RE: @ScienceDesk@flipboard.social
“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
Remote
Bill Tschumy
@btschumy@mas.to
mastodon 4.7.2Collapse Aware; Amateur astronomer; Zoologist; Microscopist; Weather buff; Mobile software developer;
• Co-author of "SkySafari" planetarium app.
• Latest app: "Our Galaxy". Shows the 3D locations of objects in and around our galaxy.
208 Followers
376 Following
36 Posts
Joined November 16, 2022
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RE: @space_environmentalism@mastodon.social
Not to mention the incredible waste of metals this represents. Already, global copper supply is predicted to fall 10 million metric tons short of demand by 2040.
Replying to
@CiaraNi@mastodon.green @juliette@mastodon.green “I am starting to tire of people making mention of climate collapse seem like a mood killer and social faux pas. We're going to tone-police ourselves and the planet to death”
I still haven’t figured out how to talk to people that are bragging about their jetting around the world on vacation. I don’t want to be a climate scold, but I feel I should bring up how that behavior I’d just not sustainable. Has anyone thought of a good way to broach the subject?
RE: @gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green
Compared to oil, solar and wind is a very diffuse energy source. That means we will have to devote much more land to “green” energy than we’ve had to for fossil fuels. That will cause decreases in natural vegetation and biodiversity. Not to mention the environmental damage from mining the metals needed.
I’m not saying we should stick with fossil fuels, just that both have severe problems. The solution is to learn to reduce energy consumption.
Replying to
@FluentInFinance@mastodon.social @mastodonmigration@mastodon.online In 1960, the top US tax rate for earnings above $200,000 was 91%. That’s the clincher.
Replying to
@streetartutopia@mastodon.online This doesn’t look like something that could be installed without someone noticing. Most of his projects are stealth installations. I would assume he got permission for something like this? Or maybe the whole pedestal is just styrofoam.
Replying to
@sundogplanets You may know all about this, but read this post:
https://mindly.social/@cazabon/116246376103901190
Replying to
@davidho@mastodon.world Every time I read of some manufacturing “breakthrough” like this, I always wonder:
- How environmentally conscious is the manufacturing process? What chemicals are left over? Can they be reused?
- When they say it fully biodegrades, what does it biodegrade into? Does it leave microplastics around?
Replying to
@tolmasky@mastodon.social @nlskies@mastodon.social It’s interesting that it is able to handle that level of indirection. I wonder how deeply you can go.
John has a similar style to Disney
Karen has the style of John
Fred has the style of Karen
Hope has the style of Fred.
Draw a duck in the style of Hope.
*Does it work?*
Replying to
@iFixit@mastodon.social I find it surprising more people don’t own a multimeter. I don’t use mine a lot but probably at least once a month. Use it to test batteries and troubleshoot simple wiring hookups. I would feel lost without one.
Replying to
“AI” is a political project – I have also sometimes called it a narrative – whose purpose is the shifting of power and agency away from people and organizations towards centralized power structures. These centralized power structures are currently mostly a handful of big tech corporations and the “AI Labs” they keep shoveling money into. (2/3)
@leah @gerrymcgovern @tante
Replying to
AI” is presented as the ultimate answering machine (or as Karen Hao calls them: “Everything Machines”) and through that logic separates us from any reliable connection to what is in the world: Where journalists and scientists try to create strong links to verifiable real-world phenomena and knowledge about them, “AI” creates something from nothing severing any link that might allow fact-checking and validation. (3/3)
@leah @gerrymcgovern @tante
Replying to
@jamesthomson Not sure I’ve ever seen an app with so many customization settings. Almost overwhelming. Not a complaint, just an observation.
Replying to
@Alice@beige.party OMG! They didn’t just scan them, they ripped them out of your mouth. 😱
Replying to
@molly0xfff And why did he have access to a gun?
“The New York Times reported his family members said he had mental health problems and had expressed suicidal thoughts.”
Replying to
@cgudrian@social.tchncs.de @allsumnull@mastodon.cloud @sundogplanets@mastodon.social Thanks. I hadn’t thought about it being a stack of short exposures. However, if that’s the case, I would expect the satellite trails to be a series of dashes following a line. That’s assuming the sub exposures were taken one after the other. It is a curious image. It also looks like the post has been deleted for some reason.
Replying to
@johnzajac@dice.camp @benlockwood@ecoevo.social That is potentially promising. Let me know when it is out of the research phase and can be used at scale.
https://jembendell.com/2026/10/04/what-we-grieve-incanting-50-shades-of-grief/
"We grieve for when hot weather was something to fully enjoy, not carrying the dread of accelerating environmental change.
We grieve for the time when talking about the weather was our way to connect with one another, not to trigger anxieties, or invite a political debate.
We grieve for when we could enjoy a beautiful landscape and not wonder about the suffering and loss of its wildlife.
We grieve for the time when allergies, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and cancers, were unusual conditions and we would be unlucky to be affected by them.
We grieve for when we didn’t know that microplastics and toxic chemicals are circulating in our blood, accelerating our aging and foretelling of future illness, as well as that of future generations.
We grieve for when humanity was small enough for this Planet Earth to tolerate the financiers’ demand for exponential growth.”
…
Generative AI — making humanity dumber one token at a time.
Replying to on ecoevo.social
@benlockwood@ecoevo.social I agree with your sentiment but not necessarily with the facts. For example, we don’t have the technology to make cement without using fossil fuels. Same for metals needed for electrification. All our large machinery runs on diesel fuels and there is no technology to electrify them.
We do have the technology to do better than we currently are but it is not clear if that will be good enough.
Replying to
@petergleick With all the thousands of articles written about the dire state of our planet, I’m always surprised how little attention is given to the fact that we are in overshoot. There are too many people on the Earth and it cannot support them. Talking about population control seems to be a “third rail” that no one wants to discuss.
At this point, any “reasonable” attempts to reduce the population will be too little, too late. I wish Ehrlich wasn’t so readily dismissed in the 60s and 70s.
Replying to
@australopithecus@mastodon.social @benlockwood@ecoevo.social We might have the technology “in the lab” but we don’t have it at scale. To ramp up would be very expensive (as you said) but it would also take time, time that we really don’t have.
Replying to
“The average new born American, according to the Institute for Mineral Information, will consume in their life time (77.9 years): 12,614 kg of iron ore, 2297 kg of aluminum (bauxite), 424 kg of copper, 389 kg of lead, 212 kg of zinc, 45.4 g of gold, 17,526 kg of cement, 14,876 kg of salts, 7,667.5 kg of phosphate rock, 5,795 kg of clays, 494.4 million tonnes of stone, sand, and gravel, 18,374 kg of other minerals and metals, 230 tonnes of coal, 240.1 toe… (2/3)
@Christo_459@mastodon.me.uk
Replying to
@benlockwood@ecoevo.social Not sure I understand. It seems to me that knowledge of what is needed without the technology to accomplish it is not that useful. It is a start though.
I don’t even think we really know what levels are sustainable. We have guesses but all we really know is that current levels are most certainly not sustainable.
Replying to
@zrb@social.hildebrind.space @mastodonmigration@mastodon.online @emilymbender@dair-community.social Sorry, but you sound just like the climate change deniers. I feel this is real.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/14/google-deepmind-ai-warnings
https://ifanyonebuildsit.com
An interesting read:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/what-futures-are-possible-part-ii
From the article:
”Phew… That was a long-winded way of saying: we are F’d. Or are we? See, while most likely 2025 was the peak of human economic activity—remember: energy is everything—a total apocalypse is far from being guaranteed. An electrified technutopia is also mathematically impossible—except for a handful high tech city states or regions, most likely in East Asia. The rest of the world will have to go through a massive economic decline: abrupt at first, erasing 5-10% of real economic output in the near future, then grinding on slowly as ongoing wars (and new ones) continue to drain and destroy an already shrinking, depleting resource base.”
Not only is it a scam, it is a monumental waste of energy.
Replying to
@xWood4000@spacey.space @benlockwood@ecoevo.social Well, ferries are huge compared to most construction equipment. They can carry large batteries in the hold. There is also a significant environmental cost to making large, compact batteries. We may just be trading one cost for another. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Replying to
of petroleum and 163.3 toe of natural gas.”
That’s a lot of consumption. The Earth can’t support this. (3/3)
@Christo_459@mastodon.me.uk
Replying to
@allsumnull@mastodon.cloud @sundogplanets@mastodon.social I’m not quite sure what we are looking at. The trails are much shorter than typical satellite trails. They also have a surprisingly uniform length. The somewhat random angles of the trails are also perplexing. Did the photographer say that he thinks these are satellites?
Replying to
@Christo_459@mastodon.me.uk That will help, but it’s unfortunately not enough.
I know this is not a popular idea but I feel we need to reduce our population and birth rates.
I ran across this recently: (1/3)
Boosted by @MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social
“US police fear Meta smart glasses could be used to secretly record them”
If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.
#USPolitics
Replying to
@xWood4000@spacey.space @benlockwood@ecoevo.social Diesel is a very high density energy source. I don’t think it’s feasible to simply replace diesel with a battery. The battery would have to be very large with a high amperage and would weigh quite a bit.
I’m sure it can be made to work with enough engineering but to change out all the existing infrastructure would take quite some time.