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On fiery rivers

What we talk about when we talk about the great outdoors, environmental protection division. The ‘environment’ is certainly an abstraction, much like all notions of considering any idea removed from its reality before during or after the attempt to frame it on its own terms. Deliberate word choice; all paintings are abstractions, to use a convenient example.

So, we take a thing out of context to do something with it – appreciate it, contemplate it, take in your arms and hold it up the light… where were we? Oh, yes protect it. That’s one reason behind the necessity of such words, a word like ‘environment.’ it’s a general idea but at the same time much more than that.

While we might be capable of protecting individuals trees or even an adored 100-acre wood, it’s necessary to widen our grasp reach, because to really protect those trees it’s necessary to safeguard all of them. Unless the goal is protecting none of them:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback. Combined, these announcements represent the most momentous day in the history of the EPA. While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin.

And however one may want to rationalize it, this de-regulatory whirlwind is also much more than it seems. Great progress has been made on public health. It will be jarring as it is abandoned.

Image: Pierre Bonnard, Nude in Bathtub, c. 1940s.  Per the above, it’s probably Marthe, but also much more than just her.

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What does thought-terminating cliche mean?

We think we like being turned on, but it’s apparently much, much easier to turnoff. How familiar is this? An essay from the Guardian, resurfaced by like minds:

Thought-terminating cliches exist, of course, in every language. In China, some government officials are known to exploit the phrase “Mei banfa”, meaning “No solution”, or “There’s nothing to be done” to justify inaction. The saying “Shouganai”, a linguistic shrug of resignation similar to “It is what it is”, is similarly weaponised in Japan. The Polish idiom “Co wolno wojewodzie, to nie tobie, smrodzie” roughly means “People in positions of power can get away with anything” (hence, don’t bother putting up a fight). According to Walter Scheirer, author of A History of Fake Things on the Internet, thought-terminating cliches commonly carry a defeatist flavour. It’s hard work, involving psychological friction, to figure out the best way to think about complex subjects such as climate policy or geopolitics. Any licence to give up the struggle is going to be appealing.

Tobia Spampatti, a decision scientist at the University of Geneva, argues that such phrases become especially problematic when wielded by politicians with decision-making power. In 2023, Australian conservatives used the rhyming slogan “If you don’t know, vote no” to discourage citizens from supporting a constitutional amendment that would have afforded Indigenous people representation in parliament. Spampatti, who studies the relationship between information processing and beliefs about climate change, says disinformation tends to spike around major events, like elections and climate deals. That’s when thought-terminating cliches do their wiliest work. Examples used to squash environmental efforts range from “Climate change is a hoax” and “Scientists have a political agenda” to “Climate change is natural” (or the related “The climate has always changed”), “Humans will adapt” and “It’s too late to do anything now”.

Unfortunately, mere awareness of such tricks is not always enough to help us resist their influence. For this, we can blame the “illusory truth effect” – a cognitive bias defined by the unconscious yet pervasive tendency to trust a statement simply because we have heard it multiple times. Memory scientist Lisa Fazio has found that we are so primed to confuse a statement’s familiarity with veracity that the bias persists even when listeners are warned to look out for it, even when they are explicitly told the source was untrustworthy. “Some of these cliches catch on not necessarily because we believe them to be true but because they feel comfortable and are easy to understand,” she says.

Do continue reading (also operative as a general admonition). We are all decision scientists now.

Image: Boat Racer, from the Occupations for Women series for Old Judge and Dogs Head Cigarettes, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The take away to the give again

If As nations decide to abandon disaster planning in favor of necessary shodding for war and its maths, a kind inverse calculus comes readable. As previously stipulated, climate change will not stop and governments preparing for war will be even less inclined to worry about floods, droughts, rising seas and disappearing shellfish. It should also be noted that military planners have long-prioritized strategies to ameliorate the effects of climate change on their ability to fight wars – actually not that different from other, widely more useful abilities.

So as Europe spends more on defense, the work they have already accomplished on de-carbonizing their economies becomes even more important, perhaps prominent and easier to understand. Not intended as investment advice or a silver lining, just another way to look at a dreadful and unnecessary shift in priorities. What was already required becomes even more so, maybe even venturing into a dual-use sort of armament, in terms we can understand. Again not, ideal.

And on the subject of less-than-ideal dualities, is destroying a country’s economy ALSO a way to file down its worst tendencies toward planetary harm? You didn’t mean it that way, but the results could point the same way – plus you’re doing it anyway. Just trying to give you credit for being so great and all.

The great environment Preznit.

Now, what makes us reluctant about forced reckonings is people will suffer consequences for no fault of their own. And in this case that is a little of all of us, as clearly always has been. Which is why we are committed to certain values and believe they are worth fighting for rather than simply picking winners. If what is going on right now with all the greatness making works out perfectly, the result will be an authoritarian wasteland of Hobbesian misery – poor, starving, wretched.

There is no possible upside to playing nice.

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Incompatible premises

Screenshot

Your house or mine, depending on the whether.

Back to the irresistible force paradox ( ED. We never left – it won’t leave) where the unstoppable force meets an immovable object. In our case, the immovable obtuse object will not listen to available facts, widely available since the 1980s. Our elected representatives, and the companies that keep them, elect to do nothing about climate change. Even though they know better, just like they get vaccines, largely eat healthy foods, and take regular vacations to foreign capitals.

And the climate continues its response to unabated carbon emissions, pollution, sprawl, and their attendant maladies.

Most poignantly, we have, despite the efforts of the best and brightest, figured out what to do. Every little thing but more importantly the big expensive ones. The power of collective action – the real facts we hate – as well as the beauty of slowness and direct personal touch. We also know beyond doubts that ‘big expensive’ will be far more affordable – always with the deadly calculus – than the bigger expensiver denial that creeps closer as we try to maintain that denial rather than a healthy biosphere. The simple human effort required of managing the cognitive dissonance of massive personal vehicles and long commutes, the right to cheap food and expensive entertainment, is plenty enough power to humble us into open minds about a closed system. Yet we cling to the power to resist all we should embrace. Forever batteries, powered by spite.

Meanwhile, more energy hits the Earth every morning than every man, woman and child will use in 27 years, if you’re scoring at home.

Image: screenshot from Bloomberg, but they’re just the messenger.

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Evangelical A.I.

The SV pinheads just haven’t thought of that yet, but just wait. It’s going to be gross.

And while we all luxuriate in behavior modification and finding ways to excuse, forgive, or hide your glee, as the case may be, about all the destruction of systems and open bigotry being given full reign in this glorious moment, just a word: don’t be so quick to be quiet quitting your opposition to autocracy.

It’s great that we’ve gotten socialized to these terms – and to be clear, it’s not great and terms like that are garbage notions as much as anything. Not helpful or conducive to happiness.

Rather, it’s always in your interest to stand up for groups or people or a person under attack. Find a small thing to have courage about and build on it.

video: friends say.

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Stunning-Kruger-incidence

This is perhaps over-determined, but how were we to know? Is it just the mildest coincidence that just when critical thinking skills are at their most needed, a mysterious and mostly useless tool is helping us file-down any remaining sharp points and edges?

A new paper from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can “result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.”

“[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise,” the researchers wrote.

I’m convinced that key ironies need to be mandatory elements of all strategic planning documents going forward, numerated AND annotated. Making dumb dumber and lazy lazier is sufficiently opportune that making us softer and doughier, paired nicely with a ’54 magnum of News You Can Trust and a much more recent vintage of doing your own research, births the inevitability of powerlessness. Aside from the button that releases the treats, of course.

The charge is that the hard work of cowing a populace to submit to not notice authoritarianism is far easier than imagined, and especially when people allow themselves to be confused about the difference between important things and trivialities.  When you’re not sure how to watch out for what you don’t know you need to watch out for, please note the lack of passive construct before proceeding.

Image: Discreet nose. Fruity. Smoke. Suave and rounded on the palate, almost sweet.

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On Going Back

But before we move on too fast, let’s dwell on the White House OMB memo from the last year week, you know, the one that was rescinded the next day:

Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities. Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending “ wokeness” and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.

That’s from the opening paragraph. Does it sound like any of that is coming from secure, well-adjusted, confident people? They have no idea, nor care apparently, what any of those words mean. They believe the words frighten people, because they are frightened of the words. But fine. Even if they’d like to put them back in the bottle, they can’t. But there’s an important point there, beyond even their great fearfulness about the present, much less the future.

That point is this: what is to be gained from going back? Even if it were possible, we’d still be racing to right here – welcome, you feinds! – But beyond trying to prove that Marx was unassailable correct go home again, what is the fascination with going backward? Trying to get back to higher levels of consumption and pollution? People may think they want more inequality, lower that or more quiescent those. But that ship has been crashed on the rocks by these ghouls, they either don’t know that or yet again misinterpret. The result of the 2024 election was only possible if the society was completely broken.

So, no going back – even if that’s not what KH initially meant by the refrain. Jamelle Bouie hits it hard today:

But as those opponents strategize their response, it is vital that they see the important truth that there is no going back to the old status quo. President Trump and Elon Musk really have altered the structure of things. They’ve taken steps that cannot be so easily reversed. If American constitutional democracy is a game, then they’ve flipped the board with the aim of using the same pieces to play a new one with their own boutique rules.

And so the president’s opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was. Whatever comes next, should the country weather this attempted hijacking, will need to be a fundamental rethinking of what this system is and what we want out of it.

Anything less will set us up for yet another Trump and yet another Musk.

Image: Author photo, sunrise about 100 miles off the Southeast US Coast.

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The self-awareness of Dinosaurs

Yes, it’s a ‘choose-your-outrage’ kind of extended moment. More on that in a sec.

Pace Heisenberg, stationary objects are helpful for perspective, especially when events appear to be moving quickly. Keep your head, it is said, when others about you are losing theirs. That was is supposed to be metaphorical.

The dinosaurs are a metaphor we are just figuring out – if that. Do stalled behemoths understand the revolutionary effects of technology? The way you-know-who couldn’t outrun a meteor much less a changing climate is a little too on the nose for a society that sets its watch to a market economy skittishly attuned to every last one of the wrong indicators. Doing ______ the most expensive way possible to prove that only we can do it builds a tautology that invites correction. And corrections will find you.

How much time to spend worrying, being afraid, looking for meaning or alternative translations of the meanings coming through loud and clear? Some, but not too much. Remember how easily, purposefully we are distracted by trivialities and it actually both explains quite a lot and provides ample space to begin again. Turn around from the corner. The whole room is there and you see the space is being utilized quite poorly. What is love? What is this moment? What is the meaning?

I was telling a friend about film, or I will:

“Pay attention to this moment. Everything is there. Perfect. And complete. Just as it is.”

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Know your business

Imagine a new, but irreversible global appetite for good bread.

What if McD––––’s corporate decided to shift from fast food to baguettes? Locations around the globe were to undergo a radical makeover – a shift toward fresh bread, maybe assorted pastries, in cities and the smallest of towns around the world, as both a cost-cutting initiative as well as a new commitment to the importance of demand for delicious, high-quality bread. Sparking immediate reaction from competitors and observers in the fast food business media, would McD____’s put experienced bakers in the C-suite? In charge of marketing and vertical integration? Or open their kitchens to the people who know how slap the dough?

“This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

Mr. Thompson has been spreading this message inside CNN during his first 15 months in the job. But now, he is taking the biggest steps yet to overhaul the company, steering it away from its reliance on traditional television and trying to cash in on digital audiences wherever they are, at the same time that President Trump has sent the news cycle into hyperdrive.

On Thursday, the company said that it would eliminate about 200 jobs focused on CNN’s traditional TV operations, and add about the same number for new digital roles like data scientists and product engineers. CNN is aiming to hire 100 of those people in the first half of the year, Mr. Thompson said.

CNN also previewed a new streaming service, similar to its TV product, that it will charge for. Mr. Thompson said that CNN would also release a new subscription product this year around “lifestyle” content — examples include food and fitness — though he didn’t specify what the product would be.

…

The push into vertical video illustrates some of the challenges that Mr. Thompson faces.

Speed is of the essence in digital publishing, where breaking news is only relevant for a few hours at a time. But getting those videos published has been slowed at times by CNN’s review process, known as the Triad, which used to include fact-checking and standards and legal vetting, according to two people familiar with the matter. Last year, Mr. Thompson moved fact-checking, formerly known as the Row, into a new unit called CNN Fact Check that works closer with editors and producers earlier in the story-generation process. CNN still maintains teams dedicated to legal and standards reviews.

Mr. Thompson and Ms. MacCallum have recruited several executives to overhaul CNN’s digital operations. Some were former co-workers of Mr. Thompson or Ms. MacCallum at The New York Times, including Ben French, who helped launch The Times’s cooking app, and Ben Monnie, who worked on subscription pricing and bundling.

Whether it’s baking baguettes or becoming using TikTok, there are people who know how to do these things. Also the news cycle doesn’t passively ‘get sent into hyperdrive’.

What business are they in again?

Image: Mmmmmm