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I don't know if you want to call the NaNo cops on me or something, but I've changed my initial plan to 'anything I write for immediate or eventual consumption by others counts' because that's how I write in the first place, and because there's really no way I'll succeed otherwise, I don't think. So I'll end up with two NaNo counts by the end of the month - the King of Limbs story and the Total. I still sit down every day and try to at least write a grand, but I have to step up my game without a doubt. So there's that.
I did pretty well in an interview for employment with Teavana. That's pretty exclusively December holiday hire, possible permanent since their barista's leaving for greener pastures. Possible employment at Weekend's Only in the warehouse, but I haven't gotten an interview scheduled, so. Doing some unenthusiastic fast food drops, submitting my resume to some better positions possibly related to writing for dolla dolla bills. I dunno, really.
Okay, this is long. It's under a cut.
I wanted to sit down to journal because I haven't (since November writing and all) and because I've been thinking about the election recently. Obama won handily but a lot of my friends still aren't particularly happy with him. His foreign policy is pretty right-wing - like, traditional right-wing as opposed to neo-con, but yeah. His human rights record isn't particularly rad. He's a pretty lukewarm ally for the LGBT community. His environmental record is pretty sad. He's still a friend to big business - and ignore the hissy-fit they're throwing right now, because they're always looking for a reason to cut hours and people. Obama's a decent Republican candidate, and that he's a Democrat just shows you how insane the Republican part line's become. Obama is a candidate that can get elected, he's better than the Republican lineup, but he's not a progressive and he never really was. Hope and change rhetoric aside, his policy stance has always been pretty close to what he actually does.
But it's not really Obama's fault. I don't blame him. I'm glad he won because I take what I can get. This is a harsh environment for important issues. Culturally, we're slowly going left, and that's good. That's important. I will never scoff at the cultural victories and I won't scoff at the fairly modest gains we've made. (And they are modest.) But for all that, we're also looking at a fairly apocalyptic shift in things like resource availability and climate change.
Wait, no, some back! Okay, I know I used the word 'apocalyptic', and I know it makes me sound a little crazy. Can we get this on the table to observe really quick? I think that it's pretty important, so I want to get the crazy in full view so it's not just in the back of your head and you're thinking, "Okay, so he's one of those nuts." I think that's fair, you know? I think that's a fair assumption when people start trotting 'apocalypse' out. I agree.
But let's look at what our scenario actually is, in a nutshell. I'm going to be pretty conservative in my assertions, here. You can Google pretty much all of it and you'll see some pretty clear cut articles about this stuff. So. Let me say that the ocean is getting progressively warmer and there might not be a way to stop that.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120611153234.htm
http://www.examiner.com/article/climate-change-made-the-ocean-warmer-thus-sandy-was-wetter-more-intense
http://www.livescience.com/24798-global-warming-changing-arctic.html
Let's just say that this is going to negatively impact weather and climate. We've had some awfully bad weather lately. Sandy's pretty bad. The fires in Texas this year were pretty unprecedented.
There's a lot of coal in the ground. I didn't realize this until pretty recently, but stock prices and, in fact, our whole economy is basically predicated on energy costs and those energy costs are figured on getting the coal out of the ground in the U.S and globally. That means they're already figured in. Let's just say that burning that coal is not really a great idea, okay? There are alternatives, but they mean changing our lifestyles a little and building new infrastructure. I'm just going to say that I'm strongly of the opinion that is a requisite. The time to do that is now, while we're able to fairly easily. Hell, government subsidies and direct spending in a weak economy to build new infrastructure kills a few birds with one stone, so that seems like a good thing to push for policy-wise.
We're running pretty low on helium.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229
I think it's reasonably clear why this is bad, I just wanted you to know, so moving on.
I think you probably remember hearing about the tar sands pipeline. You know, Keystone XL?
The real problem with the tar sands isn't really the pipeline. I'm not sure I even blame Obama for giving it the inevitable go ahead. The pipeline is, after all, post-extraction and it's the extraction that actually causes the problem. And it's Canada, which we don't actually own. You know that they have their own Prime Minister and everything? Adorable. But we can't actually put the kibosh on extraction, that's up to them. And they should, because the energy it takes to extract it and the environmental effects are going to be pretty fucking harsh.
The other thing to consider is why they're doing it in the first place. It's not like they suddenly just found these tar sands, or anything. They've literally been there since the dawn of civilization, just sitting there being gross and tarry. They're being used now because we're actually past peak oil. It's not quite the auto-apocalypse you thought, huh? Well, give it a little time, but that's right. The reason we're doing a lot of deep water drilling and arctic drilling (and arctic deep water drilling) and tar sands bullshit is because we're fresh outta new wells to dig.
These are infrastructure and culture problems.
Fundamentally speaking, the obstacle isn't just obstructionist senators and pork projects, it's our culture and it's consumerism, but mostly it's capitalism. Yeah, well, sorry. I mean, honestly, I'm not really happy with that conclusion either, and here's why. First of all, planned obsolescence is a thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence (Yeah I know, Wiki, sue me. They've got the original papers there.)
http://www.economist.com/node/13354332
Infinite population growth and infinite production cycles are also what we build for. But even though the planet's big and it's got a lot of stuff for us, there are key items and resources (drinking water, arable land, helium, silver, oil) that are both finite and reaching the end of their production values. It's like an RTS map where you've eventually mined all the metals and taken up all the space, and now you don't know what to do because it's the only map your civilization can play on. You don't get any more.
Sustainability is pretty important, but when you actually need product turnover and actually need people to buy thing stuff that they don't need and actually needs to be designed to break or go out of fashion, then you're actually fucking things up as part of your system. And, you know, I don't mean you. I assume you didn't do this. It's okay! But, you know, systematically it's pretty bad. And we export this way of thought! Consumerism! It's fun! And I do love buying shit. Or I used to. Before I and Kay were repeated canned. That's really neither here nor there, though. This is pretty much the way it has to be.
I'm not saying a direct planned economy, but we need to work on something else. We don't need all this crap, we've literally sold ourselves a bill of goods. We build houses that suck, don't insulate, and don't ventilate. That need huge amounts of energy to pump cold air in the summer and hot air in the winter. We have built a society to fail. That's got to stop.
I've repeatedly written on cultural issues. I'm not saying we should drop that to do this. What I'm actually saying is that there's no reason we can't do both. We possess the tools to restructure our society, but we probably ought to start on it soon, before things get a lot worse.
I did pretty well in an interview for employment with Teavana. That's pretty exclusively December holiday hire, possible permanent since their barista's leaving for greener pastures. Possible employment at Weekend's Only in the warehouse, but I haven't gotten an interview scheduled, so. Doing some unenthusiastic fast food drops, submitting my resume to some better positions possibly related to writing for dolla dolla bills. I dunno, really.
Okay, this is long. It's under a cut.
I wanted to sit down to journal because I haven't (since November writing and all) and because I've been thinking about the election recently. Obama won handily but a lot of my friends still aren't particularly happy with him. His foreign policy is pretty right-wing - like, traditional right-wing as opposed to neo-con, but yeah. His human rights record isn't particularly rad. He's a pretty lukewarm ally for the LGBT community. His environmental record is pretty sad. He's still a friend to big business - and ignore the hissy-fit they're throwing right now, because they're always looking for a reason to cut hours and people. Obama's a decent Republican candidate, and that he's a Democrat just shows you how insane the Republican part line's become. Obama is a candidate that can get elected, he's better than the Republican lineup, but he's not a progressive and he never really was. Hope and change rhetoric aside, his policy stance has always been pretty close to what he actually does.
But it's not really Obama's fault. I don't blame him. I'm glad he won because I take what I can get. This is a harsh environment for important issues. Culturally, we're slowly going left, and that's good. That's important. I will never scoff at the cultural victories and I won't scoff at the fairly modest gains we've made. (And they are modest.) But for all that, we're also looking at a fairly apocalyptic shift in things like resource availability and climate change.
Wait, no, some back! Okay, I know I used the word 'apocalyptic', and I know it makes me sound a little crazy. Can we get this on the table to observe really quick? I think that it's pretty important, so I want to get the crazy in full view so it's not just in the back of your head and you're thinking, "Okay, so he's one of those nuts." I think that's fair, you know? I think that's a fair assumption when people start trotting 'apocalypse' out. I agree.
But let's look at what our scenario actually is, in a nutshell. I'm going to be pretty conservative in my assertions, here. You can Google pretty much all of it and you'll see some pretty clear cut articles about this stuff. So. Let me say that the ocean is getting progressively warmer and there might not be a way to stop that.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120611153234.htm
http://www.examiner.com/article/climate-change-made-the-ocean-warmer-thus-sandy-was-wetter-more-intense
http://www.livescience.com/24798-global-warming-changing-arctic.html
Let's just say that this is going to negatively impact weather and climate. We've had some awfully bad weather lately. Sandy's pretty bad. The fires in Texas this year were pretty unprecedented.
There's a lot of coal in the ground. I didn't realize this until pretty recently, but stock prices and, in fact, our whole economy is basically predicated on energy costs and those energy costs are figured on getting the coal out of the ground in the U.S and globally. That means they're already figured in. Let's just say that burning that coal is not really a great idea, okay? There are alternatives, but they mean changing our lifestyles a little and building new infrastructure. I'm just going to say that I'm strongly of the opinion that is a requisite. The time to do that is now, while we're able to fairly easily. Hell, government subsidies and direct spending in a weak economy to build new infrastructure kills a few birds with one stone, so that seems like a good thing to push for policy-wise.
We're running pretty low on helium.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229
I think it's reasonably clear why this is bad, I just wanted you to know, so moving on.
I think you probably remember hearing about the tar sands pipeline. You know, Keystone XL?
The real problem with the tar sands isn't really the pipeline. I'm not sure I even blame Obama for giving it the inevitable go ahead. The pipeline is, after all, post-extraction and it's the extraction that actually causes the problem. And it's Canada, which we don't actually own. You know that they have their own Prime Minister and everything? Adorable. But we can't actually put the kibosh on extraction, that's up to them. And they should, because the energy it takes to extract it and the environmental effects are going to be pretty fucking harsh.
The other thing to consider is why they're doing it in the first place. It's not like they suddenly just found these tar sands, or anything. They've literally been there since the dawn of civilization, just sitting there being gross and tarry. They're being used now because we're actually past peak oil. It's not quite the auto-apocalypse you thought, huh? Well, give it a little time, but that's right. The reason we're doing a lot of deep water drilling and arctic drilling (and arctic deep water drilling) and tar sands bullshit is because we're fresh outta new wells to dig.
These are infrastructure and culture problems.
Fundamentally speaking, the obstacle isn't just obstructionist senators and pork projects, it's our culture and it's consumerism, but mostly it's capitalism. Yeah, well, sorry. I mean, honestly, I'm not really happy with that conclusion either, and here's why. First of all, planned obsolescence is a thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence (Yeah I know, Wiki, sue me. They've got the original papers there.)
http://www.economist.com/node/13354332
Infinite population growth and infinite production cycles are also what we build for. But even though the planet's big and it's got a lot of stuff for us, there are key items and resources (drinking water, arable land, helium, silver, oil) that are both finite and reaching the end of their production values. It's like an RTS map where you've eventually mined all the metals and taken up all the space, and now you don't know what to do because it's the only map your civilization can play on. You don't get any more.
Sustainability is pretty important, but when you actually need product turnover and actually need people to buy thing stuff that they don't need and actually needs to be designed to break or go out of fashion, then you're actually fucking things up as part of your system. And, you know, I don't mean you. I assume you didn't do this. It's okay! But, you know, systematically it's pretty bad. And we export this way of thought! Consumerism! It's fun! And I do love buying shit. Or I used to. Before I and Kay were repeated canned. That's really neither here nor there, though. This is pretty much the way it has to be.
I'm not saying a direct planned economy, but we need to work on something else. We don't need all this crap, we've literally sold ourselves a bill of goods. We build houses that suck, don't insulate, and don't ventilate. That need huge amounts of energy to pump cold air in the summer and hot air in the winter. We have built a society to fail. That's got to stop.
I've repeatedly written on cultural issues. I'm not saying we should drop that to do this. What I'm actually saying is that there's no reason we can't do both. We possess the tools to restructure our society, but we probably ought to start on it soon, before things get a lot worse.
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