I saw on the one hand,

• Media IPs I loved repeatedly get wrecked by the companies that own them for the sake of easy profit.
• Politics turning ever more into an adrenaline-injecting, thought-deadening clown show.
• Most of the food sold to us in stores is full of weird garbage and I have to wash the fruits and vegetables at home for fear it’s coated in residual poison.
• Even with working constantly, it’s extremely difficult to afford a home that is actually your own, leaving basically everyone as perpetual debt or wage slaves for a mortgage or rent. You will then also be dependent on paying utility companies for your basic needs.

I saw on the other hand,

• Random people produce amazing creative outputs all the time just because they like to, and then they share it, without being paid.
• I saw things like the Libertarian Party platform and people on r/anarchism101 making calm, thougut-out arguments. (I know the Libertarian Party is rather different than anarchism but the point is it was a radical step for me at the time and it told me that people outside the 2-party system were making an actual attempt to be thoughtful.)
• Almost everyone I’ve ever known who gardens vegetables or farms eggs produce more than they eat, and all of them gladly give surplus away to friends and acquaintances.
• I discovered nomadism, have lived in an RV for a year, experimented with solar power, and stayed at friends’ houses with well water, and discovered that what I actually need to be comfortable is far smaller, less expensive, and more achievable than the housing and rental markets would make it seem, and that there are a surprisingly large number of other people who have tried and discovered the same thing.

I could go on. All of this stuff had built up for years. The specific turning point was probably meeting an actual anarchist in person, hearing him describe direct action and mutual aid, and going, “Hey that sounds almost the same as what I’ve been thinking about for a while now.”

It’s seems like every time someone figures out the supply issue, they come along, put in a few road blocks and charge you money to get though to what you had before for free or way less.

I mean yeah, that kind of thing has been the foundation of wealth for like… thousands of years, I think.

1. Acquire thing that lots of people want.
2. Secure it from anyone being able to get any of it for themselves.
3. Require people to give you money/labor/whatever in exchange for it.
4. Set the price as high as people will tolerate.
5. Profit. So, so, so much profit.

The point is not, never has been, and never will be, giving people things they want cheaply, the point is profit. Giving people things cheaply is beneficial when it lets you undercut the competition from other people selling the same or similar things. So much the better if you give what you control to people really cheaply at the start, and then raise the costs once your new livestock customers get settled in. But point is, at the end of the day, this type of behavior is how the profit motive plays out.

I’d love to see simulations of what the inside of such an object would look like. Is it dense all the way down to the black hole, or does it take just a little bit of falling hydrogen to create enough “solar wind” to hold the rest of the gas up like a hollow shell around it?

People act similarly for stuff like Linux though. Gotta build a cool brand for the Fediverse!

To quote the actual abstract, not just the headline,

There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to these increasing atmospheric CO2 levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms. However, directly assessing this in humans is very difficult.

It does not say that they for sure know that atmospheric CO2 levels are going to be toxic within 50 years. It only says that, based on one examination of indirect proxies, it seems like that might be the case. Something which definitely should be studied further, because even the possibility of global atmospheric toxicity is worrying, but not something to jump to conclusions on, because doing so is bad science.

Their study result makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach too, I just want to keep a level head and not jump to “welp I guess we’ll all be paying billionaires for clean oxygen tanks in 50 years”.

If this really does turn out to be a problem we’re heading towards, it’s also premature to conclude that it won’t get fixed. I know that if I learn that this is for real, I’m certainly going to be telling everyone I know about it and looking for ways to spur useful action.

Just looked on their website at the list of ways people can help, there’s more variety of tasks & skills on there than I was expecting. I don’t know how to modify or repair bikes, or craft a solar oven, but if someone was willing to teach me I’d be excited to learn.

Carpooling with people I don’t know scares me a little, but I have friends of various ideological alignments in the different places I’ve stayed who might be interested in doing a little field trip with me. I’ll try to keep it in mind.

Also, thanks for reminding me that foodnotbombs exists. That is definitely a group which helps people directly.

Have you thought about translating, transscribing or proof reading for texts and other media? Also making audio versions of texts or translated audio tracks are digital tasks that often dont have enough people doing them.

No, I didn’t even know that was something people needed. I figured modern translation & transcription software was good enough to do most of these tasks. Where is it needed?

Do you have things that you believe you could do but currently dont because you dont have the confidence / skills you think you need for that?

Kind of, yeah. I am a competent programmer and generally have a good mind for technology. There are a few reasons I haven’t applied it to anything anarchist-y yet:

• I’m a game programmer, and have almost no experience working with any other kind of tech, software or otherwise. The fundamental skills & mindset are very transferable, but anything which is practically useful will require the effort of learning how to do new things.
• I could contribute to open source projects, but coding is a lot of work and I’m not sure what a minimal first step would be. The idea of having to get to know an entire code base just to fix a small bug or add a simple feature is daunting.
• I’m not actually sure how much I could really help people through code. Maybe a project like Meshtastic, decentralized communications? Software is a tool, and more than just a tool, it’s like a meta-tool, it’s multiple steps removed from physical reality, which makes it harder to gauge how much help I’m really providing. It is definitely something I am well suited for, and it’s something I like doing, but I don’t want to get lost in the sauce of making tools for the sake of making tools or making the efficiency more efficient without it being grounded somewhere. Unless people really want someone to put more effort towards open source game projects, then I guess I could do that lol, it just feels like a very indirect way of making the world a better place.

I live as a nomad, so I don’t really have a “local” for more than a few months at a time (at most). Without putting all my lifestyle details on the internet, it’s a large part of why I’m hoping to find ways to help people directly that are online. I have no fixed location, no local community, and usually not much means of local transport. I guess my “local community” is whatever parts of the Internet I frequent? Makes me wonder if there’s something out there for remote workers, I’ve sure seen some BS in the industries where I’ve worked.

To be frank, I do not want to make flyers or do admin tasks for a political organization I’m meeting for the first time. My goal is to help people directly. I will take your advice though,

Start small, start local, don’t burn yourself out, speak to people

The first anarchist I met suggested I write a list of all the resources & skills I can offer, and a list of all the people in my social circles (I feel like I should include online communities as well), and just start with mutual aid on a small direct scale like that. There was a term he had for doing this that I can’t remember :/

Good luck!

Thanks, I feel like I might need it.

I am actually usually in rural areas, so that option is not going to be available to me very often. I appreciate the suggestion though, never heard the term “infoshop” before.