more alien

/maurelian313

for the most alien thoughts you can muster.

Seems like everytime I open the X app I end up watching a video of someone dying.

I don’t need that. Deleted.
https://youtu.be/LbZXAY6XLSs?si=fPKzxJ0Xs_nMZ3jb

So excited about the rewilding projects in Europe: horses, aurochs, bison, lynx… maybe even lions one day.

It could be seen as degrowth aligned, but I see it as accepting our responsibility to manage the environment more thoughtfully and intentionally.

Build where we need to build, wilderness where we need to be wild.
Alternating current from alternating currents!
We need to let go of striving for what is or is not natural. But what does targets does that leave us with for stewarding the land?

Beautiful, healthy, diverse, thriving might each be a good starting point.
Ok, here is something about me, and it somehow feels embarrassing to say, but I think the conversation is returning to earnestness again, so here goes.

I grew up attending a United Church every Sunday, where the dogma is relatively chill, and things like questioning the age of the earth were acceptable. But still, the Bible stories were the cornerstone of it. My family said grace before dinner each night, but the wrath of God wasn’t used a cudgel. More New Testament than old.

Sometime in high school I became an atheist, and that felt freeing.

But at some point something flipped. Eventually I came to feel like something was taken from me.

I can’t go back now. There’s no point pretending that Santa Claus is real. But that doesn’t mean the belief itself is without value.
What’s the equivalent of NIMBY-ism for LEO?
I have a deep sense of romanticism about the oceans, forests, glaciers and earth in general that makes me sad about pollution.

No such feelings about space, I'm purely interested in it as a resource/destination. Disperse enough debris, and we just won't be able to use space anymore.

Interesting for me to see a context where my environmentalism is solely pragmatic rather than romantic.
Proof irrationality (my own at least): I feel much less dummy after a work out.

Nothing about my knowledge of the world has changed, but something about sweating, and my heart beating faster, significantly modifies how I process it.
$DEGEN allowance is claimable now.

Check your $DEGEN points and claim tokens:

degenclaim.com
This is an interesting position I think worth thinking about for 5 or 6 minutes and then ignoring.

The failure mode here looks like this:
1. rich people decide coordination is too difficult, planet is fucked, all try to go to mars
2. the carbon emissions required to get them and their stuff to mars are enormous
3. so earth is fucked
4. also the mars colony is fucked without a functioning earth to support it

So, yeah, it's still all coordination problems.
Research suggesting that when China dealt with its air pollution problem, temperatures increased by decreasing albedo.

https://www.science.org/content/article/deadly-pacific-blobs-tied-emission-cuts-china
I think it's absolutely wild that we were accidentally geoengineering the temperature of the planet for years and then suddenly stopped, again by accident.
We may be able to decrease the temperature of the planet intentionally simply by spraying sea water into the atmosphere, although the second and third order effects may not be apparent.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2024/04/24/solar-geoengineering-to-cool-the-planet-is-it-worth-the-risks/
I struggle with the view of nature as an uncaring, random assortment of mechanical forces that are antagonistic to man's desire to create a more perfect world

Nature isn't random — it's deeply patterned beyond what humans can grasp. The imperfection comes from the incessant need to control everything, which is a byproduct of total identification with the mind