LLM AI bases its responses from aggregated texts written by ... human authors, just without having any sense of context or logic or understanding of the actual words being put together.
This is really exciting if it works out and gets commercialised widely! One thing I’m not sure I understand is whether this requires entirely new cement, or if somehow the carbon black and capacitors can be mixed into existing cement structures (especially roads)? As mentioned in the article, cement is a high emission product and we already have so much of it in the world.
Thank you for sharing this!
Pandawara formed in 2022 after flooding caused by rivers clogged with rubbish damaged their homes – now they are national celebrities
Pandawara formed in 2022 after flooding caused by rivers clogged with rubbish damaged their homes – now they are national celebrities
Super cool, thank you so much! I still am not sure if I can see Firefish posts automatically in the Microblog tab though. I also don’t know anyone there yet but I’ve been thinking of making an account after seeing a few posts here about it!
Does Kbin also show posts from other microblog Fediverse like Firefish? It would be really nice if it could!
@RealAccountNameHere some of the words here were almost verbatim what I tell my husband and therapist. In a way I’m really glad to see I’m not alone globally, but I still feel hurtful and profound loneliness where I live. I feel so detached from the present and everyone else, watching them go through life business as usual without any willingness to do the smallest sacrifice to their privileged comfortable lives to do whatever little bit an individual can in the face of collapse.
If you live in a humid and wet country like I do (South East Asia), dry boxes are crucial to help stave off fungus growth. I use an electric dry box—the brand is Samurai, but honestly most dry box brands around my country seem to be rebranded Chinese OEMs so as long as it works it shouldn’t matter. It’s good habit to keep your cameras and lenses dry and making sure they’re dry before storing them away.
I’m a professional photographer but I don’t have insurance for my photography equipments because of the small insurance market for freelancers in my country. The cost of the insurance would be disproportional to the costs of my equipments. But if I have those $10k+ lenses, then it might start to make sense for me to look into it. Some home insurances might cover theft/fire/flood damage to your belongings, but read the fine prints.
In a cost of living crisis, heat pumps and electric cars are out of reach for most. Britain needs to fund a genuinely fair transition – and fast, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
In a cost of living crisis, heat pumps and electric cars are out of reach for most. Britain needs to fund a genuinely fair transition – and fast, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
> > > Some of the resistance is undoubtedly down to the Mr Toad tendency, enraged by any attempt to prise their hands off the steering wheel. (Though clean air zones aren’t strictly speaking designed to force motorists on to the bus, by painting driving as a filthy, antisocial habit, they undoubtedly offer a hefty nudge in that direction). But there remains an awkward grain of truth in the argument that – ironically, much like air pollution itself, which is most lethal to the poorest living on busy arterial roads – clean air zones are toughest on people who can least afford to comply. That means delivery drivers buzzing around on cheap mopeds; white van drivers; shift workers dreading the day their knackered old banger fails its final MOT, because it’s the only way to get home safely in the middle of the night; and also small high street businesses struggling to stay afloat, worried this might be the final death knell for customers driving into town. > >
> > > None of this changes the fact that pollution kills, cities need to wean themselves off cars, and the climate crisis poses an existential threat. But if going green costs money that not everyone has, then ultimately there are only two plausible political responses. The first is utterly unconscionable, since it means reneging on net zero. The second is to find the money for a genuinely fair transition, and fast. > >
> > > This isn’t just about Ulez. There are some alarmingly big bills looming for millions of households in the name of saving the planet, and however clearly people might see the moral case for getting rid of their gas boiler or their old petrol car at a time when forest fires are ravaging Greece and flash floods are hitting Spain, money is money. If you genuinely can’t afford to switch, few things are more alienating than being made to feel guilty about that by people shocked at how hot it was on the beach in Sicily this year. > >
While it's UK-centric, I think the points in this article apply generally and globally, and we cannot shirk away from the fact that wealth must be redistributed fairly to allow people to reduce their carbon footprint. Normal people shouldn't be made to choose between their current urgent survival AND their communal/future survival. "Going green" should not be a privilege.
I feel the same way too! I feel like this desperate need to just experience, document the nature around me before it disappears. Kinda like the vibe of the game SEASON: A letter to the future, I guess.
I feel this even more strongly when I scroll through my local/friend group chats and social media (I have to maintain my Instagram page for work). Everyone is so preoccupied with such trivial things in the grand scheme of things, living blissfully in ignorance and focusing all their time and attention and effort on ... what exactly? And I know that if I try to talk to these people about climate change, about all the food and water and economic difficulties that will be hitting us soon, they will just dismiss me and I will lose their respect. It's so scary and sad.
That's how I've been feeling for years now, intensified with the fact that there's not enough being done even as things escalate faster than expected. As someone with lifelong anxiety and depression, what I've learned is to not focus on my own helplessness and lack of self-worth, but instead what I can do and contribute in any little way to any person or creature. It's up to every one of us to give our own life meaning, and I'm trying to choose kindness.
Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
> > > We face an epochal, unthinkable prospect: of perhaps the two greatest existential threats – environmental breakdown and food system failure – converging, as one triggers the other. > >
> > > There are plenty of signs […] suggesting that the global food system may not be far from its tipping point, for structural reasons similar to those that tanked the financial sector in 2008. As a system approaches a critical threshold, it’s impossible to say which external shock could push it over. Once a system has become fragile, and its resilience is not restored, it’s not a matter of if and how, but when. > >
[…]
> > > It could scarcely be more screwed up. The effort to protect Earth systems and the human systems that depend on them is led by people working at the margins with tiny resources, while the richest and most powerful use every means at their disposal to stop them. Can you imagine, in decades to come, trying to explain this to your children? > >
> > > Looking back on previous human calamities, all of which will be dwarfed by this, you find yourself repeatedly asking “why didn’t they … ?” The answer is power: the power of a few to countermand the interests of humanity. The struggle to avert systemic failure is the struggle between democracy and plutocracy. It always has been, but the stakes are now higher than ever. > >