Notices by Linda Woodrow (lindawoodrow@mastodon.social), page 4

@Radical_EgoCom Not all means are justified, and not all means have the same likelihood of actually achieving the ends. Not all ends are equally preferable and there are different varieties of capitalism in different parts of the world, that justify different degrees of urgency.

we just stopped at a restaurant near the autobahn to hamburg to eat something and say that the MNT Reform Next campaign (it's our new 26mm thick 13" open hardware laptop) just went live aaaaa! https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

@Radical_EgoCom Depends.

@Pawpower Don't know if this is useful, but we get fish heads, cheap or free, put them in the slow cooker just covered with water for a long time, take the big bones out, cook till the small bones are soft, add brown rice or sweet potatoes and veg from the garden. Our dog loves it and it's cheap and unprocessed.

@ErosBlog @fredbrooker I reject it but not entirely. There's something in there. Not the "stupid" and not the "little people" but we, the demos (and I include me), create, enable, arm, elect, obey, feed, serve, the billionaires. Coerced by force and fear and propaganda, it's true, but also in the mix is laziness and complacency and credulity.

Sourdough is out of the oven. Rosemary sourdough crackers, herby cream cheese dip, sicky date pudding, 3 kinds of homemade icecream (real vanilla bean, lemon myrtle, mocha salted almond) with cones and sprinkles for the kids - and we're off to the family lunch feast. I hope you and yours have a lovely joyful day.

@Sonar @LeftistLawyer @JuliusGoat AI creates *such* shit summaries. You do yourself no favours, worse than no favours, using it. Somebody said that if you can't explain something in language a primary school kid could understand, you don't really understand it. This is the best understanding of what's going on in USA I've come across. Beautiful, nuanced writing, dozens of quotable bits, real original ideas. And AI turns it into "duh!".

@mttaggart great article. Thank you for sharing it.

@mttaggart In classic economic terminology, it is rent seeking on an immense scale, and that historically has led to war. But my main objection, that overshadows all else, is that it makes an absurdity of any climate action. None of our coal port blockading, recycling, growing food, conserving water repairing, bicycling, electing Greens or Teals is going to have any impact at all on shooting past 3 degrees into a hellscape while there is AI. We can't have AI and a planet to live on.

@mttaggart I get some friends saying that the same stuff was said about computers, internet, even the printing press. But AI feels quite different to me. I resent the unpaid plunder of people's work for training data for machines that belong to billionaires. That has strong echos of colonial appropriation of art and knowledge, except we're all now in the colony being appropriated by a small class of essentially stateless billionaires. 1/2

The call to action section is the weakest part of the piece. It is not weak, but it is weaker than everything else.

I want to talk about that for a second, both what the author recommends and also what I recommend.

The author recommends putting a name to this rot, calling it out, explaining it to others, and identifying the people responsible. This is a great start! Google search didn't just get worse on its own, Prabhakar Raghavan instructed a team to destroy it. There is a person, a team of people, behind this decay.

I see the change for the sake of change / growth at any cost mindset in places where I really shouldn't, thought. Mastodon, for example. It seems like each new release has some new Growth Hack inspired assault. Eugen isn't doing it for exactly the same reasons, but the root is still a mindset that values Growth over every other metric.

I do not think it is a coincidence that great social movements, like labour rights, womens rights, and racial equality arose in the wake of stable public health and public education initiatives.

When a population starts to become healthy and educated, they organize to demand standards of fairness off their governments.

Why would Trump or Putin or Musk want that? What is the easiest way to rid themselves of those threats? Make people sick, ignorant and hungry. And make them hate the other. 5/

@paulkidd Thank you!

@paulkidd One of my favourite poems https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/attack-squash-people

@LaNaehForaday @gerrymcgovern @foolishowl
I feel the same. As naive* and depressing as it may be, I keep thinking how beautiful this planet, its plants, its life forms will be, once it's gotten rid of its most stupid species.

* Beautiful in the eyes of whom?

I might have found a bit to bookmark in this book.

Ugh. One of the worst apps on my phone (which I use because the door controls are even worse), which controls the appliance that I *ALREADY* overpaid for, is switching to a subscription model.

I get to maintain "free" access… for now.

I'd hate this less If this app wasn't so terrible.

"But maintaining an app costs money!" you say.

Of course it does, but they need to do that to sell new ovens, anyway, and this is a secondary offering. They sold me the appliance, not the app (but now both…).

A key issue with AI is that transition to degrowth or doughnut economies *requires* structural transition towards low-carbon, labour intensive economic sectors - an economy built on production of art, knowledge, education, care of people, environmental restoration, energy transition. AI is exactly the opposite - high carbon, low human labour. Ie a high growth economy with big emissions and high labour productivity aka unemployment.

Front yard veggie garden this midsummer morning. #retrosuburbia #permaculture

@mackayim2022 Mine booked for Tuesday.