@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Brendanjones

@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org

A good life for all within planetary boundaries.

PM/PO/UX-er. 🇳🇱 and 🇦🇺. Avid cyclist and frisbee player. Stubborn optimist.

Mainly here to talk about:
#Sustainability #SystemsThinking #PostGrowth #Degrowth #Climate #ClimateChange #Energy #Renewables #Ecology #EcologicalEconomics #UBS #Coops #Biodiversity #PlanetaryBoundaries #UX #UXDesign #PO #Netherlands #Utrecht

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BM_Visser, to random Dutch
@BM_Visser@mastodon.energy avatar

Last year, power demand in almost all EU countries decreased. On average, by 6%.

This had major consequences for the utilisation of coal and gas-fired generation, since these are the most expensive ones with regard to marginal costs. And so, less CO2-credits (ETS) were needed for th EU power sector.

Moreover, the decrease in the EU power demand boosted the percentage renewables, since hydro, wind and solar production is hardly affected by lower demand.

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@BM_Visser With less demand for ETS credits, does that mean the price went down?

Brendanjones, (edited ) to books
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

I've been meaning to read Tim Jackson's books for many years but never got around to it.

Does anybody have opinions on which to read, if I were to choose just one?

The choice is between Prosperity Without Growth (2009) and Post Growth: Life After Capitalism (2021).

I am well read on #degrowth and #postgrowth in general so don't need an intro. I'm more interested in visions of post growth systems than critique of growth. #books

cheeaun, to random
@cheeaun@mastodon.social avatar

Seems like @MonaApp could be the 1st 3rd-party client to replace “Unlisted” with “Quiet Public”.

Now… how about the other clients… 🫣

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@cheeaun @MonaApp And so good that they didn’t copy the ridiculously meaningless explanation text for Quiet Public of “less algorithmic fanfares”

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@thek3nger @cheeaun @MonaApp I wish …

janrosenow, to random
@janrosenow@mastodon.energy avatar

My first humble attempts to represent the barriers to industrial electrification visually.

What did I miss?

Any suggestions for making this better / more impactful?

Any sources I should include not listed below diagram?

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@janrosenow What about:

  • (lack of) regulatory incentives/tax breaks.
  • Carbon price uncertainty - if there’s no clear signal for future cost of remaining using fossil fuels then hard to determine the most cost effective time to switch. This is also regulatory uncertainty, insofar as regulations affect the carbon price (or if the company if subject to a carbon price at all).
SandraDeHaan, to random Dutch
@SandraDeHaan@mastodon.nl avatar

https://landgeist.com/2023/03/13/livestock-density/

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@SandraDeHaan @Herman Helemaal niet duurzaam!

Brendanjones, to climate
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Blimey, we just hit 21.2°C global average sea surface temperature. First time that's happened in recorded history.

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@AlexsandraSmart @drclareharris an excellent question, but I'm afraid I don't know the answer. It's not my chart and I'm not an oceanographer :)

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/#info says "OISST is a 0.25°x0.25° gridded dataset that provides estimates of temperature based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations." but that doesn't tell the depth of the recordings.

https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/sst-data-noaa-high-resolution-025x025-blended-analysis-daily-sst-and-ice-oisstv2 doesn't seem to answer it either.

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@wavygk @AlexsandraSmart @drclareharris That’s really interesting. Hadn’t seen this before, thanks for sharing.

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@edwiebe It’s the 60 deg north to 60 deg south global average.

Brendanjones, to science
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

“according to a recently published survey, lots of digital documents aren't consistently showing up in the archives that are meant to preserve it. And that puts us at risk of losing academic research—including science paid for with taxpayer money.”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/study-finds-that-we-could-lose-science-if-publishers-go-bankrupt/?

jlou, to random

Property in land - What are your thoughts on Georgist libertarianism?

The basic idea behind Georgism is that land and natural resources are not the fruits of anyone’s labor, so no one has a natural right to it. Georgism proposes based on this that collective ownership arrangements be applied to such resources. Geolibertarianism supports full private property rights in the products of labor.

https://youtu.be/smi_iIoKybg

What are your thoughts on this approach to natural resources?

@libertarian

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@jlou @libertarian 100% for a redistributive land value tax, yup. I still think we need income and capital gains taxes, however, so I guess I’m not a Georgist. Income tax could be lowered, however, especially at lower incomes, with the main aim of income taxation being redistribution to limit excessive inequality.

Also, I don’t think LVT is enough by itself. That taxes human market value of land but not natural value. (1/2)

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

My crackpot idea is a tax based on how far a given piece of land is from its natural potential. This encourages land to be returned to nature, or at least greened as much as possible.

So a pristine habitat would be taxed zero, while land completely covered by a building would be taxed at 100%. But not all places have the same tax - a piece of desert would have very low biodiversity potential and so be taxed low, while some rainforest land would be taxed really high. (2/2)

markstos, to languagelearning
@markstos@urbanists.social avatar

My brain melts when I try to switch between Slack, which uses Enter-to-Send and "Control-Enter" for a newline, and Jira, which uses "Enter for newline" and "Control-Enter" to save. It's tough be bilingual between dissonant human interface design languages.

Then I come to post on Mastodon have newline anxiety where I'm not sure if pressing enter will start a new paragraph or send a half-written post.

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@markstos How about Command+K being ‘add link’ in every single word processing app everywhere, but not in Slack? That one gets me every damn time.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

How do you capitalize the name of this network?

#EvanPoll #poll

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@evan I don’t know why, because it’s ungrammatical, but it feels weird capitalising fediverse. Not so Mastodon, that I capitalise. It’s almost like the fedi is such an amalgamation, a plethora, an infinitely armed octopus, that it’s not one thing and therefore it’s not a proper noun? Or maybe my dumb human brain has seen it uncapitalised more often than not so that’s how it likes to see it and I’m simply rationalising my preference after the fact.

Brendanjones, to sustainability
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Can we fulfill basic needs for 10 billion humans without destabilizing the Earth system? Can we live in the donut (economy)?

The answer is 'yes', according to this new paper:

"it is theoretically possible to satisfy the basic needs of 10.4 billion people within ecological limits. However, large-scale transformations in all sectors and dietary changes are necessary to guarantee safe climate conditions."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652624008953

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Gotta say, there's some absolutely bangin' reading in the references for this paper. An excellent assortment of research into all sorts of earth and human systems.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652624008953#bib1

ianbetteridge, to random
@ianbetteridge@writing.exchange avatar

From @baldur, this is the best article I have read explaining the differences between EU and US tech companies' view of competition and antitrust, and in particular why Apple has got its relationship with the EU horribly, horribly wrong.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@ianbetteridge @baldur that’s an excellent read, thanks for sharing.

Brendanjones, (edited ) to climate
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Decent read. It has the same format as most 'intro to ' articles:

  • "The current idea is green growth. Sounds good, right?"
  • "Oh wait that's empirically impossible"
  • "Here's the new idea: degrowth. It's the only way we avoid environmental collapse"
  • "But achieving that is such a huge task that it appears impossible, because a growth based economy, vested interests and cultural inertia make it politically untenable"
  • "Sooo...what now?"

https://grist.org/economics/how-to-decouple-emissions-from-economic-growth-these-economists-say-you-cant/

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

There is one big, gaping hole in the article, however. It completely avoids talk of interlinked natural systems, which is a key reason why green growth is bogus.

Yes, we can decouple some environmental impacts from economic activity, like emissions, but many we can't. That's why the problem facing us gets called the - it's not just climate that's the problem but the pressure we're placing on all Earth's systems.

Brendanjones, to random
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Nice little write-up on @MonaApp explaining why it's awesome (yup, I prefer it to Ivory and all the others).

https://lifehacker.com/tech/mona-best-mastodon-client

Chris, to UX
@Chris@mastodon.social avatar

Hey people! I'm going to be doing some in-person research this week, and I'm looking for some input.

I'll be at a large scientific conference, doing quick stand-up interviews with attendees (< 10 minutes). My teammate and I have a script we'd like to get through to ask about the attendance process, as well as some general questions to inform future work and persona improvements.

We're hoping to talk to 100 people over three days. How would you capture interviews like this?

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@Chris really depends on the questions you’re asking. For example, are you expecting long qualitative answers, or are you asking yes/no questions, or maybe some set range of answers or answers you can expect?
Because if it’s yes/no answers or at least answers you can expect then one of you can be doing the talking while the other records the answers. But if it’s qualitative, then recording the person speaking would be good, and make notes about the most important points as they talk.

scottjenson, to UX
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

I'm fascinated by the of post length. First 140, then 280, it forced all sorts of complicated editing techniques/threads to make things fit.

With Mastodon I've got 500 chars! Freedom! But I STILL run out of space, albeit less often. Now I compose my first draft, usually well over 500, and then edit it down to fit. Single posts just read easier and replies are simpler to follow.

I don't read most posts >3000 chars as they tend to ramble. 500 is a forcing function, the TedTalk of post length

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

@scottjenson I’m always fascinated by the different ways people indicate that their posts are part of a thread, and where in the thread each post resides.

It’s also forced by a constraint - in this case a lack of inbuilt mechanism to number threads, or to see that a post is a thread in the UI.

Brendanjones, (edited ) to ai
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Alright, so many companies are using user or customer data for training without consent that I think I'm going to have to make an ongoing thread to document them all. 🤖

Here we go! 1/x

Starting out with who have sold user data to another company, that will use it to train AI:

https://fosstodon.org/@Brendanjones/111964241353263058

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

Here's one from last year that just came to my attention: have packaged up millions of scientific papers and author profiles for anyone to use for "AI and digital transformation" (their words from https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/datasets).

The complete opposite of .

5/x

https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/elsevier-introduces-authoritative-scientific-datasets-to-fuel-innovation-and and

Brendanjones,
@Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

The dataset includes:

  • 19 million full-text articles from peer-reviewed journals
  • 17 million author profiles
  • 1.8 billion cited references
  • 333 million chemical substances and reactions
  • 86 million bioactivities and biomedical records
  • 35 million chemical patents

Woah. That's humanity's knowledge, for sale if you have the money.

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