Five @ Five @slrpnk.net

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1. This is solar 'capacity' not actually used solar energy, because
2. It's being installed in Tibet, far away from the industrial zones of China on the coast, which all run on coal power which
3. China is the largest consumer of in the world, making up more than 50% of their energy use by kW, while renewables + nuclear make up less than 30%.

China has no intention of switching to renewable energy infrastructure, they are building more coal fired plants and have instituted quotas to ensure that dirtier and more expensive coal is still their primary source of power.

If you want a green world, you can't wait for a politburo to give it to you.

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🍞🍞🍞➕🎪🎪🎪

🥕🥕🥕🚫💣💣💣

Local radical radio, 3CR is offering a two-day podcasting course, October 12 and 19th. The signup link isn't working yet, but you can call 61 3 9419 8377 for more information.

If anarchists like ziq did not exist, capitalists would need to invent them.

This has more to do with their goal to cement their control over Tibet than any plan to save the environment.

Of all of the solar capacity China has installed, they actually use only a fraction of it. So it sits dark and good for nothing but being the subject of environmental puff pieces and authoritarian greenwashing. All of their industrialization is at the coast, and it is all powered by coal. Solar is installed in unindustrialized areas, and they haven't bothered to modify their electricity network to transport the energy to where it would actually reduce carbon emissions.

I think the plan is to use localized inexpensive solar energy to power the industrialization of China's interior, while continuing to accelerate their use of petrochemicals on the coasts. They've built economic protections for their coal industry and are building several more coal fired power plants as we speak. But if the politburo can entice more ethnic Chinese to move to Tibet, then suppressing independence movements will require less government resources. Meanwhile, China's contribution to the carbon debt will accelerate.

Solution? Sewing DIY bags from old clothing.

More reusable and personal than a factory bag, and you already know how to mend it to keep it going. Uses less raw resources than a plastic bag, as it was going to the trash anyways. It's a great beginner sewing project.

People have been saying JD Vance was spotted wearing a Donald Trump skin suit on a golf course earlier today.

I think she's been releasing exclusively on Nebula; this is the first video in a while where she's released simultaneously on Nebula and YouTube. I don't think this was done as the start of a trend but because it is consistent with the deeper message of this video.

Contrapoints has always straw-manned (straw-catgirlled?) the anti-authoritarian left, but it was done with enough nuance that it wasn't offensive enough to completely delegitimize the good points she was making. It was always a warning - among other more explicit warnings - that she wasn't one of us. If this characterization of her is true, it is not surprising.

I'm disappointed with Contrapoints all the same, but I'm happy to report Queen of Breadtube, Lindsay Ellis, just released an opus on Ms. Rachel and Palestine. It is excellent.

A French scientist was convinced that gorillas had an artistic spirit, and chose one of the most intelligent of a local zoo's captive animals to perform an curious experiment - to see if he could teach her to express herself through art. He brought her paint and canvas, and each day entered the grey cage to patiently demonstrate how paint could be applied, colors mixed, texture formed. He demonstrated shape and subject, while the gorilla watched him bemused but uninspired. The man painted bananas, clouds, balloons, and even a portrait of the gorilla. He offered the gorilla crayons, tried to put a paintbrush in her hands, and finally tried putting paint on the animal's fingers but she would not touch the tableau. After several days of coaxing, frustration got the better of him, and he stomped out his cigarette and gave up in a huff.

But in his elevated state he forgot his paint and canvases behind the thick metal bars. When he returned to get them the next day, the paints had been ejected from the pole-bar enclosure and all of the canvas had been torn up except for one. The portrait of the gorilla remained, but with a smouldering butt she had drawn vertical grey lines over the image.

Link to article still works ¯(ツ)_/¯

Exhibit A of the meritocracy of capitalism.

There are still hundreds of miles of dark fiber in city centers. Server racks in cities are not full, and are instead being emptied despite the fact that it costs more to host data in places like rural Michigan. Servers hosted in urban settings have lower latency due to their proximity to primary network nodes, and have higher performance and uptime due to the concentration of talent and experience in urban settings.

Giant data centers planned in smaller communities are motivated by one thing - a swapped power relationship between the community and the corporation. The ability to 'externalize' many of the higher costs of hosting data remotely to the people living in these smaller communities is the profit motive behind their construction.

Behind those numbers is a rapidly changing energy landscape that could lead to a much less carbon-intensive future.

The word could is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. On paper, China has already built enough PV to power half the country, but uses less than half of their built power. China is building new coal plants, which should be widely reported, but that's half the story. The other half is acres and acres of dark PV.

Always look at these propagandistic graphs and check if they're a report of energy used or things like 'installed' and 'capacity' -- because they're certainly not using it. China chooses to continue to fuel its industrialization with coal.

The coal for 'local control' angle sounds new and curious. What does it say about their TWs of potential 'solar capacity' when they still have blackouts when local private coal plant operators skimp on their coal deliveries? Are they building solar projects in regions where it isn't needed and leaving regions where it is needed under-supplied due to government incompetence? Are they installing potemkin solar farms that are built with panels that didn't meet standards for export and will never be reliable? Are they trying to get as much coal out of the ground as they can before other countries force them to stop? I'd be impressed if a journalist could find the answer to these questions.

Electric vehicle and train increases would be much more inspiring if the former wasn't the case. It's much better for the respiratory health of people in city centers, but for the purposes of carbonization, they're effectively machines that run on coal.

Just discovering this, top shelf.