Notices by Sy Taffel (sy@mastodon.nz)

@Ungrimironfist @atomicpoet @tsadilas

https://www.techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/

Is probably worth a read

'The "first buddy" role that Keir Starmer just handed over to Jeff Bezos is, in every way, more generous than the first buddy deal Trump gave Elon Musk.

Starmer's government claims they're doing this for "growth" but #Amazon isn't a force for #growth it's force for extraction. It is a notorious underpayer of its labour force, a notorious tax-cheat, and a world-beating destroyer of local economies, local jobs, and local tax bases.'

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

@pluralistic is spot on here

'Capitalism is a catalogue of system errors. It has overturned the principal balance and human health – relentlessly insisting that more is better. It has denigrated care – continually depressing the value of the carer. It has over-stimulated consumer appetites – ruthlessly arousing dissatisfaction. It has accelerated material throughput – dangerously undermining the integrity of the natural world.'

Tim Jackson, Postgrowth p165

#postgrowth #degrowth #capitalism

@lightweight just in case you didn't see this recently released report...

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2024/dec/reclaiming-digital-sovereignty

2024 will be hottest year on record, with the 1st eleven months averaging 1.6C over pre-industrial levels...

But the article wants to emphasize this hasn't broken the #Paris treaty, we just need a 45% global reduction in emissions by 2030.

Yet year on year emissions continue to rise (with the exceptions of the GFC and Covid) rather than fall.

The scale of #climate action is spectacularly inadequate, but the mainstream just pretends we're doing okay.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/09/climate-crisis-deepens-with-2024-certain-to-be-hottest-year-on-record

@accretionist @matthewtoad43 @gerrymcgovern @PaulWermer @deightonrobbie For me the band aid is some EVs (the smaller the better) alongside urgently investing in infrastructure projects for active and electric public transport.

I'm in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Sparsely populated, sky high car ownership rates, most cars are SUVs, and public transport is awful. Probably much closer to the US than London (where I grew up). We have a lot of work to do!

'Planned degrowth or deaccumulation and a shift to sustainable human development is now unavoidable in the wealthiest countries, whose per capita ecological footprints are non-sustainable on a planetary basis, if organized civilization is to survive.'

John Bellamy Foster - who has previously been a vociferous critic of #degrowth, while advocating for the very similar logic of deaccumulation, seems to have subtly shifted his position

https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/planned-degrowth/

Once again, for those who haven't been paying attention, offsets are not going to solve the climate emergency, we need to massively reduce our fossil fuel usage. And we need to do this quickly.

'39 of the top 50 emission offset projects, or 78% of them, were categorised as likely junk or worthless due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cuts. Eight others (16%) look problematic'

#climatechange #climate #climatediary

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

'The problem with, say, Meta, is only partially that Mark Zuckerberg is personally monumentally unsuited to serving as the unelected, unaccountable permanent social media czar for three billion people.

The real problem is that no one should have that job. That job shouldn’t exist. We don’t need to find a better Mark Zuckerberg.

We need to abolish Mark Zuckerberg.'

great stuff from Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980