woodenghost [comrade/them]

  • 0 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2024

help-circle


  • That’s cool, that he comes towards you. Does he already know you? Because last time I tried to feed unknown crows and they noticed me looking at them for two seconds, they got scared, even though I was like 10 meters away and other people had been passing closer than me. You could almost see a small exclamation mark above their head before they flew off. I still left some food and they came back to it, once I was further away.



  • And just to come full circle:

    Baalbek, named after Baal, is an ancient city in the Beqaa plane in Lebanon. It was known as the bread basket of the Roman empire. The Romans build the largest temples outside of Rome there and allowed worship of Baal to continue in the large entrance building in front of the Jupiter temple. The temples stood in good condition for centuries and are now under threat by IDF bombing, which has already come as close as 500 meters, while every building in the city has been declared a target and it’s people ordered to evacuate.



  • It’s just that normal gravity on earth feels exactly like being in an accelerating elevator in space. So you can’t tell the difference from the inside. Like in the elevator you can ask them, whether you’re still on earth or accelerating in space. Einstein used this thought experiment to develop the general theory of relativity.

    Basically Einstein thinking about that weird feeling you get in your gut when an elevator starts upwards led to him concluding that mass bends spacetime making light from distant stars go in curves around the sun, which was confirmed during the next available solar eclipse.



  • In addition to the advice about a group, like if you don’t have a group try to join one and talk to them and so on: In the meantime think about your limits and needs for yourself. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and you don’t have to be able to deal with the stress in a certain way. You can still contribute meaningfully, if you know your triggers and are mindful of them. Decide beforehand, what to do if a situation is too much, like getting out or getting some distance or trying calming exercises.

    Edit: You might even decide not to go to a protest, if police presence is too high and that’s okay too. You can still connect to people and help organize or render support.



  • Yes and also, nuclear power is really expensive. No one would ever invest in it without state help. No one insures it. The cost per watt is way to high and set to rise further with depleting uranium deposits. And much much higher, if it was mined in a slightly less destructive and exploitive way. Higher still if security precautions were forced to be up to date. Incredibly high, if waste was properly taken care of and the costs included in the calculation.

    Nuclear power was never profitable. The only reason it ever gets founded is because governments are motivated by the urge to amass more and more deadly nuclear weapons. Or keep that option open. Or to feed the industrial complex that grew around that.

    It’s the most roundaboud, stupid and primitive way to go about creating electricity to collect rare ultra poisonous, slightly warm rocks, throw enough of them into water until it boils and push that through something similar to a steam engine. All the technology around it is just to keep the rocks from poisoning us too quickly.

    Compare that to all the genuine novel research that goes into solar and batteries. The advanced materials like complex semi conductor alloys. The clever techniques using the latest in quantum and nano technology. How they squeeze every bit of efficiency out of remotely collecting energy from the nuclear fusion in the sun, that’s already going on for free and at a save distance.

    Nuclear energy on earth is superfluous, dangerous and expensive and every month new advancements are made in solar and battery and other genuinely green technologies, that make them even better and cheaper and widen the gap even more. And of course China is investing heavily in both solar and battery research.





  • The reason is that all those other things create actual value, thus cutting into profits of capitalists if publicly funded. If you’re a capitalist state that wants to steal massive amounts of wealth from the people and redistribute them to the rich by funding an Industry, then war really is the industry you want because it only destroys value.

    For example, if you cancelled the Pentagons budget and funded centrally planned healthcare instead, no private healthcare provider could compete. It would completely close down a huge market. Same with education, infrastructure, etc. War doesn’t have this problem of closing down a market, but has the advantage of opening up new markets (resources, cheap labour, more consumers, even rebuilding after the war, etc.) via imperialism.

    Edit: In short, imperialism is in part a reaction to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and offers an opportunity to renew primitive accumulation.