alberto_cottica

alberto_cottica, 7 months ago to solarpunk

Humble request: do you know of any real life experience of post-capitalist economies, even partial ones? Local currencies? Cooperative models? Community land trusts? Priority given to resilience over efficiency? #solarpunk economies? There are a few usual suspects (Mondragon, Cooperativa Integral Catalana, Transition Network...), but I struggle to find long lists of cases. Boost appreciated @g_kallis @jks @jasonhickel #postcapitalism #economics #degrowth #postgrowth

alberto_cottica, 3 months ago to sciencefiction

I like doing economic analysis of #sciencefiction work (man needs a hobby, I guess). Looking for advice: what do I read next? Preference for recent work depicting #solarpunk economic systems.

Background: I am part of a collective, the Science Fiction Economics Labs. We maintain a list econ-sci fi work here: https://edgeryders.eu/t/economic-science-fiction-a-selection-of-works-and-authors/8582?u=alberto

Illustration by Nadia E. Alter

alberto_cottica, 1 year ago to random

This is a deep intuition from @pluralistic : any platform's game is rent extraction ("enshittification"): insert yourself as a middleman in a transaction, then extract money from both sides. 1/3

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bondage-fees/#doorman-building

alberto_cottica, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to goodnews

No way! A European Citizens' Initiative to (1) tax millionaires to (2) finance a Green New Deal via EU Commission own funds, and (3) whose proponents are (check notes) the president of the Belgian Socialist Party, a Polish former Employment and Social Inclusion Commissioner and Thomas Piketty (@pikettylemonde), possibly the world's most prominent scholar of inequality.

Did the timeline just reset? https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2023/000006_en

#TaxJustice #inequality #europeanunion #goodnews #economics

1/2

alberto_cottica, 2 months ago to Economics

If you live in the European Union, I would ask, as a personal favour, that you consider signing this petition for a tax on great wealth. It is reasonable; it would have major impact if put into place; it is very feasible (no revision of the Treaties needed). It is the brainchild of French economist Thomas Piketty, a leading scholar of inequality. https://tax-the-rich.eu #economics #ClimateCrisis

alberto_cottica, 7 months ago to Brussels

"Right-wing parties have realized they can win votes by campaigning against issues like decarbonized transport options because these are emotional topics." #Brussels #cycling h/t @POLITICOEurope https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-bikes-cycling-backlash-berlin-germany-cycling-cars-emissions/

alberto_cottica, 1 month ago to random

@rysiek you seem to be a bit of a Mastodon ninja. Can you help me find a new server that does not plan to federate with Threads? Where I am now: EU-based, interested in climate, lots of European languages (German, Dutch, French, Spanish...) I pay a little every month. Huge thanks!

alberto_cottica, 4 months ago to poland

Hello all, I am interested in following the news about the "PIS rollback" in #Poland, but I cannot speak or read Polish. What can I read in English, French or Italian? @rysiek , any pointers?

alberto_cottica, 4 months ago to random

Question to you open source geeks out there: my cohousing group got VERY frustrated with Jitsi, and is now contemplating a Zoom subscription. None of us has the skills or the energy to run a server, since, as it turns out, building a cohousing is exhausting work.

So. We would be very happy to pay a company running video conferencing OSS for us to use. We already run on NextCloud with a similar model, and we are very happy with that choice. Ideas? Suggestions?

alberto_cottica, 11 months ago to random

A pre-commitment to block any instance owned by Meta is good game theory. https://freeradical.zone/@announce/110577451246271900

Where do we stand, @JohanEmpa ?

alberto_cottica, 3 months ago to random

@gerrymcgovern hello and thanks for the info you share. I work for a UN agency, and would try to lobby it for greener computing. I am by no means a powerful person, so it's probably going to be a dud, but I am curious to try. Could you help me by:

1. pointing out to a low-hanging fruit, some change that would not be too difficult and would reduce the impact of computing? We are in Microsoftland.
2. providing a reference I can pass it on?

Huge thanks!

alberto_cottica, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to climate

During Johan Rockström's talk at #BeyondGrowth2023 I was tweeting furiously and trying to relay his (crystalline, factful) argument in real-time. In a nutshell: human civilization evolved under conditions of extraordinary #climate and planetary stability. As we leave it, all bets are off. It is imperative to keep within #planetaryboundaries.

But it's better to just listen to his killer 10 mins presentation. Highly recommended.

https://youtu.be/oEtqefa4jmo

alberto_cottica, 1 year ago to random

New paper published! "Operationalizing anthropological theory: four techniques to simplify networks of co-occurring ethnographic codes".

https://rdcu.be/dbuhi

THREAD/1

alberto_cottica, 6 months ago to random

Here's @pluralistic going all #modernMonetaryTheory in the context of the US debate on killing social security (really, guys? Don't you think people need MORE security, rather than less?). Well worth a read, as it help explain why the debate on economic policy is so surreal (vested interests and corruption, mostly).

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111336196091080481

alberto_cottica, 9 months ago to random

Man, but I miss quote tweet on Mastodon.

alberto_cottica, 1 year ago to random

Finished @pluralistic 's "Red Team Blues". I am going to stick my neck out, and claim it is to the 2010s what "Neuromancer" was to the 1980s. Out with cyberpunk cowboys, enter forensic accountants with a TOR browser and a SIgnal account. The insane, criminal billionaires and their minions are still around.

alberto_cottica, 10 months ago to random

All this is in line with Stiglitz's book. Chang's original contribution is to adopt a historical perspective – in a move reminescent of Hirschman – and ask himself: what did the now-developed countries (NDCs) do when they were developing? How dis the policies they chose for themselves compare to those they recommend now to others? 5/

alberto_cottica, 9 months ago to climate

So, in Catania (Sicily):

1. high temperatures cause brownouts
2. brownouts prevent pumping of drinkwater, leaving most of the city with no running water.
3. With no electricity and no running water, people have no recourse against the searing heat.

Coming soon to a city near you.

#ClimateCrisis

https://www.ilpost.it/2023/07/23/catania-senza-acqua-energia-elettrica/

alberto_cottica, 9 months ago to languagelearning

Bonjour Mastodon, avez-vous des gens francophone intéressants à me recommander de suivre?

Buongiorno Mastodonti, avete qualche raccomandazione di account italofoni da seguire?

Goedemorgen Mastodon, willen jullie eigene interessante nederlandstaalige mensen aanbevelen om te volgen?

#French #Italian #Dutch

alberto_cottica, 6 months ago to climate

This man and his cat escaped a large wildfire. Evacuating a town threatened by a wildfire looks like a major traffic jam: cars are jammed together back to back, crawling towards the few (or only) escape rout that is not blocked by fire.

If you leave the car, you die because you cannot outrun the fire.

If you stay in the car, you might still die cooked in it, depending on the traffic jam.

These are interesting times.
https://medium.com/@climatesurvivor/escape-from-paradise-8c8348c9c59f
#ClimateCrisis

alberto_cottica, 1 month ago to random

Little help: can anyone recommend a setup based on a feed reader, that also works well with Mastodon? I could use it to read my masto feed AND some other stuff, like in the bad old days.

alberto_cottica, 4 months ago to random

A Jupyter Notebook with a step-by-step guide to documenting #opendata with Frictionless and publishing it. Made for my colleagues of the UNDP Accelerator Labs, and powered by @aborruso's skills and generosity.

https://github.com/albertocottica/document-dataset-frictionless/blob/main/document_dataset_frictionless.ipynb

alberto_cottica, 8 months ago to random

Is there a Firefox extension to always reject performance and marketing cookies? Y'all AI wizards must have solved that problem with classifiers and shit.

alberto_cottica, 8 months ago to random

Interesting idea at #NewEconomies : "hospicing the (economic) system". Don't kill it, but isolate it and make space to build a different system. This looks like something from @r_emrys's "A Half-Built Garden", with its dual economy.

alberto_cottica, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

Today I learned a new word: "nowtopia", a social construct that really exist in the present, while embedding some of the characteristics of a radically different, better society.

I find it a powerful concept. I know personally several nowtopias, and am even working on building a (very small, very partial) one myself: a #cohousing. I learned the concept from the mighty @g_kallis in this paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00045608.2014.973803

#degrowth

Edited: remove the attribution of the idea of nowtopia to Kallis