allan 📊 @allan

@mpjgregoire @keithzg but to circle back to the Atlantic article, we can change the zoning laws to encourage more shade. People like Mrs. Reeves show is that it can be done and how to do it.

@keithzg @mpjgregoire I went to a public lecture on this by the city's historian laureate back in February because I am a cool dude and I know how to party.

@mpjgregoire @keithzg I live in Oliver which also has tree line avenues, mostly Elm and Ash, but if wasn't for Gladys Reeves, and the Edmonton Tree Planting Committee she founded in 1923, none of those would be here. At several points, especially post WWII, the city administration wanted to remove them all in the name of progress but the horticultural society fought them off.

@keithzg @mpjgregoire I believe most of the boulevard trees are due to a pretty concerted effort by a citizen led group back in the day, now the Edmonton Horticultural Society, it's also largely why the river valley has been kept mostly free of development.

It wasn't that the city planned for boulevard trees, a grassroots organization made it happen and fought to keep them.

This article really buries the lede, talking about two people found murdered on the Alaska highway:

"Police in the region admit there are "growing community concerns" after a total of five people have been declared missing or murdered in the region in the past week"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-alaska-highway-couple-killed-1.5219740

@liaizon I think umlauts have been a standard part of english for ages, same with diaereses, for example in coördinate. Though usage has always depended on how fussily pedantic one is.

This. Is. Amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-rP_TW39CQ

Why does the world have an "adventurers guild" and obsessively catalogue stats about everyone? Because that's what the super-powered warlord-god who conquered the lands a century ago wanted.

Ditto for European style feudalism, medieval weaponry, etc. etc.

You could even explore how the adventurers from our world pointedly use their knowledge of science for their own gain but not in ways that would be actually helpful, because they want to preserve the medieval flavour.

E.g. the mc is reincarnated in a classic fantasy world, is super OP, and becomes an adventurer, but it becomes apparent that the only reason the world is a classic fantasy world in the first place is because fantasy-nerds from our world keep appearing in that world as super OP warrior douches and have built a colonial system around recreating the fantasy tropes they hold so dear.

I, along with I suspect a lot of the world, am pretty much over isekai. There are a few stand-outs that are amazing but that is mostly by subverting the tropes of the standard re-incarnated in a world that is exactly like a mmorpg isekai.

Anyways I was thinking, you could do a lot with the genre by re-imagining the social impact of having super op randos appear in the world regularly

It is definitely a thing for people to look at "reports" that cost $100M and think "how could this happen!?!" but when the consultants' charge out rates start at $100/hr and go up, it is not hard to rack up the charges.

When you cross into the millions, though...

I am really morbidly curious about #Edmonton's >$600MM consulting expenditures currently inflaming city council.

I used to work for an engineering consultancy so on the one hand I know how easy it is for consulting fees to blow up out of proportion if the client doesn't have a handle on the scope of the project. On the other, $600MM is a lot of money, at some point it has got to be more cost effective for the city to hire their own engineers?

I was talking with someone about ocean plastic and they said "yeah but, we have to look at where it is coming from..." Us, apparently https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cambodia-canada-plastic-waste-1.5215358

I largely think that plastic recycling is a scam. We should take this opportunity to really rethink the whole supply chain.

@kai I've found a lot of new authors through LeVar Burton Reads. He reads the same sort of stuff I'm into, speculative fiction, but makes a point of seeking out voices that are not white men.

Also: keeping a list of "To Reads" gives me some time to evaluate, do I really want to read this? or do I just think I *should* read this? I'm really trying to get away from the latter category of books, that is a mistake.

I noticed, a few years ago, that I wasn't really reading like I used to. So I signed up for goodreads under the idea that by tracking what I read...somehow this would do something??

I don't think it has done anything, I still read maybe half as many books as I did 10yrs ago, but: I think that the "To Read" shelf is worth it? I use the library more because, instead of buying the first book that comes to mind, I have a whole list I can filter against availability at the library.

@kai I think this is may be how climate change plays out. There won't be one big disaster it will be a series of smaller catastrophes and, since we can't see future that didn't happen, we won't entirely realize it.

To a certain extent this is already happening. The planet is already warmer and we're already seeing natural disasters and civil wars exacerbated by climate change.

Climate change isn't an actor on the world stage, it is the stage.

@kai I have not. Is it good?

In conclusion, climate change is a land of contrasts.

Though, to counter my own criticism, there is a section in the book about how climate change, unchecked, could mean an end to economic growth as we know and, in fact, a period of protracted economic contraction. In which he points out how this is completely at odds with our collective understanding of the world and our place in it.

We have spent so long with exponential growth in prosperity that the idea of it ending is itself an apocalyptic vision.

So yeah, good book.