andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2024-03-18 12:00 pm
andrewducker) wrote2024-03-18 12:00 pm
Entry tags:
- bigotry,
- china,
- co2,
- doom,
- electricity,
- evolution,
- fraud,
- globalwarming,
- heating,
- internet,
- links,
- ocean,
- organisation,
- poetry,
- propaganda,
- psychology,
- russia,
- scifi,
- short_story,
- society,
- technology,
- tolkien,
- twitter,
- usa
Interesting Links for 18-03-2024
- 1. Yes, heat pumps slash emissions even if powered by a dirty grid
- (tags:USA heating electricity globalwarming co2 )
- 2. The chambered nautilus is a bunch of tentacles in armour. What keeps it penned into a tiny part of the ocean?
- (tags:evolution ocean )
- 3. What does Woke mean? An experiment.
- (tags:society twitter bigotry )
- 4. You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're trying you more hateful and depressed.
- (tags:russia china propaganda internet usa )
- 5. 12 months of record ocean heat has scientists puzzled and concerned
- (tags:ocean globalwarming doom )
- 6. Superiority by Arthur C. Clarke (a short story about superior technology losing the war)
- (tags:Technology organisation scifi short_story )
- 7. The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien is now available for pre-order.
- (tags:poetry Tolkien )
- 8. Research shows that people who BS are more likely to fall for BS
- (tags:fraud psychology )
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So that's a bunch of people being essentially told that the Democrats are also really racist, and to throw away their votes, making it more likely that the Republicans will get in.
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It was definitely used originally by black Americans to talk about becoming aware of the way that racism is woven through their societal structures. And then it was used (starting about a decade ago, I think) more widely to talk about becoming aware of societal inequality.
But nowadays I pretty much only encounter it from people who are complaining about it, and mostly seem to be complaining about minorities getting uppity.
Looking at the Wikipedia article I don't seem to be massively off-base.
Why do you ask?
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Because I think of it as much more complex and multifaceted than this.
I read a definition by James O’Malley that I thought very interesting, though I think you might find it politically loaded in a direction that is not congenial to you. I can probably dig it out if you’d like but absolutely no worries if not.
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It's more obvious now, because the "small-l liberal political concensus" was able to get away with placating people with small tweaks to the status quo while lifestyles were largely improving during the 90s. But once that went away, it was obvious to an awful lot of people that there were massive structural issues going on. And once people started talking to each other without nearly everything being filtered through publishers they were able to get their own, louder, voice. But it's not saying anything that wasn't being said before, it's just able to say it louder than it was able to before.
So when he says "It's a new ideology" I think that he (unwittingly) means "I wasn't paying any attention outside of the Westminster/Journalism consensus, so I wasn't aware of any of this".
(Note: I'm writing this quickly while also doing work, sorting the house, etc. I apologise if some of it doesn't come across well, and am happy to chat about it in person at some point if that would be better.)
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No, you’re reminding me that we’ve had this conversation before, sorry.
I care very little that he hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been going on, and have other views on the below that are about me and not him / this (and which are highly debatable anyway). I just think he’s thought better about what’s truly different about this movement in a much richer and more comprehensive way than I’ve seen anywhere else and I find the nuance useful. Others’ mileage may vary; it is well documented that you and I play for different political teams.
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If you'd like me to respond to a different part of it then I'm happy to do that instead!
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Ah gotcha. Don’t think I regard that as main claim but peripheral to plot which is definition. Other interpretations also available.
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I'm not sure there is much that can be done to salvage the word as a useful signifier of anything.
James O'Malley might be right about what it ought to mean and the implications of that but I think any discussion about the definition of woke and the associated ideology is just going to be overwhealmed by a huge wave of noise driven by hostile actors who are being deliberately obtuse.
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I don't disagree but I think it's a different point.
The thing I really like about the O'Malley article is that he has tried really hard to think about what "woke" could mean that is different from the above. He absolutely does not approve of all of it, which I think (perhaps wrongly) is what Andy dislikes, and I'm not sure that I agree with him about where he regards it as being helpful / unhelpful. But it's the only thing I've seen anywhere that really tries to think through "if this meant something really different from anything else, something as complex as any other political movement, then what would its dimensions be?"
(I will see if I can dig it out and forward it to you, but this is by no means a sure thing.)
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I'm not sure how empirical he has been. I don't know if he's consciously analysed how advocates of a woke position express themselves and what a good faith expression of their views as advocated in the wild is or if he's reasoning from a more theoretical basis or just working off vibes. His description of woke does match a number of the elements I've observed in it.
Reminds a bit of Andrea Dworkin.
I was also wondering about the linguistic origins in African American Vernacular English - which seem to my un-expert eye to have a similar way of dealing with adverbs as Scots. Scots uses "aye" to mean both "yes" (Would you like some beer and voting? Aye, I would, thanks) and also a generally affirmative modifier (Are you always ready for more beer and voting. I am aye ready for beer and voting.)
I wonder if that linguistic difference might have thrown people as the meaning shifted from the original to the current?
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And it's here: https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/woke-is-a-new-ideology-and-its-proponents
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Brilliant - I greatly look forward to reading it!
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(In case anyone arrives here and doesn't see it easily elsewhere)
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Having just found it with extreme ease, I do want to say that I completely see why Andy thinks this is about the novelty of woke; it's in the title! I don't actually think that's the main thrust of what O'Malley writes, but it's clearly a legit take. (I actually also think O'Malley's point on novelty is defensible at least to some degree, but don't regard myself as so knowledgeable on this topic that I would want to do so with any authority.)
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It feels like a combination of muscular Hispanic Catholicism such as one might find in a Francoist and Andrea Dworkin's radical feminism.
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4) Maybe the reason I haven't been having these reactions is that I don't read social media. Unless DW counts? But I'm not reading random strangers on DW. Another factor in shaping my worldview is that I don't watch television news.
6) This is a great story, with only one serious clang: the reference to vacuum tubes. It's 1951 and Clarke still can't imagine the transistor?
7) Thanks for passing this on.
8) I know who they're talking about, and his initials are DJT.
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I'm already happily running my boiler at the bare minimum temperature (60C, because, Legionella et. al) and due to reasons* my radiators and hot water are the same temperature. I would be happy with that. Me and the cat are both happy with 16C room temp.
I have space for either. Oil burner already reliant on electricity for pumps. I have some wood fired stoves for boosting. Wood gasifiers also a popular option round here, dunno how or if the growing trees in the forestry plantations counterbalance the burning ones... Hmm...
There's government money for replacement here in Germany this year and I think next year.
I have no idea what one is supposed to replace a gas boiler in an apartment with no balcony (like I have in Berlin). District heating, for preference, but that's decades away... (Though whole building heating used to be common enough but not mine). Honestly though, an on demand hot water heater and a few electric oil rads would do as it never gets too cold except maybe on Sundays when the barber shop below isn't open.
*Broken mixer valve
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I'm in a similar quandary, especially as my wife suffers in the heat, so with global warming we may well use air conditioning. Adding a ground-source heat pump is not trivial, but heat from the air-con might stay in the ground to be available when we want it back out in the winter. (I have no idea whether a concrete block to store the heat would justify the energy+CO2 used in making the cement.)
I have no idea what one is supposed to replace a gas boiler in an apartment with no balcony
When the gas boiler died in my 1960s flat, the space that had been built around it was too small for any available boiler, so the landlord replaced the warm-air ducted system with electric storage heaters.
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Air con is never going to be a need, my massive amount of clay in this old house means it's always cooler in here then outdoors in summer. Never really goes over 18-20 inside in the warmest room (if I forget to shut the curtains!). Got about a foot of clay between the ground floor and the upper floor. Roof is not at all insulated, so yeah, the one actual room up there is hot in summer and if /when I do it out up there it'll have to be insulated. I would never sleep upstairs in any house given the choice.
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Maybe if you have access to an alternative source of electricity ...
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But all probably pipe dreams due to cost.
Sadly, 2018 me decided just buying Bitcoin was too dull and diversified out into other coins. D'oh...
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At 25:40 the advice to the defence minister is "Are you spending enough on munitions ?"
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