Musings from the End of Civilization

An attempt to document the under-reported happenings of the sixth extinction. With luck, more things to be hopeful about than not. Profile pic by the incomparable Alex Schaefer.

[anthroposcenarios]

David Byrne’s Illustrated History of the Possible Future

“The way things were, the way we made things, it turns out, none of it was inevitable — none of it is the way things have to be.”

The history of the world is a story we tell ourselves.

Though the permanency of writing has slowed the process, these stories we tell ourselves about the world are not fixed. They are ever and continually revised and changed. History is not what happened, but it is what we agree happened — shaped by our biases and self-serving interests.

Stories are lessons we send to ourselves — some remain vibrant and relevant while others are only useful for a moment. They serve myriad purposes that are often beyond our ken, for better or worse, and sometimes both at the same time.

[anthroposcenarios]

Super-rich’s carbon investment emissions ‘equivalent to whole of France’

Analysis examining carbon impact of billionaires’ investments published as Cop27 talks get under way

[anthroposcenarios]

‘Like a public shaming’: a night with the eco-activists deflating SUV tires

A group of Gen Z activists is targeting gas-guzzling vehicles as frustration mounts over US inaction on the climate crisis

“There are a lot of people who care about the environment who are very disappointed and are looking for a protest tactic,” said Fisher. “You have people flying in private jets and driving SUVs, so there are lots of opportunities for bad feelings between people with different views on that. It wouldn’t surprise me if these actions are the start of something more confrontational and more destructive. I can see it exploding at some point.”

[ceevee5]

[anthroposcenarios]

[anthroposcenarios]

[anthroposcenarios]

It has to be the end of wealth

Theft from the Earth Herself

Reindigenize me

Return me to Her care

Dystopian ecstasies

Secular eschatologies

Eroticized disease

And inroads to new colonies

We have to be careful with

New narratives, because

Everyone is rotted out from

Poisonous storytelling

Cruel manifest destiny

And freedom as inequity

And raising sex in higher key

In debt the dancing boy is free

Sky god without Uterus

You and female husbandry

Glad by our diversity

Poisonous storytelling

We have to be careful with

New narratives, because

Everyone is rotted out from

Poisonous storytelling

Poison cake

Sweetened with

Your disease

So sugary

We have to be careful with

(We have to be careful with)

New narratives, because

(New narratives, because everyone)

Everyone is rotted out from

(Is rotted out, rotted out from the inside)

Poisonous storytelling

(Poisonous storytelling, telling)

[anthroposcenarios]

The power for rapid, novel iterative design with AI is certainly something sci fi has considered in terms of architecture on a dazzling, futuristic skyline (a few books and films like The Peripheral and Advantageous come to mind). And I’ve also seen examples of AI in manufacturing (for instance). But this is the first time I’ve seen it deployed for solving a climate/pollution problem.

[anthroposcenarios]

"The biosphere figured out how to host life by itself billions of years ago by creating systems for moving around nitrogen and transporting carbon," Frank says. "Now we have to figure out how to have the same kind of self-maintaining characteristics with the technosphere."

Can a planet have a mind of its own?

The collective activity of life—all of the microbes, plants, and animals—have changed planet Earth.

[anthroposcenarios]

How an accidental discovery made this year could change the world

A lucky discovery involving lithium-sulfur batteries has a legitimate chance to revolutionize how we power our world.

Whoa. If this gets out of the lab and can be scaled, I think we have something truly amazing on our hands. Especially if an EV pack could be swapped late in life for a Lithium Sulfur upgrade.

[vegan-and-sara]

Peter Kalmus: ‘As a species, we’re on autopilot, not making the right decisions’

The Nasa data scientist explains why inaction on the climate crisis pushed him to chain himself to an LA bank – and why trusting in the ‘peo

This has been just ramping up and ramping up over the years. It’s only going to get more intense as we go forward. That’s why I feel this desperation to end the fossil fuel industry as quickly as possible. Ending the fossil fuel industry is the main thing we need to do to take the pressure off the Earth system and to at least start to stabilise at where we’re at. Then, these news stories will likely start to stabilise as well. But yeah, it’s getting more intense, isn’t it? That’s where we’re at now. That’s a normal week for 2022. What is 2024 going to be like? What’s 2025 going to be like?

The mean temperature on the planet keeps going up with every tonne of fossil fuel we burn. At some point you’re going to surpass all of these different milestones. It’s no secret that the fossil fuel industry has been planning to make as much profit as they can from extracting and selling fossil fuel, no matter what happens to the planet, to us, and to future generations. I don’t think we should just talk about future generations any more, because people are dying right now, all around the world. That’s going to happen more as we approach deadly human heat thresholds in certain regions that the human body can’t actually live through. It’s diabolical that these industrialists wish to take short-term profits at the expense of literally everything.

[krisfreedain]

The ecovillage where volunteers relearn the skills the world forgot | 5 Media

Life in a Swedish ecovillage

Discovering a more sustainable life.

Sounds like an amazing place

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Black Panthers fed more hungry kids than the state of California

It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California

The Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for Children Program is probably their best-known initiative, the press finding an intriguing story juxtaposing the Panther’s tough-guy-in-leather-jacket image with the act of serving small children plates of hot food. Importantly, it was mostly women who led these survival programmes, and women made up a majority of the Panther membership. They served in leadership roles from ‘Officer of the Day’ (essentially the office – and people – manager for each branch), to organising the many details of a location’s breakfast programme to initiating and leading food justice, healthcare and housing programmes within neighbourhoods.

So why does the image of the Panthers as a masculinist and violent organisation persist? The answer lies in part with media distortion, influenced both by the sexism and racism that misrepresented the Panthers. There was also a misinformation campaign by the FBI, led by J Edgar Hoover, waged against the increasingly popular Panthers, which had an enduring impact on how people saw them.

[solarpunkfuturenow]

Computer Powered by Colony of Blue-Green Algae For 6 Months

Algae Powered a Computer for More Than Six Months

Using nothing but light, water, and cyanobacteria, the microprocessor ran uninterrupted.

[anthroposcenarios]

The mental block preventing people from buying electric vehicles

A new study found people greatly underestimate how many of their daily tasks an EV could support.

“Programs to encourage EV sales often revolve around price – either lowering the price of EVs, or showing potential buyers how much they might save over the vehicle’s lifetime. A compatibility intervention, in contrast, focuses on whether an EV can suit an individual’s lifestyle.“

I really like this concept of literally matching up your own daily habits with an EV that can manage them and THEN showing the cost difference vs the abstracted version. I wonder if there’s a way to incorporate this into window sticker designs, etc...

[anthroposcenarios]

[anthroposcenarios]

In hindsight, Men’s Madness, (described by the Guardian in 1991 as ‘an outlandish essay in technophobia') seems remarkably perceptive as the relentless assault on the natural world continues. Assertions in the film about the drives of those who force the techno-machine forwards made it controversial at the time – but not anymore.

Films for Action