I have a desk job. The combination of a rowing machine and sit-stand desk has been a game changer for my spine health

Focus on progress that has been made, solutions to the climate crisis have been growing exponentially over the past decade. And it’s not a binary issue of everything is sunshine and rainbows vs we’re all fucked. There’s more of a spectrum. Also remember the past environmental successes we’ve had with like acid rain, the ozone layer, leaded gas, mercury pollution. We’ve come a long way.

Making any progress, no matter how small makes the future just that much better than it otherwise would be. Yes, systemic changes out of the control of anyone on Lemmy are needed, but if say every person on Lemmy worked towards reducing their own environmental impacts that could have huge ripple effects in the economy of the green transition. Just plan out pragmatically/realistically how much time, mental energy, and resources are worth it to you.

A lot things that individuals can do to help with the climate crisis often also have personal benefits like long term financial savings, less pollution exposure, healthier plant-based diets, etc.

Easy, buy up a bunch of land for conservation

Plastic production is also one of the dirtiest industries in terms of air and water pollution… I doubt China has strong enough environmental standards

Drosophila geneticists come up with the craziest gene names… My all time WTF is Suppressor of Mothers Against Decapentaplegic (SMAD).

Paywalled, but I’m gonna go with fossil fuel trap. We need to be completely off fossil fuels by about 2050. Any new major natural gas infrastructure being built now is expected to last longer than 2050. Even new residential gas furnaces are probably expected to last around 20 years or so.

While I agree there are issues with capitalism. I disagree this was capitalism working as intended. If it were, the better/more innovative technology (green/cheap energy) would have surpassed the worse technology (dirty energy reliant on continued investment and extraction) because as we are finally seeing, there is more money to be made with green energy than fossil fuels. Suppression of green energy took active anti-capitalist anti-competitive efforts to preserve the edge of fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel companies knew about global warming since at least the 1970s. Those companies have used their enormous wealth to reverse trends towards public transit (e.g. Los Angeles used to have street cars…), halt the green energy transition until very recently, and spread misinformation and buy politicians.

Edit: also think about how all of those oil spills, mountain top removal, air and water pollution, cancers, asthma, heart disease that were “necessary for the economy” over the past couple of decades. When instead we could have already had fully sustainable energy systems with similar economic growth. Vote for politicians willing to do something about it.

It’s hard, but there are more adults in the U.S. alive today who have successfully quit smoking than currently smoke.

Check out SmokeFree.gov for free science-based resources!

My Hyundai Ioniq 5 has ample physical buttons on the center console, steering wheel, and door, and a physical door handle that Teslas lack. Sure there is a touch screen (smaller than industry average), but I don’t frequently use it, the buttons outside the screen are enough.

We have some similar tastes. I think you’ll like:

Borns

Florence and the Machine

Lorde’s 2021 album Solar Power

Spoon

Billy Raffoul

Hozier

Bishop Briggs

The Revivalists are an incredible bluesy rock band, but everything of theirs on the radio is their blandest stuff. They really excel with live performances and amazing instrumentals.

“It Was a Sin” builds slow but gets really high energy by the end

“Soul Fight” has a top notch saxophone solo

Here’s a full concert at Red Rocks

We do trials to determine if a new treatment is safe and effective. Let’s say you got a “miracle drug” that cures whatever disease you’re studying, but it is too toxic and kills patients over time. That drug may get hyped up in early development as a miracle cure, but you need to compare it to something else to be sure the toxicity seen is not driven by something unrelated. This is why it’s not ethical to run late stage trials without a standard of care or placebo control arm, because in this case the standard of care would be the better treatment option.

This concept is called equipoise, as in the two treatments are equally poised to provide benefit to patients at the beginning of the trial. Otherwise if you had enough data to know for certain your new therapy is better, then the trial is unnecessary and it should just be a regular medicine/submitted to a health authority for approval instead of wasting >$100 million dollars on another trial.

Coalition for Rainforest Nations

They work with national governments, indigenous peoples, and local communities to create and audit rainforest protection programs. They also work to reforest areas and generally spread knowledge about rainforest ecosystems.

If you know your investigational therapy is better than a placebo or standard of care, then why do the trial? Just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s good

Corn syrup is mainly cheap because of the huge subsidies, putting that money to better use supporting veggie or fruit production would make us all a lot healthier

Nice! That’s got to be the Dragonstone bridge from the GoT universe

~50% of the time I attend virtually, because yeah it’s nice to sleep in on Sunday and make breakfast with the service on Zoom and camera off

It probably depends heavily on the specific congregation. I haven’t seen those vibes personally though. In my experience nobody really bothers the people who just show up occasionally, except to be friendly at coffee hour. UU are very much about democracy and so the local make up of the congregation can take it in many directions. Try it out on zoom if they offer a hybrid attendance to see if it’s a good fit

Hear me out, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church for the music and sense of community. There is no shared theology among UUs, only a set of shared values. UU services vary a lot by the specific congregation. Ours has had services on celebrating gender identities, promoting social justice, mourning global conflicts, and fighting climate change. Sometimes relevant theology from a variety of world religions is incorporated into services, but there is no expectation to be a believer and there are many atheist members in my church. The rest of the time we have potlucks, play board games, do community service projects, etc.