China’s energy grid is about 80% fossil fuels. Assuming their energy mixture remains unchanged (a bad assumption as their coal usage is on the decline) it would take about 65,000 miles for an EV’s carbon output to break even with an equivalent ICE vehicle.

The waste and suffering involved in carbon intensive fuels is ongoing instead of being single event. One benefit of renewable tech is the recyclability of it’s components. Once we’re made the battery it can be recycled and died not require ongoing extractive mining forever.

EVs have a place in a just future and can do some good at this time. Alternatives to cars are still a far more important and uncomplicated solution to our climate problems

Explain Like I’m Five

Libro.fm for stuff not at the library

Bike poggies are worth looking into to keep your hands warm. Studded tires can help with slipping too

The nice thing about trials of corporations is discovery. We have evidence of Google intentionally making search worse, increasing the time spent looking for results, and this improving ad sales. All that came out in discovery.

LMGTFY In August, before the United Auto Workers strike, the Biden administration announced $15.5 billion in funding and loans to help car manufacturers redesign their factories for electric vehicle production.

That’s why I stopped using Google a few years ago. I moved to ddg and liked it pretty well. I switched to kagi earlier this year and it’s going pretty well. I still run into some captchas that refuse to let me pass. I usually just turn around at that point

Dams are scary too, I just hope people are able to decommission them slowly when the time comes. Otherwise the deluge is going to suck.

I will say my Fairphone is a good bit thicker than my work Iphone but honestly it’s not a significant downside for me. The weight is a bigger deal but still not worth the trade-off for a phone I can be confident I can repair myself

Looks like you can do it manually. Build your own Google flavor https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/134847/how-to-filter-out-a-long-list-of-sites-from-google-search

The ones that are successful at enshitification have captive markets. They’re a monopoly, monopsony, or in another kind of inelastic market. https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

Groups of humans have lived beneficially with other life before. Plenty of folks are doing it right now. The endless need for consumption and extraction are manufactured for the benefit of the few. Eliminate the system that requires endless economic growth and we can start making decisions that won’t destroy ourselves and others

I don’t think that’s how people work. An individual can decide to think critically, act selflessly, but when you’re talking about millions of people environment means so much more. A mass of people don’t just do anything. They are the result of their education, media, and religion. When all these things are shaped by people with all the money it’s no wonder that people are bigoted, short sighted, and disillusioned with politics. We live in an extremely sophisticated propaganda machine.

As long as people are sufficiently comfortable, things will continue as they are. Enough people need to find their material reality shitty enough that they’re no longer willing to eat the shit we’ve been fed all this time. Things haven’t been this concentrated since before the great depression. If we see a similar economic collapse. This time a collapse in the ad/tech market or obscene capital financialization, and we’ll finally see a similar backlash against capital. We just need to make sure we finish the job and the owners can’t slowly claw back political power again.

The only book of his I’d recommend is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It’s quite Anarcho Capitalist, and sexist in places but it’s an interesting revolution story regardless and has some interesting ideas in it

I’m not as confident with chopsticks so I use a long set of stainless tongs and find them quite useful

I’ve got a Fellow Opus so I can make espresso, as well as less fine ground coffee. It’s quieter than other grinders I’ve used. I’ve also used a 1zpresso hand grinder and found it effective. Both are overkill for pour over or drip coffee

Say her name https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia

Individuals owning something you need many people to use, like a coffee shop, large tracks of land, or an apartment building.

The vast majority of these will not come to pass if the government is not in active fear of revolutionary change. That is the only time they will be convinced to budge from the status quo.

A similar thing happened in the 30s in the US. Most people don’t know that FDR was a trust fund kid and the inheritor of a fortune. The only reason he did the reforms was to prevent the country from going commie. Enough of the other capitalists fell in line. Those who didn’t, tried to install a military dictator, it’s called the Business Plot. Some of the smarter ones founded the John Birch Society, created various nonprofits, and selected religious leaders to empower with bags of cash. From there they slowly created the media, education, religious, and cultural right wing ecosystem that claimed the political system in the 70s.

If we don’t want a similar claw-back of power we need to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We need to make sure no one is capable of corrupting media, education, religion, and culture at such a scale. I’d argue we need to eliminate the ability for people to own the means of production. After that is done almost every other problem we have as a society will be easier to manage.

Because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with landlords as people. They live in an unfair system and they’re doing what’s best for them. That’s true of the vast majority of people. Change the system, create one where doing pro social things are rewarded, and landlords will become beneficial actors. Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people. Very few people really need “the wall”