@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

matthewtoad43

@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social

Former and hopefully future climate and poverty activist. Covid cautious. Autistic grey-ace/wtf-ro geek, software developer. Interested in green transition, green tech, activism, intersectionality, etc. I try to boost other marginalised voices while recognising my own privilege. Yorkshire, Remainer. Climate hawk on the pro-tech end: We need appropriate technology. Recently re-created this account after leaving for a while during an anxious period of unemployment.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

breadandcircuses, to science
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

Here is a somewhat comical but also highly indignant commentary about the folly of “Net Zero by 2050”…

We insiders — by which I mean anyone paying attention — know that the plan to mitigate the climate catastrophe with Net Zero by 2050 is complete bullshit. But maybe you’ve absorbed that knowledge without really understanding why. So let’s talk about it.

What does Net Zero actually mean? Net Zero is the point at which the CO2 burden in the atmosphere is no longer increasing. We’re still putting some up, but we’re also taking just as much out.

This definition immediately tips off two major problems.

The “still putting some up” part is a major issue because the fossil fuels industrial/political complex hears that and stops listening. The “still putting some up” part is their job, and somebody else can do the “take just as much out” part.

In other words, it's Business As Usual for fossil fuels, including continuing growth. Someone else can do the preserving-life-and-the-climate part.

The second obvious problem with Net Zero is the very idea of “taking just as much CO2 out of the atmosphere each year as the fossil fuel industry is adding to it each year.” We know of only two ways to reduce the CO2 load of the atmosphere. One is time. But CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years, so time is not on our side.

The other way to reduce CO2 is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Carbon is “captured” from the atmosphere using a chemical solvent that absorbs CO2, after which it can be buried in the ground where the CO2 will stay safely out of the atmosphere virtually forever.

CCS technology both does and does not exist.

CCS does exist in that there are many ingenious systems for doing it, including several pilot programs demonstrating direct air capture, the holy grail of CCS. Many fossil fuelled electricity generation plants have been removing CO2 from their smokestack emissions for decades. Unfortunately, much of the currently captured CO2 is being injected into played-out oil wells, forcing more of the remaining oil to be recoverable, to burn as fuel. Totally self-defeating, as far as reducing the CO2 load in the atmosphere.

But CCS also does NOT exist in terms of a significant contributor to Net Zero. They remove so little CO2 from the atmosphere, and at such a cost, as to make them completely impractical. To make a dent in carbon emissions, hundreds of thousands of CCS plants are needed, if not millions. The cost is prohibitive. Not to mention the carbon costs of manufacturing all those plants.

But surely CCS technology will improve over the next decade or two. Maybe someone will even find a miraculous breakthrough that will make it truly practical?

Sorry, but no. It’s not that there hasn’t been enough research into CCS. It has been heavily researched and the science is known. It’s actually some pretty simple chemistry. We can tweak around the efficiency edges, but there are no breakthroughs waiting in the wings to be discovered.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://lannierose.medium.com/net-zero-by-2050-get-the-joke-946c2d0c0530


matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@breadandcircuses @MKW Yeah, I was going to point out that there are a number of different ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere, including rewilding (likely contingent on both not using biofuels and dietary change), as well as a few other technologies.

However, if we do manage to find practical ways to draw down carbon, we need them to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. As we've seen in the last few years, even the current 413ppm is dangerously high.

Continuing to use fossil fuels is unacceptable. Whatever removals we can do cannot be used to prolong use of fossil fuels.

For instance the UK government supports "net zero by 2050", in between sabotaging all the policies that were supposed to achieve that. But they also say 1/4 of our energy will come from oil and gas in 2050. Which is unacceptable!

matthewtoad43, to random
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

So it looks like we're not going to get external solid wall insulation any time soon. Nor a heat pump.

Not because of the money but because of family issues around the disruption involved, mostly related to various disabilities.

It appears that even solid wall insulation requires us to evacuate the house for several days, because of the need to disconnect external plumbing. And yes, moving the whole family out for a few days is a big deal with our particular set of issues. We haven't gone on holiday together for decades. And there are other difficulties.

Possibly it makes sense to wait and do a heat pump at the same time, to minimise the number of moves.

System change is more important than consumer choices. Nonetheless this is disappointing. It's tricky for me to get involved in in-person activism, because of Covid-vulnerable family, and to some degree because of not having settled in my new job yet.

Sorting out at least insulation, and possibly a heat pump and solar, had been my project for the next few years. Living with my parents and a software job meant I actually have money, in spite of autism (only 16% of autistic adults have full time work).

Maybe my best option is to move out. That would make it easier to participate in in-person activism, and easier to socialise in general, but it would mean spending less time with family. It would also mean I can't give as much.

And of course renting would mean burning even more fossil fuels than my existence does now. Buying is problematic, with recent unemployment, and a falling market, and in the long run, I'd be much too worried about negative equity to have any spare money to give to anything. On the other hand I would eventually be able to install upgrades.

Yesterday I attended a protest, for the first time in years, largely in an FFP3 or P100 mask. Vulnerable family matter.

Maybe the Effective Altruism people have it right for once, even though in general they are a bunch of sophists infiltrated by climate deniers. In some cases giving is actually more important than boots on the ground.

Of course I'll have to move out one day. Mum and dad won't be around forever, and there's an argument that if something happens to my current job (which is unlikely but certainly not impossible), job hunting will be easier if I live closer to civilization and can safely attend in-person interviews.

Any thoughts?

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

One of the big issues here is that the loft has blown fibreglass insulation. Which means it is not safe to access it, period (the whole family have respiratory issues). Which in turn means that we can't put anything up there that would require a smoke detector... And replacing it would also cause problems.

Chicken and egg problems. Argh! Ideas welcome.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@ArneBab As I've alluded to before, I might actually have to get AC, but hopefully only as a temporary fix for the hottest heatwave days. There's a risk of it becoming routine though if ventilation in summer isn't enough to work comfortably - if it's like last summer, for instance.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@ArneBab Worry is that if I get AC for emergencies will end up using it to make working easier i.e. a lot of the time. Which might be a good reason to get solar, if we can solve the related problems. Insulation and heat pump make much bigger difference to carbon though.

breadandcircuses, to usa
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

United Statesians are trained to see the world in terms of “good guys” and “bad guys” — never realizing that the leaders of all the strongest countries are ALL bad guys.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@breadandcircuses Not just the "most powerful". You have to go a long way down the list before you find countries which are taking adequate action on climate change, aren't pursuing economic or military imperialism, have come to terms with their past crimes, etc.

Power is a pretty dirty business. Getting it is almost as bad. Many reasons: bad electoral systems, media ownership, weaponised nostalgia, corporate power, the list goes on. A lot of it is down to the fossil fuel industry though. They have the most to lose from any real progress.

ChrisMayLA6, to climate
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

If you think a key to dealing with the is a swift move away from for power generation, then you will be rightly worried that both India & China are increasing their use of coal whatever their other commitments....

Once again political elites are saying one thing but doing another....

As the chart indicates; also whatever other countries do, if China doesn't move away from coal we'll never transit away from it

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 They are expanding renewables and nuclear pretty fast too. The fact that Chinese per-capita carbon emissions are more than those of many Western European countries is indeed terrifying though. And for all their problems (including an interpretation of communism that is significantly less socialist than the US), they have lifted a huge number of people out of poverty over the last 40 years. Some amount of economic growth in China was and is necessary, whatever your view on the west.

I hope China does better. India too - and even their targets are depressing, in spite of being rather vulnerable. But once again, we can't use what other people aren't doing as an excuse not to act. Especially when we bear significant historical responsibility.

To pick a somewhat random link since a few people boosted this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader

Q1 2023 China had 228GW of utility-scale solar, 310GW of wind, with 379GW of solar under construction. Growing rapidly, but grid connection problems just like everywhere else. Low carbon power makes up 51% of their capacity - which is rather less than 51% of generation.

The first graph I could find shows fairly rapid growth in generation. 2500TWh/annum, about 30% of their total. UK is 56% by that measure. Unfortunately most of the rest (in China as in Germany) is coal.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/960418/china-total-production-of-clean-energy/

As I said, we need to do our part. We can't exert much influence on China, except by things like the EU's carbon border tariff. But we can't expect them to move if we won't.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@paulb3017 @ChrisMayLA6 One option: EU imposes a carbon border tariff (this exists, no idea about the details though). China verifiably cleans up its act, at least on Stuff for export, to avoid a sizeable tariff on one of its biggest markets.

Of course, that's assuming we need more Stuff. Less stuff is often a good answer too.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@paulb3017 @ChrisMayLA6 As regards cleaner manufacturing here, that's something we need to solve anyway. Manufacturing hasn't gone away, it's just at a smaller scale. Often more specialist, higher value, so easier to clean up (see e.g. Germany).

UK electricity is cleaner than China's. Generally we have better environmental legislation, so it's reasonable to hope for a relatively low carbon intensity. But you have to look at the rest e.g. blast furnaces vs arc furnaces etc.

Displaced emissions are a real thing, sure. But reducing them is solvable, whether there or here. Although it may increase prices. Which is okay: we need better stuff, not more stuff, and redistribution to soften the impact of both the transition and the crisis itself.

corbin, to random
@corbin@toot.community avatar

Didn’t seem like any big surprises at Apple's event today. Honestly, my biggest takeaway is that it was the worst presentation Apple has done in a long time. Yet another "you will die in a car crash without our products” segment, coupled with a whole lot of greenwashing.

Anyway, I’ll be pre-ordering the base iPhone 15 because I want USB-C and the screen on my SE is now too small for most apps and websites. I will miss small phones.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@corbin @cooopsspace Not just Linux. LineageOS can reanimate many Android phones. On the other hand if you've sold your soul to the reality distortion field already, it's up to Apple, modulo legislation. Although they are making some concessions.

Having said that, yeah. With real people's main phones, the prospect of accidentally bricking them is something of a deterrent.

Manufacturers need to be obliged to support this as the price for ending full security support.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@corbin @cooopsspace Cool. My recollection was that Google only went to 5 years after Apple did. Before that, Google was the best of the pack - at 2 years. 😐 So some improvement at least. I wasn't aware how much Apple has improved since then.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@Jbasoo @corbin @cooopsspace I've never trusted my phone enough to use online banking on it! Although some banks (sadly including e.g. Triodos ISAs) require you to use their apps.

As a former Android developer, I'm aware that 1) Firebase Authentication has a more annoying, and less tested, UI if you have a rooted phone, but usually still works (it's a very common component), and 2) there is a local (and possibly remote) attestation API the most paranoid apps can use if they don't want to run on rooted phones.

Also, I don't stream video to my TV from my phone. I have a dedicated, small, computer for that, though the UI is a pain (I need to make the mouse pointer bigger).

So I'm probably more able to use LineageOS than most.

And of course all the infosec stuff at work says rooting phones is the work of the devil etc. To be fair, because the architecture is reasonable, a lot of exploits and policy violations do depend on rooting phones.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@Jbasoo @corbin @cooopsspace From an infosec point of view, obviously I would point out that accessing online banking from a phone that does not have security support is a bad idea.

Bad enough that the bank may try to use that fact to wriggle out of liability when something bad happens. I would imagine they'll start detecting outdated phones at some point. I'd be very surprised if they don't have that information in case lawyers need it though.

While I can't use a LineageOS phone for work, I try not to use phones for work, and if I have to, I try to get a separate phone for it (and try to bill work for it). For my own needs, I draw a distinction between "this dodgy app wanted root" and "I installed a custom ROM". Sadly mainstream corporate infosec does not, but then they are rather dependent on various forms of spyware.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@Jbasoo I completely agree. Legislation is vital. Manufacturers should have a legal obligation to provide basic security support for the lifetime of the product, even if that increases prices. And if they want to opt out of that obligation, they need to 1) provide enough information for open source to be viable, and 2) offer to buy back existing devices (i.e. a deposit scheme for electronics).

Having said that, on a consumer level, it isn't safe to use your online banking app on a phone that no longer receives security support. There is a real risk of you being defrauded and the bank refusing to pay up because you didn't follow their security instructions. If it is possible to use online banking via a website (on a computer) it would be significantly safer. It would be interesting to find out whether such apps work on LineageOS, or for that matter on Fairphone's.

If you're using it for streaming then LineageOS probably isn't an option, sadly.

So push for system change. And if you have to buy a new device, look for something with a long support life and repairable. Personally I wouldn't buy Apple for various reasons but this conversation suggests they are taking the problem more seriously than some of their competitors. Fairphone 5 looks interesting.

Also, don't throw it away. Even old phones can be of use depending on what you want them for. Whether that's for development purposes (Android app developers often have to support old versions which are no longer security supported), or as a replacement dumbphone. You may be able to sell it or give it to a charity; it depends on what people want to use it for.

Private
matthewtoad43, (edited )
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@gunslingeradhd @theautisticcoach @actuallyautistic It is okay to self-diagnose as autistic, if you're serious about it. Autism is a huge spectrum, including people with very high needs, and people with very high "masking" (i.e. people who try very hard to appear neurotypical). It doesn't matter. High needs / low needs labels are used as a catch-22: if you have high needs, you can't make decisions for yourself; if you have low needs, you don't deserve support. So we try to avoid using those labels. It is not ableist to self-diagnose as autistic. Describing myself as autistic (I do have a diagnosis) does not mean I speak for e.g. non-speaking autistics. But I do need to try to listen to them and boost them wherever possible. Same with autistics with intersectional issues e.g. autistic women, autistic trans people etc. Listen to them and boost them. Your existing and identifying as autistic is not in itself ableism.

Can't speak for ADHD. But intersectionality matters, and these things are described as a spectrum.

Private
matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@autisticbookclub @actuallyautistic I live with my family. We're all probably autistic, and some of us diagnosed. I am financially independent, and have lived on my own, but living with my parents makes sense for me at the moment. Especially given that living on my own seems to make anxiety worse, and the pandemic.

I'm very privileged to have a good relationship with my original family. Lots of people don't have that, especially queer people.

I have a somewhat limited social circle beyond my immediate family. But at least I generally know where I am with family; it's arguably easier to maintain that sort of relationship than a long distance friendship where it's hard to calibrate communication and there are few opportunities for positive habits.

Having said that, I strongly disagree with family on some issues, resulting in arguments. Which is inevitable. Sometimes other family members can be difficult on various levels, e.g. non-shared special interests, dealing with their anxieties on top of my own, etc. Such is life. We make it work.

But whether your therapist is wrong depends on the context. See what others have said about close families and boundaries.

GreenFire, to random
@GreenFire@mstdn.social avatar

Every headline seems to be meant to push an agenda more than to provide actual illumination on the situation. Perhaps, it's always been that way, but it seems worse today to me.

Anyways, every ton of pollution we manage to not emit makes our planet better off.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@GreenFire Well it's the Telegraph. 😢 😡

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@GreenFire Britain has fewer heat pump installs than more or less anywhere else. Personally I doubt that that's entirely down to the Telegraph; we get the pro-gas disinformation around cooking hobs etc too. But it's certainly part of that fascism/denial ecosystem, in spite of occasionally publishing honest journalism.

Just call it the Torygraph. 😐

The Mail arguably still has more political power. Whereas GB News is an irrelevance. The media is mostly owned by politically engaged billionaires as I understand it. While print circulation is way down, Brexit showed that the papers still matter.

GreenFire, to CDR
@GreenFire@mstdn.social avatar

Another day, another "controversial" toot from me of course.

Direct Air Carbon is emerging as a uniquely scalable, controllable, durable & verifiable carbon dioxide removal solution.

However, if we don’t invest effort & resources into addressing DAC’s technical challenges this decade it won’t be ready at scale when we need it.

This latest paper in Royal Society of Chemistry's Energy and Environmental Science Journal provides a roadmap: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/ee/d3ee01008b

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@GreenFire @jgkoomey By taking that job she is making herself the enemy of all life (but I don't advocate violence against people, even climate criminals). The oil companies have known about climate change and pushed denial and disinformation for 50 years. Today they and their billionaire friends see outright fascism as their best hope of continuing a fundamentally broken business model.

You can't change the oil industry from within, even from the top job, any more than you can the tobacco industry. You can't change it as a shareholder. The only thing you can do is undermine its business model and fight its political proxies.

glennf, to random
@glennf@twit.social avatar

A. Wikipedia bars paid work on behalf of people or organizations getting entries added or modified. B. If you can’t match the font in your email to prevent it looking like an old mail merge, I can’t trust you.

matthewtoad43,
@matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

@glennf PSA: I've seen tools to recover pixelated text. I assume it requires exactly matching the font, the demo I saw was just a Javascript demo not a general purpose tool.

jonobie, (edited ) to BurningMan
@jonobie@social.coop avatar

deleted_by_author

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    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @jonobie @memnus Direct emissions of 100,000 tons. Glastonbury already claims to be net negative, though such claims are often dubious.

    https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-protest-climate-change-environment

    davidho, (edited ) to random
    @davidho@mastodon.world avatar

    The largest externalities (“implicit subsidies” to the IMF) associated with transport fuels relate to driving — traffic congestion, traffic accidents, & road wear and tear — and they would still be around with EVs. 👀

    We need transit and bike infrastructure.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @davidho While I agree with your conclusion, I find that difficult to believe. Carbon and a significant fraction of the pollution (admittedly not all of it) from petrol cars surely amount to a sizeable amount of external cost. 10x as many people die from pollution as from traffic accidents.

    Details?

    Private
    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @AutisticAdam @actuallyautistic Mostly for the unpredictable English weather. 😀 My bike backpack is just big enough. If I'm going proper shopping I need a proper rucksack though.

    aral, to random
    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

    Mozilla is a for-profit not-for-profit. And that’s all you need to know to explain everything that doesn’t seem to make sense about the chasm between what they say and what they do.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @neurovagrant @aral I would welcome suggestions on this. Maintaining a modern web browser is hard, even Microsoft uses Chrome. And Google is demonstrably far more evil than Mozilla. Most notably because it is Google who is now pushing the old TCPA nightmare, not Microsoft.

    If you have a better alternative than Firefox I'd love to hear about it.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @JamesDBartlett3 @aral Many charities have wholly owned for-profit subsidiaries. Either to raise funds or to provide services. Or even sometimes to avoid rules on getting too involved in politics.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @aral @neurovagrant Why does it have to be government money? That is almost as precarious as taking Google's search money!

    Whole global news gathering organisations are funded in large part through donations and largely optional subscriptions.

    There are questions over how much of Mozilla's budget is actually necessary, of course, if the argument is that only the search engines can pay the amounts needed. They have a huge surplus.

    breadandcircuses, (edited ) to environment
    @breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

    You may want to take a seat on the fainting couch before reading this, because I regret to inform you that . . . oil companies are LYING to us!!

    A new analysis of the activities of twelve major fossil fuel giants shows that the companies are misleading the public about their emission-reduction commitments while raking in record profits from fossil fuels, which are driving catastrophic extreme weather events across the globe.

    In a report published Wednesday, Greenpeace examines the decarbonization pledges, investments, and profits of six global fossil fuel giants — including Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies — and six European oil companies.

    The results indicate that in 2022 close to 93% of the oil giants' investments on average went to keeping the companies on the "fossil oil and gas path" while just 7.3% were aimed at promoting "low-carbon solutions" and sustainable production.

    Kuba Gogolewski, a finance campaigner at Greenpeace, said that "as the world endures unprecedented heat waves, deadly floods, and escalating storms, Big Oil clings to its destructive business model and continues to fuel the climate crisis."

    "Instead of providing desperately needed clean energy, they feed us greenwashing garbage," Gogolewski added. "Big Oil's unwillingness to implement real change is a crime against the climate and future generations. Governments need to stop enabling fossil fuel companies, heavily regulate them, and plan our fossil fuel phase-out now. They will never change on their own."

    Yes, that is the point. They will never change on their own.

    FULL STORY -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/oil-company-emissions

    ALTERNATIVE LINK -- https://web.archive.org/web/20230826041730/https://www.commondreams.org/news/oil-company-emissions

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @breadandcircuses @weaselx86 Also, your pension probably owns shares in them. The whole system is broken. But there's plenty we can do to change that.

    humanisttrek, to StarTrek
    @humanisttrek@trekkies.social avatar

    @drfunkyspoon with some real values right here! 🖖🏼

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @humanisttrek True, but Star Trek also has a lot of problematic baggage.

    For instance, the first series of Enterprise has an interesting title sequence that plays up the naval exploration history aspect, including the HMS Enterprise.

    There were several such ships. They were all part of the British navy during empire.

    Star Trek V, one of the weakest films, has a Vulcan saying "Columbus proved [the world] was round". No, he didn't. He was one of the worst war criminals in all of history.

    One one level, it is remarkable that Rodenberry, clearly a utopian communist, wasn't dealt with by the anti-american activities committee.

    But on the other hand, Star Trek has some major and pretty obvious skeletons in its closet around imperialism, "exploration" and "colonisation".

    Recent series have tried to be aware of these issues. Discovery and Picard are well worth watching.

    cynblogger, to HashtagGames
    @cynblogger@sfba.social avatar


    Commuting time, stress, and enviro pollution/ could be solved by making people live within walking distance of work.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @cynblogger Sure, if there is affordable housing within walking distance of work.

    Even to have affordable housing within cycling distance of work is going to take a lot of work. And we need to push back against some fundamental political sacred cows, namely that house prices must always go up, no matter what, by more than inflation or earnings.

    ilyess, to random
    @ilyess@mastodon.online avatar

    technology doesn’t seem to have evolved much in the last decade, at least at the consumer level. I was hoping that by now, phones that last several days on a single charge would be ubiquitous.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @ilyess The phones have better batteries but they use more energy?

    Private
    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic Agree with most of what you say. Keeping friends is hard. You never know when it's okay to reach out. Making new friends is hard too. You end up having mostly situational friends. Even diagnosed autistic friends are tricky when your special interests diverge. It's easier to know where you are with family, mostly.

    While I lived on my own, just before the pandemic, I had major anxiety issues around loneliness.

    I don't think I was actually lonely, I was just anxious about it.

    Much of that related to questions around long term housing and to a degree sexual identity. Which itself lost me some friends.

    Today I'm living with my parents again, mostly not too lonely (even though I have very few friends), and reasonably comfortable with "grey asexual".

    I've managed to put off the longer term worry for now.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic A big part of it I think is trying to calibrate how much social I actually need or want.

    But there's the perpetual worry that if I don't do something about getting more social, I'll regret it in future when my current solutions no longer work.

    But given all the problems today, notably Covid and a new job, I'm reasonably happy putting that off.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic One aspect of this was that when I had good news - when I ran out of excuses - I got back into major crises around such worries.

    That all blew up just before the pandemic, which provides another excuse.

    And yes, the stuff about traitorous "friends" is familiar enough.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @ScruffyDux @Elowen @actuallyautistic Yeah, I could keep it together as long as I could go see family whenever I wanted.

    But by late 2020 I was putting them at risk every time I did. And work problems too.

    Moving back in with my folks solved a lot of problems. And kicked a lot of other problems into the long grass.

    Of course my family are considered vulnerable to Covid, so that limits my options. But sometimes that's a good thing.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic Perhaps. I tell myself we have to keep fighting. How to actually do that is much more difficult though!

    At the moment I'm in a probationary period for a new job, so I can't do much apart from financially (I'm lucky to be one of the 16% of autistics in full time work).

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic The escalating permacrises make it extremely difficult to think about any aspect of the future.

    And life forces you to think about the future.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic I work from home. Most of my coworkers are in another country, though close enough timezone wise for it to be viable.

    Sharing a common purpose yes though. I was pretty desperate after 8 months, but they do something worthwhile, and I'm starting to get into real work.

    Working from home means I don't need to deal with office noise and the necessity to offset it with headphones. Or with the incomprehensible social rules of open plan offices. But mostly it means I can limit my Covid risk without messing up everyone else's workplace culture, I don't have a commute, and I can be with family.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic We'll see. Some communication issues, mostly around anxiety, pressure, rules.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @Elowen @ScruffyDux @CatHat @actuallyautistic Well, we can try.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @ScruffyDux @Elowen @CatHat @actuallyautistic Unfortunately in the world we live in it's impossible.

    But we can try.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @ScruffyDux @Elowen @CatHat @actuallyautistic Yes but it's an ongoing process.

    For instance, it's not easy for me to become a vegan, because of autism, allergies and family. I've made some progress and hope to make more, but it's not something I can do overnight.

    It's very difficult for me to cease all carbon emissions.

    And as a white male in a so-called developed nation I benefit from both historical and current prejudice and oppression. Which I need to actively mitigate against.

    Do no harm is hard.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @ScruffyDux @Elowen @CatHat @actuallyautistic Also, as somebody else said here, it's 2AM and I should go to bed.

    Hope you've derived some value from this conversation. Thanks!

    matthewtoad43, (edited )
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @yourautisticlife @ar_collins @marytzu @Elowen @ScruffyDux @actuallyautistic This concurs with my limited experience. Tops want to see a reaction. Play (and therefore sex) is a (limited) form of (intimate or emotional) communication.

    breadandcircuses, (edited ) to science
    @breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

    Climate change means, among other things, that we can’t take anything for granted any longer. There is no normal now.

    Used to be we would talk about how important it is to keep our tropical forests and other areas of vegetation intact, because they act as carbon sinks, absorbing CO2 from the air during photosynthesis.

    But even this — one of the most basic science facts we learned in high school biology — is now in jeopardy.

    "Parts of tropical rainforests could get too hot for photosynthesis, study suggests"

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/world/tropical-forest-heat-photosynthesis-climate-scn-intl/index.html

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @breadandcircuses Well, we already knew that 4C is the apocalypse. And unlikely this century if you believe IPCC. Who may be wrong.

    However in the last few years the risks, temperatures significantly lower than that are looking increasingly awful too. But if we act, it will be less awful than if we don't act. 😡

    Definitely worth reading.

    matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @PowerCrazy We need to substantially reduce the number of cars.

    Increasing the number of speed cameras, while reducing speed limits, is a step in that direction.

    18+ matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 You can't do statistics on speed cameras if there are almost no speed cameras.

    Which is the reality today. Sometimes the police go out with mobile units. But there are very few fixed ones.

    18+ matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Because somehow drivers have decided that driving is a right in the same sense that freedom of association is a right.

    That any restriction on their ability to drive, that any monitoring of their driving in a public place, is somehow against civil liberties.

    That the law should be reinterpreted to suit them. That "causing death by dangerous driving" is somehow less serious than manslaughter (aka murder 3).

    Freedom to drive has never been a constitutional or human right. Certainly not in my country nor in the USA.

    Cars need to be regulated for the same reason that guns need to be regulated.

    18+ matthewtoad43,
    @matthewtoad43@climatejustice.social avatar

    @gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Some of this results from the practical reality that many of our cities are specifically designed to force people to drive. Unfortunately it will take time to fix that.

    However, as I just boosted, there are plenty of people who can't drive.

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