Why not try to do both?

Okay, let me write in “Climate for President” and see how that goes.

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That factoid is vastly misinterpreted. In particular, the term “responsible for” does not mean “emitted”.

The study it’s referencing studied only fossil fuel producers. And it credited all emissions from anyone who burned fuel from that producer to that producer. So if I buy a tank of gas from Chevron and burn it, my emissions are credited to Chevron for purposes of that study.

The study is not saying that 100 companies emit 71% of global emissions. It’s saying that 100 companies produce 71% of the fossil fuels used globally.

Why not vote and protest and consume less?

A whole lot of people hate this notion because it essentially frames it as the consumer’s fault, but at the end of the day it kind of is.

Absolutely. Producers and consumers have joint responsibility for getting us where we are. Climate action requires joint action by consumers and by (or, more likely, against) producers.

Because politicians follow the money. And they understand voters follow the money. So polls may show that legislation against fossil fuel companies is popular. But politicians look at all the gas consumers buy and ask themselves “what will voters do if we pass fossil fuel legislation and gas gets more expensive”? And then they decide not to pass fossil fuel legislation, because even if voters say they want fossil fuel legislation they know how the voters will respond if that legislation makes their consumption habits more expensive.

It’s a lot easier to pass higher gas taxes in cities where 90% of residents take public transit to work than in cities where 5% do.

I was ranting in a different thread about the “discourses of delay” that corporate and right-wing propagandists use to delay climate action. And the fascinating thing is, the idea that only individual consumption matters (the BP carbon footprint ad campaign) and the idea that only the actions of corporations matter (a typical American activist attitude) are both industry propaganda. The former is meant to discourage political action. The latter is meant to discourage individual action. And by framing it as one against the other, propagandists discourage us from taking effective action on either.

We can do both. We have to do both.

You might look up cohousing.

In this case, the “who” is human biology. Humans evolved in tribes, not nuclear families.

There’s always the “cool aunt/uncle/friend with no children who’s always available to babysit” option. Communal child rearing generally starts with extended family - those without minor children pitch in to help the adults with minor children - and you don’t need kids of your own to help out that way.

But you do kind of need a trusting relationship with those adults first, so they’ll be willing to trust you with their kids, and it’s hard to build those relationships from scratch, or rebuild them with family members if you’ve lost that trust already.

Unhoused people refuse help because past “help” failed them or people they know, or “help” comes with conditions that are unacceptable to them, or “help” will not solve the actual problems they have. The solution is not to force people into institutions that abuse them, neglect them, and then kick them out for failing to follow arbitrary rules.

I mean, if you have a dog, and the shelters don’t allow dogs, what do you do? What sane person would risk their dog being put down at the pound in exchange for a few weeks of housing - housing, moreover, that is demonstratively less safe than living on the street?

The solution is to improve the services available without conditions so that unhoused people feel safe in asking for those services.

There are a small number of people who genuinely cannot make decisions because they cannot comprehend reality. And those people need help, possibly involuntary help. But even then, that doesn’t mean taking them away from the people and places they know and locking them up. People blame Reagan’s deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people in the '80s for the current homeless crisis - people forget Reagan’s deinstitutionalization policy was popular because insane asylums were horrifically incompetent and abusive.

And if you see a homeless person experiencing a mental health crisis or acting irrational in public, please remember, they have no private place to go - how would you come off to the public if your worst moments had to be displayed in public? - and then ask yourself whether their actions are making you feel unsafe, or merely uncomfortable.

You know, if Fox News is agreeing with you, maybe you should stop and consider whether you’re on the right side.

Sideshows are not “reckless driving”. They’re community events. But the community they come from is poor and black so the Nextdoor scolds work themselves into a panic and put up barricades to block roads.

To be fair, Oakland’s government is corrupt bottom to top. If these streets were blocked with trash instead of barricades they wouldn’t do shit. But that’s not the problem here.

And what’s the problem? So what if a whole bunch of single people moved into tiny government houses? Housing is a human right. And it sure would bring rents down.

San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.

But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can’t be trusted to use money responsibly.

So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don’t. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.

At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to “helping” the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say “the crisis is worse, we need more money”.

And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say “more money and services won’t help these people, we need to criminalize them”. And fucking Newsom is all over that because he’s angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.

There’s a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It’s sickening.

I appreciate the link!

The article, I think, is very clear on how those dollar amounts were measured, and I don’t think they’re bullshit at all, but everybody here can read the article and decide for themselves.

Mineral oil is a petroleum distillate, a byproduct of fossil fuel production. I’m not saying it’s necessarily unsafe or unethical to use, but calling it “all natural” is a bit of a reach.

As we can see from this list, a community requires a commitment to a certain social order—and usually to a place—that, by definition, must constrain some choices. In return for security, support, and belonging, members surrender some of their freedom. This explains why creating community in America today is so difficult—few want to compromise their ability to make choices. This is especially true among those with the resources and/or capacity to relocate as soon as a better opportunity beckons—the very people whose leadership and role-modeling communities can ill afford to lose.

Quoting this because it’s vital for anyone who wants to create or join any kind of intentional community. A lot of punks talk about starting intentional communities, because they want the kind of close community organization that this post talks about. But the problem is, when interpersonal relationships within the community get hard, and they will, inevitably, get hard, if people are free to leave, people will leave. And then your community collapses from lack of members.

You see a lot of anarchist organizational principles among mutual aid groups for homeless people and poor people in America. And I think that’s because in those cases poverty itself supplies the coercion that keeps the group together - they make peace with one another because they can’t afford to leave the group and live separately.

You also see anarchist organizational principles in organizations centered on shared religious, philosophical, or cultic beliefs. Same idea. People are unwilling to leave the group because they believe it’s morally wrong to abandon the community of believers, or they fear being spiritually and culturally isolated among non-believers, so they work harder to solve interpersonal problems and keep the group together.

But if people are free to leave a community and suffer no consequences for it, and staying in the community does have a consequence - accepting abusive behavior by other community members, for instance - people will leave. It’s normal, it’s understandable, and it inevitably breaks down communities. And that’s why I don’t think the authors’ understanding of community is at all wrong. In the long run everybody finds themselves in situations where they have to submit to their community’s authority in order to remain in the community. And when people leave instead of submitting, that breaks community, and everyone, especially the children, suffer for it.

I don’t think the definition of community is necessarily problematic. It centers on hierarchy and authority, yes. But even most anarchists recognize natural hierarchies. Parents have authority over children because children are not able to govern themselves. Community elders have authority within a community because of their age, experience, and the respect they’ve earned through longstanding ties to the community. When you need specialized information, about law, or medicine, or how to repair a car, or the difference between right and wrong, you go to a specialist who studied that field and you defer to their authority derived from their study and knowledge. And so on.

Everyone in a community is, or should be, equal as human beings. But not everyone has served the community equally or earned equal respect. Voluntary hierarchies based on duty and respect are not the same as involuntary hierarchies based on coercion. And it’s those voluntary hierarchies that bind communities together.

Added to post, thank you!

To be fair, people are choosing capitalism because they have to make money, buy food, and pay rent.

Graphic designer, writer, commissioned artist, were jobs people could do entirely online. And a lot of highly online people did one or the other, or have friends who did one or the other, and they see AI as the existential threat to their livelihoods that it, in fact, is.

And I feel for them. I really do. If you bought food and paid rent by making art online - especially if you’re neurodivergent or disabled or trapped in an abusive relationship and couldn’t hold a normal job - AI tools have destroyed your career. And it sucks. There’s no getting around that.

But the core of the problem is not AI. The core of the problem is the lack of a safety net. Some of the enormous profits from the AI boom should be funneled back into society to support the people who are put out of business by the AI boom. But they won’t. Because capitalism.

Generated output is a gimmick that will be used by people who have no intention of making art.

Without getting into the definition of “art”, yes, people will use generated output for purposes other than “art”. And that’s not a gimmick. That’s a valuable tool.

Rally organizers can use AI to create pamphlets and notices for protests. Community organizers can illustrate broadsheets and zines. People can add imagery and interest to all sorts of written material that they wouldn’t have the time or money to illustrate with traditional graphic design. AI can make an ad for a yard sale or bake sale look as slick and professional as any big name company’s ads.

AI tools will make the world a more artistic place, they will let people put graphic art in all sorts of places they wouldn’t have the time or money or skill to do so before, and that’s a good thing.