Mastodawn

"Think global, act local" has a structural flaw: judged on its own terms, almost any decision looks right — which is how a £100m bat tunnel got built, by people doing exactly what they were asked, with nobody lying or cutting corners. The same gap is opening up in New York's solar boom.

"Solar spreadsheets" follows both and suggests a fix for the flaw.

https://mmalc-x-machina.ghost.io/solar-spreadsheets/

#ClimatePolicy
#Environment
#ThinkGloballyActLocally
#Environmentalism
#SolarPanels
#SolarEnergy
#HS2
#NewYorkState

Solar spreadsheets

Environmentalism needs a full accounting "Think global, act local" has been environmentalism's working instruction for half a century. But it has had a structural flaw built into it from the start: a decision made locally is by definition judged locally — against whether this project, on its own, is worth

mmalc X Machina

mmalc Jun 14

Mitch McConnell hospitalisation lunch, for those who observe

https://apple.news/A8H9PFJetQkiyLvsAQMPVaA

Easy solution: lean into it.
#GrahamPlanter should employ #HunterBiden as his campaign manager.

mmalc Jun 14

"A conceptual introduction to git" — git terminology and workflow, explained conceptually rather than command-by-command. For anyone who works alongside developers and wants to understand why things like merge conflicts happen — or for developers who'd like a way to explain it.

https://mmalc-x-machina.ghost.io/a-conceptual-introduction-to-git/

#git
#GitHub
#GitLab
#SoftwareDevelopment
#ProjectManagement

A conceptual introduction to git

If you spend any time working alongside programmers, you'll probably encounter words like "push," "pull," "branch," and — accompanied by a visible wince — "merge conflict." These are the everyday terms of working with git. For anyone who isn't a developer — whether you're a product manager, designer, writer, or

mmalc X Machina

mmalc Jun 10

Vee Jun 10

DOGE royally fcked us and we're gonna eventually have to put every single thing back the way it was, to the tune of even MORE money.

Show thread

mmalc Jun 9

@EarthOrgUK

And (for full candour here, in part for catharsis) a counterpart to address the moral side of things, and to address common patterns in anti-green rhetoric

https://mmalc-x-machina.ghost.io/the-victimhood-defence/

#GreenPolicy
#EVs
#Victimhood

The Victimhood Defence

A polemic Every generation of environmental progress has had to overcome the same defensive posture: the person being asked to stop doing something harmful who reframes the request as an attack on themselves. The factory owner who called clean air regulation an assault on their livelihood. The smoker who framed

mmalc X Machina

Show thread

mmalc Jun 9

Households in the oldest, worst-insulated, most poorly ventilated homes are exactly the ones that can't absorb a £150 premium on a heat pump dryer — or afford a dryer at all — and so dry indoors on an airer instead. They then face the mould risk that better-housed people don't. Remediation, once mould takes hold, runs to thousands of pounds. The NHS spends an estimated £1.4 billion a year treating conditions linked to damp housing. The cheap option turns out, again, to be the expensive one.

Show thread

mmalc Jun 9

A typical load releases around two to three litres of water vapour into the room. In a well-ventilated, reasonably modern home, that disperses without much trouble. In a UK house with older windows, limited airflow, and no mechanical ventilation — which describes a large proportion of the housing stock — it raises humidity to the point where condensation forms on cold surfaces. *Which is how mould starts.*

This is where it loops back to Vimes's socioeconomic unfairness.

4.7/n

Show thread

mmalc Jun 9

The less obvious issue is that it isn't quite as free as it looks. The water in washing has to evaporate somewhere, and the energy to evaporate it has to come from somewhere — in a heated home, that's the boiler or heating system quietly compensating for the cooling effect. It's not enormous, but it's not nothing either. The more significant problem is what happens to the moisture itself.

4.6/n

Show thread

mmalc Jun 9

And to perhaps anticipate a suggestion for indoor drying…

Airers and indoor drying are what a lot of people fall back on, especially in winter — and for many households they look like they work perfectly well.

4.5/n