remote workers often drive more often than their in-office counterparts by taking several short car trips throughout the day.
The researchers also found that working from home can prompt people to use more energy over the course of a workday
Biking to a nearby coffee shop with your laptop, for example, is an extremely carbon-efficient way to work.
The study’s authors also point out that office buildings can be made greener. If older buildings were revamped with more energy-efficient appliances and put on a decarbonized grid, then in-office work could match the greenhouse gas emissions of working from home. Taking public transit can also contribute significantly to reducing an individual’s carbon footprint, even if they are working from an office.
So yes, your commute can make up more than half of your footprint, IF you otherwise avoid any and all big emitters in your life.
If you eat meat, use air travel or cruise ships, own a car or another fossil fueled vehicle, have a big home (which may not feel big for you), have kids, waste food, then your footprint will be affected much less by wether you work from home or commute.
Obligatory disclaimer: The climate crisis is a systemic crisis and cannot be solved on the individual level. Vote, voice, organize, disrupt.
They obviously do good work and probably could use more money and, sure, I want sick children to have an Xbox, but I'd still feel misled by calling that 'charity'.
People in here seem to question why it's not the North, being responsible for the vast majority of emissions.
Rich countries have factories and cars, but also a technological standard and environmental regulations. Both limit the amount of air pollution (think dust particles) while greenhouse gases (like CO2) are something else.
Now think of a poor country with low regulations and old technology. People in slums burn literal dirt in their ovens. While they contribute almost nothing to climate change, air quality reflects the quality of fuels, ovens, engines and regulations. It's poor.
This is just a general take. I opened the article, but immediately closed it due to popups and eyesore.
Can someone explain the use of “supersonic” in relation to space?
Great question! Made me search for answers. Although this answer does not have any sources, it seems to stand well on it's own:
Supersonic has a well-defined meaning. It means a speed that exceeds the local speed of propagation of pressure waves. In cold gasses, Mach 1 (the speed of sound) is rather low. In hot gasses, it is higher.
We don't talk about sound in space, because the density of gasses is too low to support any significant energy transfer to solid objects like eardrums. Nevertheless, "sound" waves (i.e. pressure waves) do travel through any gaseous medium. Therefore, the local speed of "sound" is well-defined.
Stop suing! They don’t care they can make more money through lying. Start jailing them!
They only care about money. That's why hurting their profits is an effective method to change what they do.
Imagine renewable electricity was 10 times more profitable than generating it from fossil fuels. Of course they would want to be clean energy barons. Lawsuits can make a business less profitable, can make investments more risky. So this is good! I agree jailing would be a much stronger incentive.
But to put someone into jail, you also have to sue them first, don't you? At least that's what my translator suggests.
I personally avoid argument threads for the most part unless I have a dire social need, but not every conversation is necessarily about the Holodomor and Xinjiang (the two points of contention it seems).
I’d hope that everyone I talk to and take seriously is a denier of “White Genocide”, the theory that white people are under threat of being bred out and marginalised in their own lands by the deliberate machinations of refugees and immigrants. In this rather gross example, we wouldn’t refer to each other as genocide deniers.
Genocide denial refers to pretending a genocide did not happen. You're talking about a conspiracy theory. "We are under [perceived] threat" is something else, notably weaker, than "We are being eradicated". Not agreeing to a conspiracy theory is not similar to denying a piece of history happened.
This answer made me question wether you are arguing in good faith. It feels like a mix of confusing terms and some whataboutism. When you were aware what the points of contention are, why bring up another, unrelated, imaginary example which doesn't even fit?
This allows the reader to question wether you see other, actual genocides as similar to imagined ones, which are only subject of conspiracy theories, not mass graves. I can see how this can be read as genocide denial, or at least downplaying.
If you promote the local feed, your posts get attention, which means user engagement. So, user engagement would have a trend to stay in its own instance, which results in bubbles and is certainly not good for discussion quality.
I think this is too much of a generalization. Certain discussions even benefit from a certain amount of shielding from the outside world. I think there are mechanics working both ways, and to generally equate local feeds with reduced discussion quality is a poor argument.
Also, how would the addition of another feed (read: the selectable option for another feed) change anything about that? Instance owners who "push users" to their Local feed (as you unecessarily dramatize it) could still choose Local as their default, even if you requested new feed was implemented.
In both scenarios (with and without the new feed), users can freely select another feed anytime (because no one actually pushes them), or even define one permanently in their settings, overriding whatever default the instance owner had selected.
The new feed would do nothing about the situation but give instance owners another option to "push users", and users another option to select from.
The Local feeds of these instances basically act as a merged view of all their individual communities. Which is a frequently requested feature in another context.
Personally, I almost exclusively use Subscribed (since I'm also not interested in themed instances), but there are reasons for All and Local.
I don’t see why people who want to block hexbear.net don’t just block some communities they don’t like and users they see commenting a lot.
Since I recently joined this group of people who want to block hb, I reply. First, I'm not subscribed to any hb community, as far as I'm aware. So this option is unavailable to me. The issues I have happen in communities hosted on other instances, with hb users participating.
What bothers me is the way in which this participation happens. Sometimes the content (offensive, vulgar, dishonest), but mostly the way (edgy). I feel this negatively impacts the non-hb communities I'd like to participate in. Blocking specific users makes me not see them anymore, but it does not undo the damage they do to what I like. It's like looking away when a classmate is being bulied. Feels wrong.
That's a nice opportunity to voice my support for defederating hexbear.net from lemm.ee.
I say this although I very much approve the open federation policy of lemm.ee, which was a main reason to register here.
But of the growing list of encounters with hexbeared comment sections, there was not one which was fine. There just seems to be something about some users of this instance to consistently ruin things.
we get called something that implies you won’t take us seriously (e.g. genocide denier is a more common one among others we’d consider on the left), why bother with civility or politeness?
Interesting you're commonly being called genocide deniers. I haven't seen a specific case yet, but I've seen the accusation frequently.
You seem to imply the accusation is not justified. But assuming this is case, you do note it is brought up frequently. You may also be aware that most other communities don't have that issue.
So if you are right and you are not genocide deniers, where is communication going wrong that others still frequently think you are? Maybe you can present your ideas in a way which is less misleading, to make yourself better understood. To help others to understand you better.
A common practice is to distance yourself from a bad thing for which you don't want to be mistaken. Inversely, the lack of such distancing can sometimes be seen as evidence for alignment with bad things.
If you're still with me, let's switch perspectives for a second. Assuming you realize you're talking with a genocide denier, which you despise very much. Would you care wether they deny genocide politely and with civility (if that last bit even makes sense)? I'd say you probably already lost the conversation if the other side thinks you're a genocide denier, and how much effort you put into being polite and 'civil' is meaningless at this point.
From my understanding, the term "genocide denier" correlates strongly with arguing in bad faith, and not taking things seriously. It seemed important to you that you are the opposite; arguing in good faith and you want to be taken seriously. Which highlights the importance of the first section of this comment. Help others understand easier and clearer who you are, or who you are not. If you are commonly misunderstood, it's probably worth questioning where things go wrong and how you can change how you are being perceived.
Thanks for your effort, especially the example screenshot! Your presentation with colors showcases the idea very well!
It's not clear where the numeric preferences (e.g. 10/40/50) should be defined. Is it in user settings? Or should it be right next to the Subscribed/Explore/Local/All toggle? And is it a digit input field, or a graphical control like sliders? Anyways, details.
I'd also like the option to always show new posts or posts with new comments from favorited communities. This could help small communities and their subscribers to get things going.
Or well, we can implement both ideas with the same mechanic: Allow me to override the likelihood with which a post from a specific community shows up in my feed. This way, I can include both big and active communities in which I'm only mildly interested, and small and rarely active communities in which I'm very interested in the same feed.
Very well! Sunny weather, much more people than expected, good speeches, funny posters, amazing bands, no serious incidents. Now all that's missing is politics listening to the scientist.
I see, thanks. Presented this way, I like the idea much more. I generally like the idea to customize my own feed. So I'd like to take it a step further: Let me choose the numbers. 50/50 seems like a good predefined starting point though.
Also I wouldn't stop there but include Subscribed. So while your settings might be 0/50/50 for Subscribed/Local/All, mine would be 70/20/10, and the next guy could choose something entirely different.
Similarly, I'd like to control how much weight small communities get in these feeds. And I'd like to say "whenever something is posted to this specific community, show it to me! No matter how much other interesting content there is from other communities."
There are other endeavors where a great deal of the effort is put into making it safe. Space travel for example.
I wish that was the case for AI development. AI safety is a notoriously underfunded, understaffed and still overall neglected field.