If you want something more hopeful, it's hard to suggest news in general, but I really like Shareable's focus on community solutions https://www.shareable.net/stories/
And I also enjoy updates from certain orgs that are actually doing projects:
- Andrew Millison taught permaculture at Oregon State and then worked for the United Nations. His channel is an incredible gallery of amazing climate solutions around the world: https://www.youtube.com/@amillison/videos
- Mossy Earth is a nonprofit that does a lot of cool restoration and rewilding projects that have had tremendous success: https://www.youtube.com/@MossyEarth/videos
- Ecosia (yes the search engine) also does similar work. They collaborate with a lot of nonprofits around the world so its also a good jumping off point to find other groups: https://www.youtube.com/@Ecosia/videos
https://www.mossy.earth/methodologies/business-ethos
Also in their FAQs:
Is Mossy Earth a charity? We are a social enterprise incorporated as a private limited company in the United Kingdom with a for profit structure. In other words, we are a business and the membership is a payment for a service we provide, not a donation. You pay us to rewild nature, and we do our best to make sure that your money has the biggest possible impact.
Well the environment keeps getting worse and nobody is doing anything about it. So I'd say any source is pretty good
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/first-black-bear-u...
I know these things are more complicated than they seem at first, but whenever these stories surface, I immediately go to an idealistic childhood cartoon land where we have a prime directive that tells us to go forth(!) and watch out for each other!
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Of course fundamentalists tend not to see it that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction#History_of_scientif...
So perhaps holy books are not the best manuals for environmental stewardship.
Genesis also gives the impression that plant life primarily exists for humans to eat. Humans don't need any encouragement to favor edible plants over inedible, to judge by their tendency to cut down forests to grow crops.
"Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food."
John 2:15
The next line is critical for context, as it defines what "things in the world" means.
> [...] For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
Seems clear to me this isn't about creation (ie not saying don't cherish nature / animals).
There is also a theory that Jesus was vegan and a belief that Christians should be too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_vegetarianism#Biblic...
Video is an interesting format but I'm glad you shared that page, text is more appropriate to dive into a subject.
Amazing question. I'm not spiritual, but regularly debate this topic with others (including here): this will be a useful way of approaching it. Thanks for posting the link!
Thankfully over the centuries some people have used their human moral intuitions to gloss over some of the worst parts. But would’ve been much nicer to not have those parts at all.
this is brilliant. The book that is supposed to the be the word on morality needs edits. I can hear the religious right gathering their pitchforks and tiki lights now. It's a perfect book written by the almighty. But for those that don't drink that particular kool-aid it's a self evident observation since it's a book of cherry picked stories by a group of people to push their agenda.
Now to be fair, there's also examples of God (as portrayed by the writers) being vindictive and harsh. I don't have great answers for that, but I do wonder how much it is seeing through their perspective of the situation and how much it was God. (I obviously come at this as a believer).
As to being the only moral text... I certainly hope it's not, because we've learned a lot since then, and I hope what's considered truth can expand beyond one book.
EDIT: not to dismiss your points, just to say that some of us view it in a more nuanced way.
- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
Remember that, multiple times in the past half-century, the protocol was to launch all ICBMs and pray.
But that's because they're either too smart to try or we have altered their genetic makeup by culling anyone who strayed too close.
As for "subdue", ask anyone maintaining a large garden how much they have to work to keep it from reverting back to a wilderness. Gardening is choosing which species stay and which are forcibly removed and optimizing the environment to enable your chosen species to thrive. If the words "subdue" and "dominion" freak you out, pick your brains up off the floor and go touch grass.
Western civilization has decided that it wants to keep the primate species and is dissatisfied when they become roadkill, so it altered the environment to enable the chosen species to thrive. This article is a gardening success story. Gardening requires dominion. We have dominion over the primates and we have chosen to be benevolent with that dominion.
The motorway was not a natural occurrence, and neither cars or trucks evolved naturally. Humans went there and installed a limited fix for the destruction they caused in the first place.
Totally normal gardener behavior.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/invidia
"Nvidia" as "officially" pronounced in English is not significantly different from some of those pronunciations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia
And the founders seemed to be well aware of the existing usage when they chose the name.
Hard disagree. Consider "Oracle," a truly inspired name for a database company. It's an admirable choice. Here's the computer science definition.
> In complexity theory and computability theory, an oracle machine is an abstract machine that can query a black box called an oracle, which is able to give an answer to any instance of a certain problem in a single operation.
There's also the wealth of linkages with classical oracles, e.g., Delphi, Cumae (technically a Sibyl), Dodona, etc. [1] Taken together, it's hard to think of a better name.
Microsoft (originally Micro-Soft) is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software.
Facebook, as others have mentioned, is a compound word that was borrowed from what literal books of faces [and names] were called.
When I think of non-dictionary names, I think of things like Mosptnspg.
Didn't know that about facebook.
Non-dictionary names don't need to be as wierd as Mosptnspg. Could simply be Frodel.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-25-the-m...
https://preview.redd.it/there-is-an-eco-bridge-in-singapore-...
I worry with projects like this that the first version's easy enough to build and show off, but if you don't keep up with the ongoing maintenance you're right back where you started within a decade, and "monkey bridge maintenance" is an easy budgetary line item for the "fiscal conservatives" to go after.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/living-root-bridges-in...
"big government wasting their money on a bunch of critters"
I'm pretty left. The one thing I will never understand is how the right does not care about nature. Just insane to me.
Also, the disconnect between Jesus's politics and what the Christian Right practices is pretty jarring.
I assume you meant to say building, yes?
> added more light rail somewhere it's desperately needed like Orange County or San Diego
In San Diego, 115M would get you what, half a mile of light rail?
Wow look New York is expensive too! It’s almost like it’s the entire country and there are other reasons besides grift.
To me, I can't accept it when I see other countries rapidly doing these infrastructure projects at a fraction of the cost and multiple times faster. Compare our costs to Switzerland or any other high income developed first world country--we're off the charts. It makes no sense other than lobbyists and environment lawyers and other ticky-tack bullshit that helps no one.
I also see it as a longterm competitive disadvantage and liability for the country. We can't complete big projects any more without squandering most of the tax payer money. It also lowers our quality of life when we're spending this much time in traffic and wasting our tax money for such little to show for it.
Those other countries also have lobbyists and environment lawyers, so your thesis reveals a lack of discernment.
The poster child in the west for infrastructure projects is Spain, and i can assure you that Spain is not light on regulation.
America has an interesting political structure - look there for your answer.
Ultimately, a democracy with a strong concept of individual rights will inevitably surface nimbies. America's fractal disorganisation gives them multiple venues to oppose any project. America's love-hate relationship with federal bodies creates overlaps. America's semi-regular cycle into small-government administration means it regularly expunges institutional infrastructure experience. You could shoot every environmental lawyer and lobbyist, and your projects would still be bunfights.
> that helps no one
You're welcome to your own values. I believe there's a place called "Flint Michigan" where the citizens would disagree.
You're really quick to just get angry mad and throw out insults over me saying something as benign as 'wow it'd be nice if California used our tax money as effectively as the example in the article?' Just seems like a bizarre totally mundane thing to get hung up on and then have this nauseating Karen-like condescending tone 'actually... the costs are totally justified, it's fine that California spends 7-10x what every other developed country does--it just makes sense'. You reek of assigned opinion and just conformist talking points from Newsom.
I've lived in California for 40 years and every year the government becomes less effective and more tax money is embezzled and fleeced and squandered. I don't know how someone could travel to Europe or Japan and then come back to California and defend the state of our infrastructure and not be wholly embarrassed. Our schools, roads, bridges, everything that matters are decades behind (despite a sufficiently large tax base to fund those same projects).
We could be doing better, but simps like you just keep giving the one party system a free pass so there've never any accountability whatsoever. Good job, let's just keep lowering our expectations and shrugging this magnitude of incompetence off.
> I believe there's a place called "Flint Michigan" where the citizens would disagree.
How do you think Flint reinforces your argument? If anything it is evidence of exactly what I'm talking about---government bureaucrats making unaccountable decisions that then devastate and rip off the local constituents. They never fixed the Flint crisis... even Obama and Biden did nothing.
Is that really true? For a simple example, it looks like a simple surface light rail line in the US typically runs about 100M/mi. That's pretty much the same as what it costs in the UK.
The Chinatown subway was $600M/km, which is 3-4× "reasonable" construction costs, and fairly far from the most expensive subway, which is I believe NYC's Second Ave phase 2, at almost $4000M/km.
The US in general is a high-cost construction country (for a variety of reasons), but relative to the rest of the US, California is neither particularly expensive nor particularly cheap.
There's no reason we pay such high taxes and have so little to show for it. I get tired of the endless excuses. Every other country--even the more expensive ones like Switzerland--have more effective infrastructure projects. I honestly don't even think this is debatable. Go look at how poorly maintained practically everything in the state is--schools, roads, bridges... It doesn't make sense when we're paying such high taxes and have all the big tech companies here... I don't know why people are so comfortable with that cognitive dissonance.
https://www.youtube.com/@MongabayTV/videos
Here's a few of my favorites:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rfy9HkzSs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZEkt4Ph41M
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynXNzOUI7Xw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMeui4P6urY