It’s a band-aid measure that makes cars behave more like buses, trains, or any other form of transit that takes the mental strain off of the individual. Yet it still uses cars, so we all still get those sweet sweet carbon emissions and ridiculously outsized infrastructure degradation. It’s a step in the right direction but we’re still on the wrong path.

It’s Bezos sponsored, so take the good PR work with a grain of salt given the state of everything he and Amazon have touched

I appreciate the operation you’re running here

Yep. Instead of focusing on humans communicating more effectively with computers, which are good at answering questions that have correct, knowable answers, we’ve invented a type of computer that can be wrong because maybe people will like the vibes more? (And we can sell vibes)

AI gets subs wrong, and thinking that doesn’t matter is both ableist and just a terrible lazy product, but that’s not the pressing matter.

It’s Israel. Because giving money to another party is not a value neutral action. Using a site that pays money to Israel—and you either know what that means or are purposefully avoiding the subject—means you are supporting Israel. Your consumption does not occur in a vacuum.

She is. A problem that has become quite apparent in the U.S. is that there are no effective measures to stop an unpopular government. The Republicans have at this time gerrymandered their voting districts and otherwise reformed democratic institutions in their favor, and are passing legislation that opposes the will of the people. They have no fear of recall, nor impeachment—there is nothing.

The vitriol people feel towards Democrats like Kamala Harris stems, among other reasons like sexism, from two common sources: a belief that Democrats spent too much time compromising with a party that openly opposed the people and the limits of government control, and a level of incredulity at the very institutional language that they are using while it is obvious that Republicans are now simply tearing down institutions they don’t like.

Just this morning I got an email from Alexandria Occasio-Cortez’s team—one of the U.S.’s most radical government representatives —that read, “And when Republicans use a legislative mechanism to gut the American healthcare system, we have to use a legislative mechanism in order to restore it and fight for it.”

How does that work? We have no legislative mechanisms available to us. The ruling party has taken away legislative mechanisms. It’s like asking a children’s basketball team to keep playing and try harder when their opponents have tossed the ball right out of the gym. The entire idea is premised on someone returning the ball—or to return from the metaphor, that Republicans are going to wreak havoc for two years and then get voted out of office because they allow enough of their enemies to vote. And that it’s “democratic” to sit and wait our turn while peoples’ deaths in the States and around the world are directly attributable to this administration’s undemocratic actions and our collective failure to stop them as of this moment.

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It will impact weather patterns and severity. I’ve certainly not done the work on how much, nor do I really have a grasp on the scales involved, so that’s mostly a meaningless statement, but I can say with confidence the impact will be real. Just like dams affecting rivers, icecap mass affecting heat reflection, and solar panels increasing local temperatures.

Given that one of the impacts of global climate change has been increased weather severity and chaos, I am not afraid of positing that reducing the severity and chaos of the jet streams could be a good thing.

Similarly, there are some interesting projects going on surrounding the use of aerogel and other materials that could help focus sunlight at the top of the oceans, where evaporation can actually occur, that are focused on creating clean drinking water—and while I think this is a good end unto itself, a nice side benefit would be less solar energy reaching the ocean and raising the body temperature.

For once, it’s cool to hear about proposed industrial projects and their side effects and they’re maybe positive, instead of “well that sounds like it’s going to leech heavy metals into the surrounding community”

Of course, aerogel is horrible to work with and clogs if it doesn’t break, and nobody else has solved the problem of scaling up and dealing with the steam getting in the way. On the lightweight flying jet stream turbine front, well, I’ve been following development for 8 years and nobody has even solved the ‘limited supply of helium leaking away into space’ problem for starters. And it’s hard making an efficient generator so lightweight that it can fly. So we don’t have to worry about them potentially improving global weather severity just yet. Or potentially devastating our remaining populations of migratory birds!

As frustrating as it is I think we benefit more from welcoming latecomers than shaming them and thinning the number of people of people willing to admit they were wrong in the future