Notices by M. Grégoire (mpjgregoire@mastodon.club), page 32

@brainblasted @BestGirlGrace Sounds like he was thinking of his company as a "common carrier", like a phone company.

Was there maybe some legal concern behind his approach?

#telco

@nigelsezyarr Are they all about #geology?

@switchingsocial @brainblasted Wasn't there a theory that the ideal society would consist of many independent absolute monarchies, between which individuals could freely move?

@Angle Humans will never cure the cancer. Human nature being what it is, we will always have unhealthy drives and resulting unhappiness. But we can *treat* the cancer, and conditions can improve, at least for a time.

The true cure will be supernatural (as I believe) or it will never come.

@Angle In fact China could have learnt from our mistakes and be cleaner now, if the elites there cared more about the masses.

Global population is expected to stabilise, less of a problem than it was 25 years ago.

Look, the world has lots of problems. Things could go badly wrong. But despair is a sin and a mistake.

@Angle (Of course I worry that we won't adopt low-carbon tech, essentially a collective action problem.)

Other than the carbon, the richer parts of the world are becoming less polluted, not more, even as we maintain manufacturing levels. When China becomes wealthier, they will also pollute less.

@Angle Sorry to hear about your problems; don't feel bad about the achievements of your grandparents -- but we both know they were unrepresentative.

Economic growth over the last two hundred years has been enabled by fossil fuels. It is possible that, at our current level of wealth and knowledge, we could develop cleaner energy.

@Angle (I've been blessed enough to travel to Europe for pleasure; one of my grandparents went there for WWII.)

Now, how do you think the lives of your grandparents compared with the lives of their own grandparents?

Positive local trends can certainly coexist with negative long-term or global trends. But they are a reason for hope.

@Angle OTOH...

Let's move out of the abstract for a moment. Think of your grandparents... Is your life better or worse than theirs? Who was more worried about providing enough food? Who was more physically tired at the end of the day? Who could expect a longer lifespan? Who was more likely to go to war? Who read more books/yr?

We can all gain strength and inspiration from the courage of "tank man."

"Thirty years on, the #Tiananmen Square image that shocked the world"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/11/tank-man-photograph-tiananmen-square-30-years-jeff-widener

The fight for human rights and freedom in #China must continue.

#tankman #freespeech #humanrights #asia

First barbecue of the season today. Made the coleslaw from scratch, but bought potato salad. We ate outside too; no flies yet.

#montréal

@tootbrute I recall the first as the best, but maybe that's because I read it when I was a youth. Which do you prefer?

#Earthsea
#ursulakleguin

@cosullivan Could you give more specific examples of benefits than "puzzle solving"?

Also when discussing drugs, links to reliable resources would be useful. Nearly everything has some sort of side effect, even caffeine.