On the radio, Jeremy Bowen, describing where Iran’s theocracy seems to be at, reached for the well-known quote from Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’:
“‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways’, Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly’.”
Which is the nature of power relationships. Whenever there is a trajectory of extraction there’s a threshold beyond which it cannot stand up.
Much of our era is in the ‘gradually’ phase with ‘suddenly’ inching ever closer…
…It’s always been that way. We’ve always been brewing storms. It’s just that fossil fuels have enabled to brew storms of a scale never concocted before:
Inequality, AI and tech in general, and disconnection from the natural world to name just three
https://mastodon.green/@SusiArnott/115886788991246881
…A species that discovers ways to tap millions of years of stored sunlight is bound to go mad with it. And we obviously have.
…The linked post above from @SusiArnott is from Marc Hudson.
Marc and I had a good rapport on Twitter which led to us once chatting on video, until we both became emigres from Musk’s storm. I ended up here, and Marc ended up on BlueSky so now… the exchange has dwindled.
Marc’s ‘All Our Yesterdays’ project is well worth your time. Here’s why he called it that https://allouryesterdays.info/about/why-all-our-yesterdays/
…and here’s an extract from his latest post by Kevin Anderson, shared by Susi:
1/2
“Humanity has become extraordinarily adept at observing and quantifying the world it is reshaping. With increasing accuracy, we can measure, model, and project the climate system, supported by ever more sensitive instruments, richer datasets, and stronger scientific confidence. Yet this growing clarity has not led to restraint or correction…
…2/2
“Instead, [our strong scientific confidence] has coincided with a profound inability to act on the damage we fully understand and knowingly accelerate, paralysed not by ignorance, but by convenience, power, and habit.”
…Here’s a book cover with the same simplified curve of convenience
https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111867603435972978
