AI is an unasked for tech looking for a problem to solve. It uses an incredible amount of energy.
Blockchain was an unasked for tech looking for a problem to solve. It uses an incredible amount of energy.
Pursuit of endless growth is pursuit of a cancer.
Moore's Law is dead and we have reached a happy plateau. We dont need more computing power. We can do so much now. If you need something to chew on, work on making it more efficient. Make the code smaller and faster and lighter.
@Julian_1_2_3_4_5 I would be careful with calling it #solarpunk , the movie has a lot of implicit neoliberal assumptions and puts a lot of technosolutionist proposals, doesn't show a lot of communities.
It's a great introduction to the idea of not giving up though! I personally recommend the movie to people who have had no experience with hopeful climate fiction at all.
The company owning the movie is pretty hard to work with as well, we failed to get educational screenings multiple times :/
Have you ever thought about how dinosaurs lived on a warm, swampy Earth and how we live on one that’s cold enough to keep pretty much the entirety of Greenland and Antarctica buried under kilometers-thick sheets of solid ice and wondered, hmm, how did we get from there to here? The short answer is that it took 50 million years of declining atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and dropping temperatures, not to mention building an ice sheet or two. For the longer story of the last 50 million years of climate change, including some of the reasons why, catch this episode of our podcast with Dr De La Rocha! You’ll hear about plate tectonics and continental drift, silicate weathering, carbonate sedimentation, and the spectacular effects the growth of Earth’s ice sheets have had on Earth’s climate. There are also lessons here for where anthropogenic global warming is going and whether or not its effects have permanently disrupted the climate system. Fun fact: the total amount of climate change between 50 million years ago and now dwarfs what we’re driving by burning fossil fuels, and yet, what we’re doing is more terrifying, in that it’s unfolding millions of times faster.
!!Nerd alert!! If you're interested in the primary scientific literature on the subject, these four papers are a great place to start:
-Dutkiewicz et al (2019) Sequestration and subduction of deep-sea carbonate in the global ocean since the Early Cretaceous. Geology 47:91-94.
-Müller et al (2022) Evolution of Earth’s plate tectonic conveyor belt. Nature 605:629–639.
-Rae et al (2021) Atmospheric CO2 over the last 66 million years from marine archives. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 49:609-641.
-Westerfeld et al (2020) An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years. Science 369: 1383–1387.
This episode’s guest is Dr Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and Environment, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and the School of the Environment at Trent University. Dr Pasek is co-founder of the Low Carbon Research Methods Group, and she talks to Ariel all about what Low Carbon Research is (and can look like!), the “carbon footprint” of academic research, new innovative ways for research to respond to the climate crisis, the importance of zines, and even hosting her own solar server in her backyard!
We're releasing today another bonus clip from behind the Patreon paywall. This originally was produced by Christina as a bonus clip to follow the early release of S5E5; supporters on Patreon at the Companion tier and higher gain access to bonus content that is either excerpted from episodes or prompted by their content every other week. Here is the original description:
"I didn't have any extra clips from the interview with the organizers of The Solarpunk Conference. Instead, here's me (Christina) reading my contribution to The Solarpunk Conference Journal that was published after last year's conference.
Enjoy!
PS- you can catch videos of many of the presentations from the conference on The Solarpunk Conference's YouTube channel (including the presentation/panel that @arielkroon was a part of)."
I am a Nebula Award finalist, and the Nebula conference is this week. My book, THE INN AT THE AMETHYST LANTERN, is nominated for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for younger fiction (young adult in this case). So what's the book about? I've got you covered: https://jendiagammon.com/2024/03/18/about-the-inn-at-the-amethyst-lantern/
@jendiagammon For those looking at the post above, I just started reading "The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern" (finally) and it is a really a lot of fun! A very imaginative world with unique visuals. It has especially fantastic use of colors - I feel like the images in my mind are vividly painted as I read. I am a big #Solarpunk fan but this is my first #Lunarpunk work and I'm quite digging the vibe. Many more things to say but will save them for when I'm finished!
Ich suche utopische Kurzgeschichten oder Romane, die in einer Nachhaltigen und Postfossilen Gesellschaft spielen, welche auch wir zeitnah erreichen könnten. Gerne Teilen! #solarpunk#scifi
When I’m thinking about good (somewhere between low- and high) #tech, I’m also thinking HEPA. Randomly fabricated fibers that randomise and trick the movements of particles.
"If we’re going to have a meaningful debate about AI that results in good policy and good products... I think it’s time to fight sci-fi fire with sci-fi fire. I think we need the Butlerian Jihad... In the deep lore behind the Dune universe, humans collectively decided to abandon and prohibit AI and even computation more broadly... In a way, this is another vision of 'AI from the movies'"
So at the food distribution point where I participate, I don't let any food go back to the food bank (where it runs the risk of being thrown out). I want it distributed.
So we never send any leftover food back. Instead we put it into the community fridge and pantry. Local neighbors pick it up and put it to good use quickly.
But that got me thinking. The food bank works with other orgs and has other distribution points. I spoke with the guy who drives the food bank truck out and said I could hit up each of those places at the end of their runs and take any food left over and put it in the fridge.
He thought it was a great idea!
He showed me his and other drivers schedules. (Its announced on the food bank app so its easy!). I'll get a feel for the schedules after a bit. This would be a good thing to organize other volunteers around as well.
So now I have an excuse to go visit the other groups handing out food and start building connections to the community fridge/pantry!!!
I think its about time to spin up my own group. Focus on logistics and moving food around. Set up the food rescue program too. Gonna start in earnest around mid to late July.
Get the Solarpunk classic The Lost Cause By @pluralistic iis for sale for $2.99 for the rest of the month. It’s been on my #toread list for a while, so I’m excited to pick this up. Anyone else in to #solarpunk? It was super popular on Scuttlebutt but not so much here.
In the recently resurfaced debate about #solarpunk (or lunarpunk) aspects of #web3 and #blockchain I'm intrigued by one aspect:
Why do we accept being given a solution without outlining the problem in the first place?
Why do we listen to #DAO pitches instead of asking ourselves how we want to run our communities, how do we want to make decisions, vote, discuss things?
Just stating the problem first would make it very clear that there are multiple technical solutions, not just the Web3.
In my definition of #technology in #solarpunk I do call it the "crystallized community", as a sum of all the decisions, tradition, culture, because the tools arise from the needs and the conscious choice, not the other way around.
Blockchain and DAOs are an anti-thesis of Solarpunk not just because of their carbon footprint, but because they bundle everything together and make choices for you, pretending there was never a choice in how your community could operate.
I lot of terrible things have happened in my life recently (and a fresh one last week!) that I have not and will not post here.
But the result is that my old life is gone. Completely.
I'm still going to work in infosec. Still hack. Still pentest. At least for the few years. It's a solid job. But my family is gone and atomized (Some deaths. Some breakups. Custody issues. Etc. Et al.)
I've made it through. And that was not a given. I only made it through because friends and family swarmed me. Would not let me be alone - despite my best efforts.
If I can get through the next several months financially... which I think I can - I will begin a new life.
Moving forward, I am going to dive heavily into Buddhism. There is pragmatism, care, love, community, and a framework there that is vastly different from the high demand religions that I grew up with.
I'm going to see if I can pursue becoming a Buddhist priest. And I want to dive even more so in solarpunk initiatives. I've had a lot of success with that and want to continue seeing it through.
Building things locally, while streamlining and establishing cooperations and coordinating globally.
I think a Buddhist priest building post-scarcity programs and forging into new economic paradigms is a solid new life.
This is a plan. A direction. And there will be deviations, changes, and adaptations moving forward.
Oh, just out here picking up abandoned bikes from the side of the highway, muling them home using human power, fixing them up and giving them away, as per usual #SolarPunk#buynothing#RightToRepair
We wanted to have a quiet afternoon and so we went to go to Kapej Coffee on the Brown Line. It is one of our favorite places in #Chicago with some of the best #coffee in the city. In fact, the owner was roasting coffee fresh in a little alcove off the counter.
Ok. Now that the seed library is built, I'm moving on to the next project.
Food Rescue.
Currently, I volunteer at my local community refrigerator and pantry....
....and by that I mean a literal refrigerator and pantry that sits outside.
Anyone can come up to it and put food in. And anyone can come up to it and take food out. No means testing. Mutual aid. Give a food, take a food.
Right now, it's being stocked with individual donations (people buying extra food while doing their own grocery runs or putting in extra food that they thought they were going to use but ended up not using all of it), overflow from food pantry distributions, and home garden and hydroponics for fresh produce.
That's great and I want to expand that, especially the home garden and hydroponics for fresh produce (see the Seed Library and hydroponics bin build pinned posts for efforts in that area).
All of that said, my local town is not doing a lot of food rescue.
We have grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants throwing away good food at the end of the day.
I want to get that food away from the dumpsters and into the community fridge / pantry.
So that's my next project. And I'll document it here. (I swear at some point, I'll put all of this together up on hacker(dot)solar - I just really suck at that. I don't know why.)
I'm currently looking at foodrescue(dot)us 's web app for food rescue coordination. It costs money, but I'm not sure how much. I'll find out and let y'all know.
I'll start with grocery stores. Then convenience stores. Then finally hot food from restaurants.
Cool thing. A lot of people worry about liability issues. That's not a thing anymore!!!
In the US, we have the Bill Emerson Food Donation Act that removes liability from donators, gleaners (food rescuers), and distributors:
"The Bill Emerson Food Donation Act establishes Federal protection from civil and criminal liability for persons involved in the donation and distribution of food and grocery products to needy individuals when certain criteria are met. In order to receive protection under the Act, a person or gleaner must donate in good faith apparently wholesome food or apparently fit grocery products to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals. The Act also provides protection against civil and criminal liability to the nonprofit organizations that receive such donated items in good faith. "
"The researchers outlined guidelines for governments to provide long-distance larval drifters, like #urchins and #lobsters, as well as #MigratorSpecies, like #turtles and #sharks, with protected stopovers along coastal corridors. "
2040 a hopeful and realistic Solarpunk movie about our future ( imdb.com )
I loved the Movie 2040 by Damon Gameau. It’s really hopeful and shows us it’s possible to have a better future, the most important message today....