nothing to see here

On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Last month’s post was called Welcome to Hell, with a photo of the smoke-filled sky over New York City. Last Friday night we were in the middle of a torrential rainstorm that dumped 250 mm of water on us. It’s one Hell of a climate catastrophe.

“We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, via @c.justc

“hiding from Threads. can we stop finding new capitalist billionaire toys to be enthralled by? we are boiling ourselves like frogs, literally & figuratively” —@BonStewart

“We have the science to stop the climate crisis and end pandemics. Why are we failing? —‘Science is embraced when it serves the interests of capital, and is often ignored when it does not.’ —Jason Hickel.” —@LuckyTran

“I think a lot of the time we get frustrated with ‘people’ because we assume that change happens in democracies when enough people want it. So we conclude the problem must be that enough people don’t want it. The bastards.
No, historically democratic change happens when organisations and movements have made change happen. They are needed as instruments for people’s desires.
We’re currently living in an era with advanced machinery of government, but almost no organisation for democracy.” —@Loukas

“My theory is that Mastodon is like the kitchen of the social media party. Not the hottest spot but eventually everyone ends up there.” —@pb

“The ‘town square’ analogy for social media is another one of those crap ones that somehow got traction. No one actually wants a town square. They want a cafe at the edge of the town square where they can chat to their mates and watch the world go by. They don’t want some bloke with an amplifier in the middle of the square screaming about how Jesus saves.” —@IanBetteridge

“On AI taking my job: A long time ago I realize it was dangerous for me to ‘be’ my job/discipline. I made a little heuristic for it: Nouns<Verbs. I am a human and I do human things like make art and tools, tell stories, share knowledge. Even though I consider teaching my ‘calling’ I am not a teacher; I teach. If there was no job for that, I’d still do it. It’s like breathing for me. I can only hold my breath for so long. —@cwodtke

“The problem is that electric cars are popular with politicians precisely because they provide an excuse to avoid doing harder things, like rebuilding our cities, or changing the habits of lifetimes. Persuading people to switch from their old gasoline car to a shiny Tesla is much easier than persuading them that they can live without a car. Hence governments are pushing electric cars, often with incentives that make no sense.” – Daniel Knowles, author of Carmageddon, via @BreadAndCircuses