Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • simple tarot spreads for gaining clarity

    these are my favorite "what the fuck is going on??" spreads to gain some insight into my own interiority and some direction as to how to proceed. both are four card spreads laid out in a square, a 2x2 grid. i feel the shape is a good map of the relationships of the spread positions.

  • Pushing things round the environmental plate

    In this article the point is made that some things that we think of as environmentally bad are in fact environmentally good.

    [...]

    This article has some merit, but doesn't totally get it right. Often these things look better in some metric but often it relies on looking at a single environmental problem and forgetting the others. For instance industrial arable agriculture can be better in terms of land use and GHG emissions, but the trade off is collapsing natural ecosystems as the insects get decimated and the hedgerows and habitat get grubbed out.

    It seems to me like if you don't reduce your affluence or population you're just pushing environmental problems around the plate, one environmental problem trades against another and if you change your way of doing something to improve some metric, a corresponding negative effect pops up in another place. Coal emits green house gases, solar panels require lithium mining and large tracts of land. Plastics do not bio degrade and cause problems for wildlife, paper bags require plantation forest (land use).

  • Let them be left

    What would the world be, once bereft
    Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
    O let them be left, wildness and wet;
    Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
    
    
     --- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid
    

  • Most people prefer traditional architecture

    For now, the provisional conclusion is that 70 to 90 percent of the population has a clear preference for traditional architecture. This preference is surprisingly unchanged by other demographic features. Men, younger people, and maybe richer people tend to be slightly more likely to favor modern architecture, but these trends are not marked. Every demographic group favors traditional design: men and women, old and young, rich and poor.

• Politics and World Events

  • Conspiracy theorists

    I generally avoid political discussions with, well, pretty much anyone. It was one of the topics no one ever raised at work, along with religion and salaries. So this week, when I unexpectedly found myself talking to a neighbour who bluntly stated his views about a very contentious topic, it rather took me by surprise.