squifish

Walking, reading, riding, loving San Francisco and actively hoping towards a better world.
#parks #bikes #books #dogs #plants #gardening #place

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thesquirrelfish_at_sfba.social@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2024-09-01 03:00:52

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I can't attribute intentions to American political parties. Theory of mind for organizations is already hard, let alone for ones that routinely act in ways I can not comprehend or justify.

2024-08-31 16:01:20

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and I looked it up and the top priority is improving the economy and 20 out of 20 is dealing with global trade. That sounds to me like the tariffs/economic protectionism are not a priority but cost of food, housing, healthcare are.

2024-08-31 15:29:31

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climate change will harm current workers more than economic changes. Seniors are more vulnerable to heat harms & extreme weather. The younger you are now the worse the heat incidents & extreme weather will be when you are an elder. Also the more harm you experience in the intervening years.
Maintaining the economy as is protects current senior citizens -the largest nonworking group- the most.
So if you want to help workers it's better to prioritize changes that provide stable access to healthy food, housing, clean water, healthy transportation, etc than to try to protect 'the economy'.

2024-08-09 16:41:25

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although, doesn't the idea that it would be a better world in that case depend on a continuously good or improving information ecosystem?
If everyone becomes more willing to listen to evidence and change their convictions but elite capture of media/information/evidence creation is continuously increasing...

2024-08-07 20:00:26

At Brenda's Meat & Three patio & may I say how much I love community restaurants like this? Ages vary from infants in arms to elders, there's welcoming places for groups, singles and couples. Despite the name it's also vegetarian & vegan friendly.
They just started a $5 breakfast sandwich. The most expensive (and most common) price is $25 but there's plenty of under $20 options too.
The staff is welcoming and personable and it is just the kind of place that can make any day better.

2024-07-01 17:15:46

I know that the Silent Generation & 'Greatest Generation' made a lot of the choices but it's really hard not to feel like American Boomers have voted the world into climate chaos and the American government into full collapse. Was it the early television exposure that doomed us? The racism becoming combined with classism? The therapy & Xanax people took to accept what they didn't want to work to change?
The greed is good messaging? but that seems more a symptom or self-justification...
It's so hard to tell how much of my feelings are personal - lack of sleep, roommate issues, a flat tire - and how much are justified rage at the state of the world - climate change & American politics & my taxes going to kill people abroad instead of house people here, and now being homeless is a crime - just being alive without a place to sleep is enough to send you to jail. But no we're not going to provide housing, just jails that will be unsafe.
I'll eat some chocolate & go to work and try to help people.

2024-06-28 22:25:21

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You don't think shareholders are working together to increase stock values? I'm not saying they're all coordinating the action of individual companies - I'm saying they're coordinating to take money/value from every other sector of society & divert it to the stock & financial markets. @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-28 21:12:53

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The % of people who control American stock is smaller than the % of people who control American policy making and that's even before you consider campaign finance. So if central planning is your concern that's what where we need to remove the concentration of power.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-28 20:30:54

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It doesn't matter how many company names they use, it's all still controlled by the same stockholders. @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-28 19:18:25

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I would say the centrally managed decisions are much more by companies like Bank of America, GE, Coca Cola, Blackstone, Walmart, Monsanto, Nestle & Chevron.
They decide who gets to own land, who gets to live on the land, how much they'll pay, what groceries will be on the shelves, what crops will be grown and how many people will be employed in what conditions in so many small towns. If Blackstone has the money to buy up the housing and Bank of America says you can't qualify for a mortgage even if you're paying more in rent, and both of their stock is owned by the same people how is that any less centrally managed?
Being managed from New York isn't better than being managed from DC.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-28 18:56:45

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Sure, and little decisions add up. People cut down one tree on their land or use pesticides on their lawn and soon we have deforested landscapes without sustainable ecosystems & pollinators. @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-28 18:42:58

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I think you just want them to be something other than they legally are. @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-28 18:36:51

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Sure, but even if the damage never left your property* it would still be harmful for the human community and next generations. @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 22:02:50

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It damages other people's use value - but not their property value.
The ability to destroy & damage the land one person controls under property rights is what harms everyone. @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 21:33:16

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Right, defending private property rights such as oil drilling, processing, selling, intensive farming, Confined Area Feed Lots, driving other people off the land, are all economic enforcement choices by the government.
It is not just possible that things drift from one piece of land to another, it is impossible to isolate the impacts of what happens on one piece of land from another. Nothing is excludable from anything else.
Private property rights drive harm to the entire human community, particularly the people in the immediate area. If we wish loose or less economic decision making by the central authority that has to include lessened protections for private property.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 18:51:09

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Neither claim is true. The dust bowl happened because people treated the earth as excludable. A buffalo herd didn't exclude anyone, a fence for cows excluded almost everyone. What we do impacts others, private property is just a way of pretending that's not true.
We're losing valuable air and water quality because of what we do with land. Topsoil is destroyed, oil & gas is mined & burned, poop pools at industrial ag plants, landfills etc all harming people. These are all interconnected systems that impact one another.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 18:18:20

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But that's the point - the whole idea of that land being private property started right then.
It's like if the government said they got to say who owned the air and you'd now have to pay breathing rent. Nobody owns the air now, it's not our private property. We make mutual rules (laws) about what is allowed in our shared resource so that everyone can continue to have access to it for free as a public resource. We don't say "oh this is your private air you can turn it to mustard gas if you want, oh you bought your neighbors air too, and he'll have to pay you not to turn it to mustard gas"
Nobody owned the land, everybody just got to use it with mutual agreements on not destroying the shared property, and we didn't have these ongoing problems of colonization, displacement, unsustainability & corresponding lack of freedom.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 17:51:24

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Colonialism arose because despotic monarchs about 500 years ago started saying property held in common actually was private property belonging to whoever they said it did. Then the 'commoners' were told that they couldn't eat or live where they had traditionally done so those people were driven from their homes. That migration forced others to migrate in turn as people with more government influence, money or whatever(guns, religion, posses have all been used), were able to force others off other lands in waves that continue to this day in the form of continued cycles of gentrification & forced displacement.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 17:44:05

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I don't understand that claim, can you rephrase? How does private property ensure that a trade is mutually beneficial rather than coercive? @npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-27 17:24:04

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agreed if leaving people alone economically didn't involve protecting property rights. Like how much of what we consider the economy is based on preventing people from using land & resources or forcing people to pay rent/give profits to someone because the government says the land & resources belong to someone else.
This is particularly abhorrent in the American context where the original inhabitants & users of the land were dispossessed without recognition or reimbursement and their descendents remain unable to use the land that their ancestors lived on & with for millennia before our government started dictating economics.
@npub165c…tdlq

2024-06-21 15:11:11

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my bike can go about 7-10 miles if I'm not towing anything or going up absurd hills, which is usually sufficient. However I've had commutes where I definitely had to charge at my destination before returning, and not every destination is good about letting you charge.

2024-06-17 19:24:17

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all things in moderation is real - I wear sunblock pretty much everyday but I try to also get outside in the morning for 15 minutes or so without sunglasses or sunblock.
According to multiple doctors I've visited most of the women they see have Vitamin D deficiency (they generally won't believe I don't unless I do a blood test) which has some nasty knock on health effects.
High quality sunscreen is generally fine, but avoiding the sun or consistently using sunscreens that block all UV are both more dangerous than moderate sun exposure. If you are avoiding all sun or using full UV sunblock it's important to ensure other sources of Vitamin D.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10239563/

2024-06-13 15:41:16

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I bet we sacrifice way more kids today to the gods cars & gas than they did back then.
3 kids per day killed by cars on average & that doesn't count stuff like the Chevron plant in Martinez California which doubles the child hospitalization rates for asthma for nearby community.
https://enotrans.org/article/motor-vehicle-crash-deaths-among-children/

2024-05-02 16:58:39

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Eh, my community college experience was kinda great actually. A decade+ after 'finishing' college, during the pandemic, I got a chance to take more real world applicable classes across my interests, for free. Registration was kinda hard, but the instructors were overall great & I took classes in local plant identification, adobe products, library stuff, native north american anthropology.. would recommend to anyone feeling stuck. Plus a gentler and cheaper way to get in the habits for grad school.
[@dlakelan](https://mastodon.sdf.org/@dlakelan)

2024-05-02 16:37:50

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so I went to UCSC before they required grades and with a major with a relatively tiny number of required classes (10 I think?) so I got to explore and not worry about grades and overall it was great. I did have to take a few community college classes later to get a GPA so I could go to grad school though.

2024-04-26 15:46:18

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[@rythur](https://mastodon.social/@rythur)
Well, there's the squad :) we just need more of them.
[@_noelamac_](https://spore.social/@_noelamac_) [@FantasticalEconomics](https://geekdom.social/@FantasticalEconomics)

2024-04-25 22:47:03

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[@FantasticalEconomics](https://geekdom.social/@FantasticalEconomics)
Agreed, an overhaul can't happen all at once, but if we start with accountability & empowerment it's harder to just replace with new unaccountable elites. But that again means we need to start with ourselves and our communities making the right choices. I have given up driving and drastically reduced the amount I fly - so I'm less willing to accept people trying to justify private jets. I think that type of change agency is effective at scale, and kind of easier. Food & housing & insurance are all drastically more expensive & climate change will make them even more expensive so we'll have to cut down on other things. If we use an ethic to choose what to cut, we'll start expecting the same ethic from others over time.
[@rythur](https://mastodon.social/@rythur) [@_noelamac_](https://spore.social/@_noelamac_)

2024-04-25 21:53:09

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[@rythur](https://mastodon.social/@rythur)
I think the problem is much bigger than that - as long as a few people are both influential and able to insulate themselves we're not going to get change on climate policy.
That's why I don't think climate policy can be separated from inequality, individual empowerment/equality/rights/influence on government, accountability and corporate governance.
As long as people are buying gas, Exxon execs are going to be able to influence every election.
We have to either get rid of the influence or get rid of the insulation to get change.
[@_noelamac_](https://spore.social/@_noelamac_) [@FantasticalEconomics](https://geekdom.social/@FantasticalEconomics)

2024-04-25 20:16:08

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[@rythur](https://mastodon.social/@rythur)
I'm not sure what kind of shock that would be - we've shown that the current system is remarkably immune to the real world. Which is kind of why I think it's gotta be a lot of individual actions for now, until we can get the cultural acceptance of punitive actions for climate arson. As long as we continue to self justify our own bad behavior we're going to tolerate bad behavior at scale by elites.
[@_noelamac_](https://spore.social/@_noelamac_) [@FantasticalEconomics](https://geekdom.social/@FantasticalEconomics)