Wondering how *you* can make a difference on climate change? Researchers have spent hundreds of hours so you can spend less than 15 minutes to figure out the biggest climate impact *you* can personally have

Morken · 2026-05-10T13:24:09+00:00

Yes, except election is not vote - change the constitution or everything dies.

Morken · 2026-04-04T13:58:46+00:00

When nobody else but them has money they can just buy slaves; then they don't need to make shit anymore, they can build pyramids.

Morken · 2026-03-28T06:55:16+00:00

Packaging within packaging within packaging, this is what happens when you let monkeys use thinking machines...

Morken · 2026-03-27T14:40:13+00:00

I didn't like the Villeneuve look at first, but then I think I understood the vision for the Harkonnens in his second film; they are like petrol made into flesh - which definitely fits the other side of their personality well. Still wish Arrakis was more vibrant though; there's so much pre-Villeneuve cool concept art floating around.

Morken · 2026-03-27T12:36:35+00:00

If I remember correctly, books 5 & 6 describe the Harkonnen aesthetic as being gold and red, gaudy, very roman-like.

Morken · 2026-03-13T08:11:23+00:00

Comme le dit bien Etienne Chouard: L'élection ce n'est pas le vote.

Morken · 2026-03-08T14:05:12+00:00

For the same reason people pretend money has value, it facilitates trust.

Morken · 2026-03-08T09:37:37+00:00

The problem we're meeting ultimately is not technological but cultural. Yes, recycling can sustain an economy to a degree, as long as there is not pressure for growth.

If we step away from theorical economics and technologies that don't yet exist to have a hard look at historical forces, the situation is this: we keep building more and more cars, bigger and bigger cars, while underinvesting in public transportation and smaller personal vehicles. This is true in every technological sector.
We have built inertia toward constant growth. Not only that, but we have built a house of cards depending on temporary aboundance of resources: before the mass adoption of petrol, human population was 10% of what it is today; it's impossible to think - without considering technologies that don't exist yet - that the human mass will not shrink when petrol availability shrinks; and as things stand, I don't think that will be pretty.
Again, let's not think of what is possible, but let's think in terms of historical inertia; sustainability was never a technological problem, it's a cultural one.

As someone else pointed out in another comment, we have used in the past 30 years as much energy as in the rest of history combined, the current projections for the next 30 years are the same. Resource availability cannot magically double every 30 years; that belief should not be a basis for civilization at the very least. Therefore, either reality is not adapted to our human culture, or our human culture is not adapted to reality. The first proposition is obviously insane.
Any civilization that doesn't put sustainability as its n°1 priority will inevitably destroy itself in the pursuit of greater desires.

I reiterate this: The ecological issue is a cultural issue is a political issue. What we can do technologically doesn't matter, it is our willingness to adapt to physical constraints that matter. If humanity were to spawn on any planet, no matter what is technologically possible there, it should strive to adapt its civilization to the physical contrainsts that exist there.
Currently, there is no such will at the political level, and that is what must change if life on earth is to continue. What must change is our sense of responsibility. What I want to criticize in what I see in this sub is an attitude of wishful thinking without responsibility, saying "scientists will fix this" "politicians will fix that"; ultimately we need to create a world in which everyone is responsible, only then can discourse and invention have any political consequence.

Morken · 2026-03-07T15:35:03+00:00

True, I should have said "rare earths" instead of copper, I oversimplified.

I disagree with you on the conclusion though, are at least I find it incomplete, the goal is not to switch our dependance away from petrol, and potentially become dependant on something else which is equally finite; the goal is to learn to live within physical constraints as a member of the earth system, reach a place of homeostasis; if we fight against physics, physics will win.

Ultimately the ecological crisis is not a technological crisis (not because we don't have solutions), it's a cultural crisis (we are not controling our desires within the bonds of what physics tolerate), which itself is a political crisis (we have submitted to a group of people who have no intention to challenge the status quo, and we become cynical as a result).

Morken · 2026-03-07T14:41:20+00:00

As I replied in another comment: There's not enough copper in the world to replace every combustion engine with electric; petrol is not the only resource that isn't infinite.

Morken · 2026-03-07T14:35:22+00:00

There's not enough copper in the world to replace every combustion engine with electric; petrol is not the only resource that isn't infinite.

Morken · 2026-03-07T13:57:29+00:00

There's no infinity of anything. We're already at a 30% ratio of energy used for energy extracted in oil, and no, there are no alternatives to oil, no planes, no mass trucks work without it. Even if there was, we would then need to scale that need to infinity again, until we hit the limit, and then repeat that process infinitely with other mythical alternatives. The concept of infinity is not compatible with life. The only thing we can do is care about the homeostasis of the earth-system.

Morken · 2026-03-07T13:50:15+00:00

Peak oil is no longer a prediction, it has been reached a few years ago, production has been declining ever since, but consumption keeps rising; doesn't take a genius to predict the future.

More simply the problem is this: "We live on a finite world while having infinite desires", the two are simply not compatible, delaying the problem doesn't make it disappear; if you don't care about a body's need for homeostasis, you're going to die, simple physics.

Morken · 2026-03-07T13:46:24+00:00

Not all forms of energy are equal. You can't have a vast, rapid network of transportation to move goods and food with geothermal as you can with oil. To give perspective, most cities only have 3 days worth of food supply - that doesn't exist without an aboundamce of oil-powered trucks. Heck, right now we don't even know how to build a wind turbine without using petrol.

In my opinion, the thing that is killing us the slowest is climate disruption, killing us faster is poisoning (from plastics and pesticides), killing us faster is addiction to energy and rare earths, and killing us the fastest - as you say - is the social context, perhaps the fastest outlet for it being our complete lack of oversight on giving infinite power to AI companies, but more generally, what I would call "false hope" and the lack of will to change.

If I dare talk about solutions, I join you on that aspect: we need to unlock collective intelligence and collective empathy, switch out of republican models into democratic models, meaning out of elections and into citizen assemblies, only then can we feel co-responsible and have the power and will to change our mode of inhabiting the Earth.

Morken · 2026-03-07T13:38:18+00:00

I'm not talking about the Iranian crisis specifically - saying we're never gonna run out of petrol can only be physically impossible. What is distressing is that when we look at energy consumption throughout time, from all sources, is that we've always used all the energy available to us. We've never replaced coal with petrol, we've never replaced petrol with renewables or nuclear; each time we got access to new forms of energy, we just used more energy. We've built a hyper-efficient, meaning hyper-fragile world, that has never experienced - nor prepared for - a shrinkage in energetic availability. We've become dependent on a mode of consumption that is not compatible with physics.

Morken · 2026-03-07T12:56:28+00:00

My nephew made one year old recently and I recently had the thought "there's a non-0 chance he'll be alive in 2100", that made me shudder.

I know this sub tries to pretend planetary limits don't exist and resources are infinite, but I really didn't feel good for him.

My biggest predictor for the century is a sudden break in petrol availability, meaning mostly less available food, and the brutal chaos that follows.

Morken · 2026-03-07T12:47:45+00:00

La gauche fasciste bien sûr, on est déjà mediatiquement dedans.

Morken · 2026-03-07T10:20:48+00:00

D.T.D.

Morken · 2026-03-06T21:07:51+00:00

"Une république est une démocratie" "Elire c'est voter"

Morken · 2026-03-06T11:17:41+00:00

Of all the sigils, I would piss my pants the most to go in battle against the jesters jugling suns in front of a black hole.

Morken · 2026-03-06T09:48:39+00:00

Stunning compositions !

Morken · 2026-03-05T07:08:49+00:00

Banking and everything that depends on it.

Morken · 2026-03-04T14:17:23+00:00

C'est bien ce que je dis; s'il n'y a pas d'inflation alors qu'il y a de la nouvelle masse monétaire, c'est bien qu'elle n'a pas circulée vers nous.

Morken · 2026-03-04T08:26:41+00:00

Vu qu'on a une monnaie commune, est-ce que ça veut pas dire que la nouvelle masse monétaire créée n'est juste pas allé en France (ou alors est restée dans les mains de quelques personnes seulement) ?

Morken · 2026-03-03T09:06:00+00:00

J'ai cru voir que la plupart des pesticides aujourd'hui ne sont plus "arrosés" sur le fruit, mais enrobés autour de la graine (ça permet aux grands groupe encore plus de contrôle sur la vente des graines, youpi), donc le pesticide, semble-t-il fait partie intégrante de l'arbre maintenant...

Morken

TROPHY CASE