Growth or Scale? By Tom Murphy, originally published by Do the Math May 22, 2024
"...It’s not too hard to lay hands on records of global resource use. One publication I ran across has some useful graphs for a few raw materials in common use. The first graph shows annual extraction of copper, zinc, and lead since 1900, usefully...
...From 1960 to 2005, in no region of the world did annual production of timber moderate alongside growth. The total global activity almost doubled (77% increase) over this interval rather than stagnating or tumbling by a factor of two as growth did.
The result for all of these resources is clear: scale is a more apt correlate than growth. The curves bear a family resemblance to the hockey-stick scale curves: far less resemblance to the peaking growth curves. A confounder in this is that per-capita resource extraction has also risen for many materials, in association with economic growth..."
70 yrs after #SCOTUS delivered its landmark decision outlawing school segregation, #BrownVBoardOfEducation ranks as perhaps the court’s most venerated decision….
Most everything else related to the decision…is complex.
Nearly 7/10 Americans say more should be done to integrate schools…a figure that has steadily climbed from 30% in 1973….But a deeper look into the views of both Black & White people shows skepticism about the success of #Brown….
…The #Brown decision focused on the value of mixing children of different races. But for many #integration activists —then & now— the case is about a path to #fair & #equitable educational #resources. Those legal battles cont. Today’s complex views about #schools & integration come amid persistent #segregation that has risen in recent decades,changes in the #legal landscape & complicated dynamics of #education & #race in #America today.
#Norway taxes its #fossilfuel industry and offers free #university degrees to students, while #Australia subsidises fossil fuel expansion and imposes high costs on university education for its youth. Budget allocations reflect choices and priorities, revealing significant differences between the two nations.
Is the government taking more from students through #HECS than it collects from the #Petroleum#Resources Rent Tax? #prrt#auspol
What Liberal Elites Don’t Know About Rural Americans Can Hurt Us
By Wendell Berry, originally published by Barn Raiser May 7, 2024
"...There is no interest in remedies for the bad ecological and human effects of mining, or in a farm bill that would make agriculture less destructive of land and people, or in ways to preserve the ecological integrity of our forests, or in ways to prevent the corporate destruction of the local economies necessary to support local communities—to name only a few rural needs.
...The space program is not the highest human accomplishment. All problems cannot be solved by science and technology. Good farmers are not mindless drudges who can be easily replicated from the “labor pool” or the Class of 2023..."
I think https://streetpass.social/ mastodon extension is a must have for all users of Mastodon. Such a nice way to know about all the amazing folks who create content that you are reading. Thanks @tvler for creating it
I think there are tons of people who would love a regular car, an EV or Hybrid, without all that other electronic junk. Purposefully making transitioning to cleaner options too expensive is a stupid policy.
Why societies grow more fragile and vulnerable to collapse as time passes
4.25.24 by Luke Kemp and BBC colleagues,Features correspondent
"...The ageing trend was there even when we excluded dynasties.
...Our findings are supported by promising studies on "critical slowing down". Before a complex system undergoes a large-scale shift in structure, or a "tipping point", it often begins to recover more slowly from disturbances. The ageing human body is similar: injuries can take a longer toll when you're older...
The next steps will be to investigate what fosters societal longevity, and what causes growing vulnerability. States could be losing resilience over time due to variety of factors. Growing inequality, extractive institutions, and conflict between elites could heighten social friction over time. Environmental degradation could undermine the ecosystems that polities depend on..."
How to unite local initiatives for a more sustainable global future
By Vasilis Kostakis, Nikiforos Tsiouris, originally published by ScienceDirect May 1, 2024
"...In a state of emergency, it is audacious to place all our hopes for tackling the ecological crisis and wealth inequality in technology –worse even, in technology that is yet to materialize... High-tech is not unsustainable in its essence, but its scale and mode of production in the capitalist realm are.
...the crux of the matter is profoundly political. The development and production of technology in the modern era are intricately interwoven with wealth inequality and environmental deterioration. Technology is not being produced in a vacuum, thus it is not neutral. On the contrary, it is highly influenced by the decisions of manufacturers, legislators, consultants, designers and everyone else involved –directly or indirectly– in the process..."
"This year, 5.3 billion mobile phones will be thrown away the international waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) forum says."
Imagine if these mostly functional devices could be upgraded instead of replace and binned. Nevermind the mining of old tech for the valuable minerals they contain instead of destroying nature for it as suggested in the article. #ClimateCrisis#resources#ClimateCollapse
So I'm convinced that bureaucratic solutions to our problems are not really solutions, they're just creating bigger problems down the line. But, how do I convince people of that when they've thought of such a bureaucratic solution and I don't have an alternative better solution? As an example, the CREDIT system of writing detailed tables of who did what in a paper. This adds more work and stress into our lives, and puts more power in the hands of the data owners and surveillance companies (RELX etc), but how else do we stop all the biases that this system is trying to address? I feel like there's a comprehensive world view that gives a better way, but that's such a hard sell when people - understandably - feel like small tweaks to the current system are more likely to work. I'd like to say that if a solution will make things worse, start by not doing it. But that's all to easy to see as an argument for keeping things as they are, which is not acceptable. I'm interested in how other people fighting for change who don't believe in bureaucratic solutions approach this issue.
Just begin allocating the terms appropriately to your contributors within research outputs. Advocate that your institution and any publications you’re submitting to acknowledge and adopt the taxonomy.
What's in it for me? Why would I use this specific taxonomy in plaintext rather than just writing what I did? Why would I advocate for acknowledging and adopting the taxonomy? Controlled vocabularies are cool but if theres no way for me to use it and no way for me to implement it on my own then what use are they. this doesn't work in my google doc, so it's mostly just a platform feature of some publishers.
a mild improvement would be to use a human authorable markup syntax:
"Building on the #Fediverse is hard. Here is a list of #ActivityPub and other developer #resources that have been helpful in developing #Emissary. This is not a canonical or official list by any means, but hopefully this list of bookmarks is valuable to others who are building their own Fediverse apps." @benpate
🇦🇪 📚 Reading list from a website about Palestine launched by an anonymous team of authors. Found in the bio of a twitter activist using a pseudonym. ⬇️
Remember, #SexTrafficking is going on in the real world. It is people who have lost choice and autonomy.
It isn't typically the fantasy world of middle class white kids getting snatched off the streets. It is real people with real issues. It is an issue of #power#control and #resources
Tornado Recovery Resources
Building Contractors...