Jack of all trades

I'm here to learn about the world and work through my climate grief.

I post about politics, climate change, economics, philosophy, being a father, programming, games, and more.

Just my toots: Jack of all trades (npub1gg4…euuk)">https://justmytoots.com/Jack of all trades (npub1gg4…euuk)

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jackofalltrades_at_mas.to@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-01-08 11:29:40 UTC

Thomas Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" sounds like an interesting book.
Quote from a blog comment: https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/why-collapse-is-inevitable/comment/189038422
#collapse #philosophy #optimism
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/859/221/661/529/618/original/1ed045f17f5d746f.png

2025-12-13 14:05:30 UTC

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Damn, I hate being right about this stuff.
@npub1j05…n8qa
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/712/626/247/424/463/original/2fdd4dd69b74ebaa.png

2025-12-13 14:01:52 UTC

As expected...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/12/eu-2035-petrol-diesel-car-ban-mep-green-deal
#ClimateCrisis #EV #EU

2025-11-06 11:18:18 UTC

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And not just the energy squeeze. LLMs are hemorrhaging money even in the current energy environment. It's very clearly a bubble that's getting ready to explode.
The amount of resources it requires vs the end result it provides looks like a negative ROI to me. It has some uses, but most of these would be prohibitively expensive if priced correctly.
At this point I'm not even sure they have a single profitable use, outside of luxury ego stroking for the rich maybe.

2025-10-16 18:24:13 UTC

We are steadily moving from the "fuck around" phase into the the "find out" phase.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/15/record-leap-in-co2-fuels-fears-of-accelerating-global-heating
#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

2025-10-09 18:06:32 UTC

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And the cherry on top is Tether printer constantly going brrr propping up the price of Bitcoin. Still going strong, waiting for the greatest fool.

2025-10-06 07:05:00 UTC

"""
The modern secular religion of progress tends to excommunicate feelings of loss. Science, technology and capitalism all presume constant innovation and growth; liberal politics promise ever-greater well-being; middle-class life is built on expectations of rising living standards and expanding self-realization. The ideal of modern society is freedom from loss. This denial is Western modernity’s foundational lie.
"""
https://web.archive.org/web/20251005062704/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/opinion/west-europe-america-lost.html
#PostGrowth #collapse #capitalism #modernity

2025-09-14 16:53:48 UTC

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Interesting channel. This primer is straightforward and concise:
https://youtu.be/f10zYGYE3wk
#collapse #doomer #doomerism

2025-09-14 16:47:18 UTC

"""
Normal people have mastered the art of the cope. In order to survive and reproduce in this life, many conscious living beings have to kill, harm, or exploit other organisms to fulfill their needs. Humans on the other hand have to not only do this but they must also remain consciously life affirming or they wouldn't be motivated to continue reproducing.
"""
https://youtu.be/KaxpYtNsUYQ
#collapse #cope #philosophy

2025-09-01 17:46:53 UTC

Norway, the most environmentally superior country on Earth.
https://youtu.be/zYjooTz_1lA
#Norway #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #EVs #oil

2025-08-15 19:17:01 UTC

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I played the first Mass Effect a few years ago, but never the second or third.

2025-08-15 19:01:03 UTC

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Taxes destroying money are the other side of the coin (forgive the pun) of money creation through government spending. Without it we'd have a constant source of inflation that could only be abated by cuts to spending.
Richard Murphy went into detail of the whole flow in this post:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/02/12/tax-and-money-flows-within-the-economy/

2025-08-15 18:42:31 UTC

I tried to get into Dragon Age: Origins, and I'm sure the dialogues and story are excellent, but the combat system is too archaic and uninspired for me to endure.
Maybe I should try Mass Effect 2 instead...
#DragonAge #Bioware #MassEffect

2025-08-04 08:01:30 UTC

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I feel the same way in my job as a programmer. Once I valued maintainability to a fault, imagining at least some of my software would outlive me. Now I don't look further than a few years forward.

2025-08-04 08:01:04 UTC

https://reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1mgnjak/the_collapse_biodiversity_and_the_scientist/
A poignant reflections of a biologist working through their #ClimateGrief and #CollapseAwarness

2025-07-21 12:36:09 UTC

Front-row seats to the apocalypse!
https://fediscience.org/@MartinStendel/114890626087160257
#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #collapse #Greenland

2025-07-20 17:02:18 UTC

Found the funniest quote today.
China promising to eventually achieve communism is "just trickle down but for leftists". "Trust me bro just a few more decades of police state bro." 😂
#communism #China
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/886/628/481/885/259/original/75e0b49fc92455ad.jpg

2025-06-24 08:42:29 UTC

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Not only that. Energy is also a very important input, which comes back nicely to the gasoline for a car vs digital subscription example.
It's hard to avoid news like these nowadays:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/21/why-electricity-prices-are-surging-for-us-households.html
or:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai
Or even a cursory browse of @npub14sz…ur2r feed will give you a good idea of how much input the digital world requires.

2025-06-23 21:20:52 UTC

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How can you be sure there are less inputs for a copy of a Bandcamp album or an Amazon Prime subscription than for an equally-priced amount of gasoline? The digital world has a very real physical footprint in terms of materials and energy.

2025-06-23 21:20:27 UTC

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What some people may take issue with in regards to the input is that economics often only concerns itself with money, as you hinted at by adding an adjective "market-traded". The input being a unique ecosystem being destroyed or a non-renewable resource cannot be reduced to a monetary valuation though.

2025-06-23 21:20:02 UTC

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"Economic growth is producing more with the same amount of inputs, or less."
This is a curious definition of growth. Wouldn't it suffice to end the sentence at "more", i.e. "economic growth is producing more"?

2025-06-06 18:09:44 UTC

"Another year, another record"
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-annual-carbon-dioxide-peak-milestone.html
#ClimateChange #ClimateDiary

2025-06-05 14:50:09 UTC

Another perfect headline for my collection.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vy191rgn1o
#NotTheOnion #ClimateChange #ClimateDiary #COP30

2024-12-30 17:32:32 UTC

"When Trucks Stop Running, America Stops"
Quite a scenario: https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/978-3-319-26375-5_1 Always amazes me how brittle and vulnerable these systems are.
Trash piling up since day one. Empty store shelves by day two. Industrial production halted by day five. Clean water gone after two weeks. Total blackout after a month or two.
"""
It brings home a hidden truth which bears repeating: Everything in our homes, everything in our stores, got there on a truck at some point.
"""
#collapse

2024-12-29 17:46:52 UTC

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I thought you said "yes" to that figure? If not, what else did you mean by "over three or four decades, a large proportion of the population is going to die in that period"?

2024-12-29 16:18:47 UTC

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Agreed on principle. In this case, however, 4+ billion people dead in the next 30-40 years to me lies in the realm of fantasy rather than high-end possibilities based in science.

2024-12-29 15:57:16 UTC

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Exceeding wet bulb temperatures for an extended period of time does not automatically mean that "everybody in that area dies". Sure, climate change makes heatwaves more deadly, but not to the point of total die-off that you're envisioning, definitely not on the timescale of the next few decades, at least.
3/3

2024-12-29 15:56:58 UTC

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You even mention at the end that, based on newest research, a safe wet bulb temperature is probably closer to 30C rather than 35C. That would make the list much, *much* longer, wouldn't it?
Yet you insist that "we cannot be very far away from an ‘everybody dies’ event".
This is a baseless claim.
2/3

2024-12-29 15:56:33 UTC

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Simon, the argument you're presenting in your article is not sound.
You link to a wikipedia article listing highest recorded web bulb temperatures, ten at the time of your writing, now a much longer, and still likely incomplete, list. You admit none of those caused mass deaths, even though they happened in highly-populated areas.
1/3

2024-12-29 11:49:21 UTC

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The contention seems to originate from this frame:
"We are actually losing a large part of the most productive food producing areas of the world, we're going to lose them over three or four decades, a large proportion of the population is going to die in that period"
Do you mean that 4+ billion people are going to die from hunger in the next 30-40 years?
I don't think the podcasters (or majority of the listeners for that matter) would agree with that.

2024-12-24 09:04:41 UTC

"After decades of rapid growth, many Chinese millennials and Gen Z people feel that the opportunities that were available to their parents no longer exist, and that working hard no longer offers guaranteed rewards."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/24/what-is-neijuan-china-viral-buzzword-laptop-bicycle
#China is more similar to the western nations than it cares to admit, speedrunning economic development, including all the problems of capitalism.
Chinese #economy could work better for the Chinese people, but the leaders don't want to give up any power.

2024-12-08 22:35:06 UTC

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The only difference now is that through science we can know exactly what ill effects we have on the environment and other living beings we share this planet with.
A temporary knowledge, in the grand scheme of things, I'm afraid. We'll be back to highly localized indigenous wisdom soon enough.

2024-12-08 22:34:02 UTC

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I'm starting to question how "wise" human societies can actually be, or even if such a description makes sense. Aren't practices of any society simply something that worked for them, in a given time, learned through trial and error, and forged by being subject to intergroup competition?
Our current time is no different.

2024-12-07 15:20:09 UTC

"""
What does it really mean to live in balance with nature? Historical Native American answers to that question were incredibly complex, often contradictory and basically have no resemblance to anything you were taught in school.
(...)
Despite their reciprocal view of nature and their gift economy with the land indigenous people across the contiguous United States managed their environment in fundamentally anthropocentric ways.
"""
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhLizvrhbOU
#sustainability #indigenous

2024-11-21 11:00:43 UTC

"""
China is warning its oversaturated photovoltaic sector to avoid blindly expanding capacity – including in producing solar panels – with newly issued guidance that comes as industrial overcapacity has been self-defeating domestically while triggering backlash in the global market and stoking geopolitical tensions.
"""
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3287529/china-warns-overheated-solar-industry-cool-competition-curb-backlash
#solar #renewables #EnergyTransition #China

2024-11-19 11:46:12 UTC

Smog over India and Pakistan visible from space.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153540/smoky-skies-over-the-indo-gangetic-plain
#India #Pakistan #smog
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/509/440/338/131/203/original/1b74418deadd18bf.jpg

2024-11-17 09:38:38 UTC

Russia targets Ukraine’s power grid before winter 😞
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/17/russia-targets-ukraines-power-grid-in-biggest-missile-strike-in-months-officials-say

2024-11-09 12:26:13 UTC

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It's not that the people "figured out" how to live without rulers 7 thousand years ago. Egalitarianism was the default state for most of human history.
What the people of Çatalhöyük managed is to still hold on to some of that egalitarian past. For how long though?
BTW, fascinated by the spot you decided to cut the quote:
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/452/978/630/472/239/original/81441bb5e469a381.jpg

2024-11-04 06:51:53 UTC

"""
Toxic gray smog has sickened tens of thousands of people, mainly children and elderly people, since last month when the air quality started worsening in Lahore.
Lahore was once known as a city of gardens, which were ubiquitous during the Mughal era from the 16th to 19th centuries. But rapid urbanization and surging population growth have left little room for greenery.
"""
https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-lahore-closes-schools-smog-air-pollution-7c997d24b7cc9dd96223bb0f564d803d
#Pakistan #smog #pollution

2024-11-01 17:04:07 UTC

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Yes and no. They have a lot to answer for, but they are the product of the system just like the poor are.

2024-11-01 15:34:58 UTC

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There are less than 3000 billionaires in the world. OTOH the top 1% is 80 million people.
Not to give a pass to billionaires, but this problem is much much bigger than them.

2024-11-01 15:27:46 UTC

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Take the assumptions away and there's no economics left. 😉

2024-10-31 09:52:51 UTC

#Halloween #collapse
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/401/417/378/817/283/original/7a981d4368aa95f5.jpg

2024-10-20 15:55:17 UTC

"China is planning to send a crewed submersible to explore the polar seabed as part of its growing ambitions in the Arctic Ocean."
And unsurprisingly this is all in preparation for "deep-sea oil and gas mineral resource exploration and production, seabed pipeline construction and maintenance."
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3283103/china-plans-send-crewed-submersible-bottom-arctic-seabed
#China #ClimateChange #Arctic

2024-10-13 07:55:04 UTC

"""
The primary use of “misinformation” is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In other words, it’s copium.
"""
https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/copium-addicts-what-misinformation
#misinformation #copium

2024-10-10 06:28:36 UTC

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Curious, isn't it? As if any argument could be labeled "climate delay discourse" in the right context.

2024-10-09 21:14:43 UTC

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Yes, but then again you could also say to that: "Emergency? Are you trying to scare people off? We need to be positive to spur people into action. This doomism is a delay tactic." 😉

2024-10-09 19:47:59 UTC

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But the truth is that just because they use these arguments doesn't mean their intention is to delay climate action. It is the opposite in fact. These arguments are only an expression of their particular set of values, and not a malicious tactic to delay climate action.
2/2

2024-10-09 19:47:37 UTC

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Yeah, I get it, just find it interesting and somewhat problematic that many arguments listed are being labeled as "climate denial tactics", while they may be a genuine expression of people's values.
I've spoked with many climate activists, on this platform included, that following this illustration, could easily be labeled techno-optimists, doomers, fossil fuel solutionists, individualists, and so on.
1/2

2024-10-09 15:41:58 UTC

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I wish I knew what that solution was, because it sounds wonderful.
3/3

2024-10-09 15:41:49 UTC

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A solution that does not place responsibility on individuals, yet uses both sticks and carrots to incentivise climate-friendly behavior. A solution that does not depend on future technologies nor existing fossil fuel infrastructure, yet doesn't impede poor countries' development nor alienate the working class. A solution that is quick enough to prevent societal collapse while avoiding the geopolitical game theory trap.
2/3

2024-10-09 15:41:14 UTC

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Even some of the discourses counter each other just fine, e.g. techno-optimists will happily argue with doomers.
That's why I don't see most of this list as discourses of climate delay, but rather discourses of climate solutions.
Because if we exclude all of these arguments as invalid, what does that leave us?
1/3

2024-10-09 07:40:36 UTC

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Sure, they all can be used by climate deniers as manipulative arguments. My point was that they can also be genuine views of people that care deeply about the climate. Hell, I find myself in many of them. That's why they are so effective: they ring true in many aspects.

2024-10-08 22:48:52 UTC

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Very interesting list. None of them are completely wrong, which just goes to show how complex the climate crisis is. I can empathize and understand all of these views. The predicament we find ourselves in is truly a reflection of the difference in values people in society can have. It's not so much a technological problem, but rather a question of how to align views and actions of 8 billion people towards the same goal (of stopping climate change)

2024-10-07 14:51:04 UTC

https://youtu.be/C3hbEX5rXwM
We have a similar saying in Poland: "Dajcie mi człowieka, a paragraf się znajdzie".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_give_you_the_case_against_him
#Russia #politics #freedom #USSR #history #communism

2024-09-15 15:51:53 UTC

What a set of headlines, can't get any more dystopian than that. The rich go into vanity trips into space, while the common people down below drown.
#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #climate #space #spacex
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/142/359/751/095/791/original/1e9f124e783c0efb.jpg

2024-08-02 07:23:52 UTC

"""
Halfway through the peak flood season, China has already experienced the highest number of significant floods since record keeping began in 1998, and the hottest July since 1961.
"""
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/02/china-flooding-record-weather
#ClimateChange #China

2024-06-19 14:46:30 UTC

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And of course they drive around in a German car.
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/112/643/826/409/320/328/original/69db03999f4f07eb.webp

2024-06-17 15:45:47 UTC

"""
Tensions are rising in a border dispute between the United States and Mexico. But this conflict is not about migration; it’s about water.
"""
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/17/climate/water-conflict-us-mexico-heat-drought/index.html
#ClimateChange #ClimateDiary #water #drought #USA #Mexico

2024-05-19 20:20:21 UTC

In the past, countries used fossil fuels to develop, as these happened to be the energy sources available. Now we have renewables, so we can abandon fossil fuels.
Environmental destruction is not inherent to industrial civilization, but is caused by capitalism. The growth imperative is a feature of capitalism and not part of any unchanging human nature.
By adopting a different economic/political system we can resolve all ecological tensions.
Is this story true? How would I know if it is?

2024-05-19 14:17:01 UTC

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"I do think that history makes it pretty clear that free markets and capitalism*, on average, lead to much better outcomes** for humanity than anything else we've tried."
Now to only define these starred terms, hmmm.