Climate change, and how we're doing fuck all about it.
There are news stories about wildfires, droughts, water shortages, hurricanes, changing weather patterns, etc. But the climate change part is usually mentioned as an "oh by the way" and it's rarely tied to stuff we need to do.
Depending how far we push it, climate change is either "just" going to cause mass starvation and novel weather patterns; or it's going to make the Earth uninhabitable for humans.
Either way is fucking bad.
There's virtually no mainstream news coverage of what we need to do. People say to buy EVs, but that's not enough. We need to either radically limit the amount of energy we consume, or dramatically change how we generate energy. Probably both.
But there's no coverage. Just tRuMp HaTeS wInDmIlLs.
Pretty wild that the author didn't set up app notifications. Getting specific notifications from specific people on my wrist is a big part of the reason I use a smartwatch. But to each their own.
It'd be pretty cool to get a significant use case of my pricey pricey Garmin for ~CAD$40.
Recognizing from history the possibilities of where this all might lead, the prospect of any serious economic downturn being met with a widespread push of mass automation—paired with a regime overwhelmingly friendly to the tech and business class, and executing a campaign of oppression and prosecution of precarious manual and skilled laborers—well, it should make us all sit up and pay attention.
We don't notice technologies that quietly solve the problem they were intended to solve. I've never seen a rage post about light switches. Or wrenches. Or locks. Or pencils.
AI, and a lot of the technologies we complain about, are business models that prioritize value to the producer over value to the buyer or user. They aren't technology per se, so much as a shoddy product wrapped in unrealistic promises.
You'd think, wouldn't you? I suspect it's because we're mostly middle aged (or older) so we're not playing TTRPGs any more. But I am! And I demand posts!
I really enjoyed Eye of the World, and I faithfully read the next seven or eight books when they came out.
But I tried to read it again a few years ago and it didn't keep my interest.