There was a brief lull with this activity, but now more iterations (languages) of the blueprint of Libro Werde are in planning again.
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Good to know, @iouxo! Meanwhile, I have made a few updates to the main Sci-Fi Econ Labās wiki. IN October we are down for a major push to Witness.
Hei, itās been a long time for me (or it feels like it!), and Iām finding myself casually catching up on some platform reads 
Hope everyone is doing fine and getting ready for an energy āsoberā winter. I donāt know about others, but coming across media saying that 19 degrees inside could pose health threats is annoying to meā¦ Ever since I moved to Brussels 5 years back I got used to living at 18-19 degrees inside (thanks to @Alberto), and over time it became the norm, and I wrongly assumed that in Belgium this is not exceptional. In any case, from what I read even small babies thrive at 18-20 inside tempĆ©ratures, not moreā¦ so this looks like the easier things to do to save up!
What are other people doingā¦ the most compelling energy saving advice you are implementing?
PS Thanks @johncoate again for this thread, really makes it easy to randomly plug inā¦
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When our first child was born the nurses actually prescribed us to keep the house temperature to 19Ā°. Iām still riding that wave, even though I occasionally have to argue about that (our house itās not easy to heat up so 19Ā° at the thermostat probably means cooler than thatā¦ but I donāt mind, kids donāt either, so maybe I should just buy some heated clothes as Matt and Vinay suggest, to cope with the extra challenge of winter 2022? I first heard of them on this forum actuallyā¦
I wanted to install solar panel and heat pumps, alas my landlord said no. So I am thinking something to blow hot air from the fireplace, and buy some cheap firewood/deadwood, but I havenāt done it yet.
In case of extremely uncomfortable cold, I am considering sleeping within a tent in our bedroom, easier to heat the air up 
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We are probably going to use one bedroom at night for all 3 of us, for more body heating. Plus careful use of appliances, more cold meals, and of course no baths. Even the baby showers with us for the last minute of the shower.
Now is when @matthias 's super manual comes in real handy ā¦ there is a section there on heated clothing too, if anyone is feeling engineer-y. Thanks again for your stellar work, Matt. I am re-reading it and nothwithstanding todayās sense of urgency, itās nice to look back and see that I and my family made some fundamental changes in our lives thanks to the collective effort and ideas. I guess it is ongoingā¦
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Wow, thatās niceā¦ which ones? Or are you referring to ā19Ā°, showers not bathsā, etc.?
For this winter, I would actually like to push that envelope. Wear an extra layer, and go to no more than 18Ā°, maybe even 17Ā°. Not sure what the housemates will say, though!
By the way, I remember that when I was small (not a baby, though, more like 6-7 yo) I used to get feverish by being brought to visit my grandmother in the winter. Her house was way too hot. In the car back, I used to press my forehead against the cold window. Once in my own home, 18Ā°, I felt happy and active again.
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In some homes itās so hot inside I feel like Iām gasping for air. Iāve been told I exaggerate, but I donāt, it does feel claustrophobic!
Iām ā¦glad (?) to hear Iām not alone in feeling some discomfort in that 
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While I personally cannot be sure who is behind this āaccidentā, I also cannot say I am surprised it happened.
But if it wasnāt for the dangerous release of methane, I almost think this could be a way to speed up investing in renewables and energy independence 
Nobody can be sure who did it at this point but, who has most to gain? Someone has actually promised the ending of north stream too by the way .
In any case, the economic and environmental consequences are immediate but, something else also happened.
This was an attack on strategically critical infrastructure as well. There were already plenty of sabotages, but not of such scale. What happened now is that a rule was broken, a line was crossed, so unfortunately it will likely speed up escalation.
We heat only one room in the house in Belgium since several years.
In Croatia we do the same but we heat it only in the evening
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My husband is the same, he feels stuffy the minute the house becomes warm This helps Ć lot!
I meant living greener in general, in Mattās manual there are points about consumerism, uselessness of stuff, food waste etc that we had been moving towards ever since Reef 1.0. After which, lifestyle change goes in only one direction overall, even with some tradeoffsā¦ like vegetarianism and energy savings, BUT still air travel. For now [sigh]
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Hehe for half of the people here this is conspiracy theory level stuff.
In 2020 i was pretty much the conspiracy guy in a discussion about covid pandemic, flat earther who doesnāt believe in science and, as some branded me, lacking empathy. Well now, 2 years later, literally everything I said turned out to be true, unfortunately. Also, it turns out some of the greatest scientific minds of this age ādonāt believe in scienceā 
. List is long.
As more information is coming out, even though they are trying hard to suppress it, more obvious it will be that we actually had a pandemic of misinformation which took most lives and will continue to take for quite some time.
What I was specially upset and sad about in 2020 was that a lot of people I considered intellectuals actually went with the bshit narrative served to them. A bit of fear and some media control was all it took. They even felt entitled enough to discuss the possibility of censoring certain people and removing the most fundamental right of all (bodily autonomy), as apparently they deemed themselves qualified for such discussionā¦in fact the real intellectuals who fought for our rights and are still doing so, took a huge amount of risk but received condemnation and ridicule from the sheep and automatons they were trying to saveā¦itās just deeply saddening and explains the state of our world today.
I bet now most people just want to forget everything, leave it behind and move on with their lives, but that is a huge mistake.
What we should do in fact is make sure something like that never happens again. That means investigation, studies, accountability, very serious consequencesā¦if a lot of heads donāt roll this kind of pandemic will happen again and quite soon.
To go back to your comment, there are actually many decisions made over the last 50 years which prove your point beyond a shadow of the doubt. Proven simply by policies enacted and consequences of such policies in critical industries.
Here is some food for thought:
They have been telling us of impending world hunger for some time now, while at the same time trying hard to reduce our food production under the green agenda. What does that tell you? That human life has very low value in their bigger picture.
Also, very mainstream academic thought is that we are too many, overpopulation is the huge problem, we humans are cancer destroying everything around us etc. It is the result of them shifting the blame for the state of the world on common people.
Well, it seems to me the āoverpopulationā is certainly being brought under control.
Right now we are going towards economic ruin. Germany decided to print out 200 more billion euros for the upcoming crisis. The result will be the same as when they printed trillions in 2020 - further devaluation of currency. Of course, per pathetic narrative, itās all Putinās fault, unreal how ridiculous that is and people gobble it up.
I expect another crypto boost, then itās destruction, then introduction of digital (programmable) currencies, then social credit score combined with carbon tax, in the meantime a huge amount of small businesses will close down, housing will become too expensive to buy, and they will increase taxes for private property too.
I wonder if there is a place in there for universal basic income, programmable of course 
.
I thought the economy was meant to serve people. How come we seem stuck serving it, even if itās trajectory is set to consume and destroy the only complex, livable biosphere we know of in the entire universe?
#naive #nighttime #ruminations
Help?
Yep, system enabled by Saudis and US early on. In return, Saudis got the monopoly on Islam, military protection of US and a status of untouchable
Yes, the petrodollar system is falling apart. As you pointed out, various wars prolonged its use but, as the rest of the world is developing, they naturally strive for more balanced partnerships and a more fair system. Many events are happening which will bring about a transformation in the world.
That is why we have war in Ukraine today, and why we had it in Syria for some time already, why we have African countries again on the path towards a creation of United States of Africa, why they are reducing the export of raw materials in order to increase export of products, thatās why we have countries increasingly doing trade in their national currencies instead of converting both currencies into dollar firstā¦ there are many examples.
US has been falling for some time. The question now is, how much is US ready to do in order to stay far ahead of everyone else? It seems they chose Europe as its scapegoat and we will certainly foot that bill. We have no integrity at all, which is incredible. American industry dominates our public power - insane. Donāt ask me how can a union of 550 million people (highly industrialized and developed mostly) be someoneās colony, but it certainly looks that way.
You can see the narrative behind this: they are all just talking weapons and war, no negotiation possible. It is in US best interest to prologue the war, though, while our economy will go to shambles and Russian economy is slowing down greatly, due to sanctions and obligation to divert so much economic power into the war effort.
Who knows, maybe itās not even that horrible, maybe we get a chance to rebuild it into something much better. Unfortunately, the way it is being done now will be the cause of so many deaths and a lot of hate will be created. That is the long term effect of war and very harming for the entire civilisation.
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If you are a neoclassical economist, it does. Market economies yield āthe most good for the highest numberā.
In practice, our economy (and most economies since the 16th century, if you believe Piketty, which I do) are meant to serve some people. Specifically, the rich and powerful. And they do it quite well.
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Itās kind of obvious, isnāt it?
If you set up the entire world on a race of accumulation, where the more you get the more you are capable of accumulating, what else do you expect as a result? 
As you might remember, I just truly donāt get the endgame of such ārich and powerfulā, unless they truly believe that obscene wealth is capable of separating them from the rest of us indefinitely and shield them from possible ecosystem collapse. While keeping them happy all along in the process? Possibly thatās too much to askā¦
Call that rationality?
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I just learned that someone made a Wikipedia page about me. Mentions Edgeryders at the endā¦
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Iām not surprised, John. That had to happen ā¦ well deserved, Sir! 
Ā
(I am surprised that Edgeryders as a Wikipedia page though, linked from the page about you. Well ok ā¦ that page about Edgeryders has that banner questioning our notability, we might be better off without one 
)
