Unfortunately, as long as we leave political offices to be filled by the worst of us this will continue. Voting is only half the battle.

Funny, I’ve mentally annotated mormons my whole life as likely to commit sexual violence and child abuse.

The job of CEO seems the far easier to replace with AI. A fairly basic algorithm with weighted goals and parameters (chosen by the board) + LLM + character avatar would probably perform better than most CEOs. Leave out the LLM if you want it to spout nonsense like this Amazon Cloud CEO.

For carbon sequestration, which also needs to happen.

Agree, but I think virtually all methods typically talked about are nonsense. Using massive fossil resources to design, build, and maintain giant machines or many smaller machines will ultimately do little to slow ecological collapse even if it does reduce carbon somewhat after some years needed to break even on production. The only sequestration method I’ve ever heard about that makes any sense to me is neighborhood scale production and use of biochar (and avoiding buying any sort of purpose made biochar device that required fossil resources to produce and ship to you). I make biochar in my backyard fire pit (which is a low smoke design) with used coffee tins (i.e. trash) and use the resulting biochar and ash in my compost.

Harm reduction is valid.

Agree, Any and all scientifically backed methods to allow us time for degrowth should be considered. I’m not convinced nuclear energy should be a significant part of this though, too many downsides and risks.

So either we get to some near global agreement on how to get out of this situation, or we just keep doing far too little since… what’s the point of trying to improve things if it just means you get annihilated by those that don’t, and things will remain the same despite your best efforts…

I feel like the way out is global and cultural in nature, and I think it’s in progress now, in fact we’re doing it now, talking about this on Lemmy. This wasn’t practical, wasn’t being done outside of “elite circles” before a decade or so ago. This global conversation is going to take some time and have bumps, but it’s happening, this is novel on this planet.

What I hope comes of this, and seems to be happening, perhaps slower than I’d like, is a paradigm shift in the way we think about ourselves, others, our communities, our situation, and our goals. We need a new “mythology” that allows us to live on this planet sustainably, and it only needs to be true enough and could even be done transparently and with purpose.

I feel like our species is in a existential battle and almost nobody (at least on the left-ish) is talking strategy. As if any valid strategy (e.g. “capitalism”, “communism”, “competition”, “religion”, “growth” “zero sum” etc) has been identified by the 1960s and we’re all just battling amongst 20th century ideas for domination.

I’m thinkiing stuff like this (sorry for the poor organization of my thoughts, to lazy to cleanup)

Define some axioms/statements that are mostly true and fairly agreeable, not based in faith, not limited by materialism.

• Most people would be happy to just live and thrive and don’t feel a need to dominate others or hoard resources
• There is a tiny number of people who do feel a need to dominate and/or hoard
• We are all vulnerable to propaganda
• Nobody is inherently better or more deserving than anyone else
• Nobody is entitled to the time or labor of anyone (except a child being entitled to their parents)
• Nobody actually knows the meaning of life or the nature of reality (not even materialists).
• Our own conscious experience is all we can be certain of, nobody knows any absolute truths
• The most logical assumption is that others’ experience is similar to my own
• I don’t want to suffer or be coerced, I don’t feel others are entitled to cause me to suffer or coerce my behavior
• It’s ok to defend myself against those trying to harm or coerce my behavior, dominate or hoard at my or my community’s expense
• If I cause another to suffer or coerce their behavior I should expect a response

–> The goal of these axioms is not to get everyone to agree to them, it’s to blaze a new path that can evolve into the way, to plant a seed that can inspire moving in new directions.

A set of explicit stated axioms allows taking the next steps and figure out how to evolve into a sustainable culture. Clear eyed strategy and goals are why the Heritage Foundation is making progress and the left is not.

Strategy like this could allow a better understanding of who and what the actual threats are and identify appropriate responses to them.

–> The “global agreement” will not be a formal inter-governmental thing, it will be loosely coupled set of cultural evolutions spurred by global conversations happening now.

nuclear energy we would be able to successfully power the majority of the species using that technology

But that energy will be used for what? To mine for more minerals, create more waste, destroy more land, and make more species extinct? Our problem is not a shortage of energy nor is it even a problem of the efficiency or cleanliness of the energy. It’s a problem of our species living far beyond the sustainable bounds of the planet.

I’d like to see a multi-phase federal plan with the clearly stated ultimate goal to phase out tips. This plan should have clearly defined beginning, milestones, and end so that workers and businesses could plan around it and everyone would be on the same-ish page or at least know what’s going on.

1. Stop taxing tips on specific jobs/industries combined with bringing up the minimum wage for all workers to standard (no $2.50/hr wage for tipped waiters, etc).

2. Start an educational program that talks about the history and effects of tipping culture and why this program is good to try to stop it

3. Start a government program that encourages reduced tipping, promoting specific percentages (e.g. 10% for restaurant table service) to consciously try to move the culture, this should go along with an increase in minimum wage that effectively makes up for the reduced tip. Repeat this step if needed to slowly step-down from tipping culture into one based on labor appropriately compensated by the employers.

• This will help people know what to expect on both sides of transactions
• This can reduce negative feelings associated with not giving a large tip because you know this is all part of a plan and the employer is expected be following the law and increasing compensation.
• This will provide cover for business to increase their prices accordingly, and simultaneously the government can put out guidance about how much prices should be expected to rise and how your total bill won’t really change much.

The end goals should be clearly stated, something like

• A person working 40 hours/wk at minimum wage should be able to afford a basic, clean, up-to-standard 1-bedroom apartment, food, and transport, and basic medical care.

Hopefully, culturally, tipping changes to be seen as like " ‘the old way’, weird old people like paying service workers to feel superior".

Check out Pulsar

https://pulsar-edit.dev/

It’s basically the continuation of Atom. It’s got rough edges though regarding plugins but it’s good enough to allow me to avoid VSCode.

Dave!?

Save a slap for the leap seconds creator.

Or, we could collectively realize time is but an illusion and transcend this silly problem.

All the waste a plant ever produces in its lifetime can be contained with ease on site.

Won’t that create a bunch of targets all over the country? Then terrorists or enemy states can use simple small bombs to make whole areas uninhabitable for the next millennium.

I don’t disagree with you, but this is unrealistic.

But…we don’t have a choice if we are to survive. Continuation with any system like our current system (i.e. exploitation of nature for economic growth) will lead to obvious ecological collapse. Why is certain ecological collapse viewed as the more realistic choice?

This is akin to a person well on their way to a heart attack saying “well, eating healthy is unrealistic, so let’s switch to diet coke and pretend that’s enough”

The truth is that no system of rule is functional long term, anarchism is the only stable system, it worked for 200k years.

So long as the state is how humans organize, there will be boom and bust cycles until either ecological collapse or invulnerable fascism brings us to a new terrible stable state.

The only logical position (in the U.S.) is to vote blue to buy time in hopes that anarchism can be reached by other means.

… Oh, not that kind of truth probably

I thought that, but after last night, I wouldn’t let Biden cook in my kitchen without supervision.

Maybe one of these people? Not that I like them, but they are not trump, have a chance, and are not on their deathbed.

• Gretchen Whitmer
• Pete buttigieg
• Jamaal Bowman

awesome!

Reminds me of

https://allpoetry.com/The-Smoke-Off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohFHsOBuLc4

Sometimes I use the term “psychopathic hoarder class” when referring to this group of people.

All drug olympics you say? …wonder if they’ll have figure toking.