mk30

@mk30@tilde.zone

programmer/artist living off-grid on hawai'i island <3

https://kukso.space

art alt: https://mastodon.art/@mk30
plant alt: https://regenerate.social/@mk30

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trochee, to random
@trochee@dair-community.social avatar

I propose that 2024 be the year of no more "sprints".

organize your work into "strolls", and connect up those strolls into "rambles".

aw dammit now I want a book pitch for the "randonneur's guide to software development".

mk30,

@trochee @ceejbot personally, i need the flâneur's guide to software development!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur

mk30,

@trochee @ceejbot i actually think "going for a walk" is a good way to get out of a programming funk and refresh the brain, so flaneurs are relevant!

mk30, to conservative

respect biocrust!

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-biocrusts-great-wall-china-erosion.html

(this is why one should think twice before walking across what seems like a craptacular landscape with nothing on it - it may be covered in biocrust, an important and tiny layer of life in an area where life probably has a hard time growing.

that biocrust might be an early step in a succession process that happens vvverrry slowly. one's quick action of stepping on it can set that ecosystem back a very long time. who knows how long that biocrust took to form...)

learn more about biocrust!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_Q1tn1uus

mk30, to climate

question by an indigenous girl for the audience at a tech/business/meditation conference in paris:

"we're taking so much out of the earth...the metals, the minerals, everything that's used to build all this technology [for the green transition, etc.]. how do you think this damage can be healed?"

as expected, there are no real answers, because most westerners don't think about how one's material uses have to balance with the land...what gets taken out, needs to go back in.

then she asks: "you're all so smart, can you invent a technology that doesn't require taking things from the earth?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbA9YAkvNmc

mk30, to history

now listening to "maladies of empire: how colonialism, slavery, and war transformed medicine" by jim downs.

from the intro:

"slavery, colonialism, and war - often treated separately in scholarly studies - had common features from the vantage point of medical professionals.

these episodes produced large, captive populations. slaveships, plantations, and battlefields created social arrangements and built environments that allowed physicians to observe how disease spread, and prompted them to investigate the social conditions that led to the outbreak of disease.

the increased appearance of these settings around the world between 1756 and 1866 gave way to a proliferation of medical studies that contributed to the emergence of epidemiology."

people say "colonialism is over! slavery is over!" but EVEN IF that were true, we still live in the world created by colonialism and slavery. ignoring this fact won't make it go away.

on a personal note, back when i worked at "PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases" (a scholarly journal for neglected tropical diseases), i learned that one of the main institutions for the study of tropical diseases was the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine. "that sounds like a kinda weird school name", one might think. and to this american's ears it certainly sounded strange... but once you know the history it's not so strange.

the school has that name because for physicians in england, they were dealing with soldiers & sailors who were getting stuff like malaria while out conquering the world. so that's why there's a whole field of "tropical medicine."

i absolutely do not mean to disparage anyone who is affiliated with tropical medicine or LSHTM. i worked with scientists who worked there and i deeply respect their work and commitment. my only point is that it's important to remember that almost all of us are still living in the house that colonialism, empire, and slavery built, and to act accordingly.

(as a footnote, LSHTM has a very detailed timeline of their history on their website: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/research-action/lshtm-120/historical-timeline fun fact: the "hygiene" part of the name was added later! it started out as the london school of tropical medicine.)

mk30, to climate

what do y'all think? : ""The biggest climate issue is a bunch of egotistical men who refuse to change," she says, referring to the heads of multinational corporations." - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-67522279

i'm a cultural anthropologist (amateur), so my interest in her statement has less to do with "is she making an accurate statement" and more to do with: what is it that drives the desire to come up with 'the biggest issue with ___" or "the main problem with ___"? because there definitely is a desire to figure out the "root cause" of this thing (so that it can be "fixed"). but i don't know if that's possible.

i used to have this desire myself! it drove my activism... and my lack of activism - because i "couldn't figure out the root cause". analysis paralysis is a consequence of this kind of "root cause" thinking.

not to say that there aren't root causes (there may even be a root cause yet!), but that the search for a root cause can be a particular kind of activism failure mode. it's one that i think i was stuck in for way too long.

and to be clear, i DO think it's important to look for root causes, i just don't know if there's a SINGLE root cause.

i think that we are trapped in a tangled web that is

  • a systemic problem (a problem of systems that create outcomes regardless of which individual people are running the systems)
  • that is also a problem of a specific kind of masculinity (NOT a problem that's like something about men themselves as humans)
  • AND ALSO a problem of literal individual egotistical human men lol. (as today, kissinger death day, should remind us all.) sometimes it really does make the difference to remove literally 1 egomaniacal human man from a group situation. and sometimes that one man is fucking impossible to get at (especially since you can't get to them with guillotines anymore).
  • AND THAT ALSO has a bunch of other root causes like colonialism, slavery, human separation from nature, spiritual poverty, devaluing of animal and plant life, devaluing of the land, the concept of 'owning land', racism, heteronormativity, ableism, the legal system that protects corporations, the market system, the belief in and desire for hierarchies, the desire for an ordered and controlled world, "ends justify the means" thinking, and a million other things.

i don't know if there's a way to get free of this web (i certainly feel very wrapped up in it), but i can still use my teeth to bite at the little pieces of web around me & my friends & the little piece of land around me!

mk30, to Plants

excellent, excellent lecture: "Slaving Science: Natural Historical Collecting and the British Slave Trade" by Dr. Kate Murphy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM4qUleVO84

context: biological specimens of plants, insects, birds, skeletons, etc., were crucial to early western science. those early scientists were on an encyclopedic mission (wanting to know about all kinds of stuff from all over the world) & very few people got to travel, so receiving a specimen of, like, an ostrich egg from very far away could be a huge deal for an early scientist in england.

these specimens were often pulled together into collections owned by wealthy collectors, and many of these private collections formed the starting collections of large national institutions that are for-the-most-part still around, and still educating millions of people...like the british museum.

in fact, if you ever went to a museum of natural history & saw biological specimens, you've been a part of this history (in a small way).

herbaria were important places for the development of early botanical knowledge. i've actually been to an herbarium! at duke university, of all places. it was a wonderful place that smelled like tea, where thousands of dried plant samples were pressed between pages of huge books.

anyway, back when western scientists were developing taxonomies & basic understandings of plant biology (like the various parts of plants & their functions), herbaria were really important.

yea, it might suck to try & understand what's going on with a flattened, dried, little patch of some grass, but at least you could look at the actual plant & not just a drawing.

also, herbaria still provide value in botany because you can take small samples & do genetic analysis, or whatever other kind of analysis you want. the fact that they're historic specimens means that a scientist can do historic analysis as well. so these old samples are not just relics.

how these samples ended up in western herbaria is a very interesting question. there's a colonial romantic image of a "plant hunter" on a "collecting expedition". he's (it's almost always a 'he') single-minded, dedicated, unafraid, adventurous, and doing it for science. it has its appeal! that's why i call it the colonial romantic - it has a romance about it, but there's a nerdy purity too. i mean, it's indiana jones, right?

but that's not how it really happened (surprise!). if you know much about how things (and people) from around the world ended up in england (and its colonies, like america), you know that it was basically always a total nightmare.

these colonials were engaged in a project of moving people, plants, animals, and specimens all around the world, like pieces on a chess board.

so, a slave ship might be carrying enslaved people, but it might also be carrying live plant specimens, live animal specimens, seeds, nuts, dried plants, fossils, butterflies, & all kinds of other stuff.

and that's what this talk is about: how, exactly early science was related to the slave-trading industry of england, specifically.

on a personal note, i live in hawai'i, a place where you can see literally in what grows on the land and in what people are here the effects of that colonial project of moving around people, plants, and animals. so if i ever start to wonder "hey, how did tree x end up on the island?" maybe it was brought as part of a plantation project. and if you meet a third generation japanese or filipino person on the island, their grandparents might have been brought over as workers for a plantation, part of that exact same colonial project. so all of us are still very much living in the world created by this global colonial project of places like england, spain, portugal, etc.

every time i look into how colonial powers moved plants around, i see that that movement was intimately tied to the goals and material reality of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.

it's a hard history to look at, but it is real.

mk30, to nature

y'all... i can't even: "Human Brains Aren't Wired to Fight Climate Change.

Society knows it’s doing things that will do immense harm to the environment for many generations to come. So why can’t it change? We like donuts too much." - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-18/human-brains-aren-t-wired-to-fight-climate-change

this bloomberg article is an excellent example of a common trope in western media: "xyz in human nature means that humans are primed to wreck their habitat." you even see this kind of thinking in policy and scientific writing.

as a cultural anthropologist (amateur), whenever i see "human nature" invoked as an explanation for LITERALLY ANYTHING, i start to get extremely suspicious.

almost always it's used as a reason for why [bad thing in society] cannot ever be solved (with the implication that maybe one shouldn't even bother because it's..."human nature").

"human nature" has been used to justify all kinds of things: men dominating women, anti-trans viewpoints, imperialism & colonialism, slavery, and more.

on the other hand, anyone can cobble together evidence showing that it's "human nature" to do any of a million "good things": care for other people, care for the land, etc.

so it's kind of a wash. it's why i don't think anyone should be making appeals to "human nature" as a reason to support/oppose much of anything.

don't ever let a "human nature" claim badger you into admitting defeat. here are arguments i use to counter just about any "human nature means we can't solve problem x" claim:

  1. so what? even if something IS human nature, the societal problem is still there (and should be resolved, fixed, not condoned, etc.)
  2. last i checked, wiring is not destiny. in addition to human "nature", we have this other thing called "culture" whereby humans transmit important information about how to live gained from the experiences of previous generations and older people to younger people. one can decide that one holds certain values (like: "don't destroy your habitat") and transmit those via culture.
  3. almost all humans have been raised within families & societies that once again, mold how we think. literally no one is out here operating on "wiring" alone.
  4. shame on you for trying to pin x problem on "human nature"! it's a cop out!
  5. (specifically in response to the climate change-related "human nature" argument:) for millenia, many peoples all around the world found ways to live within nature's cycles. they primarily relied on important teachings that conveyed to younger generations the need to care for the land so that future generations can enjoy food/air/water/etc. too. so like, who cares about human nature in this case? people (who did not have fancy written languages or universities or scientific models!) had extremely reliable cultural practices that meant that generations of their people lived without destroying their habitats. so get out of here with this "oh it's human nature for us to destroy the environment."

#nature #environment #CulturalAnthropology #CulturalStudies #ClimateChange #culture

mk30, to random

on the ghost show i'm currently watching, they're at the house of a lady who fricken collects cursed-ass dolls and toys. the whole house is filled with creepy dolls and clowns.

i think our boy barri is showing on his face the emotion that all the viewers are feeling upon being introduced to one of the creepy clown dolls. 😅​

this lady keeps acquiring the creepiest dolls imaginable, meanwhile her own child won't go downstairs to the kitchen after dark. yowch!

edit: later in the episode barri says he has coulrophobia (fear of clowns). me and you both, pal.

mk30, to random

gay couples featured on UK ghost-hunting shows like they're any other family with a ghost problem is so wholesome 😆​

all these old houses in the UK are haunted. i'm convinced 😆​.

daveid, to Israel

“There’s an unravelling genocide in Gaza and we’re talking about some humanitarian pause, which is absolutely meaningless.

“I think the US doesn’t have the will and I think it doesn’t want to seem like, in Washington, there’s daylight between the United States and Israel. And because this administration has widely and foolishly, in my opinion, boxed itself in behind Netanyahu, and now is finding it difficult to distance itself without looking foolish.”

— Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/9/israel-gaza-war-live-day-34

mk30,

@daveid i think the US thought it was the big brother and israel was the little brother. unfortunately, the little brother is totally off the rails and is even more into the bombings than the big brother (who was previously the king of bombings).

mk30, to climate

the milwaukee journal sentinel gets it:

"The Indigenous communities that call this region home have been practicing good land stewardship and sharing that message with others. But for too long, that message hasn't been heard.

The tribes hold thousands of years of expertise. They believe their traditional ecological knowledge is critical to safeguarding resources and cleaning up the land, air and water for everyone. And they're keenly aware that our relationship with nature is at one of the most critical junctures in history.

The question is: Will anyone pay attention?"

"Western thinking tends to separate people from nature, removing the responsibility to protect it, and making solutions seem out of reach.

Traditional ecological knowledge prioritizes gratitude and forward-thinking solutions, helping bring back the human connection with nature and the land."

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2023/11/09/great-lakes-native-tribes-knowledge-key-to-climate-change-work/70893550007/

peterdutoit, to climate
@peterdutoit@mastodon.green avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    mk30,

    @peterdutoit @B_Whitewind personally, i've been free-floating off that cliff (like the coyote in looney tunes) for quite some time now.

    but living close to the land and living more as a part of my local ecosystem helps me feel more secure (because i'm less reliant on the systems that are doing the global biodeath). plus, being more in tune with natural cycles means that i can adapt faster when i notice changes. the "modern" way of life doesn't allow people to adapt at all.

    dasharez0ne, to random

    WHY - HTTPS://DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN

    mk30,

    @dasharez0ne you need a pair of scissors and a rubber band.

    dasharez0ne, to random

    THATS IT - HTTPS://DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN

    mk30,

    @dasharez0ne a former friend of mine set his goal to accomplish 1 thing per day. i think 1 thing is enough.

    benfulton, to ebikes
    @benfulton@urbanists.social avatar

    Someone should make a primer on . It would include:

    • Why hills aren't an issue
    • Why weather isn't an issue
    • Why age isn't an issue
    • Why cargo isn't an issue
    • Why you can ride them in big cities
    • Why you can ride them in little towns
    • Why you can ride them in the countryside

    mk30,

    @benfulton @Aranjedeath what about charging them on off-grid DC systems? every e-bike i've looked at is very heavy-duty and would not charge on my measly 24V power system...

    jenn, to random
    @jenn@pixel.kitchen avatar

    developer pals: what kind of corporate merch do you think is the least uncool

    mk30,

    @jenn soft, thin, womens' size tshirts with an acceptable design (no words) and acceptable background color (not white).

    zip-up hoodies in womens' sizes with the same design considerations (but bright colors are ok here).

    nice backpacks are handy, right? or like a laptop bag?

    anyway, i don't know how big/expensive you're considering, and i'm probably not even in your target audience, but there ya go!

    (btw, if you want to go full chaos-mode, nothing beats a commemorative decorative plate)

    mk30,

    @evan @jenn exactly

    jenn, to random
    @jenn@pixel.kitchen avatar
    mk30,

    @jenn your new skin care routine is working!

    jenn, to random
    @jenn@pixel.kitchen avatar

    Zarflecomm reports Q3 earnings up 48% YTD, forecasting an uptick in Zerd sales in the coming holiday season

    mk30,

    @jenn dang, i better get my zerd orders in NOW.

    jenn, to random
    @jenn@pixel.kitchen avatar

    just paid $40 for dinner, putting it at a valuation of 500 billion dollars

    mk30,

    @jenn i value my shack in the woods at ~$650k. for that is how much my beloved shack means to me. :flan_hug:​

    mk30, to movies

    "2010: the year we make contact": all i remember about this movie is how they have a dolphin pool in their living room. just imagine the dampness.... 😭​

    https://youtu.be/1nNiUBVwF-o?t=977

    mk30,

    @danjac i'm not watching this movie again lol. i was just reminded of the dolphin madness.

    dasharez0ne, to random

    REST IN PISS 1820-2023 - HTTPS://DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN

    mk30,

    @dasharez0ne you're so optimistic, admin! if only it ended this year...

    dasharez0ne, to random

    YOUR IN DA ♏︎ Z0NE - HTTPS://DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN

    mk30,

    @dasharez0ne heck yea!

    scorpios during scorpio season:

    gif of an animated fire dragon rising from some flames. the caption says "i live!"

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