Brian Beach @bwbeach@social.cleverlibre.org

Excellent piece by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic on the order-less world that is upon us, ushered in, in no small measure, by the abandonment of adherence to the Geneva Conventions - with blame assessed at nations around the world, including the U.S..

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/israel-war-hamas-terrorism-ukraine-russia/675590/

Next time you see someone drinking the "nothing bad has happened since the repeal of #netneutrality" kool aid, make them read this https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-10-12/fcc-seeks-to-restore-network-neutrality-rules-trump-era-deregulation

Happy day.

🤔

Title: Fudo Hill, Lake Yamanaka (1936)

Artist: Hasui Kawase

https://lake-yamanakako.com/en/see-and-do/10439 #HasuiKawase #ShinHanga #Art #Showa #Autumn #LakeYamanaka #FujiGoKo #MtFuji #MountFuji #Yamanashi #Japan

I hadn't considered some of these before….

https://electrek.co/2023/09/29/the-hidden-costs-of-using-an-electric-bike/

#ebike #hiddenCosts #sarcasm

THE PURPOSE OF A SYSTEM IS WHAT IT DOES

Dear software people,

Unicode is older now than ASCII was when Unicode was introduced. It’s not a weird new fad.

It’s complicated but so is the domain it represents. We recognize that we have to think about time zones and leap days and seconds, for instance. And it’s a cleaner abstraction when you aren’t halfhearted about it.

Sincerely,
Charlie

If you realize that staying under 1.5C is now a fantasy... and if you've learned enough to know that temperatures will almost certainly climb far higher than that within the next few decades... and if you've heard all you need to hear about climate and ecosystem tipping points... and if you understand that our modern hyper-connected just-in-time society exists on a knife edge, where any major interruption in any part of the supply chain can potentially bring everything down... and if you've therefore accepted that collapse is inevitable...

What do you do about it?

Each of us here will have to decide for ourselves. There are no right or wrong answers.

One option is to try to prepare, to become a "prepper." That might work for some people, but not for all of us.

In any case, whatever we choose, it would be ideal if we can search deep inside and find peace within ourselves. That's the message, I think, of this heartfelt essay from Alan Urban...
_____________________________

I am tired of stressing out because I’m not fully prepared. I’m *never* going to be fully prepared. No one is.

Even if you’re already living off the grid and fully self-sufficient, it’s only a matter of time before a climate disaster kills your crops or destroys your home.

If a doctor told me I had 5-15 years to live, would I spend all my free time searching for a treatment that would only buy me a few extra months?

Of course not! I would spend my time enjoying nature, playing games, listening to music, hanging out with friends and family, and going on little adventures with my kids.
What’s the point of surviving a little longer if you aren’t really living in the first place?

Sure, I could spend all my free time learning knots, canning fruit, drying herbs, cleaning guns, smoking meat, sewing clothes, growing mushrooms, making candles, building booby traps, using the ham radio, and so on and so forth — and I will do some of these things.

But if I’m being honest, most evenings I would rather watch a movie with my kids without feeling guilty that I’m not doing enough to prepare.

I’m tired of living in the future. I want to live in the now. I want to move beyond collapse awareness and into collapse acceptance. I don’t expect to get there all at once, but already I feel less burdened.
_____________________________

FULL ESSAY -- https://archive.ph/q4dwd

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

In yesterday’s class on image-text relations shared Ibn Al-Rabin's masterpiece “Le Verbe Prophétique” alongside the always brilliant Tom Gauls to demonstrate how you can do seemingly simple yet bewilderingly complex things that can only be done in comics -because comics are cool!

Very pleased to see NYT acknowledge Lise Meitner.

Meitner developed the theory of nuclear fission & newly translated letters show she was barred from sharing credit for the Nobel Prize-winning discovery because she was Jewish & a woman. nyti.ms/3ZBT4MZ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/science/lise-meitner-fission-nobel.html?unlocked_article_code=JGbPgv1zYxrgU0vMDkmURf0UPTTjuLHgCJ7dTnWeFmWslaXwaWhZQ2CW6dr-HuF0MeGqXSfyQV0XyOgw7VTABLw9yJxUG8Jd9xQMrPqsNiNcVd3g1GwsxckwQMW5awE4g9aTqtT-TQbgs1PG5BpMDmUsqcAuapMB798_kyVYaEEXUwILTeojASGJ6ZvwXa5e-LpMvbl3o47_ZtX4JPzngzAvKys52S_L9v2O8h3vH0JYmLSlYmeokZCyl1NmKI_ZXmKyeExgLGB165ODtBkLtFvRRkCofN7uTN2imyfz20LJtbVEy1RdwZ6hqJZf8pvRMlD8yz-OjfYq7wLSbNw5k4zs0hAs&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare #science #history #HistoryRemix

one of the unsung heroes in the Katalin Karikó story is her husband, Béla Francia, who believed his wife in spite of NIH denying her funding for decades and UPenn tenure because they couldn't believe her genius

just as men need a good spouse to be great; so do women.

we need more men who will validate their wives' life purpose and support them in manifesting their genius.

NORMALIZE WOMEN GENIUSES and the people who love them because they believe in them

#NobelPrize #feminism

@parismarx @techwontsaveus

I’ve always loved tech. Now, I’m a Luddite. You should be one, too.
By Brian Merchant
September 18, 2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/18/luddites-social-technology-visionaries/

We fundamentally need a new type of option: the ability to grant software privileges that are completely phony. I need to be able to *pretend* to grant an app the ability to send me notifications, but then to have all those notifications sent into the void. Untrustworthy software should not be able to know what privileges I have granted it.

“cultural evolution can take us only so far. Now we have the scientific method to tell us that, yes, we really do need to leave the cassava for two days, but, no, the volcano does not care about the goats. When we understand from first principles, we can make progress more quickly than by trial and error and imitation. But we should not look down on the kind of collective intelligence… It is what made civilisation—and a functioning economy—possible.” —Tim Hartford

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-48859333

👏!

Here in Canada, it is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. In the image below the narwhal represents the Inuit, the beaded flower represents the Métis and the eagle represents the First Nations. The stars are for the children who never came home from the residential schools. The pathway represents the road forward and the circle represents togetherness in the spirit of reconciliation. #TruthAndReconciliation #Canada #EveryChildMatters