@largess@mastodon.au cover
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largess

@largess@mastodon.au

I am here to learn and face the truth, not avoid it and sometimes this can alas lead to confrontation when others prefer the latter to the former.

Matrix Account: @hanrahan:matrix.org

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jgpausas , to conservation group
@jgpausas@fediscience.org avatar

I must admit I was more optimistic about humanity's ability to address climate change before October 2023 than I am now. This is because we have not been able to prevent genocides & war crimes targeting children, which seems easier than stopping climate change ...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair

@ecology @wildfirescience @nature @biodiversity @conservation @climate @climatechange

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@jgpausas

Really ? 2023 ? And yet...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/un-expert-human-rights-climate-crisis-economy

>over 40 million people have died of air pollution since I became special rapporteur in 2018, yet I just can’t get people to care.

>“I can’t get people to bat an eyelash. It’s like there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand just how grave it is.

@ecology @wildfirescience @nature @biodiversity @conservation @climate @climatechange

harrietteann , to Random
@harrietteann@kolektiva.social avatar

well due to my seniors' poor management and decision-making skills, they weren't able to pay me yet since january... from oct to december of last year they only paid me HALF of the agreed monthly salary. i really need a way out of this hellhole :/

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@harrietteann
WISE etc can send to GCash as another option? If yiu have GCash.

Hope things get better !!!

@Outersider @mutualaid

lisabortolotti , to philosophy group
@lisabortolotti@fediscience.org avatar

“Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions.” RIP Daniel Kahneman @philosophy

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@lisabortolotti
This interview spring to mind when I heard the news. It really hit home when Daniel said that nearly a decade ago. Looking at emissions charts today seems to validate his thinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/08/climate-change-deniers-g7-goal-fossil-fuels

>In one strikingly depressing scene in his recent book Don’t Even Think About It, climate change activist George Marshall interviews the Nobel prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the leading scholar of cognitive biases, and tries to nudge him into saying that understanding our brains’ limitations will, at the very least, make it easier to overcome them. “I’m not very optimistic about that,” Kahneman replies, despondently sipping tomato soup. “No amount of psychological awareness will overcome people’s reluctance to lower their standard of living. So that’s my bottom line: there is not much hope. I’m thoroughly pessimistic. I’m sorry.”

@philosophy @bojacobs

ajsadauskas , to Fuck Cars
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Sydney has opened up consultation on a strategy to reduce car traffic and make the city more walkable

"Driving in central Sydney will become harder under a plan to make the city more comfortable for pedestrians.

"The City of Sydney wants to narrow roads for wider footpaths and push for lower speed limits to discourage drivers from the CBD and transform Sydney into a walkable city.

"The council will also install more pedestrian crossings and prioritise people over cars... five times more pedestrians than motorists on the average street, yet just 40 per cent of road space is allocated to footpaths."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/greener-safer-calmer-the-plan-to-discourage-drivers-from-central-sydney-20240312-p5fbr7.html

Some key points of the strategy are:

We will ensure that there is sufficient space for people to walk.

We will improve connectivity for people walking by ensuring there are frequent street crossings that give people priority and that align with people’s walking routes.

We will ensure that footpaths and crossings are accessible so that everyone can use them.

We will plan our city based on 10-minute neighbourhoods so that people are able to meet their daily needs easily by walking.

We will make it safer for people to walk by reducing vehicle speeds.

We will reduce traffic volumes on surface streets and manage through-traffic in residential neighbourhood streets to improve both safety and experience for people walking.

We will work to make all people feel safer while walking around our city.

We will work to improve compliance with road rules, especially the lesser-known rules that benefit people walking.

We will make our streets and public spaces comfortable and inviting by ensuring that they
are green and cool.

We will make sure that there are frequent opportunities for people to stop and rest, use the toilet or have a drink of water.

We will make our city more pleasant to walk in by reducing noise and air pollution from
traffic.

We will make all streets interesting to walk along by ensuring that built form has active, permeable frontages that invite engagement and curiosity.

We will use design, activations and installations to create neighbourhood-based community and encourage people to interact with their streets.

Full details here: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/policy-planning-changes/your-feedback-walking-strategy-action-plan#strategy

Unfortunately, the car-brained leader of the local business lobby isn't on board:

"Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolaou welcomed efforts to make the city pedestrian-friendly... But Nicolaou said it was difficult to see how making Sydney a predominantly walking city would benefit businesses such as retailers."

(Worth repeating that 80% of people on an average city street are pedestrians, so it already is a predominantly walking city.)

Anyway, if you think the plan's a good idea, make sure you let the Sydney City Council know by emailing sydneyyoursay@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

@fuck_cars

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@ajsadauskas

>But Nicolaou said it was difficult to see how making Sydney a predominantly walking city would benefit businesses such as retailers."

It's bemusing to me to see people articulate thier own stupidity so willingly in public. A lack of imagination to easily see how things could be much better by those who hold some sway seems to be the real impedient to making the changes needed.

@fuck_cars @kim_harding

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@heatofignition
But it's impossible to put really good infrastructure in place while cars consume so much space, all that happens is endless complaining from car owners about removal of car parks or one more lane is needed etc

We have all the infrastructure we need to start, we can close many roads to cars and uses buses and bicycles in cities while simultaneously building out even better PT and medium density dwellings to stop toxic urban sprawl add green spaces, business etc on land previously allocated to car parks but that can't happen becase we get endless complaints from car owners.

Will it be disruptive ? Of course, for a decade or more but then if we don't, in a decade we'll still be arguing we should have started a decade ago .

@mondoman712 @ajsadauskas

kimlockhartga , to bookstodon group
@kimlockhartga@beige.party avatar

@bookstodon I just reviewed WANDERING STARS, by Tommy Orange, and it blew my mind! I've selected it as one of my favorite books of 2024. My full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5872885938

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@kimlockhartga

On Bookwyrm (Fediverse) for those of us not interested in dealing with Aamzons Goodreads.

https://bookwyrm.social/book/1583443/s/wandering-stars

@bookstodon @seachanger

chargrille , to Random
@chargrille@progressives.social avatar

If anyone needs his mental health evaluated, it's a) the cop who did nothing but point a gun at Aaron's head while he was in flames & b) the people making excuses for bombing over 10,000 children to pieces in Gaza.

The people who want to see Aaron's protest buried, & the slaughter of children in Gaza continue, will talk about only one person's mental health today.

People who protest in this way are not presumptively mentally ill.

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@chargrille
Similar thing happened with Wayne Bruce protesting climate change inaction.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/25/politics/supreme-court-climate-activist-dies-fire/index.html

David Nickel similarly, a lawyer and economist who did the same thing

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/15/david-buckel-lawyer-climate-change-protest

All the rhetoric is around their mental health.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti

@8petros

mozilla , to Random
@mozilla@mozilla.social avatar

It's here! After months of testing, we're releasing a new package for Firefox on Linux. Check it out 👀 https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/4-reasons-to-try-mozillas-new-firefox-linux-package-for-ubuntu-and-debian-derivatives/

largess ,
@largess@mastodon.au avatar

@mozilla
Why this over the flatpack version I use via Mint Debian.

appassionato , to bookstodon group
@appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

This "eye-opening and essential" book (Bill Gates) will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems—and explains how we can solve them.
It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change.

@bookstodon



We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children. But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history.
ALT
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    • largess ,
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    @appassionato

    >It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change.

    And it's Bill Gates etal doing it. Perhaps he's getting worried his privileged world will come to an end when civilisation collapses under the weight of the 1% and is hoping to have people keep looking the other way while he contiues to despoil the biosphere?

    @bookstodon

    appassionato , to bookstodon group
    @appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

    Madness Is Civilization: When the Diagnosis Was Social, 1948-1980

    In the 1960s and 1970s, a popular diagnosis for America’s problems was that society was becoming a madhouse. In this intellectual and cultural history, Michael E. Staub examines a time when many believed insanity was a sane reaction to obscene social conditions.

    @bookstodon




    Michael E. Staub examines a time when many believed insanity was a sane reaction to obscene social conditions, psychiatrists were agents of repression, asylums were gulags for society’s undesirables, and mental illness was a concept with no medical basis. Madness Is Civilization explores the general consensus that societal ills—from dysfunctional marriage and family dynamics to the Vietnam War, racism, and sexism—were at the root of mental illness. Staub chronicles the surge in influence of socially attuned psychodynamic theories along with the rise of radical therapy and psychiatric survivors' movements. He shows how the theories of antipsychiatry held unprecedented sway over an enormous range of medical, social, and political debates until a bruising backlash against these theories—part of the reaction to the perceived excesses and self-absorptions of the 1960s—effectively distorted them into caricatures. Throughout, Staub reveals that at stake in these debates of psychiatry and politics was nothing less than how to think about the institution of the family, the nature of the self, and the prospects for, and limits of, social change. The first study to describe how social diagnostic thinking emerged, Madness Is Civilization casts new light on the politics of the postwar era.
    ALT
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    • largess ,
    @largess@mastodon.au avatar

    @appassionato
    Sort of related for those interested

    https://bookwyrm.social/book/82953/s/civilized-to-death

    @bookstodon

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