@cian@post.lurk.org
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

cian

@cian@post.lurk.org

Computers, Music and Solarpunk vibes. Permaculture, degrowth and surviving the looming apocalypse. Bad Buddhist. Terrible anarchist.

Currently deep into Rust, Zig, Lisp and all kinds of computer music. Csound for the win.

Weirdly obsessed with art house cinema and modernist literature.

British ex-pat lost somewhere in South Carolina.

Digital Product Design/UX Designer.

nobot

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cian, to random
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

Permacomputing seems like a solution searching for a problem. I really don't see how it helps, except in the vague sense of maybe reducing consumption.

TBH, the older I get, the more I think we need fewer computers rather than more. In fact less stuff generally.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@320x200 @permacomputer @jakintosh @praxeology
Sure, and part of the reason for posting this was in the hope people would post counter-examples so I could learn from, or even join, them. I greatly appreciate the recommendations. Thank you.

I like that manifesto, I guess my (unfair) complaint is more about the realization in categories 2 and 3. Most of what I've seen has either been toys, or stuff that feels more like play (CollapseOS is cool - but I'm not sure we need it). Solar powered websites are fun, but we don't need them. What do we need? I'm not sure - I was hoping someone had done the hardwork so I don't have to ;)

But I also think we need to rethink what computing can even be if we're living in a post-industrial society with energy and resource constraints (which I think is the plausible outcome). Without fab factories, what do computers even look like. Maybe we need to be looking further afield to Cybernetics, biological computing or even something like Dune's mentats.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@320x200 @permacomputer @jakintosh @praxeology

Or maybe we need to be more practical. In the future we will have less energy, farming will be more important and we'll probably need to get better at repairing and reusing things. What part can computers play in this. Do we need low energy weather prediction, more robust (and energy efficient) libraries of information, low density networks for long distance info sharing, etc.

And also, what does a positive vision of computing look like. Modern computing is mostly (I suspect we agree) incredibly negative. Maybe that's inevitable because of screens. Maybe we need to change social practices around computers. Place them in temples. Or return to timeshare practices. Maybe the solution to staring at screens is to bring back punchcards.

Does that make sense, and are there people thinking this way?

cian, to random
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

I'm slowing working my way through the legendary Nurse With Wound list. Starting to think I'm not cool as cool as I thought I was.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@matthewconroy

Whole album, and I'm also skipping albums that I already know well.

I'm following this list:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/thecornbreadhour/nurse_with_wound_list/

So far it's all on youtube, or Spotify...

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

Nobody seems to give one fuck in this nation about the disenfranchised Black voters of South Carolina. That’s okay. Nobody is going to give a fuck about any white people soon either.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@StillIRise1963

Which act of disenfrachisement are you referring to?

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@StillIRise1963
Sigh. I live in South Carolina. Given I hadn't heard of anything recent, I did a search and nothing came up. I'd probably care more if I knew what the hell you're talking about.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@StillIRise1963
Well I certainly don't care anymore.

Let me know how this style of passive aggressive activism works out.

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

I love this eink technology doc. It goes on for miles and solves a real pain point.

https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@ernie

Is it possible to buy one of these pre-assembled?

yaxu, (edited ) to random
@yaxu@post.lurk.org avatar

Re-listening to this interview with B C Manjunath, fully taking in his answer to @xg's queston about whether konnakol could be formalised in code.. He basically says any computer sound can be formalised in konnakol but not vice-versa, because the body is a much more advanced system for thinking about sound than any computer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kYwZ8S-qBQ

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@yaxu @xg

I'd forgotten about this interview. I need to relisten.

cian, to Eurovision
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

Why are British entries always so awful? Pop music is one of the few remaining things Britain is actually good at. And yet...

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@yaxu Null points seems harsh.

cian, to stackoverflow
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

Setting up multiple accounts on StackOverflow. Going to flood it with stupid questions and even stupider answers.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@matthewconroy

It was an angry response to this:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/06/stack-overflow-signs-deal-with-openai-to-supply-data-to-its-models/

It increasingly feels like we'll have to sabotage the commons in order to save it.

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

I for one welcome the rise of sodium ion batteries. Dear manufacturers: please make these for existing laptops.

https://newatlas.com/energy/natron-sodium-ion-battery-production-startt/

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@ernie

Supposedly they have lower energy density, but I can't actually find any info on what the practical difference would be.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@ernie

That would certainly be true for electric cars as well.

Imagine an affordable, upgradable, ARM laptop with one of these batteries...

breadandcircuses, (edited ) to environment

A blogger at Medium offers a few unpleasant truths...

Here is my take on the state of our global civilization:

1️⃣ The human species is in absolute overshoot. We consume more resources and release more pollution every year than what could be regenerated or absorbed by Nature. Yes, some countries consume and pollute much more than others, but that doesn’t make the fact disappear that even if we all lived like Jamaicans, we would be still living beyond Earth’s biophysical limits. And that is just the renewable resources part of the story.

2️⃣ The four pillars of modern civilization (ammonia, plastics, steel and concrete) — the non-renewable part — all take immense amounts of fossil fuels to make. Currently there is no way to produce ammonia (a key ingredient of all fertilizers) at scale without using natural gas, nor to make plastics without oil, or to smelt iron without coal — not to mention making cement. Note how fossil fuels are not only sources of energy here, but also key ingredients for these materials: providing the necessary hydrogen and carbon atoms making these wonders of civilization possible.

3️⃣ The best of our non-renewable resources are being depleted, fast. Using the low-hanging fruit principle we harvested the richest, most concentrated — and thus most energy efficient to get — deposits first. What remains takes an exponential increase in energy investment to extract, and might as well remain buried underground. Resource depletion doesn’t mean that we are running on empty, but that we are running out of easy to get resources — and thus bump into all sorts of limits on how much we can afford to extract.

4️⃣ We are in a chronic transportation fuel shortage, which is expected to grow much worse due to resource depletion. Lower grade ores, deeper oil wells, switching to brown coal, etc., all provide much less value to this civilization while taking up even more diesel to mine and carry around. If you consider how depletion of conventional oil (the ideal feedstock of transportation fuels) ruins diesel supply, let alone its energy economics, you start to appreciate the scale and immediacy of the predicament we are facing. Hmm, a shrinking energy base and an ever increasing energy demand to get the same amount of stuff… what could possibly go wrong with that?

5️⃣ Ecosystems all around the world are in free-fall. Even if we solve the energy dilemma tomorrow, this alone would still put an end to our existence. If we managed to kill 70% of vertebrate land animals, empty the seas and usher in an insect apocalypse with such a limited energy source as fossil fuels, what would we do to the planet with unlimited energy? Strip mine the entire Andes mountain range in a search for copper? Convert the whole planet into a bare concrete and glass hothouse, boiling the oceans just with the waste heat of our activities?

It’s very important to note how all these crises are interrelated and downstream to our civilizational activities (building, mining, deforesting, tilling, burning etc.), and are not due to CO2 alone. Climate change is but one of the many symptoms and consequences of overshoot and must be treated as such.

Replacing one energy source with another will not solve the climate predicament (let alone ecosystem collapse), nor will it alleviate resource depletion. Erasing the biosphere with electrified bulldozers in search of raw materials and places to expand our cities into, or dispersing a different set of pollutants does not change a thing for the better.

There's more, a lot more, and it's all rather bleak, but at least it's truthful.

FULL ESSAY -- https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/a-sneak-peak-6a8087cb5ee7

ALTERNATE LINK -- https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/a-sneak-peak

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@breadandcircuses

You can also access his stuff at substack:

https://substack.com/@thehonestsorcerer

Don't always agree with him, but an interesting voice for sure.

davidho, to random
@davidho@mastodon.world avatar

This is our present but it doesn't have to be our future.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@davidho

The problem is not that we can't do anything, because obviously there are lots of things we could do. But that its impossible to do any of them in the current political/economic system.

We're facing the biggest crisis in our species' existence, while encumbered with the dumbest political elite in a very long time.

cian, to random
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

https://www.vast-dynamics.com/?q=Vaporizer2

Pretty cool looking opensource synth (wavetable and Additive).

cian, to random
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

I like Apple phones because they (mostly) don't require much thought for the little I need them, and the software on the Appstore is generally quite good. But the increasingly locked down nature of both hardware and software makes me wonder if at some point I'll need to switch.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

Unfortunately I really can't stand the Android UI (it's bad, it's really bad), while Android hardware seems even less supported than Apple stuff. I really just want something simple, preferably with a fucking headphone jack. But nobody wants to sell that.

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

I've looked at stuff like the Pine phone. But while I like the idea behind it, the cost is pretty high and what you get seems a bit lacklustre.

First world problems for sure, but still... Maybe I should just go back to using feature phones?

cian, to random
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

"John Fish, chairman and CEO of construction contractor Suffolk, said an aging workforce and fewer young people entering the industry are a combustible combination. “A carpenter now is making 20% to 25% more than they did 24 months ago, and that is not sustainable.”

The word 'sustainable' doing a lot of work there I see (from a good WSJ article on declining worker participation in the US economy).

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

Going to be interesting watch business leaders try to onshore production (probably a doomed effort at this point), while also trying to suppress worker wages and refusing to invest anything in production.

The dirty secret of US growth since the 90s is that it's basically an artifact of cheap Chinese imports/labour. And the US sacrificed much of its productive capacity for that short term sugar burst.

jackofalltrades, to climate
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

is already affecting crop yields around the world, increasing them in some places and reducing in others.

Because of climate change yields of sorghum have increased by 0.7% in sub-Saharan Africa and 0.9% yearly in western, southern and southeastern Asia. In the US soybeans yields increased 3.7%.

Overall, global food production is negatively affected though. Climate change reduced global rice yields by 0.3% and wheat yields by 0.9% on average each year.

https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-affecting-crop-yields-and-reducing-global-food-supplies-118897

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@jackofalltrades

I need to dig into the figures I guess, and its possible that these are all marginal things currently (the US is very large).

But the following are trends that I know are real:

  1. US farmland is being sold off to developers, so net acreage is going down. How significant is that? Not sure. These tend to be smaller family farms, and are probably quite inefficient (US family farmers tend to be terrible at, well, farming).

  2. The cornbelt is shrinking. There have been a fair few studies looking at it, and it seems indisputable, and seems (at least in part) to be due to climate change. So far its not huge. In addition soil erosion is a big problem there. Farmland is being rendered unfarmable, even if it hasn't quite happened yet.

  3. The last three years have seen farmers in both the midwest, California and other parts too - lose entire crops due to flooding, storms, or drought, caused by climate change. If the business press is to be believed (and I suspect they are because money is on the line), then this is a significantly worse problem. Farming insurance for example has been hit very badly in the last few years.

But yes I probably need to dig into the figures before making such statements. Mea Culpea.

celesteh, to random
@celesteh@post.lurk.org avatar

Guess what resource wikipedia wants to delete? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electroacoustic_composers_of_color

I can remove the deletion notice, but I should have something more constructive to say in the talk page than "fuck off"

cian,
@cian@post.lurk.org avatar

@yaxu @celesteh

This 100%. It's amazing how often 'this person is difficult' means that this person is working class.

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