Fifty years ago, if the right decisions had been made, today might look very different. We likely would not be talking about a climate crisis or a climate emergency.
But the right decisions were not made then. Instead, our capitalist rulers pushed ahead with their growth-at-any-cost mantra. And now we face certain disaster.
There are still actions to be taken, a struggle to be waged, in hopes of making the collapse of society slightly less costly for some people in some places. We must engage in that fight.
But suffering is inevitable, great suffering, both for humans and for the natural environment that our industry and our consumerism are in the process of destroying.
(Imagine what a different world we’d be living in today if folks in tech had heeded our warnings back then. But I guess they were too busy making mint.)
PS. yt-dlp is your friend (on Mac: brew install yt-dlp). Also make sure you have ffmpeg installed (brew install ffmpeg). Finally, I had to manually tell yt-dlp where to find ffmpeg although your mileage may vary based on installation method: yt-dlp "<URL>" --write-subs --ffmpeg-location=/opt/homebrew/bin/ffmpeg (--write-subs saves the subtitles if there are any to a file in a format you can use on the web).
The Local #Government Secretary has used formal powers known as #Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (Maca) to summon Army experts after a #strike by bin workers, which has lasted over a month, left more than 17,000 tons of #waste rotting in the streets.
"Blue Shield's position – the position of the entire for-profit health industry – is that they should be able to grow as large as they can, at the expense of us, the patients. In other words, they are economic tumors – so no wonder they're on the side of breast cancer" - @pluralistic
A jury has ordered Blue Cross of Louisiana to pay $421m to a hospital specializing in a much sought-after type of breast reconstruction, primarily for cancer survivors. The insurer "preapproved" surgeries for thousands of patients, but then held back 92% of the payments it owed, with CEO Steven Udvarhelyi insisting that "authorization never says we’re going to pay you":
Capitalists: capitalism and democracy are inextricable.
Also capitalists: “US Marine Corps Maj Gen Smedley Darlington Butler claimed he was recruited by a group of Wall Street financiers to lead a fascist coup against FDR and the US government in the summer of 1933 … Members included JP Morgan, Jr, Irénée du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark of the Singer sewing machine fortune, and the chief executives of General Motors, Birds Eye and General Foods.”
Maybe you can start it first per tribe, then expand globally.
Goal: humans should not have to trade in order to survive in this society. Since this creates a tsunami of problems for people and the rest of this planet. (source)
Plan:
Basic needs trade-free.
Make the most basic needs services trade-free. Healthcare, transportation, shelter, basic food, access to Internet (information and communication). You can do that through taxes, through volunteers, through all sort of means. Many tribes already provide some of these a
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How you can try to fix this world, realistically.
Maybe you can start it first per tribe, then expand globally.
Goal: humans should not have to trade in order to survive in this society. Since this creates a tsunami of problems for people and the rest of this planet. (source)
Plan:
Basic needs trade-free.
Make the most basic needs services trade-free. Healthcare, transportation, shelter, basic food, access to Internet (information and communication). You can do that through taxes, through volunteers, through all sort of means. Many tribes already provide some of these as trade-free, like in Europe a lot of the healthcare systems are like that. Not difficult!
Basic Income.
Since this world still relies on trades (money), and people may have different sort of needs and definitely wants, give everyone a basic income (say 1.000 dollars a month) with no strings attached. You can do it again through taxes, via the removal of so many institutions and resources dedicated to track people and check if they are eligible for benefits, and all of the paperwork nonsense that has been created around this. No more "benefits", no more "pensions". Forget about labeling people as employed or unemployed in regards to who should be helped.
That is it!
Now you will have a bunch of humans who KNOW they are taken care of. They KNOW that if they get sick they should only worry about that health problem and not a financial problem. They KNOW that they wont starve or end up on the street. They know they are SAFE.
On top of this, with the money you give them monthly, they can have some power and focus on doing some useful things in this society. At least some will, if not many.
This can grow up over time into a saner society of humans who can refuse to work for bullshit companies, or do any bullshit jobs. A world in which humans have the time to decide what to focus on, who to "vote" for, stay informed and properly inform others.
A world where scientists or journalists should not worry about their livelihood. So they can do their "jobs" properly.
We deserve and need this world. Else there is no intelligent species on this planet.
During bankruptcy 23andMe says, its security regarding genetic data will remain the same, but its privacy policy says these measures can change at will.
Well, there's a headline that certainly captures the moment: Big banks predict catastrophic warming, with profit potential.
“We now expect a 3°C world,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote earlier this month."
"The stunning conclusion indicates that the bank believes the planet is hurtling toward a future in which severe droughts and harvest failures become widespread, sea-level rise is measured in feet rather than inches and tropical regions experience episodes of extreme heat and humidity for weeks at a time."
"Morgan Stanley’s climate forecast was tucked into a mundane research report on the future of air conditioning stocks, which it provided to clients on March 17."
Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and an international banking group have quietly concluded that climate change will likely exceed the Paris Agreement's 2 degree
Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and an international banking group have quietly concluded that climate change will likely exceed the Paris Agreement's 2 degree
As long as this myth of non-neoliberal capitalism exists things will only get worse. And the pseudo left of reformers and pseudo-#socialists have a large responsibility in reproducing this myth.
Reason To Hate Capitalism #233 - We have solutions to our worst problems but they don’t happen because they don’t make Capitalists enough money #capitalism #anticapitalism
…it was a mistake to think that even the #Nazis would entirely dispense w/normal #laws.…They had a complex, broadly #capitalist economy to maintain. “A nation of 80M people,”…needs stable rules. The trick was to find a way to keep the #law going for #Christian Germans who supported or…tolerated the Nazis, while ruthlessly executing the #führer’s directives against the state’s enemies, real & perceived. #Capitalism could jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of #democracy, & even #genocide.
The CEOs who paid for & attended #Trump’s second inauguration can look forward to the courts being open for the ordinary business of #capitalism. So, too, can many citizens who pay little attention to politics expect to be unscarred by the #PrerogativeState. The normal criminal-justice system, if only in [Trump perceived] *nonpolitical* cases, will crank on. Outside the American prerogative state, much will remain as it was. The #NormativeState is too valuable to wholly dismantle.
"The Texas-based electric carmaker sold less than 16,000 vehicles across Europe last month, down 44% on average across 25 countries in the EU, the UK, Norway and Switzerland, according to data compiled by the research platform Jato Dynamics.
"Tesla’s market share fell to 9.6% last month, the lowest it has registered in February for five years. In January, its sales across Europe fell 45%, from 18,161 in 2024 to 9,945."
And just to clarify, that appears to be less than 10% of the EV market:
"Tesla commanded 1.8% of the total [car] market and 10.3% of the BEV market in February, down from 2.8% and 21.6% respectively last year.
"It sold fewer than 17,000 cars in the European Union, Britain and European Free Trade Association countries, compared to over 28,000 in the same month in 2024."
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Here's the numbers from that article:
"The Texas-based electric carmaker sold less than 16,000 vehicles across Europe last month, down 44% on average across 25 countries in the EU, the UK, Norway and Switzerland, according to data compiled by the research platform Jato Dynamics.
"Tesla’s market share fell to 9.6% last month, the lowest it has registered in February for five years. In January, its sales across Europe fell 45%, from 18,161 in 2024 to 9,945."
And just to clarify, that appears to be less than 10% of the EV market:
"Tesla commanded 1.8% of the total [car] market and 10.3% of the BEV market in February, down from 2.8% and 21.6% respectively last year.
"It sold fewer than 17,000 cars in the European Union, Britain and European Free Trade Association countries, compared to over 28,000 in the same month in 2024."
Of course...a bullshit company, like most companies, providing nothing useful for the people and now even putting their personal information (and DNA) at risk. Because you know, other company may buy it and who knows what it does with the data. I have been saying that since the beginning when everyone was so excited about this useless company.
To read the DNA for useful purposes should be the job of entities that do not make a business out of it, but take care of people´s health. This nonsense of "see where you ancestors are from" "see if you are fucking irish or a goblin", is so useless even if accurate, which may not even be.
Anyway, another story of nonsense companies that make people give them their data to then fuck up this information for everyone.
23andMe Sold Access to Your DNA Library to Big Pharma
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwkaz3/23andme-sold-access-to-your-dna-library-to-big-pharma-but-you-can-opt-out
If only some of us had seen this coming and warned people… oh, wait…
…
It’s clear from this that Ireland should be stripped of the authority to enforce GDPR and, really, people farmers – and the business model of people farming in general – should be banned in the EU.
