doom_and_gloom

doom_and_gloom, 7 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

I hear Bill Ackman’s name far too little for as often as I have his paid opinions appear in front of my eyeballs. I’m not sure if he has pressured Adams directly as per this article, but I know he has been pulling strings with university admins.

doom_and_gloom, 7 days ago

Great trick, isn’t it: They’re employed to protect the capital of the titans, from the taxes of the people who they are protecting the hoard from.

It’s no wonder so many people have trouble wrapping their brains around it, honestly. It’s devious.

doom_and_gloom, 12 days ago

Furthermore, it doesn’t follow that criticizing Biden for drilling more oil than Trump helps Trump win.

I honestly think that mentioning that Biden has drilled more makes it more likely that Biden will win.

There will be plenty of time to pressure his administration after the election.

It seems politics isn’t this person’s strong suit.

doom_and_gloom, 14 days ago

Yet with those 100 watts, the brain cannot model itself in this detail - even though it is the literal embodiment of it! A strange thing to consider.

doom_and_gloom, 14 days ago

Not so different, I agree. But like you said, it’s still a weird thing to think about.

doom_and_gloom, 14 days ago

I was sure it was going to be evergrande and Chinese property?

It might have collapsed another economy, but I think China is relatively well-equipped for dealing with financial crises given the higher degree of state-planning and the lack of needing to be corporate capital havens. I think they were extremely wise to prioritize deleveraging individual investors like people buying homes for themselves (and wise to maintain a state that can facilitate such decision-making). In the end they got a surplus of housing and blew up some rent-seekers - pretty impressive imo!

doom_and_gloom, 14 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

This guy reeks of 19th century white male anthropologist.

I won’t disagree there. But I would like to pick your brain on various statements if you don’t mind.

The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem.

I assume we’re on the same page here, that the Earth is experiencing a biophysical/ecological crisis?

I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies.

I expect you reject the evolutionary psychology perspective here, but would you agree that humanity’s cognitive behaviors are unsatisfactorily dealing with the ecological crisis?

Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified.

Okay so here the author is simply giving their definition of what they consider politically viable, not too important on its own except that they clearly don’t believe these “solutions” are adequate.

If successful, this would merely extend overshoot.

This is what I’m more interested in. Do you think that if our current solutions alleviate the immediate crisis, that this will put us further into overshoot? Or do you think politically viable solutions can lead to an outcome that diminishes capacity strain such as soil health and fertilizer usage?

Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere.

I’m going to toss in my own objection here: The author is not supported imo in saying population reductions “everywhere.” Even acknowledging that many lower income countries have inflated populations due to foreign capital ensuring labor power is minimized, there are some localities that simply do not have a density issue.

Would you agree, though, that significant population reduction at the global scale is necessary in our current state to eliminate long-term overshoot? And would you agree that high-income countries need to experience the most economic contraction?

The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature.

I’m not sold on the 2 billion number, but do you agree that a population reduction of some degree is necessary to attain an equitable steady-state, or in other words, to avoid collapse?

I find most of these statements to be relatively true and/or supported, and without an overt political orientation. It’s horribly written, but the most contentious parts I see are the 2 billion number and the conclusion that “everywhere” must experience population reduction. The evolutionary psychology statements could simply be replaced with “as you can see, our actions are not adequately addressing these issues” and it wouldn’t change much imo.

You call it ecofascist, but if it were better written (and preferably not in such libby language) I would cite this publication as a demonstration of why revolution against capital is the only hope of success and why the highest priority must be the degrowth of the imperial core. Maybe the author actually is my ideological enemy, but if so, in describing reality they couldn’t help but paint a picture of why fascism must be overthrown if we are to survive. Or at least that’s how I’m reading it, and I’m curious as to where you agree/disagree.

doom_and_gloom, 17 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

I help maintain !collapse

Although it doesn’t take much effort at the moment.

doom_and_gloom, 18 days ago

This isn’t the most practical advice but here it goes: Live your life, chase your passions, find community, volunteer your abilities, and work on fulfilling yourself. Along the way, keep an eye out for other lonely souls. At least this way, you’re more likely to be starting from some sort of common ground.

If you’re a bit of a black sheep locally, it can also really help (in a multitude of ways) to move somewhere that you fit in better. It’s unfortunate but true, at least in my observations.

doom_and_gloom, 19 days ago

I lost some plants to cold snaps earlier in spring, after my losses during winter hardening. But the survivors are doing well, and most of the perennial garden plants are growing once again.

I’ve also had a lot of losses to the wildlife. I’m not sure if it’s because they are hungry, because they tend to cut the plants off at the base and not eat any of it. Maybe they don’t like my garden. Maybe they don’t like me? Either way, they eat plenty of the harvest, and they aren’t doing themselves any favors by biting the hand that feeds!

All-in-all, I am very pleased with the progress of the garden this year. At this rate, it should be substantial within 2-3 more years. The goal is a permaculture system so seeing the perennials doing well is a good sign. The soil is also slowly improving, although it has taken a lot of work and amendments. Hopefully I can get the plants well-established before the world gets too crazy. Then it’s up to them to try and adapt.

I wonder how much time that gives me? I feel like I’m going to be cutting it close. I don’t want to let me plants down. They deserve the best start I can give them heading into the pyrocene. 🥲

doom_and_gloom, 22 days ago

I’m not saying this explains all of it, but there is a lot more resistance to the mainstream culture now than in previous decades. That culture is the continuation of Roman Imperialism which is where shaving the face is adopted from. This was in contrast to other societies such as the Greeks and Vandals.

Of course not everyone wearing a beard is counter-culture, but the counter-culture is currently strong enough to influence acceptable trends. Looking like Zuck isn’t cool anymore. I would say this trend started many years ago with the hipsters, and has steadily expanded beyond that group.

doom_and_gloom, 23 days ago

Because it is what early !collapse looks like from a consumer’s standpoint.

doom_and_gloom, 24 days ago

HR is not your friend, but unless your colleague is C-level, HR probably isn’t their friend either. Just be mindful of workplace politics - but their behavior is not just toxic, it’s radioactive.

If you wanted to take it a step further, you might consider getting a bill for therapy sessions to support a lawsuit. You should probably seek out counsel if you go down that avenue, though.

doom_and_gloom, 24 days ago (edited 18 days ago)

BG3 will feel like an entirely complete game on its own. It is in the same world and has some recurring characters, but the game is designed for newcomers so they don’t assume that you know the characters and history.

For those who have played BG1/2, it starts off feeling more like a spiritual successor imo. But eventually you see how it all actually fits, and it fits very nicely. But that’s more of a bonus for return visitors to the Forgotten Realms because the game stands just fine on its own.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

That was a surprisingly good read.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

No, you’re not the only one. The last one I watched was probably Gate S1.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

That’s a tougher question. My guess is that it is serving as wish fulfillment through power fantasy. That sort of appeal can be more addictive for those it satisfies, I think.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

Solar radiation management. To fix climate change burn more fossil fuels.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

I think they can probably be held liable if damages can be proven and litigation is initiated through the US court system, but that is a big undertaking.

YouTube has some algorithms set up to remove content that it believes is highly likely to lead to trouble for itself. They are legally compelled to not host certain types of content, but most removed content is not in this category and is instead removed for business/political/optics reasons. The algorithms are primed for moderating western content because that is where YouTube expects these legal/political risks to come from.

In other words it is a very leaky net and there is no serious desire to make it airtight because it’s not a matter of mandatory regulation, it’s a matter of risk management. (If it were regulatory then the platform wouldn’t realistically be able to exist in the form that it does.)

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

This doesn’t read like science, but more importantly it is deeply flawed logic:

A person is in a car that is heading off a cliff. While they are naive of this fact, they are content but destined to an untimely demise. They are made aware of the fact and become deeply anxious.

What is causative in this scenario? Ignoring the cliff, we could say that the awareness is at fault for the person’s anxiety. But if the person were better informed about their state and there was no cliff, there would be no anxiety.

A root cause analysis would show that fundamental problem is not that the driver knows where they are going, but the fact that they are headed off a cliff in the first place.

To determine that social media is the root cause of increased teenage mental illness rates, we would need to confirm that social media in a utopian environment still causes mental illness. This is a claim without much evidence, particularly because the more one becomes informed about the world the more the will be exposed to its legitimate problems. What would be more practical, then, is to determine what incidence of mental illness occurs with awareness of these issues where social media is not a factor, and then to evaluate what if any factor remains to be explained by social media. The editorial does not take this approach, but instead appears to attempt a firehose of rationalizations that don’t converge to make a coherent thesis.

Perhaps the editorial author’s book isn’t selling well.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

Nothing like a K-shaped recovery to help the rich get richer.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

There are plenty of alternative explanations.

For a few examples:

• In such a huge universe, even if FTL travel is possible, why should we expect Earth to be a common destination?
• It is possible that only species who do not wish to colonize the galaxy will avoid the Great Filter and acquire the technology needed to colonize it.
• Not all space-faring races must be highly populous, while less populous species will encounter less of the issues that would cause a population to collapse before becoming space-faring.
• We could be colonized without recognizing it.
• Colonization itself could be inherently unsustainable.

There is also no reason to limit the discussion to a galaxy. If we assume that an FTL civilization will colonize (in a way that we would recognize), then they could come from any galaxy. Given the expanse of the universe, if such a behavior is common enough that it would stand a chance of succeeding, then it should probably exist already. And yet we do not appear to be colonized. Which is more likely: That FTL intelligences must colonize, or that we are all alone in the universe? Axiomatic reasoning reveals that the latter is statistically much less likely than the former. So it is less likely to successfully explain why we appear to be uncolonized.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

That’s just trading one privacy weakness for another, without being able to prove that original weakness has actually even been mitigated.

It make financial sense to provide this option, but “pay for privacy” is a questionable way to describe the transaction.

doom_and_gloom, 1 month ago

I’ve been very busy this month, but there’s not much to report here: The world outside my window tells me everything is relatively normal, even though the world inside my screen reveals that is not so. Meanwhile I’m just chugging along and trying to take care of the plants.