I am also concerned of AI-slop, so thanks for sharing. However, I do not think the headline here does justice to the article. There is a more interesting message in there. First of all, the study concerned new content, not all of the internet. Second, and more important, the researchers seemed to have found some kind of a saturation point for AI slop, where it’s share of new content was not rising anymore. I think it would be crucial to understand the mechanisms behind this current limitation of AI slop, and whether they could be utilized to combat AI slop in the future.

Added another wordpress instance to our server (all docker-compose). The craziest thing happened where the second site was kind of working but broken in very strange ways. Well, turns out that for the second site Caddy was pointed to the files of the first instance while passing php_fastcgi to the new one 🤯 😵‍💫 What’s more, having different relative paths for the Caddy container and the wordpress container was not as simple as I thought it was. The devil (the hours of debugging) is always in the details. Managed to solve it in the end!

I think a useful way to frame the issue is Erik Olin Wright’s concept of eroding capitalism: We simultaneously need the insterstitial initiatives that build and prefigure a new logic of economic and communal organization, as we need to tame capitalism and create space for the new alternatives on the institutional level of regions, states and multinational institutions. In my view Hickel is predominantly focusing on the latter, while the authors are focusing on the first logic.

I’m not convinced there needs to be any conflict, as I argue both movements need each other, and both logics are needed to bring about a post-capitalist future as EOW visions. Without the institutionally oriented movement, the new initiatives will not have space to grow and scale, and will be crushed. Without the new interstitial initiatives, the institutionally oriented movement will not have anything to base it’s vision and argument on, to draw support from, to build on, and it will eventually be co-opted by capital interests. I think instead of a confrontation, a recognition of each actor’s place in the bigger strategy would be fruitful. Of course, if one completely disagrees with EOW’s framework then it’s another story.

I love to cheer for linux (Fedora user here 😎) but the math and logic in the blog post is off. Firstly, the linux desktop-share for US government websites is much higher, because to calculate it, you have to exclude iOS and Android. But then again, the data may be skewed and linux-users may just be much more prominent visitors of US government websites. I think this sounds credible as many linux users are technically apt and active citizens.

Nevertheless, if the trend is true it is encouraging! Cannot verify because analytics.usa.gov only provides data a calendar year into the past by default and I can’t be bothered to get an api key to see if more can be fetched.

The real desktop linux share for the last 30 days can be calculated:

windows = 33.2

macos = 11.6

linux = 6.9

linux / (windows + macos + linux) = 0.13346228

“Shell” in this case is somewhat misleading, since in Finland the local St1 energy company has bought the license to use the Shell brand for fuel stations ages ago, but there are no actual Shell stations. Thankfully, as Shell are some of the worst climate criminals, and in comparison St1 are not quite as bad. I would even change the headline, not to give Shell any undue credit.

Good comment. I think one potential audience would be people who (like myself) want to work in the intersections of activism, research and politics. It’s not a huge demographic, but I think it’s a demographic that should take it up as one of their tasks to create more popularized narratives based on this kind of research. Also a demographic that is likely overrepresented here. The abstraction is there, but I still think it’s one of the most motivating research papers I’ve read in a while.

Quick thoughts on this:

I would not equate degrowth and self-sufficiency. While it’s plausible and possibly even necessary to increase self-sufficiency in a successful degrowth scenario, there should still be abundant international trade on important sectors. Degrowth is not a turn away from technology in eg. low-carbon energy production, electrification and bioeconomy.

Ensuring defense capabilities is of course vital, especially in the short term, and can be achieved through prioritization of resource use. Notably, in the long term the turn away from geopolitical competition, weakening the influence of fossil and military-industrial capital, increased self-sufficiency in resource use and increased global solidarity (in eg. trade policy, climate policy, development policy) would all greatly serve to promote peace and the decrease of tensions. This is not to say one should be naive towards governments like Putin’s authoritarian Russia.

While this might sound like a lot of things lumped together, for example this research article is helpful in understanding how all these things relate: https://zenodo.org/records/15529759

Joplin is an awesome FOSS note app and alternative to Obsidian. Love it, I use WebDAV to link between devices. Lots of plugins for extra functionality as well.

Based on the text I would not consider it a functional degrowth economy. What they have so far is the payment system, and some promising emerging use for it. But a great initiative and a great read anyway.

I’d love to like Tuta but man was using their service a constant pain. The search is incredibly slow for any messages not downloaded and keyword matching is somehow weird, the spam filter fails terribly (my spam folder was always full of legitimate messages), assigning rules is clumsy, and you can’t even bulk export mail to switch services:((

The tweet that seemed to be bootlicking Trump was worrying and troubling in my opinion as well. However, reading this deeper analysis alleviated at least some of my fears https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

Also the foundation model decisively limits the influence of the founder. There seems to be no other European email service that’s quite on par with Proton. Therefore I still think they are the top alternative.

Great, hope you find them fruitful!

Thanks for sharing! A great, informative and concise piece, with a lot of learning points for co-operatives.

I hope so. Although I’m not sure whether it is solarpunk or some other term under which the ideas will be popularized (eg. degrowth, eco-socialism, minor paradise, doughnut economy, ecological civilization). But I find it likely that solarpunk will be packaged together with communism, as communism, by the right. And demonized.

I’m not sure whether we have the same idea of what it means for capitalism to be compatible with something. Maybe setting aside direct action for now, major reforms in all of the areas you mentioned could be implemented in a society with a predominantly capitalist mode of production, with enough political power. It would be a move away from capitalism, strengthening socialist and statist modes of production. But it would not mean the end of capitalism as a mode of production. It doesn’t mean those reforms could be implemented only or even preferably by completely terminating capitalism, i.e. private capital and production, at once through total revolution.

There are always multiple modes of production active in a society. For an example case, compare the USA and any nordic country. Both are predominantly capitalist states, but in a nordic country, there is far more production following a socialist and statist mode than in the US. Of course, major transformations are also needed in the nordic countries to get on the path of degrowth, that’s for sure.

For reference, André Gorz, who is one of the most influential degrowth scholars, developed the concept of “non-reformist reforms” which are anti-capitalist reforms in a capitalist system. Another good read is this piece, “How to think about (and win) socialism”. Erik Olin Wright writes about the complexities of production relations and strategic logics of transformation.

I was gonna suggest The Dawn of Everything. I think one of the major arguments they make in the book is that humans have lived in very differing cultures and societies throughout (pre-)history. So attaching any one mode of societal organization to “human nature” is hardly possible.

I agree that in the long run degrowth is not compatible with capitalism, at least not capitalism as we know it. Even if markets and private property continued to play some role in the economy. However, I think it’s important to emphasize that we don’t need to first somehow completely rid of capitalism (that would require some higher order magic) and then implement degrowth. There are many reforms that can start building the path of a prosperously degrowing society. A good overlook of degrowth policies can be found in this article. Of course, the need to reduce material flows is absolutely urgent, and I definitely advocate building popular support and implementing degrowth policies asap.

Just adopted Joplin (FOSS all the way) for notes on desktop and mobile, using my own Seafile instance as the cloud service through webdav. Very happy with it so far, be it short and quick or long and complex notes.

Also using Zotero for bibliography management and related notes, also backing up to Seafile webdav. Joplin and Zotero also play together, but haven’t tried that out yet.

That was amazingly witty, ingeniously highlighted the euro-anglocentricity of western media

Clarence Kennedy