I am not terribly artistic (I lack Talent) and octopus are terrifying. The name reflects the randomness. In which I randomly re-blog things I like (including but not limited too: animals, Doctor Who, pretty nature, AOJE, Books, Tea).
A carbon-free world can be a reality. What would that mean for our jobs, homes and lives?
“Is it possible to turn things around by 2050? The answer is absolutely yes,” says Kai Chan, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.
Many scientists have been telling us how the world will look like, if we don’t act now. However, others, like Chan, are tracking what success might look like.
They are not simply day-dreamers either. They aren’t being too optimistic. They are putting together road maps for how to safely get to the planet envisioned in the 2015 Paris Agreement, where temperatures hold at 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than before we started burning fossil fuels, this article from July states.
“Three decades is enough to do a lot of important things. In the next few years—if we get started on them—they will pay dividends in the coming decades,” says Chan, the lead author of the chapter on achieving a sustainable future in a recent UN report that predicted the possible extinction of a million species.
Making these changes won’t mean years of being poor, cold and hungry before things get comfortable again, the scientists insist. They say that if we start acting seriously NOW, we stand a decent chance of transforming society without huge disruption.
No doubt, it will take a massive switch in society’s energy use. But without us noticing, that’s already happening. Not fast enough, maybe, but it is. Solar panels and offshore wind power plummet in price. Iceland and Paraguay have stripped the carbon from their grids, according to a new energy outlook report from Bloomberg. Europe is on track to be 90 per cent carbon-free by 2040. And Ottawa says that Canada is already at 81 per cent, thanks to hydro, nuclear, wind and solar.
Decarbonizing the whole economy is within grasp. We can do this.
“If we have five years of really sustained efforts, making sure we reorient our businesses and our governments toward sustainability, then from that point on, this transition will seem quite seamless. Because it will just be this gradual reshaping of options,” Chan says, adding: “All these things seem very natural when the system is changing around you.”
also we came to a WILD realization tonight: when playing rock, paper, scissors, people from the east coast and midwest go on SHOOT, and people from the west coast (who are insane) go on scissors. like WHY
I always have gone right after I said scissors, but oddly my students seem to all say “shoot” before they go (we live north of the bay area in California). When I was little and lived in Chico, CA, we called this game Ro Sham Bo, and would say those words and go right after we said Bo. When I moved to San Diego kids had no idea what Ro Sham Bo was.
So that’s three different ways to play, just in California. This all very fascinating and mysterious to me.
read in 2018 - the lawrence browne affair by cat sebastian
“Then Radnor flashed him one of his rare smiles, and Georgie felt simultaneously like he had been given a precious gift and like he had been hit in the head with a shovel.”
The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.
Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.
“The truth is, chivalry has basically fuck all to do with women, and everything to do with horses. See, the word “chivalry” comes from the French word “chevalier,” which comes from “cheval,” which means “horse.” Chivalry is literally just “rules for if you have a horse.” This was an important set of rules to have in chivalry times. Horses were the Blackhawk Helicopters of the Middle Ages; if you had a horse, you could absolutely kill anybody who didn’t have a horse and nobody was going to say a god damn thing. The only thing stopping you was chivalry. That’s what chivalry was for. Chivalry was – and still is – basically a way of saying, “okay, I have an optimized death machine between my legs, maybe I should look out for people who don’t have one of these.” So it’s not that chivalry is specifically about defending women because women are weak. It’s that chivalry is about defending people who don’t own horses, and in the middle ages women didn’t own shit.”
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Chivalry Isn’t Dead, You Just Don’t Know What the Fuck it is.
Also:
“Chivalry boils down to three things: mercy, charity, and humility. Mercy means being conscious of your advantages, and treating other humans gently. Charity means giving without expecting anything in return. Humility means accepting your mistakes, and recognizing that those who don’t have your advantages aren’t your inferiors.“
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