Sometimes reality gets a little overwhelming and I need a metaphorical hug.

The world is big and scary, yo!

https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1787915217558716438

Feeling like shit right now ngl

Feels like potential employers simply ignore my portfolio, and it doesn't matter how skilled and/or knowledgeable I am. None of them even try testing my skills, even when I am obviously more than qualified for a relevant job vacancy, or on the occasion when I do get an in-person interview, which is not helped by my social impediments.

I have always been significantly better than my immediate peers in the field where I am looking for a job currently, but while some of them did manage to get jobs, I am left with no commercial experience, and potential employers are obviously looking primarily for people who already have experience.

I don't seem to be able to hold a job in any other field, currently, at least not in the long term.

I love living under crapitalism and not being neurotypical enough to have a living. /s

(P.S. I do apologise to people whose replies I have not attended yet, regarding idealism and whether or not Marxism is anti-idealist or not. I still intend to.)

Which foods have the most plastics? You may be surprised | CNN

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2329484

The Scorching Indictment of Our Time

The numbers are in, and they paint a damning portrait of our species’ reckless disregard for the very planet that sustains us. Global greenhouse gas emissions reached new records in 2023, driving a staggering 1.45°C of anthropogenic warming so far. This is no mere statistic, but a clarion call that we have trespassed far beyond the bounds of reason and responsibility.

Wiki

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the "main current system in the South and North Atlantic Oceans".

The article is ~7.5k words. The summary comes at the very end.

For the AMOC and other climate tipping points, the only action we can take to minimize the risk is to phase out fossil fuel use and stop deforestation as fast as possible. If we can reach zero emissions, further global warming will stop within years, and the sooner this happens the smaller the risk of passing devastating tipping points. It would also minimize many other losses, damages, and human suffering from “regular” global warming impacts (e.g., heatwaves, floods, droughts, harvest failures, wildfires, sea level rise), which are already happening all around us even without the passing of major climate tipping points.

As another Climate Tipping Points report published in December 2022 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concludes: “Yet, the current scientific evidence unequivocally supports unprecedented, urgent and ambitious climate action to tackle the risks of climate system tipping points” (OECD, 2022).

It would be irresponsible, even foolhardy, if policymakers, business leaders, and indeed the voting public continue to ignore those risks.

I didn't read the main part of the article. It was too technical for me. but I did really like the intro.

Introduction

In 1751, the captain of an English slave-​trading ship made a historic discovery. While sailing at 25°N in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean, Captain Henry Ellis lowered a "bucket sea-gauge," devised and provided to him by the British clergyman Reverend Stephen Hales, through the warm surface waters into the deep. By means of a long rope and a system of valves, water from various depths could be brought up to the deck where its temperature was read from a built-in thermometer. To his surprise, Captain Ellis found that the deep water was icy cold.

He reported his findings to Reverend Hales in a letter: "The cold increased regularly, in proportion to the depths, till it descended to 3900 feet: from whence the mercury in the thermometer came up at 53 degrees (Fahrenheit); and tho' I afterwards sunk it to the depth of 5346 feet, that is a mile and 66 feet, it came up no lower."

These were the first ever recorded temperature measurements of the deep ocean. They revealed what is now known to be a fundamental and striking physical feature of the world ocean: deep water is always cold. The warm waters of the tropics and subtropics are confined to a thin layer at the surface; the heat of the sun does not slowly warm the depths during centuries or millennia as might be expected.

Ellis's letter to Hales suggests he had no inkling of the far-reaching significance of his discovery. He wrote: "This experiment, which seem'd at first but mere food for curiosity, became in the interim very useful to us. By its means we supplied our cold bath, and cooled our wines or water at pleasure; which is vastly agreeable to us in this burning climate" (Ellis, 1751).

In fact, Ellis had struck upon the first indication of the ocean's overturning circulation, the system of deep ocean currents that circulates cold waters of polar origin around the planet.

But it was not until several decades later, in 1797, that another Englishman, Count Rumford, published a correct explanation for Ellis's "useful" discovery: "It appears to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to account for this degree of cold at the bottom of the sea in the torrid zone, on any other supposition than that of cold currents from the poles; and the utility of these currents in tempering the excessive heats of these climates is too evident to require any illustration" (Thompson, 1797).

Now, over 200 years later, we have a reasonable understanding of the complex system of deep ocean circulation and, what Rumford found so evident, the role it plays in climate. However, some major puzzles remain that may be of fundamental importance to our future.

So many companies are going to shit out cheap low effort AI generated content. You already see this kind of shit on mobile and only it's going to get easier and easier.

AI is incompatible with for profit art.

I feel like writing this is asking for pity or something, but I just want to express this feeling I have.

I had a family who took my childhood from me and had me in service to their needs instead. I wasn't allowed to be innocent - I had to look after my siblings and be a therapist for my parents.

I wasn't allowed to say no or to feel. I was ignored and overlooked because I met their needs and somehow found the energy to meet mine enough to go to college. I was threatened with homelessness if I didn't go to college and I was promised my education would be paid for. Instead, I got into a school and had to take out loans.

I took care of myself as an adult, but my conditioning was such that I jumped to my family's rescue whenever their lives imploded. Family was supposed to look out for each other, and I had the assumption that they would do the same for me in a similar situation.

I never let myself get into that situation. I walked to Coin Star with my change jar to pay for gas money, refusing to need them. I doubted they would come to my rescue, but I didn't want to spend my one rescue on something I could take care of myself.

I struggled independently and found the resources to help my family every time for over a decade of my adult life. I worked and saved and carved out a life for myself.

And then the pandemic started. I got another degree and I was on top of the world for two days before a family emergency called me back to reality. I put my career on hold and suffered a terrible financial loss that same year. But I know my (relative) would be dead right now if it weren't for me.

But then when I asked for time to recover from my own hardships, I was met with the same shaming they always gave me. They asked why I couldn't be financially established not two weeks after getting out of the hospital. Like I wasn't the one taking them to physical therapy. Making office calls. Acting as an unpaid caseworker, nurse, driver, cook, and housekeeper.

I thought this time would be different - I did so much that I thought it was incontrovertible how much I contributed. That I would be allowed the space to breathe for a little bit without the fault-finding coming back in full.

I thought they would see me for the work I did for them. I thought they would treat me with love and acceptance. I thought I would finally be seen.

I'm struggling now to get back to a semblance of where I once was. I'm not living up to my potential. I know that's bullshit phrasing and oversimplifying my situation. But it's hard. I finally went no contact, but it feels like something broke in me.

I tried so hard to be treated with decency by the people who were supposed to love me and I failed. I know they failed me, but I see the effort and energy I put into caring about others at cost to myself and I just can't justify wanting to do anything anymore.

I don't want to try. I can just keep my mask on and work as the world passes me by. I don't see trying as getting me anything I wanted or needed because I can't remember a time where it has.

I know this isn't true, but the feeling is so hard to shake.

I'm getting therapy and I'm finally seeing the extent of the damage done to me before I was old enough to understand, but it's so much. It's just digging and digging and digging until I'm so tired that I forget why I'm even doing it in the first place.

I'm trying so hard to keep going and I only do so because I don't want to make good people sad or bad people happy.

I still try even though the deepest part of me feels like it's pointless. I know it's not pointless, but I just feel pain every time I start to think things could get better.

I just needed to get this out there because I don't have anywhere else to put this, but if this resonates with anyone, how did you get out of this mindset?

Central Tokyo logs 27.7 C on Sunday, record-high temperature for March

KYODO NEWS

Central Tokyo experienced a record-high temperature for March at 27.7 C on Sunday as a high-pressure system brought summer-like heat to parts of the Japanese archipelago, according to the country's weather agency. The high was marked at 12:26 p.m. in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, which made it the hottest temperature recorded in March since data began being collected in 1876.

The previous record-high temperature for the central area of the Japanese capital in the month was 25.3 C, logged on March 10, 2013. Other cities, including Yokohama, south of Tokyo, and Miyazaki in southwestern Japan, also saw temperatures reach 25 C or higher, defined by the agency as a "summer day."

Rant

The net gets less fun every day. kyodonews.net was awful and a super-memory hog. It froze up my browser. Even with Adblock - god only knows what crap the site was trying load just for me to look at a ~200 words.

Other sites nag me.

Turn off Adblock! Turn off Adblock! Turn off Adblock!

I'm just going to use Ublock anyway.

Holy shit people under capitalism are fucking evil towards the most vulnerable people.

How many boomers are losing their shit over kids committing petty crimes is insane.

You'd think they'd click that it's because of poverty and, you know, there being NO FUCKING FUTURE.

But no, old people are screeching about how kids are little shits that need to be punished even more. They want to just arrest everyone and create career criminals instead of solving the real root causes behind it (poverty, capitalism, lack of society caring about their problems).

They act as though this was caused because "people are too nice to their kids now."

Holy shit, are you joking?

These poor fucking kids man.

I hate that the media can just heard old people like this, stop them from seeing issues created by powerful adults by attacking literal children.

It's the most obvious fash propaganda technique and yet they fall for this kind of shit all the time

Society has been turned into child sacrificing monsters, what hope so we have of a better future if THIS is what the people with the most power believe.

A species that eats its own children is doomed to extincton.

Your servant here, he has been told

To say it clear, to say it cold

It's over, it ain't going any further

And now the wheels of heaven stop

You feel the devil's riding crop

Get ready for the future: It is murder

I want to talk about it, but at the same time I don't.

Fuck me. I'm such an idiot.

Slightly older interview with the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. He points out that a lot of anxiety over climate change is related to anxiety over the end of Western dominance, because the tropics are already experiencing climate driven catastrophe on top of the damage done by colonialism:

The West has also come to rely on what Ghosh calls "an expert discourse" from scientists. The result, he believes, is that science is giving fearful westerners a hope in business-friendly "sustainable development," biofuels, or carbon-capture technology, which they think will save the system before it collapses.

The alternative, a massive-scale economic adaptation to a new distribution of resources, is too scary to consider: The end of capitalism would be as bad as the end of the world.

"The people who saw the climate crisis first are at the absolute other end: farmers, fishermen, Inuit, indigenous peoples, forest peoples in India, and they've already had to adapt, mainly by moving, finding new livelihoods," says Ghosh. "And indigenous peoples have already lived through the end of the world and found ways to survive."

It's a grim sort of optimism, but it is a reminder that there are opportunities to adapt and persist if we don't push our biosphere to the point of collapse in an effort to maintain a failed system. We're not going to do that, right?

it's cool

It's from the NYT. If you want to skip the Russia bashing and go right to the scenario - go to 1:04

In this fictionalized audio scenario, Times Opinion imagines the aftermath of one nuclear strike

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/opinion/nuclear-attack-scenario.html

Love it. Great system we got here.