BRJurgis posted:

I work in landscaping. Just tonight my father was espousing how much I must have learned about gardening and farming, soil and cycles.

No, dad, I don't really care about the ideal time to prune hydrangeas or pot dahlias in the interest of beautifying wealthy folks gardens, and I don't care how invested they are in planting natives or putting little budhas in their yard!

Also endless and sure to intensify LOL at the "why" of your garden this year.

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

On Disbelieving

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

a while ago i remembered an article i had read a long while back; it was written during world war 2 by arthur koestler about people disbelieving that the holocaust was happening. i think about it a lot lately; i feel like it does an excellent job explaining the blinders so many people have on about the biosphere dying and so many other obvious awful things that are happening. its a good read:

quote:

We say, “I believe this,” or, “I don’t believe that,” “I know it,” or “I don’t know it”; and regard these as black-and-white alternatives. Now in reality both “knowing” and “believing” have varying degrees of intensity. I know that there was a man called Spartacus who led the Roman slaves into revolt; but my belief in his one-time existence is much paler than that of, say, Lenin. I believe in spiral nebulae, can see them in a telescope and express their distance in figures; but they have a lower degree of reality for me than the inkpot on my table.

quote:

And there were periods of disintegration and dissociation. But never before, not even during the spectacular decay of Rome and Byzantium, was split thinking so palpably evident, such a uniform mass-disease; never did human psychology reach such a height of phoneyness. Our awareness seems to shrink in direct ratio as communications expand; the world is open to us as never before, and we walk about as prisoners, each in his private portable cage. And meanwhile the watch goes on ticking. What can the screamers do but go on screaming, until they get blue in the face?

Cup Runneth Over posted:

got your asses

https://twitter.com/GlobalEcoGuy/status/1770101533939765492

wrap it up, doomailures

Paradoxish posted:

Hasn't there been a ton of research now largely debunking the bullshit "exposing people to reality just makes them give up" nonsense?

At this point its just a bunch of grown-rear end adults being like you're not allowed to make me sad.

quote:

Highlights
• Emotional distress is strongly correlated with mitigation motivation; hope is not.

• Optimistic messages about carbon emissions reduce climate change risk perceptions.

• Less risk leads to less distress, which in turn lowers mitigation motivation.

• Pessimistic climate change messages avoid complacency without eroding efficacy.

MightyBigMinus posted:

MLK Ultra posted:

I think about this writing a lot.
Thanks for posting it.

Stereotype posted:

pro-read

this is a good quote, i like it

quote:

They carried on business-as-usual style, with the only difference that the routine of this business included killing and being killed. Matter-of-fact unimaginativeness has become a kind of Anglo-Saxon racial myth; it is usually opposed to Latin hysterics and praised for its high value in an emergency. But the myth does not say what happens between emergencies and that the same quality is responsible for the failure to prevent their recurrence. Now this limitation of awareness is not an Anglo-Saxon privilege, though they are probably the only race which claims as an asset what others regard as a deficiency. Nor is it a matter of temperament; stoics have wider horizons than fanatics.

quote:

There is a tragic plane and a trivial plane, which contain. two mutually incompatible kinds of experienced knowledge. Their climate and language are as different as Church Latin from business slang. These limitations of awareness account for the limitations of enlightenment by propaganda. People go to cinemas, they see films of Nazi tortures, of mass-shootings, of underground conspiracy and self-sacrifice. They sigh, they shake their heads, some have a good cry. But they do not connect it with the realities of their normal plane of existence. It is Romance, it is Art, it is Those Higher Things, it is Church Latin. It does not click with reality.

Stereotype posted:

dude in the 40s: "Our awareness seems to shrink in direct ratio as communications expand; the world is open to us as never before, and we walk about as prisoners, each in his private portable cage"

me in 2024: lmao

Mr Beef Head posted:

How long are those laws to protect workers in Washington are going to last or be enforced when the same laws are being removed in Florida.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/08/florida-bill-extreme-heat-worker-protection
Yeah thats a state bill prohibiting any city or county in Florida from making rules requiring shade, water, or rest for workers

quote:

"We depend on rainwater," said Ilya Espino de Marotta, the canal's first chief sustainability officer, who was appointed in January and is also charged with reducing the waterway's carbon footprint.

"You used to see a dry year every 15 to 20 years. Now we saw a dry year in 2016, one in 2019, one in 2023 so obviously there's a climate issue we need to address," she said.

The resulting water scarcity is a major problem for canal authorities as each vessel passing through the 50-mile (80-km) trans-oceanic waterway uses some 51 million gallons (193 million litres) of water from Gatún Lake.

The lake also provides drinking water to about half of Panama's 4.5 million people and balancing these key but competing demands on a finite resource will be a critical issue for whoever comes to power after a presidential election in May.

"When you think about the number of people who take (drinking) water from the lakes, we give priority to potable water," said Espino de Marotta.

"But the canal is very important for the economy of Panama, so we need to maintain both things very viable – potable water and shipping."

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

lol yeah, for an even more crazily prescient description of Now, check out The Machine Stops, its extremely eerie

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

lol yeah, for an even more crazily prescient description of Now, check out The Machine Stops, its extremely eerie

Microplastics posted:

Why does this URL go to chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/

I mean I know I could click it and find out, but, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I don't want to click it

Erghh posted:

speaking of water https://www.context.news/climate-risks/long-read/we-all-need-water-panamas-canal-and-people-thirst-for-more?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

Microplastics posted:

Why does this URL go to chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/

I mean I know I could click it and find out, but, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I don't want to click it

bedpan posted:

absolutely adore that dumping 51 million gallons of fresh water into the ocean with each crossing was never seen as possibly problematic

Erghh posted:

texas did that last year https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/16/texas-heat-wave-water-break-construction-workers/

there will probably be a lot more like that as we "progress"

also here is a pfas in the drinking water map. i don't think its particularly complete or comprehensive but lol at some of those numbers.

https://data.usatoday.com/epa-pfas/

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

I like these bits a lot, reminds me of VBNMW/incrementalism type arguments with libs





lol yeah, for an even more crazily prescient description of Now, check out The Machine Stops, its extremely eerie

Salt Fish posted:

Local shop is giving away a pair of skis for free if you buy a bike.

quote:

For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

quote:

“In the air-ship —” He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people — an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something “good enough” had long since been accepted by our race.

quote:

Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre-Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primæval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas.

quote:

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Pekin when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Pekin? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

quote:

During the years that followed Kuno's escapade, two important developments took place in the Machine. On the surface they were revolutionary, but in either case men's minds had been prepared beforehand, and they did but express tendencies that were latent already.

The first of these was the abolition of respirators...

...So respirators were abolished, and with them, of course, the terrestrial motors, and except for a few lecturers, who complained that they were debarred access to their subject-matter, the development was accepted quietly. Those who still wanted to know what the earth was like had after all only to listen to some gramophone, or to look into some cinematophote. And even the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on the sea was none the less stimulating when compiled out of other lectures that had already been delivered on the same subject. “Beware of first-hand ideas!” exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element — direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine — the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. Through the medium of these ten great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified to an idea which you may employ most profitably in your daily lives. But be sure that the intermediates are many and varied, for in history one authority exists to counteract another. Urizen must counteract the scepticism of Ho-Yung and Enicharmon, I must myself counteract the impetuosity of Gutch. You who listen to me are in a better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am. Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what you think I think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time” — his voice rose — “there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation `seraphically free From taint of personality,' which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.”

Tremendous applause greeted this lecture, which did but voice a feeling already latent in the minds of men —a feeling that terrestrial facts must be ignored, and that the abolition of respirators was a positive gain.

quote:

The second great development was the re-establishment of religion...

“The Machine,” they exclaimed, “feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.” And before long this allocution was printed on the first page of the Book, and in subsequent editions the ritual swelled into a complicated system of praise and prayer. The word “religion” was sedulously avoided, and in theory the Machine was still the creation and the implement of man. But in practice all, save a few retrogrades, worshipped it as divine...

...To attribute these two great developments to the Central Committee, is to take a very narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments, it is true, but they were no more the cause of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period the cause of war. Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

quote:

“No personal complaints are received by the Central Committee,” the Committee of the Mending Apparatus replied.
“Through whom am I to make my complaint, then?”
“Through us.”
“I complain then.”
“Your complaint shall be forwarded in its turn.”
“Have others complained?”
This question was unmechanical, and the Committee of the Mending Apparatus refused to answer it.

“It is too bad!” she exclaimed to another of her friends. “There never was such an unfortunate woman as myself. I can never be sure of my music now. It gets worse and worse each time I summon it.”
“I too have my troubles,” the friend replied. “Sometimes my ideas are interrupted by a slight jarring noise.”
“What is it?”
“I do not know whether it is inside my head, or inside the wall.”

quote:

Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine. The sigh at the crises of the Brisbane symphony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit. All were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse unchallenged.

quote:

...the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward, and allayed the panic with well-chosen words. It confessed that the Mending Apparatus was itself in need of repair.
The effect of this frank confession was admirable.
“Of course,” said a famous lecturer — he of the French Revolution, who gilded each new decay with splendour — “of course we shall not press our complaints now. The Mending Apparatus has treated us so well in the past that we all sympathize with it, and will wait patiently for its recovery. In its own good time it will resume its duties. Meanwhile let us do without our beds, our tabloids, our other little wants. Such, I feel sure, would be the wish of the Machine.”
Thousands of miles away his audience applauded. The Machine still linked them. Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, ran the wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one garment of subserviency.

quote:

As for Vashti, her life went peacefully forward until the final disaster.

quote:

But there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.

Vashti was lecturing at the time and her earlier remarks had been punctuated with applause. As she proceeded the audience became silent, and at the conclusion there was no sound. Somewhat displeased, she called to a friend who was a specialist in sympathy. No sound: doubtless the friend was sleeping. And so with the next friend whom she tried to summon, and so with the next, until she remembered Kuno's cryptic remark, “The Machine stops”. The phrase still conveyed nothing. If Eternity was stopping it would of course be set going shortly.

quote:

Then she broke down, for with the cessation of activity came an unexpected terror — silence.

Oglethorpe posted:

Welcome to Venurth

quote:

"obviously there's a climate issue we need to address"

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

i'll post a couple fun snippets from The Machine Stops; mostly they're more about our relationship with communication technology and how it changes us than anything overtly sci-fi

also a fun thing to do with this story is to find/replace "The Machine" with "liberal democracy" or "technology" or "the rules based international order" or "Number"

e: there's also a passage that nearly directly visually describes the final 10 seconds of the pearl jam "do the evolution" video with the giant worms sucking up all the resourceslol

Spaced God posted:

Is climate doomerism part of the DSM like "oppositional defiant disorder" (anti capitalism)

quote:

V Codes (used in the DSM-5 and ICD-9) and Z Codes (used in the ICD-10), also known as Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention, are codes used to identify issues that are a focus of clinical attention or affect the diagnosis, course, prognosis, or treatment of a patient's mental disorder. However, these codes are not mental disorders. Both V and Z codes are underused by clinicians, and there is often a lack of awareness about these codes.[1]

It is often helpful to put V or Z codes in a patient's clinical documentation when there is no evidence of a mental disorder, but if they are presenting with significant impairment. Compared to the DSM-5 V Codes, ICD-10 Z Codes are much more comprehensive and cover a wider variety of psychosocial problems. These codes capture important social determinants of health information that psychiatric diagnoses do not capture. Sometimes, it is these codes that are more important than any psychiatric diagnosis!

Stereotype posted:

i am always curious what would happen if the internet just straight stopped working for an extended period of time. would people find community with their neighbors and those in close physical proximity to them? how would we post??

Oglethorpe posted:

find your nearest HAM radio operator

Stereotype posted:

i am always curious what would happen if the internet just straight stopped working for an extended period of time. would people find community with their neighbors and those in close physical proximity to them? how would we post??

MightyBigMinus posted:

i think its ASD Level 0 - saying factually true things that violate the social norm of not thinking/caring about any of that stuff

Stereotype posted:

but doctor, i am a ham radio operator

BigWeirdSashimi posted:

The bike will be useful longer, that sounds like a cute little giveaway

Stereotype posted:

there’s no harm in being optimistic

quote:

For the first time this millennium, growth in carbon emissions has slowed. Indeed, the year 2014 was the first time in 40 years that the planet saw zero growth in emissions. We examine whether this message of progress can be effective in motivating people to engage in mitigation efforts. This question dovetails with commentary suggesting that gloomy messages about climate change risk fatiguing the population, and that alternative approaches are necessary. It is also informed by work suggesting that hope is a motivating force in terms of engaging in collective action and social change. Study 1 (N = 574) showed that negative emotions were strongly related to mitigation motivation and feelings of efficacy, but hope-related emotions had a much weaker relationship with these constructs. In the main experiment (Study 2: N = 431) participants read an optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral message about the rate of progress in reducing global carbon emissions. Relative to the pessimistic message, the optimistic message reduced participants’ sense that climate change represented a risk to them, and the associated feelings of distress. Consequently, the optimistic message was less successful in increasing mitigation motivation than the pessimistic message. In sum, predictions that the optimistic message would increase efficacy did not transpire; concerns that the optimistic message would increase complacency did transpire. Recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is welcome, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective communication strategy.