Climate legislation is only dead when supporters give up. So what if Manchin won’t support climate action? He’s the quintessential example of a conservative Democrat. Vote him out if you can, protest if you can, and speak out against him so that YOU get to write the first draft of his disgraceful legacy.
Don’t despair when you read claims like “Climate legislation is dead”, get mad. There is no force more powerful than an angry public. Use your frustration to contribute to progressive organizations in any capacity that you are able, because the future you want to see must be built by you.
When your friends or relatives mention gas prices redirect those conversations into how the opportunity to decarbonize painlessly was squandered decades ago. When the US didn’t take sufficient climate action 20 years ago the pain we’re feeling today became inevitable.
When you hear inflation being talked about redirect that conversation to a discussion about how car/truck dependent our cities and supply chains are. Trains, bicycles, and feet don’t give a fuck about the price of gas. When gas prices go up ALL prices increase because most of our transportation and industry is designed to use fossil fuel.
Everyone outside the US can have these conversations too. Get involved in your community because more lives than your own may eventually depend on the relationships and organizational foundations you build today.
Don’t focus on fighting the past, focus on building a future.
Summary of the bill from Congress.gov -
This bill prohibits certain large online platforms from engaging in specified acts, including giving preference to their own products on the platform, unfairly limiting the availability on the platform of competing products from another business, or discriminating in the application or enforcement of the platform’s terms of service among similarly situated users.
Further, a platform may not materially restrict or impede the capacity of a competing business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features. The bill also restricts the platform’s use of nonpublic data obtained from or generated on the platform and prohibits the platform from restricting access to platform data generated by the activity of a competing business user. The bill also provides additional restrictions related to installing or uninstalling software, search or ranking functionality, and retaliation for contact with law enforcement regarding actual or potential violations of law.
The bill establishes affirmative defenses for the prohibited conduct.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice must designate whether an entity is a platform covered by the bill, and both must carry out enforcement activities.
The bill also provides for civil penalties, injunctions, and the forfeit of profits for repeat offenders.
Hearing a song I liked and missing the opportunity to listen to it again later is not a serious issue, just another piece of straw on the camels back.
My point is that a lot of little inconveniences add up to a significant life-style change, especially when the end-user is supposed to choose that life-style change.
Just a few weeks ago I used a dumbphone for 2 days in the US.
During that time
- I was called for work while out and the caller expected me to review their email and respond while on the phone with them. This would have been easy with a smartphone, but instead I had to go home, review their email, then call them back the next day. They were annoyed by the inconvenience and delay.
- I was called to schedule a doctors appointment while out, I needed to call the office back when I got home because I could not check my calendar without a smartphone.
- I was working on a project and wanted to take a photos for memories / share when explaining why the project was taking so long. I needed to leave the project site, go home, grab my camera, return to the site, take the photos, upload them to my computer, then email them.
- I wanted to log in to an account while away home, but I was unable to access my password manager or email without my smart phone.
- My family went out to eat and I needed to borrow one of their smartphones because I could not scan the QR code for the menu and the restaurant did not have paper menus available.
- I needed to deposit a check, so I would have driven nearly 20 miles round trip if I had not used remote deposit on my smartphone instead.
- I wanted to listen to an audiobook from the library, but I need to use the overdrive / libby app in order to do this.
- I heard a song on the radio and I could not use Shazam to identify it.
- I needed to display a ticket for an event, so I had a friend save my ticket on their smartphone and they used their phone for both of us.
- I needed to read a smart home monitor, but the only interface available was a smartphone app.
- Discord kept crashing on my desktop, so I used my smartphone instead.
I gave up using a dumbphone after only 2 days because smartphones are integrated so deeply into modern society that it felt prohibitively difficult to function without one where I live in the United States. Everywhere a person goes it is assumed they have a smartphone on them, so anyone without a smartphone needs to find workarounds for simple tasks and is forced to navigate dozens of inconveniences every day.
I am spoiled and addicted to the convenience that smartphones provide, but my experience persuaded me that systemic changes, instead of individual choices, are necessary to ultimately solve these problems. Evidently, it can not be expected that a significant portion of the public will choose to abstain from the convenience smartphones offer even when they are educated about the harms caused by smartphones. Therefore, the only solution I can imagine is regulation to mitigate those harms, and humane technology design that solves the problems of profit-maximizing technology design.
The reason for the opioid epidemic is not because the medical system has clamped down on prescriptions.
Pharmaceutical companies lied to doctors and patients about how addictive opioids are. Then, a series of studies concluded that many people are living with untreated chronic pain; so prescribing opioids more frequently was advised by medical associations and public health authorities.
It was only a matter of time until the truth about opioids’ addictiveness became obvious and undeniable. Only THEN did the “whole” medical system start clamping down on opioids.
The Sackler Family (owners of Perdue Pharma) directly caused the deaths of millions of innocent people by misleading doctors, patients, and health authorities. The Sackler Family is spending millions of dollars to launder their reputation and prevent the public from associating them with the opioid epidemic and the millions of lives they ruined for profit.
Look into Nextcloud calendar, you can use the default calendar application on your phone / desktop while offline and it will automatically sync with your Nextcloud when connected to the internet. Hetzner Storage Share is an inexpensive Nextcloud host with calendar enabled by default.
I believe the greatest factor is community. In my experience wealthier people, and wealthier areas, tend to have less community and weaker interpersonal bonds because they do not depend on one another to the same extent that poorer people do.
When your neighbor needs to borrow a tool, you need to sleep at a friend’s place, or you give a friend a ride to work you’re building relationships. The web of relationships between all the neighbors in a community forms a culture.
When people become wealthier they don’t need to borrow tools because they can buy their own, they don’t need to crash at a friend’s place when they can stay in a hotel, and they don’t need a ride to work if they have their own transportation.
In my experience some of the isolating effects of wealth accumulation can be mitigated with infrastructure that increases the inter-dependence, trust, and fraternity between neighbors. A few examples are walkable cities, cooperative organizations, social clubs, public parks, etc…
Companies have brands, people have personalities.
I have read too many books evangelizing hustle culture, and I have listened to too many MBAs preaching “selling yourself” by “promoting your personal brand”. It’s bullshit, I’m a human being - I don’t want to sell myself, or spend countless hours crafting a narcissistic professional persona.
All I want is meaningful work, a modest livelihood, and a stable community. None of which requires fame, and it doesn’t require tracking my every keystroke. Exploitative tech companies are so desperate to chase infinite growth that they will sacrifice and erode everything that makes life worth living in pursuit of profit.
Is it really any wonder that people just want to use the internet without being data-mined, judged, and manipulated?
Unfortunately, this is old news and not as exciting as it sounds. Doing a search on Youtube yields videos from almost 10 years ago with ordinary people filming time lapses of mealworms / superworms digesting styrofoam.
One problem is that it takes a large number of the worms to digest a small amount of plastic, they take a long time to do it, and they do not fully digest or absorb the plastic on a single pass through their digestive system. The worms must eat their own poop multiple times before the microplastics are sufficiently broken down enough to be released into a natural environment.
A diet of styrofoam is also (probably) unhealthy for the worms, and it is unclear if there is a safe and effecient way to dispose of the dead worms.
The researchers are interested in isolating and synthesizing the enzyme that allows the worms to break down styrofoam, I think this is a great start and definitely deserves grant money, but even in a hypothetical scenario where commercial styrofoam composting is viable today it would not be enough to solve the problem of styrofoam pollution. Reducing (and ultimately eliminating) the use of disposable plastics is the only viable way to address pollution.
I’m not sure if this is exactly the sort of solution you need, but check out Loomio. It is open source and self-hostable.
AMD’s APU, and Intel’s UHD graphics are marketing terms for integrated graphics processors. It just means that the CPU has a built-in GPU.
When purchasing components, or choosing a prebuilt system, you can simply select a CPU that has “integrated graphics”.
Even a modest graphics card will drastically out perform any integrated graphics chip, but if your sons are not playing hardcore resource intensive games then you can save a lot of money not buying a GPU. You can also always purchase a GPU later for a birthday / next Christmas to enable them to play more intensive games.
Try searching your local craigslist / classifieds market for preowned PCs. It’s usually not too difficult to find a good deal on a second hand PC as long as you’re ok with hardware that is a few years out of date.
It is not a Windows PC out of the box, but the Steam Deck is one of the best value prebuilt options available, and since you won’t need it until December the long waitlist shouldn’t be an issue.
If your sons are not playing hardcore games, and are fine turning the graphics settings down, then you can save a lot of money by not buying a graphics card. Intel’s integrated graphics, and AMD’s APUs have gotten powerful enough that I have not used a dedicated GPU since ~2017. You won’t be able to run a 4k display or VR on one, but most games at 1080p with the graphics settings turned down are perfectly playable.
Rclone is the best program I have used for any cloud storage needs, you should be able to mount your google drive using rclone. It is a CLI program, but it is very easy and intuitive to use. As an added bonus you can skip cryptomator and use rclone’s built in encryption.
A great book on the topic is Brotopia by Emily Chang.
This is exactly the type of info I was hoping to find, thank you!
I found only one Low-Income Designated CDFI in my area. I think there’s a real void here. I need to find a volunteer opportunity or another way to connect with financial leaders in my area to learn more about my local credit unions and maybe help direct more funds towards serving the community.
It’s kind of disappointing that there aren’t better options in my area, but it is also reassuring to know I’m not just cynical! Thank you!
Check out https://frame.work/ it’s a pretty high-end and completely modular laptop.
I am not aware of any crypto consensus algorithm that is not regressive. This is an argument against all cryptocurrencies and blockchains, not just Proof of Stake.
What has proven far more equitable than any decentralized consensus algorithm is a fiat currency issued and controlled by an institution accountable to a democratic constituency.
This is not correct.
MYTH: The natural immunity I get from being sick with COVID-19 is better than the immunity I get from COVID-19 vaccination.
FACT: Getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
Emerging evidence shows that getting a COVID-19 vaccine after you recover from COVID-19 infection provides added protection to your immune system. One study showed that, for people who already had COVID-19, those who do not get vaccinated after their recovery are more than 2 times as likely to get COVID-19 again than those who get fully vaccinated after their recovery.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/prepare-for-vaccination.html
There’s https://www.mercuryos.com/
Mercury OS is a speculative vision designed to question the paradigms governing human-computer interaction today.
If you’re wanting to self-host a cloud service, then Nextcloud is second to none. You can use NextCloud together with Cryptomator for easy client-side encryption, but If you need automatic syncing look into rclone instead.
If you are planning to use this for backups, check out borg backup and vorta(easy to use GUI for borg).
Unfortunately, despite forced interoperability being a recommendation by the FTC and a senate committee, the judge in this case has already limited the scope of the case to exclude anything regarding interoperability.
Currently I’m using VS Code because VS Codium does not have a native M1 Mac build, and electron apps running through Rosetta 2 saps my laptop battery at least twice as fast as native apps. I could build VS Codium myself following this page, but I would rather continue using Homebrew to manage as many packages as possible.
I’ve been considering learning Vim, is it more productive and worth it to learn in 2022?
At least in my circles and where I live it’s pretty normal to shit on mainstream apps. Most people still use them, but if my opinion of those platforms comes up I never feel judged. In fact, since the social dilemma came out and after Facebook’s most recent controversies and name change I’ve heard more and more people speaking poorly of social-media, smart phones, and algorithms in general.
In my experience it’s almost as if using social-media is perceived the same as smoking was in the 80s-90s: everyone knows it’s terrible for you, but it’s normal. Now, in conversation there’s almost a prestige in saying “I don’t use Facebook” that causes people who do use Facebook to immediately justify using it by saying things like “Yeah, I only use it to keep in touch with family”, or “I don’t check it very often”.
Many of my friends and family half-joke about their addiction to their phones and apps, it seems pretty widely recognized now.
I don’t believe alternative apps, services, and platforms are necessarily better, so if I bring up the fediverse it’s usually in the context of me advocating for government forcing interoperability between social media sites to weaken the tech-giant oligopoly. Most people’s response is basically “huh, I didn’t even know that was possible”.
For using Linux I used to catch flak from my friends when trying to play games with them, but we don’t play games nearly as often anymore and anything we do play generally works on Linux now, so I don’t get teased anymore. Amongst every single non-techie friend I have they could not possible care less that I use Linux.
In order to identify systemic / cultural discrimination against certain demographics. If these types of questions were never asked we would only have personal anecdotes to guide decision making.
e.g. We are better prepared to address the gender disparity within the industry when we have surveys and studies reporting the massive imbalance of men and women. By asking the same questions year after year we are able to tell whether diversity programs and policy changes are working.
I’ve only seen this in larger cities with lots of people experiencing homelessness, it’s more of a housing issue than anything. In most of the country, and where I live, businesses don’t make you pay to use the bathroom.
I used to work for a retailer with free bathrooms, I went into the bathroom during my shift and found a homeless man half-naked giving himself a sponge bath from the sink. I startled him, he startled me. We locked eyes for a moment, it was awkward, so I shrugged and walked across the store to use the other bathroom to give him some privacy.
Businesses want to avoid those sorts of interactions, protect their bathrooms from damage, and they don’t want people making messes that have to be cleaned up. The guy that I saw bathing in the sink got water all over the floor that had to be mopped up after he left. Once a few businesses restrict bathroom access every other business in the area is overburdened by people only coming in for the free bathrooms until they too decide to restrict bathroom access. In most of the US our public infrastructure completely neglects people experiencing homelessness, so their needs are passed onto businesses which also refuse the obligation.
We have a federal government that does virtually nothing for people experiencing homelessness, state governments that do as little as possible for the homeless, local governments confused and unprepared to deal with the causes of homelessness, and finally businesses (which are the least able to meet the needs of the homeless) that discriminate against the homeless.
I’ve been using and following cryptocurrencies since 2014, cryptocurrencies today are no longer trying to make decentralized currencies. Today, most cryptos are hyper-speculative “get-rich-quick” schemes with virtually no practical and legal use cases. The environmental impacts of cryptos have been discussed ad nauseum, so I won’t beat this dead horse. What I find most insidious is that the crypto ecosystem at its core is no longer an effort to create a decentralized currency, but to commodify literally everything in the world. e.g. Grid Coin, Sweat Coin, Ethereum NFTs such as Propy.
I started with libertarian views, but I have been overwhelmingly convinced that this universal commodification and market making is incompatible with ethical and equitable resource distribution. Most cryptos I am aware of are fundamentally regressive designs that favor early adopters and wealthy investors by disadvantaging the average user.
Below are my notes on various consensus algorithms: Proof of Work = Fundamentally unscalable, incredibly wasteful. Proof of Stake = Fundamentally regressive. Byzantine Fault Tolerance = Federated / Centralized, this defeats the purpose of crypto. Proof of Capacity = Fundamentally regressive. Proof of Burn = Fundamentally wasteful and deflationary. Proof of Activity = Hybrid POW & POS, incredibly wasteful and fundamentally regressive.
Proof of Elapsed Time = Probably the most promising, but currently very rare.
Wishing for the country to burn is wishing for the suffering of hundreds of millions of people. Most people in the US are in favor of significant reforms, Much of the struggle we are witnessing is the disagreement about which changes should be made, and obstructionism to prevent reforms from being enacted.
You’ll be more helpful through compassion and solidarity with those Americans who are working to change things for the better.
edX has all sorts of engineering courses for free, no torrents required.
My understanding is that voice interfacing is already the most common way to interact with a smartphone in China. Chinese (and other non-alphabetic languages) are notoriously tedious to type, and all sorts of keyboards have been invented to make it easier, but they all have a learning curve. Instead, it is far simpler to simply use voice recognition. Over the last decade many companies have pivoted their focus towards the Chinese economy, so a lot of the voice assistants, customer service platforms, and other software innovations we enjoy in the west are the direct result of companies trying to break into Chinese markets (and other emerging markets) with voice-driven designs that are accessible to billions of people for whom typing is an insurmountable friction.
Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant’s User Friendly is a really good book for learning about state of the art UI / UX design and the current trends that are likely to determine what our computer interfaces will look like in 2025 - 2030.
https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/ , Fuchsia - Wikipedia - Another really interesting project. This is Google’s new operating system they are building from scratch to replace Android, ChromeOS, Windows, and perhaps even server Linux. Fuchsia is being built from the ground up to replace the traditional desktop metaphor with a conversational or “story driven” metaphor instead. The ultimate goal is to be able to tell your computer in human language what you want it to do and have the computer do it. e.g. “Ok Google, open the survey results Sarah emailed to me. Ok, now plot a histogram with markings at each standard deviation, oh and a pie chart too. Great, save that and email it to Kyle.”
I’m not aware of what Microsoft, Apple, or any other tech giants might be working on, but Fuchsia is at least currently open source under BSD, MIT, and Apache 2.0 licenses.
I was looking into getting an eink display for my rasperberry pi so that I could have a minimalist terminal only computer similar to the light phone. Now, I’m really looking forward to getting a PineNote, loading a compatible distro on it, and avoiding having to build my own case!
Thanks for the suggestion! On the surface it looks like such a cool organization, I picked up a copy of William & Kathleen Whyte’s Making Mondragon, I’m looking forward to reading it after the holidays.
If you haven’t heard of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer yet, it’s a really good read to understand how things got to be the way they are. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, but at every opportunity we’ve doubled down on critically flawed designs.
These are really problems with stroads, car-centric infrastructure, and car culture rather than with the vehicles themselves.
I like to watch Not Just Bikes, he has a lot of well-done videos exploring why car-centric infrastructure causes all sorts of problems, and showcasing how The Netherlands successfully re-built their infrastructure to prioritize pedestrian traffic and public transportation.
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Direct link to the study : https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v1
Whether or not you believe that a civil war / terrorism is likely, a lot of the steps you should take to prepare are the same steps that you should take to prepare for any disaster. The Red Cross’ official recommendations are a good guide.
GET INVOLVED, LOCALLY. - By participating with local organizations you can help resolve issues within your community and prevent conflicts from escalating to violence in the first place. Organizations that you can be a part of may help maintain order and save lives in the event of a disaster. The people you connect with today may save your life tomorrow.