monkic

joined 1 year ago
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AP Shares Guidelines Prohibiting Staff From Using AI to Write Publishable Content in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

LLM AI bases its responses from aggregated texts written by ... human authors, just without having any sense of context or logic or understanding of the actual words being put together.

MIT scientists propose power storage using cement blocks in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is really exciting if it works out and gets commercialised widely! One thing I’m not sure I understand is whether this requires entirely new cement, or if somehow the carbon black and capacitors can be mixed into existing cement structures (especially roads)? As mentioned in the article, cement is a high emission product and we already have so much of it in the world.

Giant space umbrella tethered to asteroid could protect Earth from climate crisis, study says in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for sharing this!

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TikTok stars clean up: the influencers saving Indonesia’s polluted rivers and beaches (www.theguardian.com)
 

Pandawara formed in 2022 after flooding caused by rivers clogged with rubbish damaged their homes – now they are national celebrities

The profound loneliness of being collapse-aware in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@RealAccountNameHere some of the words here were almost verbatim what I tell my husband and therapist. In a way I’m really glad to see I’m not alone globally, but I still feel hurtful and profound loneliness where I live. I feel so detached from the present and everyone else, watching them go through life business as usual without any willingness to do the smallest sacrifice to their privileged comfortable lives to do whatever little bit an individual can in the face of collapse.

‘Climate Optimism’ Is Dangerous and Irrational in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@gothicdecadence I feel you too, friend! I have definitely spent many days (years?) feeling paralysed and helpless. It’s definitely hard watching what feels like everyone else in my country/part of the world/social media just continuing to live as if the future will remain as luxurious and comfortable as it is today. For my own sake I’ve decided to just focus on what I can do—it’s not a lot l, but I have the privilege of being able to learn a little here and there to better put myself in a position of contributing.

‘Climate Optimism’ Is Dangerous and Irrational in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

@gothicdecadence the article argues that the faux-optimism created by faulty IPCC models/assumptions has led to less urgent (and also unjust) policymaking. We need to know what we’re dealing with if we want to start solving it.

It’s also not true that there isn’t hope—even if the worst situation happens, there’s still harm reduction that can be done. All these require knowledge of what’s happening and would happen—instead, the “optimistic” models have caught many people, including scientists who relied on the models, by surprise.

I personally am done acting like I’m helpless even though I know I am one person and my sole contribution doesn’t matter. I’ll do what I can to the best of my abilities and circumstances to reduce my own harm to the planet (including by sacrificing my own lifestyle standards and expectations) and encourage the people in my life to do the same, and in the meantime also learning whatever skills I need in order to best serve and care for my community in the near future (ie growing food, etc).

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‘Climate Optimism’ Is Dangerous and Irrational (www.currentaffairs.org)
 

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.

Hello Photographers and Videographers! in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If you live in a humid and wet country like I do (South East Asia), dry boxes are crucial to help stave off fungus growth. I use an electric dry box—the brand is Samurai, but honestly most dry box brands around my country seem to be rebranded Chinese OEMs so as long as it works it shouldn’t matter. It’s good habit to keep your cameras and lenses dry and making sure they’re dry before storing them away.

I’m a professional photographer but I don’t have insurance for my photography equipments because of the small insurance market for freelancers in my country. The cost of the insurance would be disproportional to the costs of my equipments. But if I have those $10k+ lenses, then it might start to make sense for me to look into it. Some home insurances might cover theft/fire/flood damage to your belongings, but read the fine prints.

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An inconvenient truth: you can’t sell the green revolution to people who can’t afford it | Gaby Hinsliff (www.theguardian.com)
 

In a cost of living crisis, heat pumps and electric cars are out of reach for most. Britain needs to fund a genuinely fair transition – and fast, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff

Some of the resistance is undoubtedly down to the Mr Toad tendency, enraged by any attempt to prise their hands off the steering wheel. (Though clean air zones aren’t strictly speaking designed to force motorists on to the bus, by painting driving as a filthy, antisocial habit, they undoubtedly offer a hefty nudge in that direction). But there remains an awkward grain of truth in the argument that – ironically, much like air pollution itself, which is most lethal to the poorest living on busy arterial roads – clean air zones are toughest on people who can least afford to comply. That means delivery drivers buzzing around on cheap mopeds; white van drivers; shift workers dreading the day their knackered old banger fails its final MOT, because it’s the only way to get home safely in the middle of the night; and also small high street businesses struggling to stay afloat, worried this might be the final death knell for customers driving into town.

None of this changes the fact that pollution kills, cities need to wean themselves off cars, and the climate crisis poses an existential threat. But if going green costs money that not everyone has, then ultimately there are only two plausible political responses. The first is utterly unconscionable, since it means reneging on net zero. The second is to find the money for a genuinely fair transition, and fast.

This isn’t just about Ulez. There are some alarmingly big bills looming for millions of households in the name of saving the planet, and however clearly people might see the moral case for getting rid of their gas boiler or their old petrol car at a time when forest fires are ravaging Greece and flash floods are hitting Spain, money is money. If you genuinely can’t afford to switch, few things are more alienating than being made to feel guilty about that by people shocked at how hot it was on the beach in Sicily this year.

While it's UK-centric, I think the points in this article apply generally and globally, and we cannot shirk away from the fact that wealth must be redistributed fairly to allow people to reduce their carbon footprint. Normal people shouldn't be made to choose between their current urgent survival AND their communal/future survival. "Going green" should not be a privilege.

With the way the world's going, is there even a point to anything anymore? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's how I've been feeling for years now, intensified with the fact that there's not enough being done even as things escalate faster than expected. As someone with lifelong anxiety and depression, what I've learned is to not focus on my own helplessness and lack of self-worth, but instead what I can do and contribute in any little way to any person or creature. It's up to every one of us to give our own life meaning, and I'm trying to choose kindness.

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People have received third-degree burns due to the massive heat wave (www.ladbible.com)
 

Extreme heatwaves are sweeping Europe and the United States with some people being treated for third degree burns.

In Phoenix, Arizona, mobile clinics are treating homeless people suffering from third-degree burns and severe dehydration.

The city has already endured 15 days in a row of temperatures exceeding 43.3 degrees Celsius.

In the desert city of Palm Springs, homeless people have been left to deal with the extreme heat themselves, with only 20 beds available in the sole shelter.

Roman Ruiz, the city's homeless services coordinator, told CBS News homeless residents struggle in normal heat to find enough shade.

"I don't know how anyone can do it really," he said.

"I feel so bad, and yet there's not much I can do."

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With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth | George Monbiot (www.theguardian.com)
 

We face an epochal, unthinkable prospect: of perhaps the two greatest existential threats – environmental breakdown and food system failure – converging, as one triggers the other.

There are plenty of signs […] suggesting that the global food system may not be far from its tipping point, for structural reasons similar to those that tanked the financial sector in 2008. As a system approaches a critical threshold, it’s impossible to say which external shock could push it over. Once a system has become fragile, and its resilience is not restored, it’s not a matter of if and how, but when.

[…]

It could scarcely be more screwed up. The effort to protect Earth systems and the human systems that depend on them is led by people working at the margins with tiny resources, while the richest and most powerful use every means at their disposal to stop them. Can you imagine, in decades to come, trying to explain this to your children?

Looking back on previous human calamities, all of which will be dwarfed by this, you find yourself repeatedly asking “why didn’t they … ?” The answer is power: the power of a few to countermand the interests of humanity. The struggle to avert systemic failure is the struggle between democracy and plutocracy. It always has been, but the stakes are now higher than ever.