Emma_Goldman

Why? Books are to be read, annotated, lived with and lent out, not treated as precious objects in a way that is completely orthogonal to their use-value.

Is cacao production unsustainable? It seems the problem is the oligopolistic and exploitative price setting architecture for cacao. Pay farmers more, and supply will increase.

One of the alt-chocolate alternatives mentioned here involve palm oil, one of the most environmentally destructive ingredients on the planet.

I don't think beyond meat is an example to follow. It is ultra-processed fake food ruinous of health, and rightly - at least in the UK - now has an aura of ill-health surrounding it. Better to just make yourself a burger with healthy whole foods, like lentils, mushrooms, chickpeas.

Lead and cadmium can stay in the body for decades, so it is a cumulative rather than an acute problem, I think.

This is the main reason I don't frequently eat chocolate anymore. Dark chocolate is both the tastiest and lowest-sugar chocolate, but its cacao-intensity increases your intake of metals.

If I recall correctly, however, the origin of the cacao makes some difference. Cacao from West Africa and Asia has a lot less lead and cadmium than from South America. Still, I think little chocolate, wherever it's from, is metal-free.

I use the app screenzen. It rations distracting apps and retrains you to use your phone as a functional device again. I now only use my phone for messaging, emails, maps and spotify, but can still access Chrome when I need. A perfect balance.

It's reasoned conjecture on an internet message board. Yes, it is over-stated. But if one treats quality of diet as one variable among many in cognitive capacity, which is the only sane approach, then trying to match the diet of a population to trendlines in society-wide cognitive performance is not going to tell you anything.

Why isn't that the current CfD / RAB models?

They approach environmental reporting like a campaign organisation, it's just not serious. Politically, I will never forgive the Guardian for the mendacious editorial campaign they waged against the Corbyn project. In general, the Guardian leads with cultural issues geared towards the liberal professional managerial class, which only compounds the logic and superficiality of its clickbait business model. It is incredibly hard to learn anything by reading the Guardian. This quote from the nymag piece is telling: “The reason I think that it works for us is we cover so much breaking news and it drives a lot of traffic, and we have the scale to make it work,” Reed said. “Even if we only monetize one percent, it’s still a lot.”

As a long-standing Guardian reader, I couldn't disagree more. It might be financially solvent, but the business model of the paper under the leadership of Katherine Viner has shifted to high throughput, low quality content vying for clicks in the attention economy. They have gone all-in on volume.

Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).

Wikipedia is fairly reliable if our standard isn't a platonic ideal of truth but real-world comparators. Reminds me of Kant's famous line. "From the crooked timber of humankind, nothing entirely straight can be made".

See the Wikipedia page on the subject :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

Bizarre confabulation: the text you quote says nothing of the sort. They say the made one site, not to be confused with other, similar sites, and that the idea originates with someone else's tweet. Why jump to negative conclusions when they are sharing their project for the first time?

Ukraine's capital account has to offset its trade account or its currency tanks, and the state is in desperate for revenue, so however regrettable, this looks more like predictable economic arithmetic working itself out than a conspiracy. I don't 'support' it, that's not the point, but the global trade architecture is a brute fact of the conjuncture which give states in Ukraine's extreme situation few options. Again, happy to be told otherwise by anyone with more knowledge of the Ukrainian economy.

I should say, Mark Curtis is a well-known conspiracy-adjacent figure in the UK. His piece cherry picks and distorts the primary sources. He makes mundane civil service work sound far more sinister than it is. Go on the UK project website and read for yourself.

Curtis' version:

"It notes: “Ironically, despite the horrific circumstances in which interventions are being delivered, the operating context has provided a unique opportunity to really demonstrate to the GoU [government of Ukraine] and the Ukrainian population the importance and effectiveness of targeted technical assistance interventions designed to deliver reforms that generate tangible benefits”.

These reforms are also variously described in the UK project documents as “better integration with Euro-Atlantic markets” and “aligning it [Ukraine] more closely with Western markets”."

Original version:

"Whilst Russia’s invasion has had a fundamental impact, the roots of Ukraine’s weak governance and growth stretch back to independence: systemic corruption via oligarchy and economic concentration; inconsistent application of the rule of law and judicial corruption; weak public administration capacity and state capture, and large-scale state involvement in the economy. These were some of the factors driving the need for continuation of the GGF even prior to the invasion.

What has changed over the past year is that the invasion has led to a profound increase in need, coupled with an unsettling of the previous reform-resistant ‘elite bargain’. As such, opportunities exist for serious reform and a healthier long-term political settlement. Some favourable conditions exist such as a (temporary) decline in the political power of the oligarchs , much greater international support for Ukraine, including increased international support for EU candidacy as both an incentive and a structured process for deep-rooted reforms, greater social cohesion, and a resurgence of civil society and civic activism. Most importantly, public support for the state has grown, and in part as a result of the support of GGF-funded and managed interventions.

Ironically, despite the horrific circumstances in which interventions are being delivered, the operating context has provided a unique opportunity to really demonstrate to the GoU and the Ukrainian population the importance and effectiveness of targeted technical assistance interventions designed to deliver reforms that generate tangible benefits. The GGF has seized such opportunities providing valuable support to some hugely important reforms for example: through the TAPAS project IDPs were able to receive status certificates in days instead of weeks, citizens accessed ID cards, passports, birth certificates and tax payer identification numbers online in 18 regions and half a million people, (55% women) from occupied areas and active warzones were able to register their unemployment status and thus receive GoU support. The IFC project has supported Digital Data Corridors that have enabled thousands of Ukrainian refugees in eight countries across Europe to access their credit history. The IFES project resulted in over 3,000 students in 22 universities actively engaging in civic education. Finally, the IDLO project has supported the Higher Council of Justice (HCJ) to resume its work after a two year hiatus, appointing 8 new members in January 2023. "

So, Curtis' killer quote actually referred to helping hundreds of thousands of displaced or embattled Ukrainians access their passports and birth certificates so that they could claim state benefits and asylum abroad.

Less a scandal than the predictable outcome of a massive wartime trade account deficit, and faltering state revenues, that have to be made up via the sale of Ukrainian assets in the capital account paying out to the state? I am a socialist, but Ukraine is in a war of survival under extreme economic duress, and could lose US backing under Trump. It has to do whatever is necessary at this point. Not surprising it would favour the UK given that it's one of its leading geopolitical backers and the City of London. Happy to be told otherwise if anyone knows more about the Ukrainian economy and any alternative lifelines open to it.

It's also the name of the most successful left-wing press in the English-speaking world:

https://www.versobooks.com

The question of Palestine's admissibility to ICC proceedings was subject to a sophisticated legal review years ago, in relation to a former case.

The gist of the argument can be gleaned from its sub-headings:

Palestine is a State for the purposes of the Statute under relevant principles and rules of international law...... 25

C.1. The Montevideo criteria have been less restrictively applied in certain cases........ 25

C.2. It is appropriate to apply the Montevideo criteria less restrictively to Palestine, for the purposes of the Rome Statute ..... 29

C.2.a. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and it has been recognised that this implies a right to an independent and sovereign State of Palestine... 30

C.2.b. The exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is being obstructed by practices contrary to international law................... 32

C.2.c. Palestine has been recognised by a significant number of States.............. 34

C.2.d. No other State has sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territory............ 35

C.2.e. Palestine’s status as a State Party must be given effect........ 36

C.2.f. The Prosecution’s alternative position is consistent with international law ........ 39

C.2.g. Participants’ arguments regarding a possible referral by the Security Council are unclear.......... 40

D. The Oslo Accords do not Bar the Exercise of the Court’s Jurisdiction........ 40

D.1. The Oslo Accords regulated a gradual transfer of power to the Palestinian Authority over most of the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) and Gaza.............. 40

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20230609070357/http://www.icc-cp...

Coincidentally, Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the EU, announced earlier in the month that several of the bloc's member states intend to recognise Palestinian statehood on the 21st of May - today.

See: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/spain-ireland-reco....

I don't think this is right at all, a lot of intellectual forms of 'flow' necessarily involve incessant reflection, often through writing and re-writing, but also through conversation with self and others. Keep in mind that Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who pioneered the concept of flow, thought of the manipulation of symbols - including in science, philosophy, conversation - as one of its principal domains.

I'm curious if anyone could expand on the numbers here. Global data centres running at max capacity are estimated to require ~45GW of electricity. That's a lot, but not necessarily for the whole world, so it really depends on the rate of growth, and in particular, its national/regional distribution. For reference, demand on the British electricity grid peaked at 37.5GW today:

https://grid.iamkate.com/

Well, that's the point in question. For its critics, the whole enterprise is a misguided sham. See Leif Wenar's stimulating recent piece, 'The Deaths of Effective Altruism', which sees SBF less as aberration, than symptom.

https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/

I think EA was naive from the start, both in its unreflective moral realism, and its reduction of complicated questions of social theory down to back-of-the-envelope utility calculations based on threadbare empirics.

The list of illustrative examples may be misleading you. It is a wide category. Look at the Nova classification, then look at the ingredients list of meat substitutes. There is no debate on this point.

See also:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/12/quorn-r...

Food, and therefore nutrition, is significantly more complicated than a ledger of macronutrients. In this particular case, I was getting at this:

https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310

How far is that from pre-existing products, like Quorn[1], which here in the UK is probably the main producer of vegan/vegetarian meat simulacra? The problem is that people don't like eating straight fungus, and so it is serially transformed through elaborate processing, to create meat-like products. Which it turns out are extremely unhealthy.

I think you are on more promising ground in your final remark. There are plenty of whole food plant-based sources of protein that are tested, economical and low-carbon, while possessing none of the health drawbacks of 'high tech' alternatives.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn

"Criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value, but rather as a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying. In that sense, this criticism is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological -- and not transcendental -- in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. And this critique will be genealogical in the sense that it will not deduce from the form of what we are what it is impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think. It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom."

It's worth reading Foucault's entire discussion of Kant's essay, published on the second centenary of the original:

http://individual.utoronto.ca/bmclean/hermeneutics/foucault_...

Cute

Sorry, this is childish and you don't substantively respond to the core point. I am not going to waste my time.

I agree you should be paid properly. But I don't understand why, if the US has a privatised healthcare system, hospitals are not paying to train their own labour?

Growth is a useless indicator. The whole point of Piketty's argument is that the return on capital tendentially outstrips the rate of growth, and that large investors have access to especially high return assets. The OP is right that a 5% average annual return is conservative.

I get that this is a humourous and offhanded comment, but it's the equivalent of saying that basketball is 'just bouncing a ball'. A surprising amount of complexity emerges from putting teams of humans into a competitive sandbox environment with conflicting goals to, in each example, 'put the ball in the other team's basket', or 'click on the other team's avatars until they die'. They also overlap in that both are ultimately based on entering a skillful kinesthetic flow state, of becoming one with the ball, or your digital avatar, and gliding seamlessly, through muscle mechanics you've trained over hundreds of hours, through situations which are dynamic and non-identical because they involve opposing humans capable of interactivity and learning.

I've never really understood why FPS games are considered 'dumb'. All video games leverage our innate capacities of entertainment to fix our attention on unreal worlds, often to distraction, even addiction. Given that, it's difficult to transpose ideas of high and low brow onto the medium. The whole enterprise is dumb by design.

I think crucial over the medium-term is the comparative difficulty of decarbonising building heating and home-to-work transport at scale, through what technologies that is achieved, and the energy intensity of those technologies. It also depends on house size and grid design.

My understanding is that the annual kWh energy consumption of a heat pump will be slightly greater that an electric vehicle. But most two-adult families each have their own car, doubling the energy demand. It also require a lot more energy to build an electric vehicle than a heat pump, and requires more scarce minerals - with their own security and environmental problems. But then if people commute by walking, cycling or train, that's a very different calculation.

I do think this is a crudely banausic perspective.

Their novels are surely enjoyed by far fewer people than an only-relatively successful niche Youtube or TikTok content creator. Literary novels don't make money, and don't shape the culture, so what does it even mean to be a 'powerhouse'?

Mere numerical impressions is a poor standard of influence or staying power. Very many great works of culture, philosophy and history are little read by the standards of social media. I have no idea why you think that means they 'don't shape the culture'. I doubt that, each year, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is read even one hundredth the number of times that Mr Beast's videos are watched. I very much doubt that the future historian will take the Philosophical Investigations - by consensus the most influential work of philosophy in the twentieth century, whose effects on our intellectual culture are deep and pervasive - to be an incidental footnote when compared to Mr Beast.

But cultural value isn't just a function of influence, clearly. Knausgaard's books are to many people, myself included, simply great works of art, and should be celebrated for that fact. They show a level of cultural excellence, ingenuity and craft that the average trending YouTube video doesn't, whatever merit it might have besides.

The depletion of fossil fuels is not the problem. In fact, the opposite is true: we need to leave a very large proportion of present-day fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we're to avert catastrophic increases in global radiative forcing, and leading fossil fuel states don't particularly want to do that. Renewables, and potentially nuclear, can deliver all the energy we need if we are intelligent about it. Some things will be more expensive in the medium-term (producing extreme high heat, flying), but that's far from a doomsday scenario. Other things (average electricity prices, road and rail transport) will be cheaper.

You are conflating absolute resource scarcity with planetary boundaries.

There is no absolute resource scarcity on any meaningful timescale, there is only a related question about the size of the resources which will become economically recoverable over succeeding centuries. Resource-to-production ratios are often used to suggest that certain resources will run out within a number of decades, but that is just a form of corporate book-keeping - new exploration, technologies, and rising prices, can and do push the search for new reserves. The R-P ratios at the heart of the Limits to Growth argument have actually improved since the 1970s despite rising consumption, for exactly that reason.

You are right, however, that there are clear tensions between compound growth and planetary boundaries like ocean acidification and topsoil depletion. That is really the crux of the issue - how many times can we multiply the size of the economy without, through sheer weight of exploitation of natural resource sources and sinks, and of material power and artifice, destroying the planet.