Nick Doty @npd@octodon.social

(And a good reminder for me personally that while trains are nice -- and much better than flying -- the diesel leg of my train trips is much more carbon intensive than if I took Megabus.)

Distance travel must shift to electric power (trains, buses or even cars), but intercity buses are remarkably efficient even on diesel fuel.

More graphics at: http://www.saxifrages.org/eco/show1s/Transportation

my .plan for the new year:
https://npdoty.name/plan/

* stay healthy
* support and seek support from family
* complete dissertation on enacting privacy in technical standard-setting
* support privacy in the architecture of the Web
* take actions on the climate crisis

why does the account creation process ask the user to come up with a password? the user is the least qualified to come up with a password: they don't know the password complexity requirements; they don't know the list of compromised or previously used passwords; they are especially bad at choosing something hard to guess. Why don't sites just assign a random, unique password and ask the user to store it for the future?

the future i want is:
bicycles for the mind, plus actual bicycles

if you search on Google Maps for "McDougald Terrace", "Oxford Manor" or "Forest Hill Heights", you're unlikely to find much of anything in Durham, NC, despite these being significant public housing complexes, some of which are large and well-known landmarks. But I've just finished adding all of Durham Housing Authority's public housing communities to OpenStreetMap. #osm

also, I'm equal parts annoyed with my own feelings of entitlement (why doesn't it work on my machine?!1!) and impressed with the world that it feels like a plausible expectation that any software announcement is something I should be able to run myself within minutes from any network-connected device.

has anyone used AI Dungeon themselves? I've seen screenshots on social media and it looks like a stunning, fundamental advance in computing. I tried the G Colab version and it threw an exception after several minutes of loading. I was excited to see an Android version, but it failed with a JSON parse error in setting up an account. what if it's actually just screenshots that are being shared, an experiment in social media NLP disinformation?

— this quote is from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, 1955, but it seems the words apply to the climate crisis today with no changes, except that we would not today mistakenly refer to scientists exclusively as men.
https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto/

Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only upon the extent of the particular expert’s knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

* "The Game Changers", Netflix: professional athletes, bodybuilders and fighters perform well on vegan diets; soy does not have estrogen; meat-eating might actually inhibit male sexual performance;
* "Cybertruck", Elon Musk: here's a vehicle that's even tougher than your entirely unnecessary ego-compensating giant pick-up truck; so tough that you can explicitly live out your post-apocalyptic fantasy (and also it runs on electricity and has a dramatically lower carbon footprint)

A trend:
Certain cultural properties of fragile masculinity have been entrenched by marketers to encourage unhealthy and unsustainable habits: eating meat and driving pick-up trucks.

Rather than trying to change those views of masculinity (which, sure, would be great, but it's super slow), we could instead show that the marketing is flawed or try simply to out-market on hyper-masculinity.

and more current, you could get something like this just by analyzing your credit card transactions, right?

Doconomy provides a credit card that does this:
https://doconomy.com/en/

Oreoco suggests connecting your Mint transactions:
https://www.oroeco.com

These depend on databases of carbon estimates for different kinds of products, but those are improving! including from Åland and UC Berkeley. Obviously they could be much more precise with product/service providers involved.

links:
"carbon trading credit cards" proposed by UK government in 2006:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/dec/11/uk.greenpolitics

Royal Society said in 2009 it might be feasible by 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/feb/03/personal-carbon-allowances

Tesco carbon labeling (since withdrawn):
https://green.blogs.nytimes.com//2009/08/25/does-carbon-labeling-confuse-consumers/

... these schemes have been proposed (and largely abandoned) in the past, with the long-term goal of having mandatory accounting and a trading system if you went over your annual allowance (cap-and-trade). But they might be more feasible and acceptable now.

And there have been attempts to add some nutrition-style labeling in stores (Tesco had a pilot program). But it would be especially valuable across different types of purchases, because it's the comparisons that people are so bad at.

I find the idea of a personal carbon account/charge card so attractive. Even if you swiped it just when buying gasoline, electricity/gas, groceries, prepared food and long-distance travel: I think it would be so informative to see the difference in carbon emissions from all these different actions and purchases.

Has anyone explained instant runoff voting to British people?

It seems absurd that current predictions show the Conservatives getting 9% fewer votes (than the 2017 election) but 11% more seats.

Is everyone in the UK just okay with this? Governments are determined not by your popularity with the people but by the relative overlap of the opposing parties?

Things I would like on an always-on e-ink display mounted on a wall near our front door:
* the current time
* a list of buses and how long til they leave the station
* current energy usage (in watts) of the apartment, with a breakdown by category/appliance
* outdoor temperature and the day's weather forecast

The DMV won't let me apply for a driver's license, because I don't have auto liability insurance. I pointed out that I don't own or regularly drive a car, but was told that was irrelevant.

Allegedly this is a state with a Republican legislature that sued over Obamacare because it mandated purchase of private health insurance, but when it comes to making it more difficult or expensive for poor people or people who want to go mostly without cars, I guess those conservative principles don't count.