edited or deleted and without nay tracking of our reading habits.
- Walking is still free, without any subscription required.
- It is still legal to turn off one’s phone.
- I love my spouse at least as much as I loved her when we first met almost 30 years ago. And, yep, she seems to kinda like me too ;)
the use of the term still actually makes this sorta ominous.
You mean it is worrisome (sorry, English is not my native language)? If so, it’s the intend because I think there is already too many hints pointing out to a (slow?) vanishing of many of those ‘options’.
yeah essentially its like. for now. implying they will be gone which is like part of the things I worry about for the future.
It’s one of the reasons I decided a while ago to move back from digital to analog (I started using ebooks in the early 00s and have been mostly reading ebooks up 2 or 3 years ago, approx.) for as many things as I was able to, not just reading books.
Physical ownership and ‘not-Internet’ & ‘not-high-tech’ dependent medium should be a lot more resilient to any excess of control, surveillance and censorship than anything digital. Plus, baring accidents, all of those analog things will outlive me and my spouse (we’re both well into our 50s) and, unlike with digital ‘objects’, it’s very easy for us to make sure those analog objects will end up in the hands of a new owner that will know how to best use them… without anyone having much to say about it.
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
Source: My epub library growing day by day, synced between multiple devices by syncthing.
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
You’re quite right (at least it used to be easy, I have not checked for some time how hard it is now to get rid of Apple’s and/or Amazon’s DRM… the two main DRM-locked ebook sellers), but keep in mind not everybody feels ok to not respect the rules and/or breach the contract they signed. Also there is no need to that at all with printed books.
Not parent poster, and you’re totally correct… But paper-format books don’t work at all for me, or many others with accessibility needs. I read almost exclusively with TTS while driving/doing chores/walking or to fall asleep. It’s… very hard to TTS a paper book.
So, an old (<= 5th gen) Kindle works great. They’re incompatible with the newest Kindle DRM, so they still allow old methods to transfer books. For KU books, it also has built-in TTS, so you can leave the book “reading” for you after you’ve transferred the file to your “real” device. That way authors get paid for your page reads, but you can still read/store/transfer/preserve the book.
But Amazon still tracks your reading data, and you’re still supporting Amazon’s/Kindle’s self publishing monopoly… But it’s literally the only place where books from my genre of choice are available, so not really any good options until their unethical monopoly is regulated away from them.
I was just pointing out that if that’s your major reason for buying physical over digital, it’s solved very easily.
I for one really don’t like owning many physical books because of the space it takes and 95% of my book purchases are digital.
Why go through the trouble of purchasing them with DRM and supporting that garbage and doing all the work to make them your own?
Piracy is infinitely superior.
Writers gotta get paid, tho’.
They already don’t get paid. Nearly every writer has to supplement their income with a paying job. Writers know this.
Piracy doesn’t hurt the writers nearly as much as it hurts the publisher, and that’s the point. If publishers get hurt badly enough and can’t operate properly, then writers will find a different path, and go independent, and keep all the money for themselves. THEN I’d want to buy directly from the author.
Ask the independent writers on Amazon how that’s working out for them.
Because some books are not available? You know, someone has to be the first to share. Sometimes that someone is me.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
I think that is really reassuring
What does that mean? This is one of the most logically true discussions of spirituality I am familiar with. It takes no position on what that condition might be, but addresses the issue in an almost circular reference.
Those who believe we come from nothing cannot argue that somehow, by having lived, we will go on to be something afterwards, per the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Those who believe we have a ‘soul’, something other than our physical bodies, that goes on after we die, admit that we had to have had a soul prior to birth.
And those that believe we are on a wheel, going through life again and again, understand that we are what we always have been, and will continue to be, when we’re not busy living our lives.
https://philosiblog.com/2011/12/05/after-your-death-you-will-be-what-you-were-before-your-birth/
Maybe there’s only one soul. Like in The Egg. It’s just one soul reincarnating into one life after the next, jumping forwards and backwards in space and time. Eventually after passing through the lifetimes of every sentient being that is, was, or ever shall be, the path of reincarnation loops back upon itself. There is only one soul, only one consciousness in the cosmos. One infinite endless circling wheel of experience, all bound in a universe finite in both space and time.
One of my favorite short stories and a really neat way to view the world. It’s hard to be angry at others when you feel they are more like you than they seem or realize.
Canada geese and white-tailed deer nearly went extinct. Now they’re considered pests in some areas. It’s possible for nature to bounce back, it just needs to be given a chance.
Pests? If you got a problem with Canada Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.
You or the geese?
Gooses!
white-tailed deer
Kamikaze hoses. I some how have not totaled a car on one yet.
Trump is pretty old, and I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone. Nor are there any viable successors that are likely to dodge any infighting. JD Vance as a successor? Yeah, ain’t happening.
To summarize, the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. And the worse the MAGA crowd pulls it in their direction now, the harder it will swing.
I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone.
Most religious cults especially Christianity lol, what a statement
yeah. frankly while most left/liberal dont’ see it, Trump is also a product of the pendulum swinging. we have been on a good spat of liberalization for 30+ years and there was going to be a backlash. and as someone who grew up working class white, i totally get the unfairness and bitterness of so many of those people who the economic/education system has totally abandoned, and the horrible feelings and condescending that comes from the liberal elite/educated set who look down on everyone who isn’t highly educated and living in a coastal city. i got lucky and got to be one of those people, but many of my peers did not.
frankly i find it truly revolting how much of liberal america is so disgusting smug and condescending towards anyone who isn’t exactly like them, and that massively accelerated in the 2010s. used to be in the 2000s people would respect/admire me for working my way from a poor working class family to elite school on scholarship and putting myself through grad school and building al ife for myself… somewhere around 2015 that all became to change though and i repeatedly starting meeting folks who told me that i should have ‘stayed in my place’ and my ‘education is wasted on losers like you’. etc. and that attitude has only gotten worse and worse in the 2020s. i’d say there is a massive massive increase in class snobbery and elitism that didn’t exist 10-20 years ago.
i’ve also noticed progressives have moved away from economic issues largely and are entirely focused on culture war bullshit, esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted over it. to me this is a horrible horrible move, and plays right into the right wing’s advantages. because they are offer a much clearer narrative about these things than the left/liberals are. and clear narratives win elections and voters.
what baffles me is how the democrats can’t understand or replicate Obama’s success and messaging and act like he was some act of God. He wasn’t. He just appealed to people’s sentiments and listened to them… just like Trump did in this last election… meanwhile the democrats totally ignore the people and lecture us that they know better than we do what is going on in the country and we should be happy with how things are.
I hope someone on the left/dems capitalized on the severe economic need in this country and steers away from the culture war bullshit. A candidate that wants to actually fix the problems in this country that affect everyone, but it seems nobody is coming forth to do so. And at best we are just getting some candidates who are just going to go with the ‘trump bad, me not trump’ routine again, which we know doesn’t work.
what a lot of people miss in Trumps success is that he had a clear vision people could get behind, even if it was all bullshit and lies.
I thought of disputing, but every paragraph is a troll
esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted
You have completely and hopelessly fallen for Republican propaganda. You’ve swallowed their entire framing of trans issues without any thought. You’re repeating the Republican Party line verbatim.
Democrats have spent the last decade trying to stay the hell away from the trans rights discussion at every opportunity. They’re not over bigots like Republicans, but they try to talk about literally anything else. Republicans however have continued to scream from the rooftops about trans people, as they try to incite the populous to acts of literal genocide.
Where are all these Democratic leaders that spend all their time talking about trans people? Can you name a single one? You’ve been brainwashed by conservative media.
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
Fascism doesn’t actually last that long. At some point, policies have to have some kind of attachment to reality, and fascists are incapable of grappling with reality.
Franco stuck around for quite awhile, but yeah its track record is usually short.
putin and kim have been going for quite some time.
Those are well crafted, defensive dictatorships at this point that have had decades and decades to sow the seeds of complacency and authoritarian control of their population. In one of those examples, the people of NK worship Kim and his father and grandfather as literal gods. So Americans aren’t quite there yet.
Not saying they’re super far off, but still a bit to travel before you get to centuries of repressed soviet/russian control and literal god-king dictators with an iron first around their populace.
well yeah because they were not short lived is all im sayin.
Franco was the first one I thought of. However, his fascism didn’t outlive him, and President Pedophile doesn’t have 36 years to go.
Historians debate just how fascist Franco really was. In fact, Orwell wasn’t even that sure when he wrote Homage to Catalonia, and he was quite clear that he went to Spain expressly to kill a fascist.
Well, we all wish they’d “grapple” with a few rounds at high velocity instead of fingerbanging their own shit and screaming incoherently. They’re infecting the other adult-sized toddlers, and it’s getting tedious to corral at this point.
