@bakuninboys@aus.social cover
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

bakuninboys

@bakuninboys@aus.social

Am I everything you need?
You better rock your body politic now!

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

johnquiggin , to random
@johnquiggin@aus.social avatar

Personalised pricing is exploitative. It's also inefficient, with resources wasted on both sides. Historically, it's the difference between posted prices in a store and haggling in a market square. There are good reasons why people prefer stores most of the time @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@jackwilliambell @stealthisbook @johnquiggin @pluralistic I've figured out that haggling is about relationships. You're not asking for the best price, you're asking "how much do you like me vs how much do I like you". So much of the haggling I hear goes like "just give me any price that you think is fair" and "nono I would never give you a price that won't make you a profit, but you'll make a profit with $X".

The point is to have a repeat customer and to know to go back again. Paying the "full amount" likely means that as a customer, you're not interested in going back.

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@johnquiggin @stealthisbook @jackwilliambell @pluralistic I'm taking more of a David Graeber angle on this, in the context of haggling. The point of haggling is to bring in the intangibles of acquaintance to the tangibles of something being sold. The relationship is "worth" far more than a few dollars here or there. It might mean someone who comes in and has a chat over tea on a slow day. You can only think of "waste" if the only thing you consider is the money, but you can't buy an acquaintance. Someone you know and someone who knows you. Someone who can do you small favours, someone who can offer expertise or knows someone who can solve your problems.

"Haggling" isn't about the money. The communities which do it are strengthening their bonds. The money is kind of a toy. I just think this isn't very well understood in the west.

vampiress , to random
@vampiress@eigenmagic.net avatar

"Welcome to Bunnings!" (seductive)

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@vampiress I did not realise you're Australian. OMG.

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@vampiress oh, we're the Bakunin boys. We're here for the video games and Anarchy!

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@vampiress Speaking of Lesbian though, do you know about the Indieventure podcast?

vampiress , to random
@vampiress@eigenmagic.net avatar

And my FINAL link for the night before sacking out…

"Why did we abandon 4:3?" [16m] by Nostalgia Nerd is a good summary of the history of aspect ratios - and how we ended up basically settling on 16:9 as the current default. (For all media, really.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj_3w8

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@vampiress Noodle has a very good spiritual take on ratios:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlUV6y5TUko

or the 2D version at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFGKc69RN7c

bakuninboys , to random
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

Sooo... The west is desperate for oil so it kills people to steal the oil which it turns into energy which it uses to generate AI which it can then order around like a slave. That just sounds like slavery with extra steps.

bakuninboys , to random
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

A bit angry at Annabel Crabb for this hot take. She needs a lot of words and really ties herself in knots to try and draw parallels with the LNPs various "gaffe's". Albo fucked up but he's no "ditch the witch" minister for women Tony Abbott, no "you're lucky to not be shot" "I don't hold a hose" Scott Morrison. They clearly have a disdain for women, and, yes, they are misogynists. Someone who is earnestly doing what they can for women is not the same thing no matter how much rhetoric you throw at it.

Albanese was so desperate to prove he cares about gendered violence, he forgot one thing: if you're a proper leader, it's not about you - ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-01/albanese-gendered-violence-rally/103785858

bakuninboys OP ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

OK so it seems this is right wing ratchet in action. Apparently the real announcement was next to useless (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYyJ54O_Lok)

It's a bit stupid to march in solidarity with people but then not meet their demands, and is classic "fiscally conservative, socially progressive" nowadays. It's as though Albo is saying "I'd love to press this button right here to solve the problem, but I'm not going to do that."

Compare and contrast with Scomo's "I'd love to be able to shoot you all but you happen to be in a lucky country."

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

The nightmare story behind the explosive growth of single-use plastics and the petrochemical industry...

Fossil fuel companies are staring down a time when their signature product will no longer be so critical in our lives. As the world transitions slowly but surely away from fuel-guzzling cars, gas-powered buildings, and coal-fired power plants, industry execs must count on growth that comes from somewhere else — and they see their savior as plastics.

In the last decade, petrochemicals have moved from a sideshow for the oil and gas industry to a major profit machine, and the trend is expected to accelerate: The International Energy Agency predicts that plastics’ consumption of oil will outpace that of cars by 2050. In a recent report about its 20-year growth, ExxonMobil executives assured shareholders that the company could offset losses from the transition to electric cars with growth in petrochemicals.

There are climate impacts at every point of the lifecycle of plastics. The production process consumes fossil fuels both to make the plastics and maintain the high temperatures for refining and manufacturing. Methane, which is both a fuel and a potent greenhouse gas, tends to leak during drilling, transport, and refining, making it an underestimated source of pollution from the oil and gas industry.

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) estimated that last year alone, plastic production contributed the equivalent emissions of 189 large coal plants. If plastics production continues apace, the sector is on track to reach the equivalent annual pollution of 295 large coal plants in the next 10 years, and double that by 2050, according to CIEL.

An International Energy Agency report from 2018 indicated that carbon pollution from the petrochemical sector will increase 30% by 2050 over the sector’s current rate.

FULL STORY -- https://grist.org/climate/fossil-fuel-companies-are-counting-on-plastics-to-save-them/

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@breadandcircuses There is a fixed quantity of fossil fuels in the known universe, all on earth. There's not a lot left. Never is really like 50 years, but we need them to stop now.

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

Please read this opinion piece by Johan Hansson, a theoretical physicist at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. Here are a few excerpts...

I find it tragic that the world is governed exclusively by economists and is driven by economics, which is not a natural science, but just a human invention. There are physical limits to continuous economic expansion – a fact that most economists do not seem to understand.

In my view it is crazy to think that uncontrolled technological “development” and exploitation driven by unbridled and increasingly unequal capitalism will save us. It is what has plunged us into today’s crisis in the first place.

After all, if you are sitting on a tree branch that you are sawing off, and the ground underneath is burning, the solution is not to switch to a better saw – it is to stop sawing.

Role models like climate activist Greta Thunberg are trying to save those who, for some reason, have not yet understood how serious the situation actually is. To reach the climate pledge of limiting global warming below 1.5°C, the use of fossil fuels must completely cease by 2035, with zero deforestation and a drastic reduction in other greenhouse gas emissions. Yet according to the International Energy Agency, about 80% of the world’s energy today still comes from fossil fuels.

There is one option to reverse the current trend and that is to abide by Earth’s natural limits. Governments need to realize that rich countries must adapt their production and consumption to bring it below what is sustainable for the Earth-system as a whole. The only alternative to a planned and controlled downsizing is a forced and catastrophic global collapse.

Only degrowth can save us.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://physicsworld.com/a/the-climate-is-doomed-if-we-continue-to-be-fixated-by-economic-growth/

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@breadandcircuses I don't think it's the economics, but the bad economics. Carbon tax, for example, is an idea created by and advocated for by economists. Even the "OG" economist who ruined the original climate reports could be thought to be an ideologue. The study is not the problem, the dressing up of ideology as study is the problem. It is a cancer in the field.

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

Why is Business As Usual allowed to go on? Why do governments continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry and issue even more drilling permits when it seems obvious to most of us that this is the wrong course?

Why? Because governments don’t listen to people like you and me.

Instead, they listen to their “seasoned” advisors, ministers and cabinet members formerly employed by oil and gas companies. They listen to lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry, people who used to work beside them in government, part of that revolving door. And they listen to “experts” from the Chicago school of economics who promise them that we can do both: we can slowly reduce some harmful emissions AND keep our economies growing. It’s a win-win!

But it’s a devastating loss for Earth’s biosphere, for our climate and for our natural environment.

SEE -- “Climate modelling not fit for purpose”
https://www.netzeroinvestor.net/news-and-views/climate-modelling-useless-and-not-fit-for-purpose

SEE ALSO -- "Minister consulted BP over incentives to maximise oil production"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/05/minister-consulted-bp-over-right-incentives-to-maximise-oil-production-foi-reveals

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@breadandcircuses I feel: It's simply not an issue which affects the bourgeois, and therefore they do not need to take active action to fix it. Constrained resources generally make the rich richer, and a climate disaster constrains the entire environment.

In some ways, this is the wet dream of the kind of economist in the 90s who was talking about capitalising everything, including water, including air. Both are now partly capitalised.

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

Wow. Jag Bhalla offers one of the most sensible, thought-provoking, and wholly convincing articles I have ever read.

Title: "Climate Optimism Is Dangerous and Irrational"

Subtitle: "Overly-confident math models based on unrealistic assumptions are used to avoid crisis-consistent climate policies and to protect global elite privilege, while abandoning our duties to the planet’s most vulnerable."

It includes these section headings:

‣ The IPCC’s Official Modeling Malarkey

‣ The Worst Offenders: The Economists

I hope you can take the time to read the entire article. It's very long, extremely well-researched, and completely devastating.

This is near the conclusion...

Climate change is not just going to be “apocalyptic,” it’s already apocalyptic.

It’s just that the apocalypse is not something that happens to the entire world at once. Instead, the apocalyptic events are experienced mostly by the world’s poorest people (who, incidentally, have contributed the least to creating the problem). Who, witnessing the scale of flooding in Pakistan last year, could possibly say that the climate crisis is not “apocalyptic,” unless you regard Pakistanis as unpeople whose well-being simply doesn’t factor into the equation? 33 million people were displaced, and millions of homes destroyed.

When white Western elites publish books with titles like "It’s Not The End of The World" or "Apocalypse Never" or "False Alarm", what they mean is “it’s not the end of the world for people like me,” “apocalyptic conditions will never be experienced by my sector of society,” and “those of us who are among the world’s richest do not need to be alarmed.”

Of course, even these are false comforts — the mansions of Malibu are flammable, after all.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/07/climate-optimism-is-dangerous-and-irrational

#IPCC #Politics #Economics #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency

bakuninboys ,
@bakuninboys@aus.social avatar

@breadandcircuses very similar to the kind of argument Sabine Hossenfelder makes but for the climate models themselves.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •