Notices by Zane Selvans (zaneselvans@social.coop), page 2

@brennen Happy to be part of a social network platform where the idea of commercialization is still literally a joke.

@corrigan Welcome!

@Mujinga This bill in particular is about locating density by transit, but the legislators & advocates behind it are also very supportive of bike infrastructure -- and those neighborhoods will be much easier to make walking & biking a priority in.

Many older environmental groups were created to *stop* things from getting built. The big question facing Sierra Club & others today is “What do you do when building something produces an environmental good?”

If the state & local Clubs won't fight for building dense, livable economically accessible, low-carbon, mixed-use cities, they become at best irrelevant & at worst an enemy of climate action, engaged in predatory delay alongside Shell & the Kochs. #SB827 https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/green-house-divided

@rbenjamin @mattcropp Agree that there's a lot more growth potential here. Are there any explicit governance conversations happening internally? How is it going to be funded? How will decisions be made to preserve the member serving nature of the instance?

@christianbundy I'd look at the national co-op grocer's association: https://www.ncg.coop/ though they are primarily retail/storefront oriented. If you're looking for startup funds / financing, you might connect w/ Shared Capital Cooperative: http://sharedcapital.coop/

@christianbundy The member-run bulk-buying club is how most storefront food cooperatives have started, historically, and I think it's probably the most cost-effective way to run things. It's kind of a tiny-hippy-costco. But eventually, if it keeps growing, it'll need some physical space (since nobody wants bulk food for 1000 people in their living room...) and additional overhead costs will be incurred. Hopefully the economies of scale will be enough to compensate.

Unsurprisingly, it seems like whether this is worthwhile will depend on our discount rates and risk tolerance. As with climate mitigation, a low discount rate & risk tolerance will encourage/enable climate adaptation investments.

Which reminds me of this thing I wrote a while ago.

http://cleanenergyaction.org/2014/05/09/the-myth-of-price/

Knowing when & how much sea level rise is going to happen seems important in the valuation of these coastal urban places. Can you trickle money into retrofitting an amphibious city? Or does it have to happen up front? Do we have appropriate financing mechanisms?

Thinking about the value of land/location vs. improvements in the context of sea level rise & sunk costs/stranded assets. Negative locational value may not wipe out a city, if the residual value of the improvements is high enough. If so, what happens?

And across all the papers Alden owns, is there a correlation between how liberal/conservative the voice paper is, and how hard it gets squeezed? Are there any other interesting variables that correlate obviously?

It's like they realized anyone who still had a subscription to the paper was probably going to stay subscribed no matter what, and with one paper in town that gave them monopoly pricing power. So they were like, hey let's squeeze what we can out of this while it's still around.

Are there any reader/journalist owned multi-stakeholder cooperatives out there? Anywhere on Earth? It seems like a thing that should exist by now.

@christianbundy We surveyed our local grocery stores, and found that for comparable bulk organic foods, the stores charged 50-100% more than we do. Our overhead is extremely low, and it's entirely member run, which allows us to keep it very affordable, in exchange for the time & effort of organizing the members to participate.

@theo That's good to hear! The more privacy & security oriented options there are, the better. I've also been having increasing issues on PIA with sites blocking the IPs they use, and occasional Ruby crashes... which are also part of my curiosity about other options. @LiaraRoux

Finally finished The Water Will Come, and wrote up some thoughts... It feels like the start of a difficult conversation about our situation, which is great.

The conversation that is, not our situation.

https://amateurearthling.org/2018/04/14/the-water-will-come-by-jeff-goodell/

Complicating all of this, thanks to an overly entitled wealthy coastal enclave in Florida, a judicial precedent has now been set that makes governments liable for *not* maintaining vulnerable infrastructure which should never have been built, or which ought to be abandoned based on what we know now. (PDF) http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/clerk/briefs/2011/1201-1400/11-1294_JurisAns.pdf