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doom_and_gloom possibly a cat @lemmy.ml

It's just a murder of crows, coming up slow.

Posts 9
Comments 31
Have you gone down any rabbit holes that gave you an existential crisis?
  • Culture is not a static system. Elements may be destined to be counter-rational for now, but a better of awareness could also destine us for a more fair and effective system in the future. Just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that determinism dictates it never will.

  • 'You can't kill all of us': Kenya protesters vow to march again as authorities kill 22
  • I agree that China would be better to work with than the IMF.

    Closing some of the international investor tax exemptions that were on the chopping block might still be beneficial in that case though, imo.

  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • Are you talking specifically about powered speakers? Certainly, resistance is a lesser concern when you're passing almost no current.

    But it's important to have a heavy enough gauge cable between amplifiers and passive speakers so that there is not too much resistance, as this will cause it to overheat and potentially start a fire.

    Generally speaking, I think a coat hanger's gauge is too small for common amplifiers. Plus, if it's iron then it's going to have a higher resistance compared to standard materials, meaning more voltage drop and more heating.

  • What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?
  • Pay as much as you want but the sound will not be any different than if you used metal coat hanger wire.

    The speakers won't sound too good after the coat hanger has caught them on fire, though.

  • Monthly observations thread May 2024
  • If you want to start growing plants inside and plan to move them outside, do yourself a favor and invest in a proper light timer. I've been surprised by how many supposedly non-photoperiod plants can really struggle with a sudden day period mismatch.

    Also be mindful of getting plants too warm and then moving them to a cooler outdoor environment, as that really messes up their seasonality. (That's probably common sense but I thought I might as well point it out.)

  • Is everything the worst?
  • Not everything is the worst. Just the important things.

  • We've moved to https://lemm.ee/c/collapse -- please update your subscription
  • As the argument of population control is one I think not at all worth having for many of reasons, such as, you just can’t do much about it!

    I've often argued a similar line. This topic is notorious for bringing out bad-faith posters trying to shape the narrative. Sometimes it seems hardly worth discussing to me as well. Especially among redditors which is what I was used to for many years. But to not be able to discuss it at all is too much for me as a mod, especially when those who would take advantage of us discuss it freely.

    And it will become reality easy enough if it becomes mandatory and that’s sad enough.

    My concern is that there are still different ways that this can all go down, and that we aren't charting towards handling the crisis in a wise and humane manner. We're basically blindly following capitalists into the void. And acting "naively" (following systemic biases) is not moral or ethical in our position. People are already dying of exposure today, in our local communities and around the world. It is the most disadvantaged that suffers most and it will continue to be that way unless something is changed.

    But I guess if we find ourselves truly not welcome here anymore than it seems we would just have to move with you guys.

    Whatever works best for everyone involved.

  • We've moved to https://lemm.ee/c/collapse -- please update your subscription
  • @eleitl and I have been members of the wider collapse community for quite awhile - since around 2009 for me. I am a member of multiple communities, each many times larger and more active than this one (although I'm particularly fond of the userbase here).

    We've seen collapse communities prosper and we've seen them falter. The tension between users, mods, and admins is nearly a constant. Despite those tensions, more and more people join these spaces every year because they still find value in them. One of the common discussions that triggers these tensions is the Limits to Growth.

    That conversation has been going on since '72 and it's not about to stop. If this is an issue now then it will continue to be one moving forward. Personally I do think it's something important to discuss (how could it not be?), I know many other Marxists who agree, and I believe that in most cases the community has successfully held these conversations while self-moderating (including the work of the mod team) against ecofascists and right-wing trolling, brigading, etc. Successful as compared to how other communities handle it, at least. Temporal population limits themselves have never been the primary focus of discussion, and as a moderator I would not allow that focus to develop because such myopia is not productive for understanding our holistic situation.

    Many of us come from spaces that can generally handle these challenges to our consensus standard. Our much more frequent complaint (on other sites) is admin censorship over the merits of such things as introducing rent-seekers to guillotines. I don't mean to say that opinion in these spaces are perfect but in my experience, far-right propaganda gets proliferated on more reactionary forums (such as the front page and climate change subreddits which are largely captured). The collapse channels in recent years, on the other hand, are where those talking points are often dunked on and resoundingly refuted by informed users.

    I love the people I've interacted with on lemmy and I am interested in supporting an even better space for discussing collapse in the fediverse. I don't want anyone to have to feel alone as they deal with a firehose of lies around sustainability, as I had to do for many years. My only real interest here is creating a safe space for people with both empathy and collapse-awareness.

    Our current hosts are not entirely comfortable with the prospect of us navigating these complexities skillfully. From our brief discussions in the removed thread, it appears that they think we are already failing to do so. And that is their right as admins! It is certainly possible for low-quality collapse-related discussions to turn into genocidal echo chambers - I see them all the time lately in non-collapse-related forums - and while I trust in the community here, the admins are under no obligation to undertake that risk.

    As developers, however, they gave us a graceful solution: Federation allows us to move to an instance that will be more comfortable hosting us. That reduces tensions for everyone. It's a win for all parties involved as far as I can tell.

    I appreciate our admins/devs. I am not particularly concerned about our differences of opinions from my side of things, but I also don't want to give them headaches or create any more hard feelings - I'd rather just get out of their hair.

    If anyone feels they got the short end of the deal, I encourage them to reach out and I will do whatever I can to make amends. I know that is not ideal, but it is what I can offer.

  • Why Do You Pirate Music?
  • YouTube and Spotify are lossy, and not everything I listen to is available for streaming anyway.

    99.9% of the time I just stream, though.

    My view is that there are many ways to interact with music, and you should do whatever works for you. I think for a lot of people that means not using torrents because the benefits don't really match their use cases.

  • A New Documentary Traces How Piracy Overhauled the Music Industry
  • Sure, but there's a shortage of decent paying jobs compared to all of the workers looking for them. Everyone has a CS degree now.

  • www.cbsnews.com Monkeys are dropping dead from trees in Mexico as a brutal heat wave is linked to "mass deaths"

    "If you see monkeys that are weak... please try to hoist a bucket of water by rope for them to drink," a wildlife preservation group said.

    Monkeys are dropping dead from trees in Mexico as a brutal heat wave is linked to "mass deaths"
    4
    www.livescience.com Half-asleep bears are wandering around Siberia because it's too hot to hibernate

    Bears that are struggling to hibernate due to abnormally warm weather in Russia's Amur region are wandering around in a daze, having suppressed their metabolism in preparation for winter.

    Half-asleep bears are wandering around Siberia because it's too hot to hibernate
    12
    web.archive.org ‘No normal seasons any more’: seed farmers struggle amid the climate crisis

    Floods, freezes and heatwaves threaten seed production as farmers scramble to produce strains that resist climate chaos

    ‘No normal seasons any more’: seed farmers struggle amid the climate crisis

    The article interviews various individuals involved with raising seed crops for small-to-medium operations. Chaotic weather patterns have had a major impact on their seed production. The article notes that it takes longer to produce seeds for many plants than it takes to produce food from them, and that weather conditions must remain appropriate through their entire life cycle. It briefly discusses adapting plants through hybridization and open-pollination to make them more resilient against growing threats.

    2

    Weekly maybe Observations Post (10/1 - 10/7???)

    Mods are AWOL. Is this collapse?

    Post your observations here.

    Start your comment with "Location: [insert location]" or the bot will get angry - any nonsense location will do.

    12
    /c/showerthoughts @lemmy.ml possibly a cat @lemmy.ml

    If AI researchers won't pay to farm Reddit/Twitter comments, they'll probably farm Lemmy comments instead

    Our conversations right now might have a disproportionate effect on the future of AI.

    2

    Let's get this party started: acollierastro on Avi Loeb

    I just saw her video on string theory here: https://lemmy.ml/post/1500342

    As I commented in that post, I didn't find her argument entirely convincing on that video. Maybe I have a bias toward string theory, I don't know. But she has a fun channel and I just recently ran across another video from her: A critique on Avi Loeb, who has managed to interject his name in the UAP discussion quite thoroughly lately.

    I'm a text person, not a video person (for these things at least). I had my grievances with Dr. Loeb from his writings but this video paired criticism with videos of his own words taken from various calls and videos. I found that it gave a lot more insight into his character than I had before.

    I'd like to recommend this video to get things started, because I find this to be a very interesting and also a potentially very serious topic. So let's approach it with an appropriate respect and gravity: Let's maintain our critical thinking.

    Disclaimer: This is a mostly one-sided critique, although she does show some understanding and leniency. It is most definitely a critique as opposed to an objective overview. Keep that in mind when forming your expectations. There are, of course, other viewpoints to be had and arguments to be made.

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