Huntn00 @Huntn00@talkedabout.social

October 6, 2023 - “The risks of alopecia totalis, psoriasis, vitiligo, vasculitis, Crohn disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, adult-onset Still disease, Sjogren syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, and sarcoidosis were associated with increasing COVID-19 severity.” “Study suggests higher risk of new-onset post-COVID autoimmune, autoinflammatory disorders” - https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-suggests-higher-risk-new-onset-post-covid-autoimmune-autoinflammatory-disorders

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate my bank's tech? Every single year after a new iOS release, I have to wait for six months before I can access the bank's app. This is without fail. The app just crashes whenever I open it.

#Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejects the Biden administration's plans to build new sections of wall at the border, telling reporters: "This authorization for the construction of the wall is a step backwards." He is to hold talks today with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior US officials in Mexico City.

@Huntn00 😂 I have cats, so it will remain in a habitat. They like a lot of room and they love to run, so he’ll have a wheel. They use a tiny litter box and also like to play in the sand box.

It’s so weird interacting with people who were totally normal eight years ago but now I stop myself before mentioning I got a medically conventional vaccination because I don’t want to deal with their unhinged response.

A blogger at Medium offers a few unpleasant truths...
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Here is my take on the state of our global civilization:

1️⃣ The human species is in absolute overshoot. We consume more resources and release more pollution every year than what could be regenerated or absorbed by Nature. Yes, some countries consume and pollute much more than others, but that doesn’t make the fact disappear that even if we all lived like Jamaicans, we would be still living beyond Earth’s biophysical limits. And that is just the renewable resources part of the story.

2️⃣ The four pillars of modern civilization (ammonia, plastics, steel and concrete) — the non-renewable part — all take immense amounts of fossil fuels to make. Currently there is no way to produce ammonia (a key ingredient of all fertilizers) *at scale* without using natural gas, nor to make plastics without oil, or to smelt iron without coal — not to mention making cement. Note how fossil fuels are not only sources of energy here, but also key ingredients for these materials: providing the necessary hydrogen and carbon atoms making these wonders of civilization possible.

3️⃣ The best of our non-renewable resources are being depleted, fast. Using the low-hanging fruit principle we harvested the richest, most concentrated — and thus most energy efficient to get — deposits first. What remains takes an exponential increase in energy investment to extract, and might as well remain buried underground. Resource depletion doesn’t mean that we are running on empty, but that we are running out of easy to get resources — and thus bump into all sorts of limits on how much we can afford to extract.

4️⃣ We are in a chronic transportation fuel shortage, which is expected to grow much worse due to resource depletion. Lower grade ores, deeper oil wells, switching to brown coal, etc., all provide much less value to this civilization while taking up even more diesel to mine and carry around. If you consider how depletion of conventional oil (the ideal feedstock of transportation fuels) ruins diesel supply, let alone its energy economics, you start to appreciate the scale and immediacy of the predicament we are facing. Hmm, a shrinking energy base and an ever increasing energy demand to get the same amount of stuff… what could possibly go wrong with that?

5️⃣ Ecosystems all around the world are in free-fall. Even if we solve the energy dilemma tomorrow, this alone would still put an end to our existence. If we managed to kill 70% of vertebrate land animals, empty the seas and usher in an insect apocalypse with such a limited energy source as fossil fuels, what would we do to the planet with unlimited energy? Strip mine the entire Andes mountain range in a search for copper? Convert the whole planet into a bare concrete and glass hothouse, boiling the oceans just with the waste heat of our activities?

It’s very important to note how all these crises are interrelated and downstream to our civilizational activities (building, mining, deforesting, tilling, burning etc.), and are not due to CO2 alone. Climate change is but one of the many symptoms and consequences of overshoot and must be treated as such.

Replacing one energy source with another will not solve the climate predicament (let alone ecosystem collapse), nor will it alleviate resource depletion. Erasing the biosphere with electrified bulldozers in search of raw materials and places to expand our cities into, or dispersing a different set of pollutants does not change a thing for the better.
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There's more, a lot more, and it's all rather bleak, but at least it's truthful.

FULL ESSAY -- https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/a-sneak-peak-6a8087cb5ee7

ALTERNATE LINK -- https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/a-sneak-peak

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

‘Lowlife with small brain and big mouth’: Trump hits out at ex-aide Kelly https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/05/donald-trump-john-kelly-comments-military-veterans?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Going to pick up my new baby on Sunday. I’m so excited! #Hedgehog
What should I name him? (Peter Quill is overused already.)

Jim Jordan is officially running for speaker of the house. Do his feckless colleagues have any idea just how many of those wrestling stories are about to come flooding back like a red tide? It’s like nominating Jeffrey Dahmer to deliver the keynote at a nutritionist’s convention.

Why the Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico is creating a stir in Congress - al.com https://www.al.com/news/2023/10/why-the-rices-whale-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-is-creating-a-stir-in-congress.html

Opinion | How atheists can fix a broken America - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/kate-cohen-atheism/

Once more as a gift article because it’s not to be missed. #Atheism

https://wapo.st/3ROmmWL

Whitmire: Prove me wrong, Kay Ivey. A man’s life depends on it. - al.com https://www.al.com/news/2023/10/whitmire-prove-me-wrong-kay-ivey-a-mans-life-depends-on-it.html

Advocates sue three Alabama counties alleging ballots inaccessible to visually impaired voters - al.com https://www.al.com/politics/2023/10/advocates-sue-three-alabama-counties-alleging-ballots-inaccessible-to-visually-impaired-voters.html

Republicans forget their own rules in push to nominate Trump as House Speaker - Raw Story https://www.rawstory.com/trump-rule-26/

Network for Public Education is our most important organization in America fighting to preserve public education, the foundation of democracy. https://tultican.com/2023/10/02/my-first-npe-conference-revisited/ #NPEconference

US student held in Dubai for weeks for tapping security officer’s arm https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/04/new-york-college-student-dubai-jail