schmorp @ schmorpel @slrpnk.net

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2 yr. ago

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That's it, negative externalities. Thanks for reminding me of the word. Which group would I support if I wanted to change something in Portugal? I have found a lot of middle class 'feel good activism' (planting trees which then die, talking endlessly about what to do, pass the same old advice to fellow citizens ...), but that doesn't really cut it. The country is a beautiful banana republic and has a few nice valleys to hide in, and I have been living here long enough to want to help protect these places. How can we hold accountable the industries who want to come here to destroy and extract?

I would say the only environment where I would want to see such a thing is dense urban environments. But then, maybe we shouldn't have urban environments so dense that we have to build skyscrapers for our salads ...

I keep waiting for the final shudder but it keeps going on and on?

It also means using Amazon which is not better than Nestle really

'Crazy train' describes well the feeling I had last summer. Like the 'this is fine' meme. And this summer will be the same. You hide, keep your garden watered, and hope the fires won't get you this year. All while the officials keep advising to plant more Eucalyptus for profit and organic matter is blamed for the problem and burned for biofuel or on people's fields - instead of reincorporated into the landscape as it should be. Here in Portugal, for animal bedding, most buy straw bales from the overheated because desertified Extremadura instead of cutting the Giesta (broom) as people used to do. Why are the Spanish straw bales cheaper? Because fossil fuels and the big scale agriculture attached to them create a fake price for the straw (I'm not an economist and don't know the right terms, but it's like the prices for fossil fuels and their derivates don't contain the environmental damage caused by its use). And the Giestais, unused, grow and spread the wildfires.

I used to talk your talk, because I parroted it from other smart guys in Academia. Then I got into small scale gardening and permaculture, and started studying traditional food production. I have to tell you, big ag has been lying big time about their efficiency. Yes, they can produce more per hectar of one crop, but that takes an enormous input of fossil fuel, heavy machinery, fertilizers. In a permaculture system you might not get a ton of x per hectare, but 100kgs of x, 200kgs of y, 300kgs of z ... with less input of fossil fuel and less environmental destruction. Of course if you just count the tons of grain, industrial ag wins. But you have to count both input and output plus long term sustainability to know which system really works better. Combine animals, plants, mushrooms, microorganisms in the right way and you can create a very resilient, nutrition-dense system with little energy needs. Spain is turning itself into a dust bowl for the profit of the few, and a lot of the monoculture propaganda is made up and spread by landgrabbers who are too happy to buy up smaller farms in the name of 'efficiency' and 'feeding the multitudes' - it just sounds so much better than 'I bought my neighbors land because I have more money than him'.

I suggest you visit a well-run forest agriculture and permaculture place to see how you can achieve results that are even more positive than huge technological solutions like vertical farms or desalination water lines crossing the land.

With renewables only the energy itself is an 'infinite' source (nothing is infinite, but for example solar is quite infinite in our terms, geothermal a little less so). The mechanisms for harvesting said energy and for running vertical farms and desalination plants do need finite resources to be built and maintained, however, while a diverse ecosystem basically runs itself. Big engineering has become so normalized that we believe we need this to make a big impact, but I think we have to think smaller again. Big tech has brought us here, let's be a little more careful with it in the future.

Those big tech solutions always strike me as a very complicated way of solving a very simple problem. The Iberian peninsula is drying out because people (and their animals) are turning it into a desert. Look at Extremadura and many other places in Spain (and Portugal, to a somewhat lesser extent) - what ever happened to the trees? If we allowed trees and the connected biodiversity to return we could also retain water in the landscape more efficiently. And the best about this is that it doesn't need high-tech anything. It really just requires to think twice before you chop down a tree. Actually, do less. Cut less, plough less, stop transporting stuff around ... just chill, and the planet can chill as well.

Where does 'unethical' start? I used to translate marketing copy and I was miserable because it felt so dishonest. Now I translated user manuals instead, but I'm still embedded in the same consumerist system. It's difficult. I would like to grow edible mushrooms instead but need to buy land for that, so I keep feeding the bullshit industry in the meantime. Or I would prefer to translate only for worker owned companies, but there are not enough of those.

I've spent last August sitting in the shade listening to the music from the village parties mixed with the sound of the airplane engines flying over a nearby forest fire. It was bizarre. But then, what is one to do really? People who live around here aren't really the ones to blame. Can't really blame them for still wanting to have their village party. While I, who does give a shit, do little more than eating local and avoiding consumerism. Eating the rich might me more efficient, but there's none around here, we just have grapes and potato.

If everyone would do it this way, downvotes could filter out noise. But even I found myself klicking at the downvote button for disagreeing with somebody. Maybe call it a noise button instead and give it a different icon?

Experience has shown that too much blue-eyed-ness and openness towards trolls with bad intentions ruins a space very quickly. I can understand people want to put some thought into avoiding this before it happens.

I'm maybe not the best person to apply as I'm not a worker in the system, but maybe I can help out till someone worthier comes along. I came from _facebook 😳 to reddit to Lemmy, gradually got fed up with corporate Social Media and I have been looking for some spot to become active and involved. I used to spend a lot of time on r/antiwork and thought about how to transfer more of this vibe from the internet to the real world, as I live in a country where workers are very submissive and lack information. My own work as a freelancer is comfy and leaves me with some time to get regularly very angry about what people have to put up with in the workforce. However, I have never been in the workforce, know very little about work laws, unionizing or other such things - and even though I do have some time, I also have other real life responsibilities so I will not be able to dive in 24/7 and just study all that. As a moderator I also welcome to have the occasion to learn more about the back end functions (I usually find my way around this stuff quickly). I might want to host my own instance at some point but have come to realize there is more to it than I had initially figured. I guess there will be some shifting around on Lemmy in terms of communities, moderators, instances - but I guess one needs to start somewhere for this place to come alive.

Oh Antiwork! I'm a fairly fresh Lemming with strong opinions against work and some time on my hands, lemme see that pinned post.