Liberals ≠ Socialists

My dude, do you know what statistics is? The paper doesn’t say anything of that sort. Measuring the proportion of people who hold a particular belief is nothing like what you describe

Solidarity fist bump.

You are committing a logical fallacy called “affirming the consequent”.

Props to you for admitting you spoke prematurely

Indeed. Whilst many people (such as AlsaValderaan, based on their comment) understand this, there are also people who don’t seem to understand that unpredictability and more extreme weather is evidence of climate change, not against it.

As you say, “global warming” hasn’t been used by scholars in and adjacent to the field in many years, but the term and it’s connotations seem to have stuck in people’s heads. As a scientist, I have an instinct to say “this is a messaging problem, and if scientists better understood how to use rhetoric, perhaps people would have a better understanding of climate change”. However, I think that’s an incorrect instinct that only exists as a form of “cope”.

I do think that scientists, on average, need to get better at communicating their research to laypeople and policy makers. However, it low-key feels like victim blaming to lay responsibility for muddy public understanding of climate change, given that the primary cause of this is moneyed interests who stand to profit from the ongoing rape of the planet’s ecosystems.

My expertise isn’t in a climate related field, but I have friends who do work in that sphere, and it feels like there’s a sort of collective trauma amongst researchers (I mean above and beyond the despair that many of us feel at political negligence exacerbating the climate crisis). I can’t imagine how it must feel to go to a conference and present some research that says “this extremely specific thing that I am a hyper specialised expert on is at risk of permanent loss, here is what needs to happen”, and find that despite unanimous agreement, and everyone else there is shit scared because they have their own hyper specific objects of expertise that are at risk for the exact same reasons; nothing will change because you’re preaching to the choir.

There are scientists who are good at shouting at public policy makers, but they’re outnumbered and outspended by the people and corporations that want more profit. Sometimes people fight for years to implement a particular scheme, but it gets corrupted along the way — usually not from a malicious sabotage of climate action kind of way, but through the kind of bureaucratic incompetence that arises when the people steering the ship fundamentally don’t care about the aims of a project. Policies get progressively watered down, or completely distorted from their original aims. It’s depressing as hell.

Honestly, the only reason I’m still alive is spite. I don’t think climate change will eradicate humanity, but it will put countless lives and ecosystems in jeopardy. For all my privilege, I know that to the ones in power, I am just as much an acceptable sacrifice on the altar to profit as a Bangladeshi textile worker, or a Congolese cobalt miner. The assholes with money are probably going to win this war against most of the planet, but ironically, they’re some of the least well equipped for climate resilience — money only gets you so far at the end of the world, after all.

My car’s infotainment system (a newish Honda Jazz) is running Android (which I understand is based on Linux — this is me saying “yes, and…” to the OP). I’m unsurprised by this, but also for some reason, I find it quite funny how it doesn’t look like Android — until you go delving in the settings and hidden menus to discover that the developer’s settings (and how you enable them) is exactly the same as my phone.

They get more human written text, which is one of the most powerful things in their doomed attempt to forestall model collapse

This says it well. I also like how the character’s fucked up backstory is inescapably linked to the fucked up backstory of the world he lives in. It it were just that he was a fuck-up, then it wouldn’t be as compelling. What I really love is that whilst he certainly is the victim of his own choices, it’s much more the case that he’s a victim of his material circumstances (rather like how I am currently still in bed due to a combination of poor choices, and material circumstances making consistent good choices very hard)

I enjoyed it because many RPGs are a power fantasy, where you’re an epic hero who saves the world. Some of them present you with a blank slate character you can shape however you wish, and whilst that can be fun, I find I have more fun when I’m playing a character with some history.

In Disco Elysium, you’re playing as someone whose history is fucked up, so good choices often aren’t an option. He’s not a typical hero, and he’ll be lucky if he can save himself, let alone the world — the world is even more fucked up than he is, riddled with scars from a long dead, hopeful era. Even though at the start of the game, both the player and your character have no knowledge of history, you can’t escape it.

A huge part of why I like it is because I can see what it’s going for, and I’m here for that. Even if I didn’t personally click with it, I think I would respect it for having things to say and committing to it. What’s an RPG that you have clicked with or loved what it was going for? If you’re not into Disco Elysium, then I suspect that your answer might be a game that would pull me out of my comfort zone in interesting ways.

“dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.”

I think this is a pretty harsh statement, but it did make me laugh, because part of why I vibed with Disco Elysium so much is because a couple years before, I actually bumped my head that I lost my memory and couldn’t even remember who I was.

I will always back you up bratan! You and I are bratannoi – brothers. Brothers fight. But when they’re done fighting, you know what they do? They party. They fucking party!

“future regrets” is such a trippy phrase

I conclude that Yorkshire should become an independent country

That was a delightful video; thanks for sharing

I give out live usbs like they’re candy (to friends who are Linux curious)

In many ways, we’re already at that point. Crises often don’t come out of nowhere, and if we think of crisis as a sliding scale rather than a binary, I would argue we’re already in a time of crisis, and have been for a while.

That’s why I agree with you. I am often miserable and demoralised, and I often feel suicidal because of my personal hopelessness. The goodness you describe is a huge part of why I’m still here. It gives me a wider sense of hope, because many of the best people I know are just as aware of the harms caused by the unchecked power of assholes, but the worse that the world gets, the more steadfastly good they are. Most of them are as depressed as me, but they seem to draw strength from the defiance of giving a fuck about morality in a world on fire.

It invokes a sense of duty in me that helps bolster my own resilience. When I was a suicidal teen, I felt like I was staying alive solely for other people, and this wasn’t a productive or healthy way to live. This sense of duty feels different, because it’s not framed as if I am a living martyr, sacrificing my own happiness for other people. Instead, it’s grounded in the recognition that we’re all struggling, and I actively want to stand alongside the defiant good people. Given the shakiness of my resolve, I don’t feel like I have much concrete to add to their efforts, but perhaps I can show them that even when it feels like you’re losing the big fight, the very act of resistance can galvanise the hearts of people who had already given up. After all, I’m still here.

I keep a small list titled “illegal heroes”, and these hackers are on that list. It’s bullshit that they’re being hounded like this.

I don’t know what the fuss is about. It’d be a different matter if the person who had drawn the swastika had voted for the AFD candidate. However, clearly this was done in a disparaging manner

Gotta write that shit down for it to count.

Thanks for this, I appreciate it