adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

Once again, I need your help: I am trying to scare up a cellular automata-based visualization I remember seeing from a few years back, that essentially used a game-theoretical ruleset to illustrate how few sociopaths are necessary to turn a whole society sociopathic. Under the right circumstances, only a few moves were necessary to flip the entire field from "cooperator" cells to "betrayers." Is this ringing any bells for anyone, or am I making this all up?

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

Beloved, the art of these terrible days consists in threading the needle. You will have to navigate between premature surrender to doomery and the vacuousness of toxic positivity, between condemning savagery and seeming to endorse the inevitable acts of savagery enacted in revenge. You will have to maintain your compass, when all the Earth is spinning and too many of the ones around you seem to have lost their own bearings.

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

Kids, I am super here for any actual reasoned attempt to explain consciousness in terms of alleged quantum effects, but please, please try to come up with a version of this theory that doesn't dip significantly into woo, I'm begging you. Begging.

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

Say, I don't suppose anyone out there has an mp3 of "Off Da Wall" by Reg E. Gaines they can send me? According to the internet, it only liminally exists. : . |

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

It's long past time for me to have a proper website, especially now that my fourth proper book is coming out — one place for people to find information about those books, my public speaking, SML versions of my bio, etc. I don't have a huge budget — in 2023, would you recommend Squarespace, or hiring a developer?

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

A public service announcement for all owners of Clarks desert boots in the original sand color: since it's bizarrely difficult to find appropriate replacement laces, and Clarks themselves don't offer any for sale, the ones you want are Kaps Round Laces, 60cm, in beige. You're welcome.

adamgreenfield, 9 months ago to random

This whole thing really upsets me quite profoundly. As a writer, I’m not going to turn down a paycheck, but it’s more important to me that people read my books than that I get paid for them. The publishers suing Internet Archive may be acting in someone’s name, but it sure as hell isn’t mine. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html?unlocked_article_code=SHhC1zCbybhNFFee1y2yE7uXqng9k_IfnWuZkvknItNyMGa8BjDb1bXtRT0vokzjJaZZ4n4b5tyDwKHX_OKblh5-fgx1H7U_y940V0RgncogyolvY7rx8-IY95ySMtAVyUXnSCINtoXVM-oHLsNncfS2VAmgWe5FGNQlJzFNLs7K-66gISBTvh364RoH3jmjvdf704Eoq-qNuSQEBshAMCUANLHBkCI9sJKVgDaiOsJwhoCfC2QXb5Kj7uwSQN78xBz6_V4R-HISPaCICnwsD-nwEhWDA0cxHLsC6PWPeRa_hhNetXGpM0wml5p0AqvzzAZ8idCCbUc-qcV9IuZ04aw92MN5ogprGrzF4bSZcBdsGFka7hzM13MxzQ&smid=url-share

adamgreenfield, 9 months ago to KindActions

Well, beloved, it’s real. You can preorder my book “Beyond Hope” as of now. If you suspect that #MutualAid, #municipalism or the example of #Rojava suggest strategies to survive a hot, dangerous future, if you want to learn from examples ranging from the Black Panther survival programs to the solidarity clinics of Greece, or if you’re interested in a concrete working-out of #solarpunk ideas in the form of the #Lifehouse community resilience hub, this is the book for you. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Hope-Collective-Mutual-Emergency/dp/1788738357

adamgreenfield, 9 months ago to random

Just a heads up that I’m going to be followers-only posting from here on out – on reflection, I think it’s the wisest and best way for me to be here.

adamgreenfield, 9 months ago to random

Also I just want to light a virtual candle here for a few of my friends who have lost their beloved cats recently. It’s so awfully hard, time spent with cats being one of the very few redeeming aspects of this life. May their memories be a blessing always.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Aberdeenshire, by my count, has two seats at Westminster. Rishi Sunak just fucked the future for the sake of two votes in Parliament, in an election he’s almost certain to lose anyway. I don’t want to ride my hobbyhorse, but if this is how mitigation’s going, we really need to think harder about what happens in its failure. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/rishi-sunak-approval-100-new-north-sea-oil-and-gas-licences-fossil-fuel-climate-crisis

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

I’ve tried to say this a couple of different ways over the past few weeks, but I am extremely uncomfortable with the emerging line of rhetoric on the climate left that casts strategies of adaptation to the circumstances of heating as somehow acquiescing to the extractive industries and/or their enablers in rightwing politics and the mainstream media. Adaptation really is all we have now. It’s up to us to ensure that it’s liberatory in conception and practice.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

A good friend of mine thinks that the way I habitually structure sentences, with lots of clauses and parentheticals and so forth, is in itself diagnostic of ADHD. I find this idea intriguing.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

A passage from toward the end of “Beyond Hope,” the book I’m working on – for @foolishowl, but equally for anyone else who might enjoy it.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

It’s amazing how few of the troubles that afflict us ever truly get “solved.” I’m thrilled every time I see people discussing the resolution of challenges in the language of maintenance, repair and long-term care, but far too many well-intentioned people still think in terms of “solutions.”

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Greenfield’s Law of Requisite Variety: Every single cornershop/bodega/konbini in your neighborhood offers some item for sale that none of the others carry. If you want the good bread, the good hummus, the good beer and the good chocolate, that’s four different trips and four different transactions.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

You know what I’d really love? I’d love it if people stopped calling me a “doomer” because I think it’s much too late for carbon mitigation, and that we’ll have to wait for a massive contraction of the planetary economy before any gross reduction in emissions is possible. This is just facing up to the facts, not an admission of species-wide defeat or a counsel of passive acceptance.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Look, I too love the letter X. I like Malcolm X. I like the band X. I like Speed Racer’s brother, Racer X. I like “The X-Files.” I like “eXIstenz.” I even like the x-axis. But even I can’t get over how hostile and malevolent it looks when I click on a Twitter link now. That shit just looks grim.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Your classic surf instrumental is a pretty fucken great cultural achievement. Few things get me quite nearly as amped.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

I have to say this about Rebecca Solnit, and it will seem petty but I think it tells: she doesn’t get the details right. I opened her book on walking, and stumbled right out of the gate at her characterization of the Marin Nike site as (IIRC) an “ICBM silo.” I’ve never been able to entirely trust her again after that. And in reporting on matters like the climate, the details aren’t merely the details: they are the story. It matters. Make of that what you will. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-climate-doomers

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

OK, real talk for a second. Allyship is like networking: it’s gross, and will not work, if you call it that, call attention to the fact that you’re doing it, or let it become part of your identity. It’s just something you fold into the way you conduct yourself, organically. It oughtn’t require any notice or comment at all.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Just…hug your kids, spend time with your parents, cuddle your pets, tell your friends how much they mean to you. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Can I just say again how brilliant the Merlin #bird ID app is? It’s one of the few legitimate applications of “AI.” In just the last week alone, it’s tagged House Sparrow, European Robin, European Starling, Rose-ringed Parakeet, Eurasian Magpie, Eurasian Coot, Eurasian Blackbird, Eurasian Blackcap, Common Chiffchaff, Eurasian Wren, Common Wood-Pigeon, Common Swift and Carrion Crow calls from my kitchen window. which is everyday-magical. Hello birds! https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Y?

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

I can’t promise you this book is actually going to be any good. I can promise you it will be the only one on your shelf that has citations regarding solar radiation management, borderwork, the effects of heat on various rice cultivars, the Young Lords, the roots of Kurdish feminism and the FGC-9.