Notices by John Socks (john@socks.masto.host)

CNN Business has an article on Corey Doctorow's enshittification. Apparently seriously and without irony they have an HP printing service ad in the middle of it.

It is 2025, why is Apple still letting fake FastTrack messages through to old ladies with iPhones?

WTF.

In the latest example the sender had a Hotmail account, how hard is that to exclude?

Our LA fire evacuation may end tomorrow. That would be nice. It would be a week. On the one hand that seems long, but on the other it matches the amount of dog food I took. So maybe I knew.

I think people, especially outside the area, might make the LA situation into too much of a climate change story.

This is our climate, and people living here know it.

You might know the story of Goleta’s Great Simoon of 1859. While we don't live in a desert, in the coastal areas, we have a desert behind us in a deep history of dramatic weather events. As you may have heard we have whole ecosystems evolved for fire.

Suburbs are not evolved for fire in the same way, making an inherent risk

It's amazing how many air sorties they've done against these LA fires. I've seen almost continuous operations against the north side of the #palisadesfire. That fire has been trying a slow march up the Sullivan road/canyon and into the valley. Amazing effort, especially given all the fires in the area.

"During a 13-day period in Southern California in 1970, 773 wildfires burned 576,508 acres, destroyed 722 homes and killed 16 people."

An interesting story here of how much organization and investment California has put into preparing for these kinds of fires.

https://wildfiretoday.com/2019/05/16/the-wildfires-in-1970-brought-about-firescope-changing-the-way-emergencies-are-managed/

Is everybody seeing this, or is it just California?

This picture was taken at Vallarta market which is a nice store but egg prices are not really their specialty. That said, they are usually only just a bit higher ..

@SnowshadowII I think I saw something many many years ago that looked at the carbon impact of bicycling to work.

It concluded that bicycling to work increased an individual's carbon impact, and that was the punchline.

Because they live longer.

I don't always agree with carnage4life, but he has some good posts.

"I recently joked that people are getting dumber while computers are getting smarter. There is now data from a global test to back up that sentiment."

Atrophy.

https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/DDm8DIvSVza

I'm not sure who needs to know, but I think @CarandDriver is pretty broken, at least from the official Mastodon Android client.

I have to view in browser in order to get to the articles.

@clintruin @jgordon @samlitzinger I read him as saying something different, that there have always been the the kind of people who now follow Trump.

It's just that in the network tv age, with gate keeps, they were isolated, unaware of each other.

They were unorganized deplorables.

@clintruin @jgordon @samlitzinger

Yes, it was cool that the US did not go Nazi in the 1940s, as it might have done.

The problem now is how we resist those worst motives in a world without gatekeepers. In a world where the deplorables have overpowered them.

Nobody has an answer either, because they still do control one party in a two party system.

This morning, KamalaHQ posted the debate clip of Trump saying to the Proud Boys, "stand back and stand by"

It wouldn't surprise me that they are going to build towards an election crescendo organized around January 6th.

Remember there is a culminating clip of him saying that he would pardon the January 6 mob.

"Harris may have "won" the debate, but Americans "lost on fracking," climate experts say"

So sad, but this is the American contradiction.

The average American does want to solve the climate problem, and does want cheap gasoline for their big fast car.

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/12/harris-may-have-won-the-debate-but-americans-lost-on-fracking-climate-experts-say/

@br00t4c Dumb and Dumber, or Mad and Madder?

@thomasfuchs Right. Is it a classic collective action problem. But then, many problems in our world are even harder collective action problems.

@thomasfuchs I don't really complain. I just accept it. But the sad thing is that it brings my expectations down all over the place.

Compared to many of the problems in the world leaving Twitter is easy, possibly it is the easiest thing out there.

It's easier than solving environmental problems. It's easier than ending wars.

It is a supreme irony to me that people talk on Twitter about solving those bigger things

"A Palmer oak in Jurupa Valley is estimated to be 13,000 to 18,000 years old. The plant, which looks like a sprawling, dark green shrub, is now at the center of a development battle."

That's crazy to think a shrub you walk by, or mountain bike past, could be 13,000 years old.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-06-29/development-fight-centers-on-californias-oldest-plant

"J.D. Vance Wanted a Constitutional Crisis"

This rose to the top of Memeorandum today, so it must be getting fair attention.

Yikes.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/jd-vance-wanted-a-constitutional

Vance, like Jordan Peterson, was introduced to me by "nice guy" and "low key" libertarians. I kind of worry that there was something non-accidental about their path after that.

Maybe libertarians, even nice ones, know they have to be remoras on some shark. Vance is their shark.

"How the recycling symbol lost its meaning"

Note that the 1992 picture in this article shows a recycling center sorting plastics by type. That's the way it would have to work, and it's really impossible at scale.

The white cap on a plastic pill bottle should go in one bin, and the yellow pill bottle should go in another.

When things scaled up to everyone just throwing everything they remotely hoped was recyclable into one "recycling bin," the system failed.

https://grist.org/culture/recycling-symbol-logo-plastic-design/