jbu

was talking about this with a friend who knows more. He did point out we need to replace old housing stock, which we also don't do, so just have cold, mouldy old houses. But that's not what's being talked about here.

I also had a twitter conv with a housing charity once, who agreed but pointed out that the financialization of property is hard to overturn, and it's easier to just advocate for more building. Problem I see here is that the new buildings will just be more stock for existing portfolios, and actual prices don't seem to reduce.

Comment · 2 years ago

I know a bit of the history with this one.

Back in the day there was a smaller consultancy with awesome developers called LShift (mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_London_Tech_City). They worked out that an open source messaging thing would be useful, and created RabbitMQ (there were details about who, how it was funded internally, etc). That got sold to VMWare, and a bunch of people went with it, but LShift went on as before, happy, but always looking for another Rabbit. Didn't find one, was aquihired in the end.

Meanwhile, some of the Rabbit people formed Weave, looking for the killer business around the early container ecosystem (https://www.weave.works/oss/net/ was interesting, eksctl, flux, CNCF, lots of good things). But I guess they took a bite of the VC apple and sustainable technical contributions was no longer the goal.

I've huge respect for everyone I knew from Weave. Great people all. Best wishes and I know you'll land on your feet.

Comment · 2 years ago

That's why we now have the Vimes Boot Index - https://www.vimesbootsindex.co.uk/

Comment · 3 years ago

9 mortal men? Look out for the one ring to rule them all…

Comment · 3 years ago

Why is reporting scientific findings considered political?

Comment · 3 years ago

It's useful to realise that humanities yearly CO2 production is greater (by weight) anything else we make. by far.

So yes, if we don't stop producing industrial quantities of CO2, we'd need to plant about 1 USA sized forest/year to compensate (and keep it away from fire etc). Obviously Complete Nonsense.

Also a strawman argument. We need to stop producing industrial quantities of CO2. Then reforestation can help (a bit, perhaps).

Comment · 3 years ago

I really prefer Ministry to termination shock. I mean, it's a fun book, but it offers no solution (eg sulphur seeding does nothing for ocean acidification, not to mention termination shock). The fact that people read it and thing it offers a solution is puzzling. Now Anathem is another matter! Brilliant! (although again I have quibbles).

Comment · 3 years ago

News people don't like is often dismissed as 'hysterics', 'alarmism', etc, which is a well known cognitive bias. Nearly all people trying to improve the future do so sensibly, following established processes and norms and trying to be nice, but you haven't heard of these people because that's not how change is made in the face of established power that doesn't want the change. Most of that good work gets sunk. Change in the face of vested interests is 'noisy, hysterical, disagreeable', at least to the vested interests.

Comment · 3 years ago

I guess you mean Naomi Wolf, as the sub-title makes clear? Quite different people. Klein is an excellent writer and thinker. Wolf is deep in the conspiracy hole.