Notices by &2i (pneumaculturist@hcommons.social)

In the past, I've seen people cite Stalin, Pol Pot etc as if they are self-explanatory refutations of #socialism. Well, for future reference ...
"it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia"
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
PS this is not to defend Pol Pot and the rest: I do not.

"Jezz Bezos and Elon Musk emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average human does in their entire life."
...
“Half of the world’s emissions come from the richest 10% of people. The wealthiest 1% by income account for 16% of emissions, which is more than the poorest two-thirds of people in the world,”

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-are-the-one-case-where-personal-choices-can-affect-climate-change-2000518380
#inequality #CarbonFootprint

"According to a 2020 study led by Matthew Hayek, a New York University environmental studies professor, a shift to plant-based eating in rich countries would free up enough land to sequester an amount of carbon dioxide approximately equal to the past nine years of their fossil fuel emissions."
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/362224/environment-groups-meat-industry-lies-global-warming-climate-change-wwf
#meatIndustry #climateCrisis #carbonFootprint

@HistoPol @jnye @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
No counter-argument from this Christian horrified at the betrayal of the values of Christ.

@annecavicchi
Interesting too how much the kindness of others -strangers even- helps him. And, of course, he gets to visit the doctor. "Self-made"? Not a bit of it.
"Black says it was still a successful experiment after demonstrating how it was possible to rebuild his life through the power of determination"
... and help from kind people, medical services, and a big hat-tip to previously acquired skills and experience. -The latter are not normally part of the toolbox many others bring to the 'having nothing' experience.
He was very lucky someone gifted him somewhere to sleep early on. Probably his ability to present as a believably otherwise wealthy guy temporarily impecunious was a big factor in that. Again, not transferable.

"De-anonymising data is surprisingly easy: if you know Tony Blair’s date of birth (a matter of public record) and the two dates during his term in office in which he was treated for a heart condition (ditto), you can pick him out of any “anonymised” pool of NHS data in seconds, and then discover all those facts about his health that aren’t a matter of public record... Dr Ben Goldacre and his team at Oxford created OpenSAFELY, a “Trusted Research Environment” that allows researchers to write programs that analyse NHS data in situ. These programs would be dispatched to run against the data held by NHS trusts, and then the system would return the results to the researchers without ever letting them handle the data – which never left the trusts’ own servers."
https://goodlawproject.org/cory-doctorow-health-data-it-isnt-just-palantir-or-bust/
#dataProtection #research #NHS #privacy

PS #Palantir, ... is literally named after an evil, all-seeing magic talisman employed by the principal villain of Lord of the Rings (“Sauron, are we the baddies?”)