Notices by Bastian Allgeier (bastianallgeier@mastodon.social), page 2

„Better is now“ by Stefan Sagmeister has many fantastic points. But I’m sorry to say that his thoughts on climate change are built on the idea that we can undo our mistakes in many fields. But this does not apply to the climate in the same way. If we hit a tipping point we cannot undo that. That’s the very foundational concept of a tipping point #btconf

@reichenstein @marcthiele We should found a fan club. He does a really good job at this. He's the only tech reviewer I'm still watching regularly. I'm really no longer interested in the entire genre of tech reviews - or new tech in general. But his videos are far more than just that. His conclusions always contain very interesting thoughts on the future, on the role of tech in our lives, on quality, pricing etc, etc.

This is the part where EVs really start to play an entirely different role than just as a car.

1. huge home battery with the potential to get you through power outages for a couple days
2. helpers to balance the grid to not let excess renewables go to waste

Tibber is starting their grid reward system in Sweden and Norway and it's awesome. Your car battery starts to serve as virtual controllable excess storage for the grid and you get paid to provide it as such.

There's a German article about it: https://www.heise.de/news/Tibber-Wallbox-Netz-verkauft-verteilte-Regelenergie-9695619.html and I also found a really great short explainer video, which seems to be unintentionally listed on the Youtube channel of the voice actor and not Tibber, so it might not be fully official yet :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4lYV8utCMM

Sometimes marketing is all about waiting long enough for your audience to forget about the 80s and 90s.

I love how ALDI celebrates this brilliant new design that saves 40% of plastic by removing the plastic lid.

Doktor Whatson is a German science communication channel on YouTube. To debunk common myths and media coverage about burning EVs, they invited an expert and instructor from the Berlin fire department and just let him talk for 20+ minutes https://youtu.be/hZEyRdlB6S4?si=4CBiuDlwRKVtLsqM

What a refreshing format in times of endless bullshit.

We joined 15.000 people in Heidelberg today with friends and the entire family to protest against fascism and the AfD. The first big protest for the kids. It was so good to see so many people united against Nazis ✊ #NeverAgainIsNow

We arrived at the starting point and although the place was packed it wasn’t clear how many people were there. 3000, 5000, 10.000? Then the march started, but we couldn’t move for over an hour. While the beginning of the stream already reached the final destination, we still had to wait because there simply were way too many people that packed the streets. Really nice!

This is an article that took a lot of strength to write and I might take it down again. But I felt like it is an article that is very necessary right now. https://bastianallgeier.com/notes/grandpa

Yesterday, we talked about the absurd German tradition to watch „Dinner for one“ at NYE and a friend from Sweden and a friend from Egypt independently told me that a similar tradition for them would be to watch „The sound of music“ I honestly never heard about it before (don’t judge me) and so we watched it together today. I think I see why we didn’t turn that one into our German NYE tradition. But I guess the timing couldn’t be better to watch it.

„Suppose they published populist news and nobody shared them“

Our public discourse has been hijacked by an endless circle of shit. Populists post fake news and horrendous attacks and the majority shares it. Either because they fall for it or because they are in rage about it. Both sides help to promote it with the same effectiveness.

I really believe that we need to be aware that we are part of the problem if we participate with our rage - even if it seems like a fight for the right cause.

Reading the latest thread by Mastodon‘s CTO @renchap made me realize once more how small the team behind all this is and how they really try to listen to feedback and get it right.

It’s incredible what they‘ve achieved. It’s literally David vs Goliath compared to other social media platforms.

We should always keep that in mind when some things are not 100% smooth.

We get an ad-free, algo-free, tracker-free, lunatic-billionaire-free space in return 💛

@thomasfuchs With current advancements in battery tech, this is only a matter of time and my point already counts very much for cars. Especially if you consider an efficiency of more than 90% for an electric motor.

I’m always amazed by how poor the efficiency of fossile energy really is.

- A coal plant has an efficiency of around 40%
- A gas plant can get up to around 60%
- A combustion engine car can only translate up to around 25% into motion

Most of the rest is wasted as heat.

Getting rid of fossile fuels by electrifying transport and switching to renewables automatically leads to huge energy savings.

The leader of the German conservatives introduced the idea to collaborate with the far right AfD yesterday. He knows that he won’t get kicked out or replaced as the party leader. He will paddle back a bit after some backlash and that’s it. It doesn’t matter that he just meant on a community level either. The idea to collaborate with Nazis is now officially speakable without consequences. I feel sick!!

Holy shit. VanMoof ran out of money and is currently in a legal process to avoid bankruptcy. Their app to control bike settings is already stopping to work properly for some users. It seems that you can still lock and unlock, but this is a shitshow: https://mastodon.notsobig.co/@phill/110701490478043590

Smart home stuff, smart bikes, smart whatever tech that gets bricked because the company folds is just the worst.

A while ago, I read about the psycholgical effect that kicks in when someone tries to fight for a good cause, but then makes a tiny mistake.

We are very hard on hypocrisy because our brains like when things add up.

I.e. a climate activist with a plastic cup triggers much harder than Elon taking a 5 minute flight in his private jet every other day.

The first feels wrong, while the second just meets our expectations.

I can't stop seeng this everywhere ever since.

@thomasfuchs where do the 10% come from? The 3 degrees by the end of the century which we currently are heading for seem likely to kill a lot more than that.

What are your preferred ways to fight climate change anxiety and just pure frustration with climate politics? I feel like I got a lot better dealing with this in general, but sometimes I really get hit hard again.

@charlesroper "Control what you can control" definitely is key. Also a big fan of small, continuous changes. Thanks for the recommendations.