They say that, but there are people out there deliberately breeding humans to keep the population up so human hunting remains justified, and these wild humans do terrible damage to the environment by over-foraging.

I fear for induced demand. If electricity is cheap, why build more efficiently? Why not do bitcoin mining or AI training?

It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t plenty of places around the world that could desperately use solar panels, that are building fossil fuel infrastructure instead. Climate change is a global problem, so the obsession with getting your individual emissions down to zero is selfish and sometimes even detrimental to the climate if “your emissions” don’t include the cost of manufacturing and limited availability.

We should be sending solar panels to the developing world as fast as humanly possible, not making electricity so cheap in California that multinationals can open up a couple more data centers.

They’re using hydrogen to de-rust iron, and later let the iron rust again. I don’t have a degree in chemistry, but that sounds like a scam.

There are basically two sources of hydrogen that matter at an industrial scale: fossil fuel cracking (not clean energy) and electrolysing water. In the first case, if you want power it’s more green to burn the fossil fuel directly.

And if you’re electrolysing water and then using the hydrogen to chemically derust iron, it would (as far as i understand with high school chemistry) be strictly more efficient to electrolyse rust directly. The oxygen can dissipate into the environment or be reintroduced as necessary, like with a sacrificial metal for ship’s hulls.

It’s undoubtedly innovative that they have a relatively efficient way to store the latent chemical energy of hydrogen given an excess of hydrogen, but in terms of energy storage that is putting the cart before the horse.

before riots

- the post title

Glad to see their talking points focus on food security rather than agricultural companies’ interests like the EU. Though I wonder if they’ll come to the sensible conclusion and cut down on the meat industry.

Latest*

It’s not even a particularly bad one, compared to Dole coups, Coca Cola assassination, and Uniroyal napalming civilians.

People have survived “deadly” wet bulb temperatures long before electric refrigeration. Air conditioning is a patch for colonial societies and those that emulate them that have stupidly built western European style (Cfb climate optimized) housing in tropical climates.

Universal solidarity doesn’t just mean solidarity with the poorest US citizens, it means solidarity with the billions of people who don’t have AC or a car. Giving US citizens who already have AC and a car free electricity will probably be less effective and less equitable than a more egalitarian degrowth-based distribution of resources.The OOP mentions electric cars, which are simply a luxury when public transit and utility vehicles (kei trucks, vans) exist. Air conditioning likewise can be a luxury when passive design exists. Cisterns, shade, plant respiration, air flow management, high roofs, large communal spaces that reduce outer surface area, etc.

People have a right to live a cool and comfortable life, but that does not mean the right to live in a nuclear family suburban home with paper-thin walls and not a tree in sight, basking in full sunlight, with AC on full blast, using your electric SUV to drive half an hour to the grocery store or school. A tropical longhouse shared with your community, a natural or artificial cave system, or living somewhere that isn’t trying to kill you (as badly) can serve that purpose just as well.

So instead of pushing for free electricity for American citizens, I would much rather push for degrowth of the American economy, with smarter designs that simply need less electricity.

Hope and positivity are two different things. Hope dissociates from the present and the future, externalizing your care into an imagined future you can not affect. Empirically, people with hope fare worse psychologically than those without hope, because those with hope have no coping mechanisms when their hopes get dashed.

What we need is not positive news, but a positive life. Sit in a meadow, share meals with friends, be kind and generous, work at things that mean something to you, make art with passion, and rage during political protests.

When so much of the world’s news and media are pushing a narrative of unending consumerism and growth, it is good to keep reminding ourselves with factual news that this world will collapse sooner rather than later.

If it helps, all life ends in misery, be it decreptitude, disease, ecosystems collapse, or all of the above. Life has never been about how it ends, it is about what we do while delaying the end. Everything we do for the future, we do for the future that will actually be, not for the future that gives us comfort to imagine.

Which revolutions were inaccessible to the poor?

And honestly, yeah, revolutions like the American one where a bunch of rich people used propaganda, money, and threats to secede so they and an oligarchic “democracy” of white male land owners could pay lower taxes and privatize public land weren’t as radical or revolutionary as subsequent propaganda made them out to be.

If capitalists can’t take legally, they will take illegally.

So that’s a no? If Trump is people breaking from mainstream 2000s Republicanism, and Harris is mainstream 2000s Republicanism, then Trump and Harris must be different, right?

Anyway, more on the content: You seem to seriously underestimate how bad the USA can get. There are limits to how much you can brutalize people politely, so “brutalizing politely” also means brutalizing less.

The difference between Harris and Trump is whether or not being transgender in public carries the death penalty (project 2025 says trans = pedo and pedo = death).

The difference between Harris and Trump is whether or not people with an ectopic pregnancy will bleed to death.

The difference between Harris and Trump is whether the library has books written by feminists and Marxists or not.

The difference between Harris and Trump is whether the internet lets you access lemmy and wikipedia or whether it only gives you access to a ChatGPT-generated world of lies engineered to drive people towards fascism.

Harris means oppression, Trump means a suicidally fascist doomspiral.

Okay, so do the Republicans of the early 2000s and Democrats of 2024 overlap with Trump?

Could you explain why?

It’s a 1000 times improvement the same way riding a horse is a 1000 times improvement over riding an army of snails. It’s possible because nobody was doing the old thing because it was garbage.

“Strong current flow” is informal language, but both it and photoresponse refer to the electrical power that comes out. In theory you would just divide that by the incoming solar flux and get the efficiency. For now it’s only in a lab setting, though, so we’ll have to see what the practical efficiency will be if this is actually incorporated into a reasonable solar cell.

So yeah, apparently barium titanate solar panels used to be extremely terrible, and now they might become competitive with further research.

No, you disagree with myself and pretty much all historical usage on the definition of “right-wing”. Whether it’s the original right wing in the parliament of the first French Republic, monarchists in general, 19th century British Tories, imperialists in general, ethno-nationalists, fascists, etc.

Mussolini was fascist, but held left wing beliefs like welfare and relief for the poor and government intervention and ownership.

Welfare for the in-group is not (exclusively) left-wing. The Nazis had welfare for blonde blue-haired ‘aryans’ that produced lots of children. Also, neoliberal and conservative western governments love giving welfare to corporations and rich people. Even if your in-group is “all Romans” (in case of the ancient grain dole that Mussolini was inspired by) or “all Italians”, if the motivation for welfare is to empower the in-group to exploit the out-group, it’s right wing.

Government intervention and ownership are not (exclusively) left-wing. The original right wing - the monarchists in the French parliament - were pro-government intervention and ownership, with the government being embodied by the king. Government spending is consistently higher among Republicans than Democrats. Large ostentatious state projects with kickbacks for the in-group are bread and butter of pretty much every right wing government, from the massive Nazi government-owned holiday park Prora to the Space Launch System. Right-wing governments often forcefully nationalize projects run by the out-group, like Jewish shops in Nazi germany or Black Panther community support networks in the US.

The right wing may cloak themselves in the guise of the free market or of individual liberty or decentralization of power, or in the guise of community and centralization and rights that must be defended at the cost of freedoms. They will present themselves as underdogs and punks and outsiders or as rightful inheritors, powerful leaders, loyalists and patriots. Often they will switch narratives from topic to topic, going from underdogs fighting against the liberal elite who says you can’t say slurs anymore to patriots bemoaning the lack of solidarity of people kneeling in protest at a flag.

The one thing that unites them, the one thing that is consistent, is to exploit and oppress the out-group to benefit the in-group.

Contrast communist authoritarianism and mass murder, which were generally justified as being for the good of all mankind.

On that we agree.

I’m acting under the assumption that they would have died anyway. As they do. When they decompose naturally, they release their carbon.

Okay, glad to understand that the issue is that you didn’t understand my first comment or any comment that came after it.

One last time: what I’m saying is that you bury the wood to prevent it from decomposing and releasing its carbon, as an alternative to burning it. And that as an alternate source of electricity you use something that doesn’t produce as much emissions, like solar, wind, or nuclear. And if you think burying wood is bad for any reason, then setting it on fire is bad for the same reason.

You’re right that there is a definition of anarchism that nobody will meet, just like there’s a definition of feminism or capitalism or communism that nobody will meet. Those definitions are therefore useless, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.

There’s a difference between self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after oppressive systems and consciously include oppressive tools in their proposals for change and self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after systems that can help empower anarchism and that try to include as little archism in their proposals for change as possible.

The anarchist movement isn’t a static definition, it’s a vector force pulling at present-day society. Ancaps don’t pull along that vector. Non-vegan anarchocommunists do.