@cwebber

My bleak optimism is:

The global economy is really fragile and as the weather disasters blow holes in various parts of the world, the ability of the world to rebuild polluting infrastructure will get increasingly compromised.

So if we're really lucky we'll get enough painful chaotic degrowth to cut emissions.

And I guess the more we can do to stop buying things from global supply chains the better? More boycotts harder for them to rebuild.

So I guess have friends doing gardening, cooking, low energy food preservation and crafting?

Maybe practice camping?

@craigmaloney

I always wondered who or what's lifetime they meant.

@craigmaloney

I think pod racing inspired first person view drone racing.

e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR4Gq9qfpnM (though not for the easily motion sick.)

Ok so I'm not buying beans will fix everything, but...

Beans are a nutritious & efficient sources of protein, and the environmental impacts of modern farming would be lessened if beans were a larger part of peoples diets...

So this vox article
"Eat more beans. Please"
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/5/12/23717519/beans-protein-nutrition-sustainability-climate-food-security-solution-vegan-alternative-meat

Led to this possibly over selling it challenge.
https://beansishow.org/

Anyone got a favorite bean recipe?
#beansonthemenu

Here's my instant pot black bean recipe.

- 1 cup dried beans (makes about as much as 2 cans worth of beans)
- 4 cloves garlic chopped (looked like 2 big ones but came apart)
- 1 3/4 c water
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- bay leaf (recommended)

Push bean button
Wait at least 20 minutes after it finishes before releasing remaining pressure
and removing.

Takes about 40-50 minutes to go from dry beans to eatable beans.

This is pretty sad.

Though also kind of believable.

" When Patient Questions Are Answered With Higher Quality and Empathy by ChatGPT than Physicians"

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/when-patient-questions-are-answered

Also I came up with this theory that on one reason why people like alternative medicine quacks is that they tend to be much better at listening than US trained doctors.

And unfortunately sometimes the real problem is being lonely.

@Andres4NY that is a pile of suck

@thomasfuchs

I sometimes wonder how effective a quiz "what mastodon instance are you?" might be at helping pick an instance.

I think what's most important is ending up somewhere where you'll agree with the moderation, and thats kind of a combination of politics and community.

There's also some instances offer a stronger local sense of community.

I feel like there's the possibility of making a good recommendation using the silly internet quiz format

@thomasfuchs do you have that plugged in and usable? What does the pile of adapters look like?

@atomicpoet @cstross @Lazarou

I could stand to understand the relationship between mercantilism and capitalism better.

@cstross @atomicpoet @Lazarou

I'm not sure if capitalism is directly its own religion or if its a consequence of Christianity?

My current guess is that Christianity gave Europeans an excessive sense of their own superiority. With that they then went out and conquered the Americas and Africa with colonialism, and imposed the economic system called capitalism.

The three Cs seem deeply connected in hard to separate ways.

As examples:

Is it even possible to separate americas work obsession from the Protestant work ethic?

The American wealthy classes seem to be heavily invested in spreading prosperity theology.

@atomicpoet @cstross @Lazarou

The reason I'm thinking that there's a relationship is the Europeans seemed to have two major priorities when conquering the Americas looking for loot and imposing Christianity.

It seems like after running out of easy to find loot in the Americas, they used the wealth from that loot to start the transatlantic slave trade, and here again the slavers frequently used Christianity to justify subjugating non-christian populations.

I saw an argument suggesting that funding Columbus was an example of an early capitalist like activity.

The already rich Spanish royalty used their wealth to fund Columbus' high risk, high return venture in a way similar to more modern venture capitalism.

They lacked the legal advancements of the limited liability joint stock corporation, so it's not as developed as modern capitalism, but does arguably represent a capitalist like enterprise.

I think most people would agree that later ventures enterprises like the Northwest Territories company or the East India company were quite similar to modern capitalist companies and were major implementers of colonialism.

Christianity, colonialism, and capitalism are major themes in western history, and they all intertwined with each other in ways that my understanding of history is inadequate to tease apart.

@liztai

I have been hoping that social media services would get less American centric, and that open source systems like Mastodon or one of the many other tools might allow other cultural groups to run more culturally sensitive instances.

It seems like even when reasonably run, US companies struggle to provide reasonable moderation for non-English users.

As I sit here trying to fill out my US taxes, I want to remind everyone in the USA that the fault that you have to suffer figuring out how to file your taxes lies entirely with the tax preparation industry.

"The makers of TurboTax and other online systems spent millions lobbying last year, much of it directed toward a bill that would permanently bar the government from offering taxpayers prefilled filings."

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple-hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it

Income taxes could be like car registration or property taxes where the government just sends you a statement and a bill or refund at the end of the year.

@thomasfuchs

Can I try in 5 words?

"Everything happens so much"

@thomasfuchs

I correctly guessed pentium style motherboard before giving up and reverse image searching for more information

I wonder who needs these.

@carnage4life

I see the WSJ is declaring it's full allegiance to the network of Republican white supremacist propaganda outlets.

Even The Atlantic's pet moderate conservative thinks this argument that this banks implosion is related to diversity programs is stupid.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/republicans-svb-collapse-wokeness-esg-dei/673378/

@b0rk early machines had other wacky word sizes. Like 10, 12, or 36

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)

The page also suggests the 8 bit byte became popular after ASCII was standardized

@CobaltVelvet the democrats most unifying characteristic is how very lawful they are.

Because of Americas voting system there's can only be two parties. And since one side is violent white spremacists who think the only rule is every else is inferior to them (Republicans), the other side is made up of everyone who thinks society should be governed by human laws. (Democrats)

And that's how you get one party with both capitalists and socialists in it.

I wish in lived in a world where the current capitalist democrats were the farthest right wing party that was acceptable.

@melanie @deivudesu

This group is trying to raise funds to build a replica of a clipper sailing ship using more modern techniques.

https://ecoclipper.org/

They periodically mention a few refurbished sailing ships carrying cargo and passengers

@deivudesu around 60-70% of pollution emissions ultimately stem from household purchasing.

I personally think carbon footprint calculators can be an interesting project for wealthier people to do.

Footorints scale with wealth and its mostly the people flying regularly, driving large vehicles, or buying large hard to heat or cool buildings who are causing most of the pollution and are in the position to alter their lifestyle to be less polluting.

Also posibley the most effective policy to reduce emissions might be to bring back those 70 to 90% tax rates on the richest