Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 35

"There are some worrying signs of inflexibility in today’s world, Hegmon notes. Our nation-states are so large that relocation is not really an option. And we are perhaps overly reliant on large-scale infrastructure like the U.S. electric grid. 'We’d go back to the Stone Age if the electricity system went out,' says David Nicol, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana."

"But the people who fled adapted to cope with the changes. 'They became less family-focused and more communal,' says Ortman. For instance, Puebloan ritual rooms called kivas became communal, and the people built more plazas, indicating that they placed a higher value on community."

Which maybe suggests communal and adaptable societies are more resilient than those based around brittle nuclear family + market systems ... like those encouraged (if not forced on people) in the #NeoLiberal era?

The assumption here is that markets are the only way to redistribute food between families or communities. #AmartyaSen would dispute that. In 'Development as Freedom', he talks about markets failing to prevent famines because those who starve lose their purchasing power at the same rate as they lose their ability to grow for their subsistence needs. According to his data, famines have always been prevented in democratic countries, but by public action, not by market forces.

"Mesa Verde’s economy was organized around the family unit, Ortman notes. Each family was more or less economically self-sufficient; they lived on small farms and didn’t produce a surplus of food for market—in fact, there was no market ... But the droughts, and a bout of cooler weather, made those marginal lands even more difficult to farm ... Without the necessary infrastructures in place to redistribute food, the people of Mesa Verde began to starve."

This article challenged a few of my beliefs, like the idea that US #PublicTransport was intentionally destroyed by the car companies that bought many of them up. But it fails to discuss a number of ways that operating public transport could be improved, like running vehicles on electricity instead of fossil fuels, and running smaller vehicles more often, instead of having huge buses running only half-hourly or hourly, crammed to bursting during peak times.

"The only way to reverse the vicious cycle in the U.S. is by providing better service up front. The riders might not come on day one, but numerous examples, from cities like Phoenix and Seattle, have shown that better service will attract more riders. This can, in turn, produce a virtuous cycle where more riders justify further improved service—as well as providing a stronger political base of support."
- #JonathanEnglish
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-killed-transit/568825/

@jessmahler thanks so much for this thread. I'm in recovery from falling down a fairly deep depression hole, right when I was preparing for a long international trip. I've been thinking a lot about hacks that might help streamline my life to avoid the mental exhaustion that makes such crashes more likely, and I keep coming across bullet journal. I used to use a simple, paper-based organizer and it worked well for years. Your posts are further encouragement to go back to it. Thanks again.

A #kabuki version of #TheLastJedi!
https://boingboing.net/2019/11/29/watch-the-kabuki-version-of-th.html

That might actually be good. Unlike the film version, it wouldn't waste most of its running time with illogical or sickeningly cutesy, and like good #StarWars movies, it could focus on the interactions and relationships between the characters, with action scenes telling us something about those.

"Ultimately, the Mesa Verde people may have clung too rigidly to a way of life and been unable to adapt to their changing reality, she says."
- #JimODonnell
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/hohokam-mimbres-collapse/

@arteteco
> I'm not sure this is related to my personal feed

If you want more vanilla search results - ones that are less influenced by what the search engine knows about you - try using a private browser tab :)

"Through caring, people could unlearn coercive practices and attend to the wounds of the past and present. This caring would require people to see three things: Order revitalizes itself through change. Individuals are interdependent and must work to create a shared life in a fair, non-totalizing system. And different points of view are partially related but should not be conflated for the sake of harmony."
- #JustinLau
https://www.sapiens.org/culture/hong-kong-harmony/

New #Disintermedia blog post on '20 Years of #Indymedia.org and the Independent Media Centres':
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2019/11/29/20-years-of-indymedia/

Here' the website for a 20 year anniversary event for #Indymedia:
https://indy20.dangerousmedia.org/

It displays a blank screen, until the visitor allows Javscript from not only the primary domain, but mywebsitebuilder.com, storage.googleapis.com, and possibly windows.net too :/

@ericbuijs agreed. Classic example of a solution in search of a problem.
@clacke

@stevenroose that's because I only just invited you in ;) Are you seeing messages from me and @orbifx ?

@Wolf480pl are you getting messages from the jabber group chat that @stevenroose just invited us both into?

@orbifx

@Wolf480pl are you getting the messages from the jabber group chat I started with you and @orbifx ? Just testing ephemeral group chats in Conversations.
@stevenroose

@denikombucha muted for a while to see if it helps you grow up 😊

So now small Pacific states are taking money from China *and* Israel to endorse their anti-democratic annexations of their smaller neighbours. Much like the Caribbean island states supporting the Japanese with their "scientific" whaling fraud and attempts to restart commercial whaling, in exhange for economic "aid". I find the corruption inherent in all these examples deeply frustrating.