Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org

When I started college in the 80s, tuition quadrupled before I graduated. Minimum wage was $3.35 and a semester hour was $4. When I graduated, minimum wage was the same, but a semester hour was $16/hr.

Fast forward 30 years when I go back to school to take 2 classes. Minimum wage was $7.25, a semester hour was $267. I spent about $2000 for 2 classes.

More people with more money to spend would improve the economy tremendously.

https://www.axios.com/2023/08/14/student-debt-biden-lawsuit-dismissed

🎨 Solarpunk Art Contest! 🎨

Solarpunk thrives because of all the great artists who created inviting pictures of a sustainable-technology-future.

But so far, there are few pictures of #softtechnology - cultural techniques that help us create that sweet, post-hierarchy, #solarpunk future.

So that, in short, is the aim of this contest.

You can read the idea and the rules here: https://medium.com/@lex1/solarpunk-visual-art-contest-743d07b0b009

Really looking forward to your contributions! 🤩

Boosts greatly appreciated!

#art #mastoart

@GottaLaff My social media feed is a "curator" of news for me. However, Facebook is a terrible curator and Mastodon is an excellent one, so there's no loss for me. :)

Excellent short article by an ecologist on how the biophysical demands we have placed on this planet make 'degrowth' inevitable, whether we like it or not.

"Access to fossil fuels has allowed us to temporarily overshoot biophysical limits. This lifted our population and demands on the biosphere past the level it can safely absorb. Barring a planned reduction of those biosphere demands, we will experience the same "adjustments" as other species."

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/495938/critics-of-degrowth-economics-say-it-s-unworkable-but-from-an-ecologist-s-perspective-it-s-inevitable

MoD must act to tackle impact of climate crisis on UK forces, MPs say - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/18/mod-must-act-to-tackle-impact-of-climate-crisis-on-uk-forces-mps-say "Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the defence committee, said the scientific consensus on climate change was clear and overwhelming." bravo

Where was Elon Musk when Twitter (now Xitter) was stalling the Department of Justice after Twitter got a warrant to see what was in Trump's Twitter account?

Why, he was in D.C. — meeting with Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy. Marci Wheeler tells the story, noting the following (see /2):

#Twitter #Xitter #ElonMusk #Trump #JimJordan #KevinMcCarthy
/1

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/08/17/as-xitters-lawyer-stalled-doj-elon-musk-met-with-jim-jordan-twice-and-kevin-mccarthy/

@wordshaper @davidho
If you are hypothesizing that a gigaton scale industry can only be started after we've already all decarbonized completely than you are subjecting perhaps millions of species to extinction without trying to do anything to save them, but that is of course up to you.

The few billion dollars out of hundreds and hundreds of billions in the Inflation Reduction Act going towards starting a DAC industry here in USA will not delay decarbonization one day!

We can’t take any GOP official seriously unless they declare that if Trump is their party’s nominee, they won’t support him. If they still plan to vote for Trump, they are just spineless cowards we should ignore. Agreed?

@zleap
We tend to ignore the turdsite stuff.

Since Monday, a new interest of ours is in using the peer-to-peer network (#I2P) to #democratise fediverse #contentDelivery. So when a person positively interacts with a toot the content is retained to be served by that person (if they have not flagged content and their battery is above 50%).

In this context moderation becomes self-fulfilling, and the use of I2P protects the users from survellance and targetting.

#cdns #fediMeta #glutPlug #i2pfs

As if I needed another reason to avoid Georgia.

#teachers #censorship #lgbtq

https://apnews.com/article/georgia-teacher-fired-reading-book-gender-identity-64f8428af86ed47bea093fba5167506a

This has mostly been reported as "trans women banned from women's chess" but it's much more sinister. (as if it weren't already.)

ALL trans people are targeted by this ruling. Trans men will be stripped of all chess titles won, which can only be returned to them by “changing the gender back to a woman” (from the ICF’s ruling). ALL transgender chess players will be marked as trans in their files.

If you play or know anyone who does take a stand on this. It's ugly.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/international-chess-org-trans-women?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

My take-home message from #JWST is that everything in the sky is just gravitationally lensed versions of the same 20-30 galaxies.

The future looks bright for every social media platform that is not Twitter.

https://www.dexerto.com/tech/elon-musk-says-twitter-x-will-be-removing-block-feature-2256143/

@zleap

We need to hear the huricane, us, we do.

We need to hear the alarm.

We have opposable thumbs, we have all have a neocortex

We must decide. We Must Decide.

Carbon is over.

It is an alarm.

tell everyone

#Climate

@zleap

No.

On Americas west coast?

No.

There was one 80 years ago, and in 1858.

He's going to get people killed with this.

You know what Nazis used to do in my Twitter replies before I started mass blocking?

They'd give my home address out to OTHER Nazis in my replies who had expressed an interest in murdering my family and me.

When 75% of your weekly client meeting is spent teaching them to open and edit documents it’s acceptable to start drinking in preparation for said meeting