While the high-tech approach pushes the costs and energy use of the internet higher and higher, the low-tech alternatives result in much cheaper and very energy efficient networks that combine well with renewable power production and are resistant to disruptions.
If we want the internet to keep working in circumstances where access to energy is more limited, we can learn important lessons from alternative network technologies. Best of all, there’s no need to wait for governments or companies to facilitate: we can build our own resilient communication infrastructure if we cooperate with one another. This is demonstrated by several community networks in Europe, of which the largest has more than 35,000 users already.
Rebloggin because; holy shit; this is really cool and if there were some way to implement this in the US to get out of the thumb of big telecom…
Rebloggin because, if Net Neutrality is murdered, we need to start getting onto this locally…
I feel like everyone needs to know that there is a ridiculous amount of Suez Canal/Ever Given Container Ship fics being written and I wanted to give those curious a direct link.
if anyone else, like me until recently, exists with a general awareness that the us is evil and like, seeing posts come and go about specific evil things that the us has done but not really retaining enough concrete details to mount a solid case for why the us is evil if someone asked you why you felt that, i definitely recommend reading the jakarta method by vincent bevins as a starting point. it provides several detailed and in-depth case studies and has really helped me to solidify and confirm my anti-us views. i also highly recommend this book to anyone who thinks the us is any capacity good. here are some links to download it
just finished reading this book and i really truly think everyone living in the us or in the global north more generally should read this
The pandemic showed us just how slow the global ruling class to move through the stages of grief, often getting stuck in denial (“this isn’t happening”) and bargaining (“can’t I just reopen one teensy little giant Tesla factory, pretty please?”).
The climate emergency is a sterling example of how “market forces” are incompatible with the continued existence of a human-habitable Earth.
Cons like “carbon offsets” are trivially corruptible and instantly become “markets for lemons,” where the least effective climate measures produce the most profitable (and therefore most common) carbon credits, driving out all the good ones.
Market-based climate measures are where Gresham’s Law (“bad money drives out good”) meets greenwashing. Every promising financial vehicle designed to harness markets to save our species becomes a scam.
Take “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) funds, pitched as a way to save for retirement without annihilating the planet you’re planning to retire on.
These were once so promising that they panicked the finance sector, so much so that the world’s carbon barons convinced Trump to propose a law making it illegal to direct your investment dollars into an ESG.
It didn’t happen, because Trump is administratively incompetent and easily distracted. But carbon criminals are very competent and good at staying on-task. Rather than banning ESGs, they simply corrupted them, turning them into another form of greenwashing.
Writing in USA Today, Tariq Fancy calls ESGs “marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community” – and he should know, he founded and ran the ESG program at Blackrock, the worlds largest asset manager.
The ESGs you’re sold are stuffed full of the world’s worst polluters, from fast fashion companies to (not making this up) giant oil companies. *Oil companies*!
ESGs are blowing up, with sales nearly doubling over the past year.
The SEC’s new Climate and ESG Task Force" will “proactively identify ESG-related misconduct.” If history is any guide, it will fail. The most profitable green investment strategy will always be investing in polluters while pretending otherwise.
As Fancy writes, the solution to the climate emergency isn’t asking the public or business to do capitalism differently. As with the pandemic, the answer is regulatory, coming from democratically accountable states, not the autocratic satrapies of the corporate world.
“In response to the pandemic, we’ve learned that only top-down government action, such as forcing the closure of high-risk venues and mandating masks indoors, makes a real difference. A ‘free market’ will not correct itself or fix the problem by its own accord.”
The consumer movement was born at a time when competition made companies sensitive to things like boycotts. Consumerists realized that they could skip the tedious, unreliable legislative process (where corporations could always outspend them) and hit companies where it hurt.
That’s not the case any more and it hasn’t been for decades. While consumerists were focused on market pressure, corporations successfully lobbied for new antitrust standards that allowed them to eliminate competition through monopolistic mergers.
Once companies eliminated competition, boycotts stopped working. Every time I post about Amazon’s abuses, someone tweets that we should just spend our money better, voting with our dollars. Which sounds great, until you realize that every tweet generates revenue for Amazon.
By definition, you can’t shop your way out of a monopoly. If you don’t believe me, hit your local grocery aisle, where two companies – Unilever and Procter and Gamble – are responsible for nearly every product on sale.
The “cruelty free” brand is made by the same company as the “maximum cruelty” brand. The “organic” brand is made by the same company as the “Oops! All Additives” brand. The “low packaging” brand is made by the same company as the “padded with spotted owl feathers” brand.
When Procter and Gamble buys up some beloved local organic babyfood brand or a scrappy keto meal startup, they trumpet the acquisition as “giving consumers more choice.”
If Procter and Gamble does something you hate – marketing caged-veal smoothies or whatever – and you protest by buying the “plant-based” I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-veal smoothie, chances are, you’re still buying a P&G product (and if not, it’s probably Unilever’s).
Corporate America was once very afraid of consumer movements, but it’s been decades since boycotts or other spending choices were capable of effecting real change. It’s time to stop thinking of ourselves as ambulatory wallets whose only way of acting is spending.
Structural change comes not from how market actors behave, but how markets are structured. The rules for markets matter more than the decisions we make under those rules. Our consumer power is irrelevant, but our citizen power is essential.
The path to a better future lays through state action, through leaning on your lawmaker (and agitating for electoral and campaign reforms), not through endless agonizing over your joke of a 401k or the things you put in your shopping basket.
since microplastics have now been found in plACENTAS allow me to reiterate:
faux fur is plastic
pleather literally has plastic in the name
synthetic wool is plastic
stop implying that plastic is good for anything.
“Vegan” fabrics? Yeah that shit is just plastic rebranded
not supporting the fur industry – but remember, vintage furs from thrift stores do not contribute to killing animals and are actually better for the environment than faux fur.
You can also buy fur new if you want. That is not a crime unless you are buying endangered animal furs. It’s also not really worse for the environment or the animals than buying regular meat or eggs from the grocery store, because all those animals are factory farmed, whether for fur, meat, or eggs. Factory farming isn’t solely a problem with fur, and anyway if you want to stop it then you’re better off calling or writing your politicians and getting involved with the larger movement that is trying to end big agra monopolies than only shopping at ‘pure’ retailers. You can’t change the world with your pocketbook, that’s a lie capitalism fed us.
The best furs to buy for warmth are coyote and raccoon, anyway, not mink and such. Sheepskin is also good. Stuff like mink, ermine, and sable aren’t actually very useful in terms of keeping you warm. Vintage bear and beaver are also pretty warm. Rabbit is useless, it sheds and goes bare quickly and isn’t very warm at all. Soft though.
Wool is the only fibre in the world that keeps you warm even when the wool is wet, and silk is among the best baselayers for warmth. Linen is the coolest fibre in the world, better than cotton, has been used for centuries and is a lot less costly in effort and water to produce–cotton is only cheaper artificially.
Down is the warmest and most breathable stuffing for blankets and pillows and it lasts a really long time. Cotton or wool stuffing is available also, but it doesn’t get the loft that down does, nor is it as warm (cotton isn’t warm at all). Remember that stuffing is also made of plastic!
Leather is great stuff, if you take care of it properly. It needs regular care and maintaining, but it will last a really long time if you do, and just get softer and softer over the years. And yes, you can clean it! You use something called saddle soap to clean it with. Patent leather has a plastic coating and may not even be leather these days, unfortunately. Deerskin is very nice, very soft but not very warm.
There’s a movement I first heard about in the historical costuming community, from Pinsent Tailoring: Slow Fashion. It’s a response to fast fashion, and the goals are to have a wardrobe that is more about longevity and quality of the clothing, and also about the clothing being made so that in a hundred years, all that would be left are the metal/horn/bone/shell/wood buttons. It’s very hard to do that with modern shoe soles, but if the heel or insole of your shoe is the only plastic you leave, you’re still doing better than an outfit from Target or something. Making your own clothes is actually not extremely difficult, you can start with extremely simple things, including the Bisexual Shirt (poet shirt), a pair of comfy pajama-style pants, and so on.
Make friends with your local vultures, costume historians, and leatherworkers (which are all, sometimes, also cosplayers)! They’re going to have oodles of resources for where to find natural materials.
My hypothesis is that in like 10 years gen z is gonna have a big cult boom the way the boomers did in the 70s
It’s already happening on tik tok. There’s a fun new thing going round that’s citing common symptoms of depression and anxiety as signs you’re about to have your awakening and that you are actually an alien and the reason you don’t feel right is because you’re home sick for your own galaxy. So that’s fun.
agreed, and i don’t mean this in a “haha gen z is so dumb they’re gonna join a tiktok cult lmao” i mean that conditions are perfect for the formation of cults right now.
high unemployment and a lot of underpaying, pointless jobs = people are looking for things to do with their life, a purpose
skyrocketing cost of living = most young people will not be able to live on their own, meaning some will end up in a group living situation with people interested in recruiting them
it’s a time of great cultural and political upheaval, nothing feels real, people are desperate for meaning and human connection. cults promise that
there is a new wave of acceptance and understanding for ways of life outside the norm, which is great! …except for when cult leaders tell you abusive and controlling practices are just their culture, their religion, their lifestyle, their beliefs, their tradition, and if you disrespect it you are the problem
social media influencers have already shown us how easy it is to build a cult of personality and attract people from anywhere in the world who are interested in the exact brand you are selling
spirtuality is having a boom, as are things like astrology, crystals, tarot, meditation, energy… those things aren’t bad on their own but they are often used as tools of cult spaces
wellness. i think a lot of people are already in wellness cults. you can make people do a lot of things in the name of “wellness” and a big factor of maintaining a cult is keeping members in a state of decreased cognition….. like say, with regular fasting
i think people are just unaware in general of how cults function, especially because the satanic panic was a big stupid false alarm that convinced the youths that dungeons and dragons or doom were gateways to cults, which are scary evil child murdering, satan-worshipping gangs. people don’t know how to spot them in real life.
as a cultic abuse survivor with a half-decade of academic research on how these groups work, here are some quality, public-friendly educational resources to help you learn what high control groups look like, how they work, and the methods they use to influence, draw in, and control/coerce literally anyone.
education about this subject is SO important—high control environments and their methods for influencing and controlling people often go totally unnoticed unless you’ve learned about them, and there’s a long history of mainstream misinformation on what thought reform and cults are, what they look like, and how they work. there’s also a huge misconception that “no way that could be me!” when unfortunately, because of how high control influence works, it’s possible for anyone to get drawn into a high control group or relationship without realizing that’s what it actually is.
A Little Bit Culty podcast.
This podcast is hosted by former NXIVM members Sarah and Nippy, who are
now cult education and survivor healing advocates. Episode 2 (titled
“Cults 101″ with guest Steven Hassan, creator of the BITE model)
introduces what cults are, and why humans are universally vulnerable to
cult abuse.
“Is Trump a Cult Leader? A Scientific Perspective” by Telltale. This video has a catchy title, but the creator does a great job on 1) knowing his stuff, and 2) explaining what’s required to be a cult, and what does/doesn’t qualify as a cult. The video also has really interesting insight/analysis on the current conspiracy theory cult movements we have today (QAnon, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers). The channel is a good source on both those subjects, as well as groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
TV Series/Films (Bit More In-Depth):
Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (Emmy award-winning TV series, it’s on US Netflix
now). Really digs into the specifics of Scientology, but they do a
great job portraying to the general public how cults operate, and how
even a destructive cult can recruit people, cover up abuses, evade the
law, and keep members within the group.
The Last Stop: The True Story of the Elan School (Warning: All of the TWs. Seriously.) Film on the Troubled Teen Industry, aka what happened when the War on Drugs combined with the 1960s anti-drug cult Synanon and LGAT seminars to create a still-active billion dollar industry of cult-based institutional child abuse in the name of teen rehabilitation. There is actual footage, it is deeply upsetting. Use the trailer to gauge your limits. Spoiler: fuck Nancy Reagan.
If you can’t watch the Last Stop, or even before you do, watch the video “The Elan School: Death by Misinformation” (it has its own bullet point later, too). It’s shorter, and the creator does well in giving you information from The Last Stop in a less harrowing/triggering delivery format. The video highlights the cult history of the US rehab and residential treatment industries. Also, once again, fuck Nancy Reagan.
Wellness/Self-Help Cults, including Corporate Cult Seminars/Workshops:
The channel above goes over a *lot* of the self-help/wellness industry cult groups/businesses, including MLMs. I’d genre her videos as true crime, but the research is really solid, the presentation is respectful, and there’s a good balance of education and entertainment.
Also check out Lifespring and Large-Group Awareness Training (LGAT) seminars. These are 1000% endemic, and yes, they’re high control groups. Their seminar methods are all various implementations of abusive high control tactics. Not good 😦
Cult Origins of and Ongoing Destructive Cult Presence in the Modern US Drug Rehabilitation, Residential Treatment, and Troubled Teen Industries (including the origins of anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy camps):
“The Elan School: Death by Misinformation” by iiluminaughtii. Includes a good 101 background on the Synanon cult and est seminars as the origins of the methods and ideology behind the modern US rehab industry, including residential treatment for adults and minors with substance abuse or mental health issues.
This list seems really long, but I actually cut a lot out. Happy to field asks if that’s helpful—these links are meant to be easy-access for a general audience, but there are many more *really* fantastic resources besides these ones I’ve mentioned above 🙂
[image description: An infographic about baking cookies, the first half devoted to how to get specific kinds of cookies, the bottom the instructions and ingredients.
The top half: Divided into thirds by dotted lines, there are Thin & Crisp (An image of three stacked cookies, thin and crisp above the title) 2 ½ sticks unsalted butter, sorted, 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar, ¾ cup brown sugar. Soft & Chewy (a picture of three cookies, fuller and more classic cookie-appearing, hangs above the title) 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened. ½ cup granulated sugar. 1 cup brown sugar. Light & Cakey (An image of three cookies haphazardly stacked, very full and rounded) 1 ¼ sticks unsalted butter, softened, ¾ cups granulated sugar, ¼ cup brown sugar
The ingredients: 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon baking sida 1 teaspoon coarse salt 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 2 large eggs, room temperature 2 cups (about 12 ounces) chocolate chips
The instructions: 1. Preheat oven to 350, in a bowl, whisk together flour and baking soda. In another bowl, beat butter with both sugars until fluffy. Beat in salt, vanilla and eggs until well combined. Mix in flour until just combined. Stir in chips.
2. Drop tablespoon sized balls of dough 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets.
3. Bake until cookies are golden around the edges but still soft in the center, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, let them cool
ifesbob 