The greatest trick the petrochemical industry managed to pull was convincing people who think of themselves as "environmentalists" that a few lithium mines are somehow worse than the entire global oil industry (which, remember, is also where the plastic being dumped in the sea comes from).
then there's the part where the conflate 'battery' with 'lithium'. Battery tech is developing REALLY FAST & the most interesting stuff is specifically designed to make the tech cheaper & less environmentally disruptive. (E.g. I love those massive iron-salt batteries - they're packed in large-size shipping containers & installed in massive arrays as buffer storage for wind- & solar-farms.)
I understand why people don’t want lithium mines at their doorstep. But on the other hand, I think there’s always an element on colonialism in many of those protests. People want to enjoy the goods that come from extraction, but are happy if extraction is done half the world away, on poor countries so they don’t have to see of suffer through the consequences. Anyways I think the solution to mobility is less cars, not just making all cars EVs, that should be the main goal.
Existing cars definitely need to be EV. But solving the “too many cars” problem isn’t hard. Netherlands does it. Even Spain has the largest high speed train network on the planet only second to a much bigger country, China. The real hard problem to solve is finding people who are good at, and want to solve hard problems and are also willing to go into politics and win elections. EVs won’t fix this, among many other problems: twitter.com/visionzeroyvr/stat…
@Miguel Arroz And yet Spain runs zero long distance trains to Portugal, and cancelled the only sleeper services it had with no plans for replacement.
Meanwhile the Algarve Line has exciting infrastructure plans to increase the average speed from about 60kph to about 75kph.
I’d love, love, love ubiquitous fast convenient rail, but the promise of it at some unspecified future date is frequently trotted out as an excuse to not need to decarbonise road transport, a thing that is already happening, and is quite easy to accelerate.
Yeah, I’m not saying decarbonizing and depolluting out cities isn’t important. I’m just saying that isn’t the panacea people are led to believe it is by the car industry. Long distance and cities are different problems, but living on a city core, I honestly think politicians should face trial every time someone gets hit by a car, because they do exactly jack shit to stop this mayhem. I’m preparing myself mentally to move out of Vancouver because I can’t take this shit any more.
It’s ironic that when I visit my parents in Portugal on a shitty Lisbon suburb, I can have the window open any time and not feel any real difference in the noise levels. Here, if I open the window, even during nighttime, my living room turns into a highway. The noise is unbearable. And I live in the city that calls itself “the greenest city”. This experience made me deeply hate cars and politicians.
@Alisdair Calder McGregor We don’t hear much about how you guys are getting on in the news. I was told there were going to be sunlit uplands. Sounds nice.
@Baroque Mongoose I could see how they would be a concern in the UK. Every time I go back there, the lamentable state of the mobile networks surprises me every time.
There was a period during which VoIP-only lines (FTTP) were provided with a battery backup. They dropped it as just not worthwhile, landlines are rarely the mechanism of last resort these days.
Here's what The Counteroffensive is reading today:
Tensions between Wagner and Russian forces have been a routine side show of the conflict so far. In a new escalation, a Russian officer is accused of drunkenly firing on Wagner members as they drove by.
Apple Watch workout app doesn’t track course for paddling for some strange reason, so I looked for an alternative that integrates with workouts, but adds course tracking.
Seems there are two. One is free, the other is 6 euros a month.
I hate this subscription crap. Just let us buy things and stop trying to turn the whole world into a glorified Company Store. I’d have gladly paid for either, but I’m not renting a workout tracking app, especially not at that price.
Developers: if I have a choice between a product I can buy, and one I have to rent, I will always go for the one I can buy.
As I’m quite fond of not drowning, it pleases me immensely that some of the orcas have been tagged. They plan to try and tag more this summer as they migrate through biscay, and update the maps weekly on the orca app.
We needed this 3-4 years ago, and it’s only by luck that nobody has died yet, but better late than never. When we know where they are, we can avoid them.
We now have two inflatable SUPs, an 11 foot model and a 10 foot model, and for the first time, @Sylvia Knight and I went out on the sea together. It was a beautiful calm day; the Atlantic was being very benign with a smooth sea state, crystal clear water. Saw loads of fish and you get s really good view from up there on the SUP.
I really like the smaller of the two boats. It’s sporty and moves with the swell, giving a very dynamic feel. Looking forward to doing a lot more of this!
Apropos of Y. pestis (plague) genes being found in a 4000 year old skeleton, @Sylvia Knight was wondering out loud why the sudden catastrophic wave of the disease, the Black Death, in the 13th century.
So I did a bit of reading. There was a fringe theory a couple of decades ago that black death was not bubonic plague. One of the reasons some people thought this is from epidemiology: it spread too fast. Specifically, it travelled around Europe at the speed humans did, not at the speed rats did, suggesting rat fleas were not responsible for primary transmission, as many of us were taught at school.
Turns out that, however, human fleas can also transmit the disease, but they're really shit at it and probably not the culprit.
But body lice, they are like,
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Apropos of Y. pestis (plague) genes being found in a 4000 year old skeleton, @Sylvia Knight was wondering out loud why the sudden catastrophic wave of the disease, the Black Death, in the 13th century.
So I did a bit of reading. There was a fringe theory a couple of decades ago that black death was not bubonic plague. One of the reasons some people thought this is from epidemiology: it spread too fast. Specifically, it travelled around Europe at the speed humans did, not at the speed rats did, suggesting rat fleas were not responsible for primary transmission, as many of us were taught at school.
Turns out that, however, human fleas can also transmit the disease, but they're really shit at it and probably not the culprit.
But body lice, they are like, actually quite good at transmitting it. Apparently coming into contact with a plague corpse 3 days post mortem, if that corpse had body lice, is sufficient to infect you with around 10 bites. Really not many.
Body lice don't live on warm human bodies - it's not comfortable for them. They live in our clothes.
Or rather, they used to. Laundry detergent eradicated them.
But laundry detergent is a 20th century invention, and the plague stopped coming to Europe in the 17th century.
Soap was around before though, a long time before.
Very popular in the Middle East towards the end of the 1st millennium.
Which means, of course, in Christian Europe, it became associated with Islam, and therefore was dubious.
Apparently there was a huge decline in soap use in Europe in the medieval period.
Which, of course, would allow the louse population to flourish.
Racism killed a third of Europe in the 13th century. Silly buggers.
By the way, I know we are increasingly encouraged to cold-wash our clothes these days for environmental reasons, but maybe ... let's not, eh?
BTW, AIUI the major difference between head lice, body lice, and pubic lice is more geography than biology, so head and public lice could probably transmit it too.
But they live directly on us, in our hair, and don't mingle every time we take our clothes off and put them in a pile.
That's probably why head and public lice are not known for being disease vectors.
@Ghost of Hope My own English vocab has a bunch of Portuguese loanwords. Most notably, my entire family has adopted “trotinete”, as there’s no specific word for it in English (kick scooter, I guess, but that’s two words)
It reminds me of this time I got to chatting with a young woman at a bar and she kept mentioning being discriminated against because of her “politics” and I was just about to ask what she meant by that when I noticed the swastika on her tattoo and noped the fuck out of there.
Yeah, I would have blocked that account on Reddit lickety-split. That’s not how someone who was been wronged speak.
Also twatter, Reddit, meta(stasis), etc will happily lock out an account. So that’s not an argument, unless it’s related to their famously lax rules for certain demographics (go to some of the religious subreddits and view death threats to large groups of people).
In the book, 1984, the true sign of loyalty to The Party is that you believe what they tell you over the evidence of your own senses.
This is exemplified when Winston is being “re-educated” in the Ministry of Love by O’Brien. In a scene reprised in Star Trek: TNG, O’Brien shines four lights at Winston but wants him to believe there are actually five.
Eventually Winston genuinely believes there are five, and so is ready to go to Room 101 to complete his love of Big Brother.
And so it is with Brexit Britain: true believers are required to genuinely believe that a clearly and obviously black piece of paper is, in fact, blue.
Only Brexit Britain can’t afford a Ministry of Love, so adherents have to brainwash themselves on the cheap.
All this for only 8 US monies a month, and we might not even be able to take the money from your bank because we fired everyone who’s good at computers!
Apparently the Rocket Man tried to endorse Florida Man Hitler on his social media site, but it didn’t work because he fired everyone who’s good at computers.
I hear he's just endorsed DeSantis, the would-be führer, for US President. He does realise that fictional character, Roman Roy, is meant to be someone we despise, not someone we imitate, right?
@Richard Gadsden Oh Florida, Florida show me a sign. My rockets are launching from thee! The morning will come when the worlds are mine. Mars will belong to me.
Along with many people, I often peruse r/AmITheAsshole on Reddit. There’s the occasional gem of a post in there, but so many are from people who are basically doormats asking if they’re the asshole for setting some barely-there boundary, and it makes me sad.
Seen a bunch of people sharing this one idea that the Iberian orcas are attacking sailing boats because one of them was previously “traumatised”.
I think it needs to be said that this is a fringe theory and widely regarded by lots of people studying this emergent behaviour as implausible.
For a start, orcas swim at 3 times the speed a sailboat travels at. As far as they’re concerned, they are essentially stationary objects. Secondly, orcas weigh more than sailboats, and if they wanted to sink them, they could, easily, but they aren’t doing that.
What the orcas are doing is biting rudders. The sinkings that have happened have been secondary to that: water ingress caused by damage to the rudder stock.
The leading theory is that this started as hunting practice. The Iberian orcas eat tuna, and they hunt them by biting their fins off so they can’t swim away. Sailboat rudders superficially resemble tuna fins, and so are good practice.
The behaviour started with a few young males about 3-4 years ago. It’s now spread and a
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Seen a bunch of people sharing this one idea that the Iberian orcas are attacking sailing boats because one of them was previously “traumatised”.
I think it needs to be said that this is a fringe theory and widely regarded by lots of people studying this emergent behaviour as implausible.
For a start, orcas swim at 3 times the speed a sailboat travels at. As far as they’re concerned, they are essentially stationary objects. Secondly, orcas weigh more than sailboats, and if they wanted to sink them, they could, easily, but they aren’t doing that.
What the orcas are doing is biting rudders. The sinkings that have happened have been secondary to that: water ingress caused by damage to the rudder stock.
The leading theory is that this started as hunting practice. The Iberian orcas eat tuna, and they hunt them by biting their fins off so they can’t swim away. Sailboat rudders superficially resemble tuna fins, and so are good practice.
The behaviour started with a few young males about 3-4 years ago. It’s now spread and around 15 of them are doing it. It’s nearly all young males.
It appears that what started out as practice has now become the orca equivalent of that arsehole on TikTok walking into people’s houses: they appear to be doing it because their mates do it, and they think it’s funny.
Sadly inaction by, mostly Spanish authorities is leading to people increasingly taking things into their own hands. Sailboat owners share information on orca locations and are increasingly travelling in convoys, WWII style. Initially putting the boat into reverse on engine seemed to work, but they’ve got wise to that, and so an arms race is developing. The current technique which seems to work pretty much all the time is to throw firecrackers into the water.
They’re starting to move on to other types of boats too. Small fishing boats are increasingly being attacked.
This is not going to end well. Either they will finally kill someone, which will likely result in a cull, or they’re going to fuck with the wrong boat. In a few months the tuna migrate north towards Normandy. The orcas follow them. If they start attacking French fishing boats, I can’t imagine those guys taking any shit. Sail boats are pleasure craft and our response has been to try and avoid them, but that’s not going to be the case with fishing boats, and the French are not known for calm and gentle responses to things that threaten their livelihoods.
Watch this space, I guess. The hope is that this behaviour is a fad that will go out of fashion. If it doesn’t, it’s going to end up in deaths; possibly humans, definitely orcas.
From Aug 22, 2000. 60 minutes episode describing the teen elephants in Pilanesberg Park, South Africa. I't's also called the Biggest Big Brother Program in t...
Surely people can be a bit more inventive rather than resorting to a cull and creating an antagonistic relationship between Orca and people. Orca interact with people every day here and they're never aggressive or destructive. But we did have a leopard seal that liked biting boats we learned to work around her. Maybe find something that gets in their way or otherwise puts them off without causing them pain.
@CooperJ this has been going on for about 4 years, and various such things have been tried (slowly reversing, different sounds, etc), but they always seem to adapt.
The authorities won’t help. They seem utterly uninterested, and it is likely going to take human deaths to get them to act, or maybe not even that. There are some marine researchers trying to look into it, but it’s kinda small scale.
If the first people they kill are leisure boaters, then there will likely be a bigger push for action. If the first people they kill are fishermen, then I suspect we’ll just start seeing orcas washing up ashore with bullets in them.
@graydon Yes! There's gotta be nonlethal ways that work, or at least try them first. Humans are the most dangerous apex predator. #OrcaConservancy #OrcasGoneBad
@Alexandra Lanes @Sylvia Knight @Zoë O'Connell And a bit of still life, in a separate post, because Mastodon gets weird about long form posts with more than 4 photos in.
@bonkers @bipolaron I bet if a pizzeria opened a fediverse account, they could gain some local followers right off the bat by sheer novelty of being a local business with a fedi account. If they actually posted something more interesting than pure ads, they could probably grow a worthwhile following *and* extend their reach through boosts.
Honestly I would love to follow an account that posted good looking pizza pics (with alt text)
I don't think advertising on Mastodon is all that hard. Create an account, get followers, and then tell them about your product. You could even ask them to retoot your ad to reach an even bigger audience.
@bipolaron @jepyang that's actually my point, the format of advertising and also doing business has to change to fit in the fediverse. It will be pretty exciting to see how people and businesses invent new models.
How do I advertise at my local anarchist book-fair? Everyone keeps telling me that they're "not interested" or "broke" and to "fuck off" - is this an instance of market failure?
and that kind of thought is encouraged by "wait and see" stances on a Facebook corporate instance. absolutely no ads on fedi, ever. refuse to tolerate anything else!
I know I have several TERFs hate-reading me, because I live rent free in their heads. Hi guys! Just want to let you know, in case you've forgotten, that you are terrible human beings and you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves.
I should also note that TERFs are so utterly fucking pigshit thick that a bunch of them were in a shopping centre the other week, and got stuck for hours on an escalator because the power failed.
The year is 2030. Prime Minister Starmer continues the policy of TERF appeasement because he can’t be arsed not to. TERFs have created five million fake email addresses in order to boost a gov.uk petition to sex-segregate the sewage flowing onto UK beaches so that they can swim in adult human female shit, an important “sex based right”, they say. This friendica node continues to exist but consists entirely of me reviewing Portuguese wines while drunk, in Portuguese. TERFs still send fifty complaints a day to Lib Dem HQ about it.
Astonishingly, it seems I still live rent-free in the heads of many UK TERFs. I was not expecting this.
Ladies, I emigrated from your dismal little island ages ago. I’m not involved in your stupid culture war any more. Move the fuck on, or get therapy, or something. Sheesh!
So the Liberal Democrats overwhelmingly told their resident TERFs to go do one at their spring conference. They voted by around 9 to 1 to not even hear their hatred and simply remove it from the agenda.
The transphobes are showing their usual complete and total lack of introspection and utterly failing to take the hint.
This is a lesson for us all. Just constantly frustrating them and hoping they go away does not work with these people. If you have them in your organisation, they will not leave by themselves.
TERFs are like bedbugs, or pubic lice: once you’ve got them you need to actively make them go away.
it’s best to make your environment as hostile as possible, to try and prevent them arriving in the first place. if you get them, they will multiply and before you know it, you have an infestation that will not fucking shut up about trans people and “females’ sex based rights” (yes, they talk like Ferengi, or incels. They can’t seem to quite manage to successfully mimic actual human communication and this is a good way to spot them if you aren’t sure whether or not you have an infestation).
If tou leave it too long, they start sending pretend legal threats. it’s best to get rid of them before this point because dealing with this will become very time consuming. They’ll also stalk you and probably your friends and family too.
The Lib Dems did well this weekend, but they still have a largely untreated infestation, and it would have saved them a lot of trouble if they’d nipped this in the bud about 5 years ago.
bedbugs (at least, bat bugs quite closely related to our common bedbug) are very interesting from a sex and gender perspective researchgate.net/publication/5…
Ooh, it's fun having a federated timeline! I was always scared of the firehose so didn't bother subscribing my #friendica micronode to a relay, but I took the plunge, it's not killing my internet connection, and because it's Friendica I essentially get full text search of the English language fediverse (please don't kill me).
FeralRobots
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Alexandra Lanes
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Alexandra Lanes • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Miguel Arroz • •@Miguel Arroz Ok,
But let’s make the cars EVs first, because that’s a much easier problem to solve.
Miguel Arroz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Miguel Arroz • •@Miguel Arroz And yet Spain runs zero long distance trains to Portugal, and cancelled the only sleeper services it had with no plans for replacement.
Meanwhile the Algarve Line has exciting infrastructure plans to increase the average speed from about 60kph to about 75kph.
I’d love, love, love ubiquitous fast convenient rail, but the promise of it at some unspecified future date is frequently trotted out as an excuse to not need to decarbonise road transport, a thing that is already happening, and is quite easy to accelerate.
Miguel Arroz
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Miguel Arroz
in reply to Miguel Arroz • • •Sarah Brown likes this.