While I'm here I'm going to put some links in because that's a thing I do enjoy doing:
Benebell Wen continues to produce occult content at Seanan McGuire-levels of making me weep. This week she released an Oracle Bone Divination deck that's free to print at home and a new course: How to Self-Publish Your Tarot or Oracle Deck
The objective of this course is not to tell you what to do. The objective is to first ask, what do you want to do and what is your plan? Okay, now that we’ve established that, let me share with you my insights on how you can make sure you achieve what you want to do, you can sell that idea and people will want to buy it, and how to fine-tune that plan of yours so you ensure your success.
The Yurok Nation Just Established the Rights of the Klamath River
According to the Yurok Tribe, the resolution “establishes the Rights of the Klamath River to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve; to have a clean and healthy environment free from pollutants; to have a stable climate free from human-caused climate change impacts; and to be free from contamination by genetically engineered organisms.”
Decentralized Microgridding Can Provide 90% of a Neighborhood's Energy Needs, Study Finds - VICE
According to the new report, titled New Strategies For Smart Integrated Decentralised Energy Systems, by 2050 almost half of all EU households will produce renewable energy. Of these, more than a third will participate in a local energy community. In this context, the microgrid opportunity could be a game changer.
The report describes microgrids as the end result the combination of several technological trends, namely, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, heat pumps and batteries for storage. The key is that these technologies are decentralized—they can easily be owned by consumers and cooperatives in local systems.
notreallystars linked to: Why we’re made to feel guilty for work stress
“I really take issue with the narrative that explains stress as a failure of individuals to take responsibility for their own wellbeing,” Ronald Purser, Professor of Management at San Francisco State University tells me. Purser is the author of a new book, McMindfulness, which critiques “capitalist spirituality” – something he believes mindfulness to be a huge part of.
You know, I joke about blaming capitalism for everything but you really can blame capitalism for ruining everything.
The shitty new communist futurism
What unites such visions of the future is that they do not seek to reject modernity, as is often done on the left. Rather, they fully embrace its possibilities. Many adherents view themselves as properly Marxist. As the Communist Manifesto points out, while capitalism continuously tears us apart, it also creates an awesome global infrastructure and culture that offers the conditions of its own destruction.
This does a pretty good job of laying out my feelings on Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Conceptually I see the appeal but in practical terms I don't know that it's be best solution.
Dozens died from heat in Montreal, yet zero in Ontario. Here's why.
"Because Ontario doesn't count them" is the answer, which I found weirdly disappointing. I guess I still want there to be a simple solution.
Actual Takeaways:
1. A/C makes the problem worse, pushing out hot air and draining the power grid
2. The best answer is greening
3. Where that's not practical in the short term, white roofs and similar solutions can help
4. But seriously we need to do something, anything even if it's not perfect
I waffle a lot in the direction of "maybe it's Too Late and we can't fix it" but ultimately even if I'm not convinced that carrying my own silverware is going to accomplish anything, it makes me feel better, and that's probably worth something. I worry about whether the world will exist for my kid to grow up in, but I also need to be the best parent I can be for her right now, which means taking control of my mental health, and believing in the little lies as practice for believing in the big ones. (I don't know how PTerry would feel about that mutilation of the metaphor but oh well.)
And in the realm of articles that probably weren't written to make me feel better but worked anyway:
It is taken for granted by Governor Brown, by the climate scientists studied by Robbins and Moore, and the many people now reporting symptoms of ecoanxiety, that this new abnormal we call the Anthropocene is a new problem. But, guided by the insights of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, let’s jump back in time for a moment. In the second half of the 19th century an apocalypse happened on a series of islands just off the west coast of what we now call Canada.
Somehow reframing it as not actually a new problem, just our dumb white asses finally figuring it out that nature applies to us too, works in much the same way as "mother nature will be fine, regardless of whether humanity is" as a kind of reassurance.
The world ends all the time. I'm gonna go chop the wood and carry the water.