Environment

cross-posted from: reddthat.com/post/25361855

Canonical YouTube link

UB: To start with, we tried to argue with our book against a very dynamic treatment dealing with ecological crisis: what we call green capitalism, or the green economy, or ecological modernization of capitalism. Which is: we have a problem with the combustion engine so it should be the electric engine. This will not be sufficient, we know, because the resources have to come from the South and there is still the space problem.

Only evening hours actually, but pretty cool idea.

Switchgrass and foxtail provided the perfect camouflage for a heron slowly wading through a prairie pond. Only the squawking of a Canada goose mother scolding her offspring shattered the bucolic stillness of the wetland. It was the summer of 2023, and throughout large areas of the Canadian prairie provinces and the Great Plains of the United States, increasingly dry conditions had made water a precious resource. But not here. The 260-acre Hannotte wetland in east-central Saskatchewan was an oasis in an otherwise arid desert of wheat fields.

Last March Oregon became the seventh state to pass “right to repair” legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill’s passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states are considering such bills in 2024.

Example: where wet bulb temperatures are the new normal, air conditioning is as vital as air and water because you will literally die without cooling. “You can buy all the electricity you can afford” is not good enough.

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Theo Mulraney is my real name. I’m a British man who accelerated the development of AI by arguing on forums about physics, morality and why I think everyone should be more optimistic. Lots of people like me were getting about, changing the narrative of history by obsessing over fantasy worlds.

Little interview sfstandard.com/…/holden-karau-fight-health-insura…

[Image description: a two panel meme. In the top panel, a person labeled “my customers” asks the question “how do I keep bugs off my plants?” In the bottom panel, a person labeled “me, a native plant nursery owner” says “that’s the neat part, you don’t”]

Could a 3D-robotic loom be the answer to making fast fashion faster and more sustainable? Unspun’s patented loom (so proprietary that we had to blur it for the video) can create clothing that fits you seamlessly every time, with just a scan of your phone, and far less waste than other clothing production methods.

There’s plenty of research around translating non-human communication into human language (arstechnica.com/…/do-sperm-whale-calls-share-feat…), but what about translating human language into non-human speech? This is a fun little project from an interesting blog.

Archived version

Title taken from the article version of this newsletter; posting the newsletter version because that has no paywall.

Surprising absolutely no one …

[Image description: eight raspberry cuttings showing the stages of root development at their growth tips, with the leftmost cutting showing almost no root and progressing to the rightmost which shows a cluster of roots and upward growing leaves]

This article was almost surely placed because it came out that the tech firms were using accounting techniques to obscure their impact:

two signals drive the human spirit: positive and negative vibes.

https://archive.is/f5O4p

This video made me think of this community. Fixing a camping chair and stool with Tyvek is pretty inventive, as well as sewing a tent with the material!

This summer, Californians have had to endure blistering heatwaves, raging wildfires – and now snow.