Links
Shame on The Guardian. They took the coward’s way. They could have done the work of linking or adding the context they suddenly feared was missing. Meanwhile, these words, whatever each of us make of them, will only proliferate more—Barbra in full effect.
The Hell I do not believe in is real
Children carrying other wounded children.
I’m already incensed, horrified, disgusted at the latest failures of humanity that have produced so many dead children, among so many other dead.
But my pacifist tendencies (the word “tendency” is doing a lot of the work, but it does have a breaking point) are tested at the murder and torture of children (as well as state violence pointed right at me—see, I’m ultimately not a pacifist).
Any response to such to do it ten or one hundred times more is a million times worse.
The Hell I do not believe in for an afterlife is visited upon these children now.
Ugh.
The reporting on the indictment of Senator Menendez seems pretty damning. Regardless of what he is guilty of, or deemed guilty of by a jury, it is certainly darkly comedic and inept tactless when contrasted against the systemic corruption that is legitimized.
"Beef guzzlers: 12% of Americans eat half of the country’s cow meat"
A single cow can belch up to 264 pounds of methane in a year, the equivalent of burning almost 4,000 pounds of coal or driving a gas-powered car about 9,000 miles. That’s why climate advocates say people should eat less beef if they want to help ease climate change.
…
Who, exactly, comprises that group? “There’s some of everybody,” Rose said, but men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 are most likely to be big beef eaters, the study found.
I don't know what the carbon outlay of Ozempic is, but my overweight steak-and-burger-loving diabetic-amputee-Dad doesn't even feel like ordering a steak now that he doesn't have the appetite to finish more than a third of it.
"Why.are.there.periods.in.my.iPhone.searches" Me three!
Daniel Ellsberg. ¡Presente! It is a story I’ve alluded to too many times in too many places, a boring one at that (I had no role except to be there) but I had lunch with him in early March 2003. He was discussing with my then-boss his premeditated protest outside the White House of the imminently expected invasion of Iraq.
Regular programming will be interrupted
Just Stop Oil protesters interrupt opera at Glyndebourne festival (The Guardian):
“Our highest priority was the safety and security of everyone on site and we would like to thank our staff and performers, whose calm and professional response kept everyone safe, and disruption to a minimum.”
I’m with the demonstrators on this. I think everyone’s highest priority should be the climate crisis. This doesn’t mean one can’t wind down and go to an opera, but only if and until society actually realigns to this priority, expect the rest to be interrupted lest we keep thinking everything is fine.
Keep it dumb, dummy.
Will it be possible to buy a dumb electric car? No Internet Protocol dependence and certainly no fucking ChatGPT? I don’t mind contemporary local computer-driven safety features—not talking Model T dumb. I like the idea of bringing extra brains and network connectivity to the vehicle with me (e.g. via smartphone) but entirely optionally.
I’d still like to go for a drive without anyone but… the CCTV and imagery satellites and drones knowing where I am. 😮💨
No Fuck
Drastic climate action is the best course for economic growth, new study finds.: “Based on everything we think we know about technology, climate damages, etc. it would indeed be ‘optimal’ to cut emissions massively now,” ... “early inaction leads to warming that cannot be undone later by spending more on abatement.” (Yale Climate Connections)
Our civics suffer from misdirection
Cory Doctorow has an essay in Locus flagging points of common ground between broadly genuine progressives and leftists and the misdirected but genuine right, or uncritical skeptics who are often lumped-in with conservatives.
I’ve been getting tongue-tied in knots internally on the same general topic, so thank you, Cory.
How powerful our civics could be if we could unite in numbers on some of these things and reject the truly corrupt.
Instead, genuine folks get conned into engaging in distractions or holding their nose to pick one of two corrupted sides… and it’s only gotten more extreme, and worse, with the alienated becoming seemingly as extreme as the extremists in at least rhetoric sometimes.
Total Cost of AI?
I was listening to the latest episode of The Important Thing, where they meander around the implications of generative AI. One form of the question they articulated was what happens when stuff is cheaply generated for, as I heard it, by such AIs and for everyone.
The question that came to mind for me was: is it even cheap?
I don’t know.
I haven’t done my homework, so I am speaking for myself in articulating this question — I have a vague sense of recently seeing some reporting on energy usage by these breakthrough AIs (one reason they’re in the cloud is it isn’t practical to run this client-side, they need the cloud)… but I don’t know the particulars, or how it compares to say, crypto mining. But I think we’d even have to compare it to the total cost of feeding a human. The mining of ore and building of machines and generation of energy and environmental impact to run an AI vs. say … cost of same of humans. And that’s just in a sort of typical Capitalist framework.
This is just an inkling. I don’t really know all the bits I am alluding to here. My gut feeling is that when we internalize costs, the machines aren’t advantageous as is widely projected—whether or not that happens to be validated in this case.
Kevin Kelly repeatedly references (reported in Wired twenty years ago, recounted recently by Kelly in this conversation) what he learned about Amish communities' adoption of technology — slow, intentional, broader than most assume - and I kind of wish our society was more like this. Like the Luddites professed to be, with some core values.
I wonder what we’re missing from Dominion settling with Fox.
For all the warranted critiques of the New York Times, and laments about the arc of newspapers, I am grateful for the Metro Diaries feature of that paper. I have been reading it, on and off, for 25 years.
I think I have to give my Dad credit, to whom I don’t give a lot of credit, for pointing it out to me in a print edition of the Sunday New York Times about that long ago. Back when the Sunday Times was a big thick paper, and the Metro section (if you bought it within range of the city, at least) seemed bigger than my local city paper (with the ads removed, anyway).
Appreciating, as I think I have nearly every year since it began, the “State of the World” thread on the Well, from Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky.
All the local broadcast weather reports I heard the past couple of days celebrated the 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than normal temperatures. Which was depressing. Currently put it in real context.
I am not a fan of the chumps who introduced and voted for this amendment, but I am disgusted with everyone—the other 97—who voted against it.
I was going to say this shit is killing me, but that’s not a great idiom when it is literally killing other people.
This (the rest of this) is a fucking war
- MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. — “the scenario which was the least closest fit to the latest empirical data happens to be the most optimistic pathway known as ‘SW’ (stabilized world), in which civilization follows a sustainable path and experiences the smallest declines in economic growth—based on a combination of technological innovation and widespread investment in public health and education.” (Vice)
- How the West’s disasters are outpacing its climate action (New Statesman)
- Flooding in Europe, in Pictures (New York Times)
- Climate Changed Is Blamed for Worsening Flooding in Europe (New York Times)
- EU, China Unveil Sweeping Plans to Cut Greenhouse-Gas Emissions — ‘“Our current fossil-fuel economy has reached its limit…”’ (Wall Street Journal)
- Europe Plans Aggressive New Laws to Phase Out Fossil Fuels (New York Times)
- Planes dump water on Siberian wildfires as residents plead for help — “The Siberian fires have raised fears about the permafrost and peatlands thawing, releasing carbon long stored in the frozen tundra. Meanwhile, ash from the fires could blanket nearby snow cover, turning it dark so that it absorbs more solar radiation and warms even faster.” (Reuters)
- Parts of the Amazon Rainforest Are Emitting Carbon Dioxide (New York Times)
- Brazil’s Amazon is now a carbon source, unprecedented study reveals (Mongabay)
- Wildfires Are Intensifying. Here’s Why, and What Can Be Done. (New York Times)
- E.P.A. Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking a Decade Ago, New Files Show — ‘“In areas where there’s heavy fracking, the data is starting to build to show there’s a real reason for concern,” said Linda Birnbaum … The presence of PFAS, she said, was particularly worrisome. “These are chemicals that will be in the environment, essentially, not only for our lifetimes, but forever,” she said.’ (New York Times)
- Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office (Intercept)
- Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House — ‘Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.’ (Guardian)
- Explosive Interview Directly Implicates Donald Trump in Tax Scheme — ‘Jennifer Weisselberg’s claims would directly tie Trump to what a New York criminal indictment described as a corporate scheme to pay executives “in a matter that was ‘off the books.’”’ (Daily Beast)
- Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election, according to Mark Milley book — “Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.” (Cable News Network)
- “You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War”: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran (New Yorker)
- America Punishes Only a Certain Kind of Rebel (New York Times)
- The Left Needs Free Speech — “I would support free speech even if it wasn’t a tactical necessity right now, because I don’t think I have a lock on all the truth in the world. But the fact is, given American realities, where almost half the electorate voted for Donald Trump and large numbers don’t even believe in evolution, no one needs it more than the left. It’s messy, it’s contradictory, it means living with insults and stupidity and even, sometimes, evil and pain. Fortunately, your enemy is in the same position. That may be as good as it gets." (Dissent)
- Biz Markie, Hip-Hop’s ‘Just a Friend’ Clown Prince, Dies at 57 — ‘“I’m going to be Biz Markie until I die,” he said. “Even after I die I’m going to be Biz Markie.”’ (New York Times)
- Biz Markie Dead: Rapper Had a Hit With ‘Just a Friend’ (Variety)
I cannot help but like Oblivion better
The Red Hand Files - Issue #158 — “Not a question but just thank you for actually loving my favourite female poet, Stevie Smith (issue #157). ‘Oblivion’ has always been my story.” (Nick Cave)
I’m not sure a poem has spoken to me more in the past couple of years.
Tides are rising, but are our boats floating?
- Quiz: Are You Being Nice Enough About the Climate Apocalypse? ❧ “The world is on fire! But let’s talk about your tone, okay?” (Current Affairs)
- Our climate change turning point is right here, right now (Guardian)
- The ocean is full of tiny plastic particles – we found a way to track them with satellites (Attention to the Unseen)
- Heatwaves and drought are killing trees at an alarming rate (Attention to the Unseen)
- Heat Wave Killed Marine Wildlife en Masse (New York Times)
- ‘This Is What Bipartisanship Looks Like’: Vicious Fire Tornado Caught on Film in California — “Climate policy isn’t about imagining a spectrum from left to right and finding the sweet spot in the middle. It’s a zero-sum battle with physics.” (Common Dreams)
- Chuck Schumer Says He Doesn’t Consider Gas “Clean Energy” (New Republic)
- Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming (BBC News)
- Pope reappears after surgery, backs free universal health care (Reuters)
- Campaign to Rein in Mega IRA Tax Shelters Gains Steam in Congress Following ProPublica Report (ProPublica)
- Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves — “How workers’ retirement savings are enriching billionaires and, in every way imaginable, financing the apocalypse.” (Daily Poster)
- The South, Slavery & the Lost Cause — Jeffery Robinson (Alternative Radio, 2017)