Lots of reasons to dislike Google. That is not one of them.

Is it fair? Probably, yeah. But I don’t think it’s an effective way of framing or addressing the problem.

The challenge is always getting enough people to do enough of an action that it makes an impact. It is certainly more effective, in terms of reducing emissions, to target policy interventions at leverage points - like forcing energy companies to adopt renewables by law and banning further fossil fuel extraction.

Personal action can be useful to live in alignment with your values and to provide examples to others for ways to get involved in the climate movement, but we can’t consume our way out of this.

Billionaire wants a totalitarian state, who’s surprised?

No, I just never feel good after using it

Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s the algorithms, but I do notice a difference in how I feel after spending time on the Lemmy or Mastodon vs Instagram or LinkedIn

I use Proton and really like it, but I don’t know how to go about using my own domain (though I am interested in it). How difficult is it for someone without webdev and self hosting experience to get set up?

Why am I not surprised? In the words of the Wu Tang Clan - “cash rules everything around me”

How so? I already use both, I’m just curious

What do you typically use your computer for? That’s going to have a major impact. If it’s pretty basic stuff (web browsing, text editing, etc) you shouldn’t have any issue. If it’s something that’s more complicated or unusual, then sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes not, depending on what you want to do. In general, a little bit of comfort searching the web and working in the command line helps a lot with troubleshooting Linux

Of all the words in the world, those are certainly some of them

Sure. For one, the growth imperative means that any business must return a profit as its primary function. If profits are hard to come by, that can lead to things like predatory lending and higher fees for consumers, not to mention investment in environmentally destructive, but profitable, activities. Second, by commodifying human necessities like housing and turning them into investment vehicles, housing is increasingly unaffordable for working people as prices go up. I could go on, if you’d like, but I think those are both fairly compelling arguments.

One thing that I’ve found helpful is from Naomi Klein in her most recent book. To paraphrase - conspiracy theories often get the feelings right, but the facts wrong. For example, we are all being screwed over by banks and hedge funds, but it’s because of the structures of capitalism, not the Jews. But it’s much easier, mentally, to pin the blame on one specific person or group than to grapple with the flaws inherent in the social systems we’ve created.

• Knowledge Fight
• Behind the Bastards
• Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I hear that, but I think we need to be phasing out coal as fast as possible. Nuclear for base load and renewables plus storage for the rest is our best path forward to decarbonize ASAP

Wind has come down a lot, just over a longer time. Solar and storage are what have really plummeted recently. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy

One of the big challenges now in the US is streamlining permitting, for renewables and for transmission upgrades and expansions.

I’d be interested to see the video you mention!

This is true, but investing in research and subsidizing its production is how we drive costs down. We’ve done a really incredible job of getting clean energy costs down from where they were, but there’s no need to slow our efforts down now

Oh yeah… arc flash. That makes sense

I misread and I’m still wondering. Can you please help me out here?

No please! Electric substations are necessary to transmit power, and we actually need more of them if we’re going to build the amount of renewables we need.

If you’re looking for parts of the electrical system that I feel less positively about, that would include data centers (especially for AI and crypto mining) and coal-fired power plants.

Of course, industrial sabotage is a crime, and with all the high voltage and current going around, it’s a particularly dangerous one at that. Would not recommend