Zodium posted:

it's been used in a variety of ways by people, but insofar as it's used on c-spam, it refers to a toy theory i developed for my own understanding a couple of years ago to explain the system behavior of capitalism in the post-ww2 era, especially its response to covid, in terms of a cybernetic integration between ecological psychology and marxist theory. it does not have anything to do with robots or computers as such. i think the first big post i did on it is still pretty instructive for the theory as a whole:



if that were the case, cybernetic capitalism would just be capitalism. the cardinal trait of cybernetic capitalism is its replacement of direct ruling class control with self-organized systems of feedback loops of ecological variables which systematically constrain perception across classes to maximize its stability.

RC Cola posted:

If you don't fear being tortured for all eternity, how are you not screwing over every person you meet for your own benefit???

tuyop posted:

ah I see.

capitalism: the landlord fucks you

cybernetic capitalism: capital fucks you and the landlord right after it destroys your shared reality?

I do think there’s something missing in your analysis of like, surveillance and the distinct properties of the data we produce on the nature of extraction, but it does really bring the effect of the epistemological crisis forward.

https://www.vox.com/2015/11/17/9749754/obama-presidential-power posted:

Obama: I didn’t appreciate how weak the presidency is until I was president

One big thing Barack Obama has learned about being president? The job isn't as powerful as you might expect.

In an interview with Bill Simmons in 2015, which is well worth reading in full, Obama explained that he "didn't fully appreciate" how "decentralized power is" in the US political system until he took office.

That is, to get anything done, he had to spend a ton of his time trying to persuade other people. Here's what he told Simmons:

OBAMA: What I didn’t fully appreciate, and nobody can appreciate until they’re in the position, is how decentralized power is in this system. When you’re in the seat and you’re seeing the housing market collapse and you are seeing unemployment skyrocketing and you have a sense of what the right thing to do is, then you realize, "Okay, not only do I have to persuade my own party, not only do I have to prevent the other party from blocking what the right thing to do is, but now I can anticipate this lawsuit, this lobbying taking place, and this federal agency that technically is independent, so I can’t tell them what to do. I’ve got the Federal Reserve, and I’m hoping that they do the right thing—and by the way, since the economy now is global, I’ve got to make sure that the Europeans, the Asians, the Chinese, everybody is on board." A lot of the work is not just identifying the right policy but now constantly building these ever shifting coalitions to be able to actually implement and execute and get it done.

Of course, that's right — on a great many issues, the president isn't the policy-wonk-in-chief, he's the coalition-builder-in-chief. And without a strong enough coalition, he can't get his way. This is true on issue after issue — from gun control to the cap-and-trade bill to immigration reform.

This is a common realization that presidents have after taking office. Indeed, it's so common that political scientist Richard Neustadt wrote a book about it decades ago, in which he made the famous argument that at its heart, "Presidential power is the power to persuade."

Now, Neustadt didn't just mean that the president has to rely only on convincing people with the power of his words. Instead, the president is engaged in a long bargaining give and take with all of those actors Obama listed. The president's position, prominence, and powers provide many advantages in that process. Still, of course, presidents often fail to get their way — and even when they do get what they want, they feel like they're working awfully hard at it. Neustadt quotes President Harry Truman complaining:

"I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them. ... That's all the powers of the President amount to."

Indeed, Obama has chafed against these limits so much that he's pushed the limits of his executive authority in some novel ways, as I described in 2014. But even here, he has been hemmed in by the courts — for instance, his major immigration executive actions were blocked.

So the president's difficulty getting his way is a persistent feature of American democracy. And Matt Yglesias has argued that it could eventually lead to the doom of the American system — if this usual bargaining and persuasion process breaks down due to increased polarization, presidents will stretch the limits of their authorities ever further, leading to an eventual constitutional crisis.

For now, though, Obama's realization will be familiar to other presidents. As George W. Bush once said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier."

quote:

2024 will probably be hotter than this year because of El Niño, NASA scientists say

s millions bake under a relentless heat wave in the South and Southwest US – and as temperatures soar around the Northern Hemisphere – NASA scientists warned Thursday that we haven’t even seen the worst of El Niño and next year will likely be even warmer for the planet.

Climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels, is unequivocally warming the Earth’s temperature, NASA scientists said.

And El Niño, the natural climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that brings warmer-than-average sea-surface temperatures and influences weather, has only just started in recent months and therefore is not having a huge impact yet on the extreme heat people around the globe are experiencing this summer, said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Melting ice on a small tundra pond in Greenland.

Long-lost Greenland ice core suggests potential for disastrous sea level rise

“It’s really only just emerged, and so what we’re seeing is not really due to that El Niño,” Schmidt told reporters. “What we’re seeing is the overall warmth pretty much everywhere – particularly in the oceans. … The reason why we think that’s going to continue is because we continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Until we stop doing that, temperatures will keep on rising.”

Last month was the hottest June on record for the planet, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported earlier this month. Several days in July were the planet’s warmest in modern records kept by two climate agencies in the US and Europe.

All of that heat is adding up, and Schmidt said he believes there is a 50-50 chance that 2023 will be the warmest year on record.

But, he added, it is likely that a sweltering 2024 will exceed it, precisely because of El Niño’s influence.

“We anticipate that 2024 is going to be an even warmer year because we’re going to be starting off with that El Niño event,” Schmidt said. “That will peak towards the end of this year, and how big that is is going to have a big impact on the following year’s statistics.”

mags posted:

someone should update that R.E.M. song

Xaris posted:

Unless posted:

I worry that folks confuse disempowerment and escapism with acceptance

there are gonna be all kinds of dynamics in play as this progresses

allowing the folks that, at best, ignored the problem, to maintain decision-making power and influence is gonna inevitably lead to hyper-Malthusian turbo-fascism

Crazypoops posted:

denial
anger
bargaining
depression
Lmao

cash crab posted:

when she came back later she said"yeah, i believe in that stuff, i just don't want to hear about it."

mawarannahr posted:

Uphold Tony Thought

Uranium Phoenix posted:

I think one important point to reinforce about climate change is that:
As long as people continue to not take action, it will get progressively worse.

err posted:

https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/status/1682254109850607617

sleep with the vicious posted:

Nobody warned us, and also its not real anyway, and also the forest firefighters are lazy and make too much money, and also the fires are good

kater posted:

I am shocked I am still able to feel shock anymore.

quote:

The ship was built in 1976 and is flagged in Barbados. It was converted into an accommodation barge in 1992. It was formerly known as Floatel Stockholm and Dino I.

From 1994 to 1998, it was used to house the homeless, including some asylum seekers, in Hamburg, Germany.
In 2005, it began to be used by the Netherlands to detain asylum seekers in Rotterdam. In 2008, an asylum seeker resident of the Bibby Stockholm died of heart failure following repeated failures to provide adequate healthcare.
In 2013, the barge was used by Petrofac as accommodation for construction workers at the Shetland Gas Plant. During this time, it was berthed at Lerwick, Scotland. In 2015, a man from Saltcoats, Ayrshire called His Majesty's Coastguard to report that two bombs had been planted on barges - the accommodation ship Gemini, and the Bibby Stockholm. He admitted a charge of threatening or abusive behaviour and was sentenced to a six-month tagging order. The barge was finally towed away from Lerwick by the Cypriot tug Mustang on 31 May 2017, although it had been unused for over a year. It was subsequently towed to the Danish island of Bornholm.
In August 2017, there was some discussion by a property management company about leasing the barge to provide university accommodation to 400 students in Galway, Ireland, along with the Bibby Bergen. However, the plan was generally not workable - the existing docks were not suitable, and the Supreme Court of Ireland had ruled that such a use would require planning permission.
In June 2018, the barge was moved to Piteå, Sweden, to assist in the construction of Markbygden Wind Farm. It stayed there until at least 2019.

In April 2023, the Government of the United Kingdom announced plans to use the ship to house asylum seekers at Portland Port in Dorset, because it would "offer better value for money for taxpayers than hotels", referring to the £5.6m bill for accommodating asylum seekers in hotels. However, The Guardian reported in July 2023 that the barge would deliver only a trivial cost saving. The plan is for the barge to stay in the port for at least 18 months, containing 506 asylum seekers whose asylum claims are already being considered by the government. The barge would also contain healthcare provision, catering facilities, and 24-hour security. The plans have met widespread opposition from humanitarian organisations, the local MP and local authorities—who are Conservatives, the party in government. Dorset Council explored legal action to prevent the barge from arriving. On the morning of 17 July 2023, the barge left Falmouth for Portland Port.
In July 2023, an open letter signed by over 50 NGOs, MPs and peers called on the barge's owner, Bibby Marine, part of Bibby Line, to acknowledge its founder John Bibby's links to the Atlantic slave trade and to end the practice of containing asylum seekers on its vessels.

Radical 90s Wizard posted:

We're already way beyond the point where any action we could take would stop things getting worse in the near-term.

Radical 90s Wizard posted:

We're already way beyond the point where any action we could take would stop things getting worse in the near-term.

what'd tony melt down about that got him perma'd?

err posted:

https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/status/1682254109850607617

Uranium Phoenix posted:

as bad as it's gonna get, it can absolutely get way worse

Gravid Topiary posted:

what would way worse be? not being snotty i'm just wondering how bad you think it's going to get based on what we currently know

Gravid Topiary posted:

what would way worse be? not being snotty i'm just wondering how bad you think it's going to get based on what we currently know

Uranium Phoenix posted:

Gravid Topiary posted:

what would way worse be? not being snotty i'm just wondering how bad you think it's going to get based on what we currently know

RIP Syndrome posted:

Curious about this too. What's everyone's definition of the worst possible outcome? Extinction of humanity and all other complex life? You could argue that as we blow past that and lock in an increasingly insane-looking art project planet to leave behind, the outcomes start improving again.

La Louve Rouge posted:

Obama was a deeply evil leader and his "long moral arc justice" bullshit is one of the most dangerous, paralyzing sentiments put out into the world

La Louve Rouge posted:

Obama was a deeply evil leader and his "long moral arc justice" bullshit is one of the most dangerous, paralyzing sentiments put out into the world

Puppy Burner posted:

Even if we glassed the surface I don't think we'd stop life for long tbh. We'll end ourselves and much of what exists now but the present is an illusion dreamt by a psychotic ape. Tl;dr it don't matter, none of this matters.

Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:

What we consider brutal today will be a walk in the park next to what happens when literal waves of humanity come knocking at the door of already stressed nations.