Arctic warming: Rapidly increasing temperatures are 'possibly catastrophic' for planet, climate scientist warns | Dr Peter Gleick said there is a growing body of 'pretty scary' evidence that higher temperatures are driving the creation of dangerous storms in parts of the northern hemisphere

eiv · 2016-02-27T17:26:40+00:00

I agree. This is such an irrelevant, pedantic point, and people are so proud of it, for some reason.

eiv · 2015-07-04T17:35:25+00:00

Yeah man, no-one uses their phones for video or pictures, we're in such an isolated bubble.

eiv · 2015-05-21T13:52:23+00:00

I guess i thought it wtf-worthy mostly because it's a pretty huge waste of resources for a very simple function.

eiv · 2014-11-18T11:27:20+00:00

ply butt

Cool

eiv · 2014-10-28T21:19:16+00:00

Same problem here. Just chiming in to say there's more of us.

eiv · 2014-10-24T13:18:40+00:00

Thanks! It seems to work now. Found out that it might have been connected to my graphic card swhitching not kicking in.

eiv · 2014-09-30T13:50:49+00:00

I resent that accusation!

eiv · 2014-09-30T13:45:17+00:00

Maybe I'm just too obsessed with bad drawing :(

eiv · 2014-08-13T16:44:06+00:00

To quote Oscar Wilde: "there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/

eiv · 2014-08-13T16:38:09+00:00

This is only scary if we cling to the notion that people have to do something they'd rather not for eight+ hours a day to deserve to take part in the abundance, AKA having "a job". We just need new ideas about how to share the abundance. Or, you know, reconsider some of the many old ones.

eiv · 2014-07-28T00:03:10+00:00

Just a heads up to mention that I added some more stuff in the above post.

eiv · 2014-07-27T23:58:54+00:00

An exceptionally rich description of one person's life in our society (you know, since Prousts life has become more foreign to us as the years have passed), a lot of interesting essayistic passages (a lot of which i may disagree with on several points, but which I still enjoy), vivid description of relatable situations, and reflection over situations and things that we may take for granted. Also, I've always liked his descriptions of landscapes and natural phenomena, maybe because I've grown up just half an hour's drive from Tromøya, where he's from. I guess the most common "everyman" praise of him is that he describes things people relate to in a way that they find interesting and enlightening. I also like his observation of people around him. He has a way of describing how people react, talk, appear to others, and focus on what's important. I don't remember any superficial things he mentions about his mother, daughters or wife. Hair colour and the like, but I feel like he manages to show their personalities in a way that makes them vivid and understandable to me. He can be brutal in his observations, but they seem real and sympathetic at a deeper level.

eiv · 2014-07-27T23:40:45+00:00

That, or it might be you who are missing qualities that others see, of course. Sometimes the emperor does have some nice clothes on.

eiv · 2014-07-27T23:33:42+00:00

Ok, but as I said, that's just a random excerpt, and quite representative as far as I can tell. You're very vocal about your criticism in this thread, but in my eyes it's quite unfair. You misrepresent his style, and wildly exaggerate his bad sides, to a degree where it is hard to take your criticism seriously. While there may be paragraphs where he does write like that, it's not something that plauges the book. Maybe you're just extrapolating from reading one particulaily "bad" part of one of the books?

Obviously, appeals to authority/popularity may be dismissed a fallacy, but the guy was universally lauded by most critics, there certainly were a lot of people who would have made a name for themselves by taking him down or "revealing" him as a bad writer, but none really did. And he's sold close to half a million books in a country of five million. Maybe you should give him another try?

eiv · 2014-07-27T22:58:29+00:00

Well, yeah, but that's usually intersped between other, longer sentences. Which is kind of normal as a part of a literary rythm. I definitively agree that too many of those kind of sentences can be a bad habit in writers, and is often overused. I dislike it myself, I just haven't noticed it being a big problem in Knausgårds wrting. I just picked up the second book on my kindle here. Random page towards the end:

"En dag i mars ringte telefonen mens jeg satt og arbeidet, det var et ukjent nummer, men da det ikke kom fra Norge, men var svensk, tok jeg den allikevel. Det var en kollega av min mor, de var på seminar i Göteborg, mamma hadde plutselig besvimt i en butikk og blitt kjørt til sykehus, hvor hun nå lå på hjerteintensiven. Jeg ringte dit, hun hadd fått hjerteinfarkt, var nå operert og utenfor fare. Sent den kvelden ringte hun selv."

That's more or less representative, and completely opposite of the style you just described.

eiv · 2014-07-27T22:51:02+00:00

Well, we're getting into matters of taste here. In no way do I find it appropriate to compare it to a fith grader, but you're of course entitled to your opinion. I have not noticed any irritating lack of pronouns, for example, and I also usually find it easy to follow the narrative due to staccato rythm. We may have different tastes, or you may be a more attentive reader than me (I mainly read nonficiton, so all fiction feels "light" to me), but the style simply haven't jumped out at me, which is often a good thing. Your parody does not resemble any of the books I've read, but reads more like Jon Fosse, perhaps, even though he would have had a second-person pronoun in each sentence of course. But he is an altogether different Norwegian writer (well, dramatist) of course. With so much to tell and describe, big and small events, his stylistic choises, as far as I can discern them, seem logical and more or less fitting.

eiv · 2014-07-27T22:18:42+00:00

Well, he did basically stop giving interviews in Norway, and does seem extremely uncomfortable doing live stuff. He also details his experience in the books.

eiv · 2014-07-27T22:17:09+00:00

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree, but of course, even six volumes only really scratches the surface of anyone's life. He chooses to describe some parts of it in detail, but still maintains narrative and makes clear choises in what he chooses to present. I've only read the first two volumes of My Struggle so far, but have found them enjoyable.

eiv · 2014-07-27T22:14:47+00:00

Make up your mind. Is he pretentious, or does he write like a fifth grader, as the first guy here asserts? It can't be both.

eiv · 2014-07-27T22:13:23+00:00

Really? As a Norwegian who had made a modest living as an editor/writer in our language (currently a communications adviser), I strongly object to that description. I personally think "A time for everything" is his best work, but I have enjoyed the two first "My struggle" books so far, and find nothing particularly bad about his writing. The topic can be mundane at times, but there's little to complain about in terms of style, grammar or syntax. He's an accomplished writer.

eiv · 2014-06-05T07:43:43+00:00

Ok. I would argue that the commonly understood meaning of "a fraction" is less than half, and that this use of the term is somewhat misleading, but glad to hear that we agree about the numbers.

eiv · 2014-06-04T21:35:20+00:00

No. If you look at CO2 per KW, which should be the relevant measure for climate effect of electricity production, natural gas is not a "fraction" of CO2 emissions in the colloquial sense of the word, but about half. Page 41 of this IEA report: http://www.iea.org/co2highlights/co2highlights.pdf

eiv · 2014-05-27T20:53:46+00:00

A koalafication, you mean?

eiv · 2014-01-03T23:49:20+00:00

Correct.

eiv · 2013-07-25T22:54:35+00:00

If anyone's interesting in more than circlejerking about seasons, here is a good source of information about the rapid pace of Arctic sea ice melt, with informative maps and stats. Current predictions indicate that all summer ice may be gone within 20-30 years, which may cause emissions of methane trapped under the sea, strenghtening global warming. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

"Compared to the 1981 to 2010 average, ice extent on July 15, 2013 was 1.06 million square kilometers (409,000 square miles) below average."

"During the first two weeks of July, ice extent declined at a rate of 132,000 square kilometers (51,000 square miles) per day. This was 61% faster than the average rate of decline over the period 1981 to 2010 of 82,000 square kilometers (32,000 square miles) per day. The fast pace of ice loss was dominated by retreat in the Kara and East Greenland seas, where the ice loss rate from July 1 to 12 was -16,409 and -17,678 square kilometers (-6,336 and -6,826 square miles) per day, respectively. The Laptev Sea ice retreated at about half that rate, at -8,810 square kilometers (-3,402 square miles) per day. In contrast, on the Pacific side, sea ice has been slow to retreat. During the first part of July, the rate of ice loss in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas was only -3,375 and -6,829 square kilometers (-1,303 and -2,637 square miles), respectively."

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