rlamacraft @rlamacraft@qoto.org

Fascinating charts about power generation by country (gift link).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/climate/global-power-electricity-fossil-fuels-coal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BU0.DsDB.wfepDJfyFvMY&smid=url-share

Look, this is silly. Yes, we would need unfeasible amounts of new wiring to recreate a modern high energy economy powered only by (green) electricity. But we would also need completely unfeasible amounts of lots of other things – most particularly metals. We are going to have to learn to live WELL in a much lower energy world – and, actually, it isn't hard to see how we achieve this.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/25/race-to-get-uk-electricity-grid-ready-for-net-zero

If God wanted us to have unlimited free energy He’d have put a giant fusion reactor in the sky.

Public transport isn't supposed to make money. It's not even supposed to break even. It's supposed to lose money and to be financed and extended from general taxes because it gives back way more than mere money.

And all the politicians know this because they keep building and maintaining streets for free

how git cherry-pick and revert use 3-way merge https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/11/10/how-cherry-pick-and-revert-work/

I can't help but notice the new Apple laptops rate "Video Playback 22 hours, Web Browsing 15 hours" under battery life.

Congratulations web developers everywhere, it's now more computationally intense to render a webpage than video playback!

Disabled people should not be required to give their PIN to anyone - friend, stranger, or shop assistant - and probably wouldn't be protected by the banks if they did and were then robbed. This is ridiculous. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-67239870

REMINDER: ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other large trained neural models are NOT "artificial intelligence", they're just stochastic parrots, remixing and regurgitating what they've been fed. There's no theory-of-mind involved, so no understanding: there's no "there" there. (A real live parrot exhibits more intelligence than this.)

Don't call it AI; call it parrot-tech. That way you'll have a better perspective on what it can (and can't) do.

What does the #solarpunk #degrowth version of that magic moment look like?

Imagine for a minute that, instead of sitting in a centuries old building that has been converted in to an overpriced burger joint, I was sharing a meal with friends and strangers in a community kitchen.

Imagine, instead of a Spaceship owned by a billionaire, it was a high altitude weather balloon launched by local hobbiests.

Maybe, instead of real time high resolution video, we have to make do with high resolution photos or low-res video, until the high resolution footage can be recovered. Maybe we just have to wait until the footage is recovered.

Maybe, instead of a brand new pocket super computer I'm watching the transmissions trickle in over ad-hoc wireless connections on recycled and repurposed hardware.

Would it have been any less magical without the rent seeking? Without the ocean boiling?

It's my general belief that when a book goes out of print and new copies are unavailable, the book should fall into the public domain.

If the publisher is no longer selling the book, then the publisher and author are no longer receiving income from it. There is really nothing left to protect, no benefit to the public in protecting a work that is unavailable. Don't want your book to fall into the PD? Make an ebook available perpetually.

(No, it's not practical. But it's nice to dream.)