someone---who---cares

[someone---who---cares]

To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.

“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”

“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,” reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.

Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tan—the current Y Combinator CEO who’s attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Francisco—participated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting “die slow motherfuckers” at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in “moderate” politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”

@karpad @quasi-normalcy @ubernegro

#What...

[someone---who---cares]

The youth are the future. Why else would the powers that be focus so intently on keeping them small, repressed and controlled? To those of us ushering in new futures, we understand that seeding hope and resilience in new generations is the actual key. Not silencing.

-qbv

#queerbrownvegan #sustainability #climate change #environmentalism #social justice #environment #climate crisis #environmental justice #activism #intersectional environmentalism #student protests

[someone---who---cares]

"A global shift to a mostly plant-based “flexitarian” diet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help restrict global heating to 1.5C, a new study shows.

Previous research has warned how emissions from food alone at current rates will propel the world past this key international target.

But the new research, published in the Science Advances journal, shows how that could be prevented by widespread adoption of a flexitarian diet based around reducing meat consumption and adding more plant-based food.

“A shift toward healthy diets would not only benefit the people, the land and food systems,” said Florian Humpenöder, a study author and senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “but also would have an impact on the total economy in terms of how fast emissions need to be reduced.” ...

The researchers found that adopting a flexitarian diet could lower methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture and lower the impacts of food production on water, nitrogen and biodiversity. This in turn could reduce the economic costs related to human health and ecosystem degradation and cut GHG emissions pricing, or what it costs to mitigate carbon, by 43% in 2050.

The dietary shift models also show limiting peak warming to about 1.5C can be achieved by 2045 with less carbon dioxide removal, compared with if we maintain our current diets.

“It’s important to stress that flexitarian is not vegetarian and not vegan,” Humpenöder says. “It’s less livestock products, especially in high-income regions, and the diet is based on what would be the best diet for human health.”

In the US, agriculture accounts for more than 10% of total GHG emissions. Most of it comes from livestock. Reducing meat consumption can free up agricultural land used for livestock production, which in turn can lower methane emissions. A potent greenhouse gas, methane is mainly expelled from cows and other animals raised for livestock. Animal production is the primary contributor to air quality-related health impacts from US food systems.

“This paper further confirms what other studies have shown, which is that if we change our diets to a more flexitarian type, we can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jason Hill, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s department of bioproducts and biosystems engineering.

According to the study authors, one way to achieve a shift toward healthier diets is through price-based incentives, such as putting taxes on the highest-emitting animal products, including beef and lamb. Another option is informing consumers about environmental consequences of high meat consumption."

-via The Guardian, March 27, 2024

#flexitarian #vegetarian #vegan #environment #environmental news #agriculture #big agriculture #beef #methane #air pollution #climate change #jail climate criminals #we want climate action now

[someone---who---cares]

"The public don’t understand that the olive oil price is skyrocketing because crops in Europe have been devastated by extreme drought because of climate change, and that it’s going to get much worse - or that David Attenborough warns the collapse of the food system is on the horizon which means extreme violence… The public don’t understand because the media aren’t interested and aren’t telling them. More about it here:"

Reflexively so, there are also researchers who are optimistic about the future of Olive Oil production. I have seen some other articles address these issues, and some report about hoping that current/future farmers will be able to adapt/change certain practices to account for weather fluctuations -and albeit yes it is quite alarming (as this conversation can extend into overall food security with gradual but drastic increases in climate change that we have see this past decade alone). I wanted to share this from the CBC article above, because I have hope that this industry will be able to recover:

"The situation has some farmers talking about how to adapt to climate change, such as by planting more drought-hardy varieties of olive trees. But Pananos says any change to the farming methods is going to take a long time." "Some of the farms around here, some of the olive groves were established many years ago, some of them 100 and 200 years ago," he said." "To make a drastic change … they will also have to put up with many years of inactivity to implement such thing." "Although farmers like Pananos are concerned about the short-term and long-term effects extreme heat will have on olive groves, some researchers are still optimistic about the plant's future." "Olive is actually a crop for the future because it doesn't rely so much on water," said Selina Wang, who has been researching olives for more than 15 years." "It requires moderate amount of water and chemicals for growing olives. A lot of farmers do not use any chemicals at all," she told Galloway."

#jail climate criminals #we want climate action now #climate change #climate crisis #big oil #fossil fuel industry #plastic #climate washing #floods #climate activism #IPPC #late stage capitalism #victims of capitalism

[someone---who---cares]

According to a recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de), around three million smart toothbrushes have been infected by hackers and enslaved into botnets.

The most cyberpunk thing on your dash today.

[someone---who---cares]

As a young boy in school, Masaki Sashima would be dragged out of his classroom and beaten by his fellow students.

Masaki, now 72, was different to the other kids. 

He was Ainu, an Indigenous people from the country's northern regions, most notably the large island of Hokkaido.

"During recess, the hallway door would open, and several guys would yell at me to come out," he said.

"I clung to my desk in the classroom and kept quiet.

"Everyone would surround me and beat me."

Japan has long portrayed itself as culturally and ethnically homogenous, something that some have even argued is a key to its success as a nation.

More than 98 per cent of Japanese people are descendants of the Yamato people. 

But the Ainu are distinct, with their own history, languages, and culture.

But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination, much of that identity has been lost. 

[someone---who---cares]

Student protesters at Cal Poly Humboldt redecorated the University President’s office after occupying Seimens Hall, renamed “Intifada Hall”.

[someone---who---cares]

#pope francis #climate change #climate crisis #climate action #climate emergency #climate catastrophe #environment #sustainability #jail climate criminals

[someone---who---cares]

[someone---who---cares]

[someone---who---cares]

#egypt #1967

[someone---who---cares]

[thread here]

#climate change #climate crisis #climate catastrophe #climate emergency #global heating #global warming #current events #spring #april #april 2024 #2024 #Bangkok #South Asia #Southeast Asia #twitter

[someone---who---cares]

So weird to see pple on this site still going gaga over David Cross and Bob Odenkirk as if they both don't have a history of being antiblack (despite David's leftist politics 😑 but then again, it doesn't mean shit), or David not having a history of being racist to Asians and then getting defensive when called out on it, along with defending Jefferey Tambor's workplace bullying and Bobby boy isn't a Zionist who signed the Biden letter.

#anti david cross #anti bob odenkirk #anti zionism #antiblackness #anti asian racism #abuse apologism

[someone---who---cares]

[someone---who---cares]

By the way, 44 people died yesterday because of the extreme heat. But since it's Mali I guess nobody gives a sh*t. Always the first to suffer and always the last to be considered. Black lives don't matter, even worse when they're African. Even worse if it's because of man-made disasters concerning climate change.

If only we could be this united against climate change...

#climate change #climate crisis #current events #climate catastrophe #global warming #survival #Mali #Africa

[someone---who---cares]

If only we could be this united against climate change...

#climate change #climate crisis #current events #climate catastrophe #global warming #environment #survival #extreme weather #drought #flood #climate migration

[someone---who---cares]

Watching the most recent music video of Toomaj Salehi who has been sentenced to death by the government of Iran basically for protesting them and rapping.

https://youtu.be/Jpi7d_uQ5Ec

#iran #freedom of speech #freedom of expression #justice #rap #rapper #music #toomaj salehi #toomaj