scottmatter

scottmatter, 2 days ago to Futurology

Looking for examples of qualitative, ethnographic work on experiences and experiments with #degrowth

I’m scoping a new #research project and hoping to find examples to help set context for the proposed project.

#academic #ecology #anthropology #ethnography #politicalEcology #activism #climateCrisis

NicoleCRust, 2 days ago to science

When should one call themselves an X researcher?

There are so many different types of researchers. Weather researchers, climate researchers, brain researchers. And within those categories, the nuances (like memory researchers).

When someone says they are an X researcher, what does that imply to you? In other words, what qualifies? Does it just imply that they are curious about X? Or perhaps that they know a bit more about it - perhaps they've mastered some scholarly literature or they've done at least one experiment? Or maybe even published a paper in a peer reviewed journal? Or maybe even more - perhaps they have a body of work on the topic; maybe they even run a lab (and have grants to support X research).

On one hand, no one should gate keep curiosity! On the other, certain terms imply knowledge and qualifications. I'm a "researcher". But just because I know a lot about memory doesn't automatically mean that people should listen to me about climate or economics. And I once read a very good book about ecosystems, but I don't think that means I should quality as an ecosystem researcher. So what, then, might instead?

#science

kcarruthers, 3 days ago to random

We are doomed as a species 🤦‍♀️😷
https://arvr.social/@mpesce/112443991548195663

urlyman, 3 days ago to random

#climateDiary
I would really like green growth to work.

For everyone.

But for me,
from where we are,
within the terms with which we currently define economic growth…

it doesn’t look remotely realistic.

But the artefacts of pursuing it could provide a crash pad

for a bit
for some.

That’s something

scottmatter, 4 days ago to academia

WTAF?!?

"When applying a risk assessment framework to universities, research is an activity that is inherently high risk, since we are working to create something that is not yet known."

#academia #academicChatter #universities #research

scottmatter, 7 days ago to random

Trying to think through the current situation of #universities and #higherEducation and wondering where in the #enshittification process we are?

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”

Clearly we can think of universities as platforms, where many actors plays roles of producers and consumers, users and customers.

I’m wary of nostalgia about the role universities have played in the past, and of idealized models.

But I think we may be in the middle stage - the university platform in many countries seems to have been transformed into worker-production systems where, absurdly, the proto-workers go into debt to gain credentials that allow them access to labour markets.

The business customers here are employers and lenders, who gain access to a pool of people who are financially precarious from whom to extract both labour and loan repayments.

I’m not sure universities (or many businesses, for that matter) actually reach the final stage of enshittification. Though maybe the pressure to cut costs and generate operating revenue (from tuition, often from exorbitant fees charged to international students, but also via commercialization of research) is an example of moving into the third stage?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

ajsadauskas, 9 days ago to auspol

So despite climate change, Australia's federal government has just committed an extra $3.25 billion into building a toll road and a 20-lane freeway widening.

For those who wonder why Aussies think toll roads are a scam (https://aus.social/@LesserAbe@lemmy.world/112405373613706682), here's a great example of why.

"Pouring an extra $3.25 billion worth of federal funds into Melbourne’s North East Link is a good use of taxpayer money, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has insisted, despite the project’s cost doubling just a few months ago.

...

"The North East Link – which includes 6½ kilometres of tunnels – will stretch from Bulleen to Greensborough. It will widen the Eastern Freeway by up to 20 lanes.

"Allan revealed in December that the 10-kilometre toll road had more than doubled in cost since it was first announced.

"The toll road was initially budgeted at $10 billion and reassessed in 2019 at $15 billion. But the government revealed last year that the updated cost estimate was $26 billion."

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/federal-funding-to-boost-victorian-road-link-by-3-25-billion-20240509-p5ii7b.html

@fuck_cars #Urbanism #Auspol #Vicpol #roads #UrbanPlanning #transport #cities #Melbourne #Naarm #Victoria #Australia

ajsadauskas, 12 days ago to Trains

Looks like Sydney Trains is going to drop the jargon from its PA announcements.

From the SMH:

"Commuters will soon be told to “get off” the train, rather than “alight”, after Sydney Trains resolved to overhaul its station announcements to favour colloquial language.

"The phrase “this train terminates here” is also being retired, due to concerns the word “terminates” is difficult to understand."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/this-phrase-terminates-here-sydney-train-announcement-overhaul-20240502-p5foby.html

@sydneytrains #trains #sydney #nsw #transit #planning #train #UrbanPlanning

b9AcE, 12 days ago to random

Oh, great.
Went to do some laundry at the apartment complex communal laundry building, buuut... the mandatory electronic booking system has run out of storage space, so all it displays is an error page and no times can be booked, so as a consequence the laundry room can not be entered by any tenant.

Was using a pencil and paper really so bad?
Those didn't unexpectedly run out of storage space nor lock us out unless we had written down our booked time first.
Sigh.

inquiline, 16 days ago to random

"#UCLA now finds itself in a far more vulnerable place. The attack last night was pure anarchy in which violent thugs were given free rein, seemingly with the tacit support of law enforcement. It placed scores of anti-war demonstrators in the encampment in direct and serious danger.

Moreover, the actions last night do absolutely nothing to assure the security and well-being of Jewish students, staff or faculty"

https://forward.com/opinion/608479/ucla-violence-campus-protests/

gerrymcgovern, 18 days ago to random

“As a society, we have to admit that, despite 50 years of knowledge about the dynamics of the collapse of our life support systems, we have failed to initiate a systematic change to prevent this collapse. It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite technological advances, the change needed to put us on a different trajectory will also require a change in belief systems, mindsets, and the way we organize our society.”

https://tomdispatch.com/eco-collapse-hasnt-happened-yet-but-you-can-see-it-coming/

scottmatter, 26 days ago to random

Reading this fascinating profile (sorry, probably paywalled) and wondering whether the discourse around weight-loss, health, obesity, etc is mainly trying to push on the wrong leverage point. The (erroneous) idea that our bodies are a manifestation of our virtue and strength-of-will, rather than an indicator of material and energy flows through a much larger complex system, seems to be a root cause of this apparent contradiction between pro-fat and pro-weight-loss factions.

This quote from the piece stands out:

“Sole-Smith does not dispute that in some cases, excess fat may contribute to disease, but she believes that weight stigma is “the foundation of everything about weight and health that nobody has been looking at for so long.” She is part of a fractious, vocal band of activists and advocates who argue that the real epidemic is bias, not obesity. Some reject even the word “obesity,” which is a medical diagnosis, as derogatory, too tangled with a long history of sexism and racism from doctors, advertisers, and health editors to be neutral.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/well/eat/fat-activist-virginia-sole-smith.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

JohnBarentine, 26 days ago to conservative

Are some #insects evolving in response to light pollution?

"We find a stark decline in blacklight trap efficacy over 25 years of monitoring in Delaware, USA, mirrored over 10 years of monitoring in New Jersey, USA. While the precise causes of this decline remain a subject for discussion, the practical consequences are clear: insect conservationists cannot fully rely on long-term trends from entomological light traps."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10841-024-00588-x

#ALAN #Entomology #Conservation

fraying, 29 days ago to random

It's not just that Meta's AI bot posted something weird and wrong. It's that it posted anything at all in a Facebook group. This is showing what I keep saying: Facebook, a company that came to power by getting people to talk to each other, wants to replace those people with computers. They want a Facebook that talks to itself. They hate their users and want to replace them, and any company that implements "AI" in this way wants the same thing.

https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-told-parents-group-it-has-a-disabled-child/

scottmatter, 1 month ago to ai

Love the #PsychicHotline corrective to #AI hype, and now have more than just #Salami to throw at the situation.

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

grimalkina, 1 month ago to random

Realizing how many software engineering conversations pull probability estimates out of thin air is gonna radicalize me, a person who assumes that every probability estimate is OF COURSE based on empirical data and real statistics

scottmatter, 1 month ago to ai

If #AI #salami can do our jobs, maybe it’s less about machines having human capabilities and more about those jobs being dehumanizing…

scottmatter, 1 month ago to random

Space seems to be three dimensional.

Is time one-dimensional?

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-think-about-time-to-understand-your-hopes-and-regrets

ronanmcd, 1 month ago to climate

I actually saw a marketing claim today that a company's partner organisation, Dublin Airport, is carbon neutral since 2020.
These people are so stupid they have no idea no one is taken in by them. Dubin airport? With the planes? Carbon neutral? GTFO
#ClimateChange #carbon #transport

gretared, 1 month ago to random

Apparently we are now calling personalization “AI” in meetings and goddamnit. Also I saw someone use LLM in a way that can only be interpreted as llama without vowels.