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dwither

@dwither.bsky.social

Resilience, adaptation and disaster management. Ōtepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa πŸ‡³πŸ‡Ώ

801 Followers  |  938 Following  |  1,394 Posts  |  Joined: 03.03.2023  |  2.5015

Latest posts by dwither.bsky.social on Bluesky

I struggle with this framing tbh. Seems to me that the majority of the American people, where political power flows from, decided that none of this matters at the last election.

The institutions and media did their job in trump I when it might have been a fluke. But trump II shows that it was not.

02.11.2025 01:02 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Oh wow, I did not know this.

31.10.2025 22:57 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

They are really entrenched in terms of supply chains, and if the gov actually posed a threat, they could just lower profit margins to out compete.

But this approach sidesteps a lot of those issues by creating a new model. Ofc, gotta iron out those kinks before you think about scaling.

31.10.2025 22:18 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Nice that you got good feedback.

I do think that supportingthis kinda thing would be the ideal way to start some sort of alternative arrangement for food in NZ.

I think there are too many pitfalls with the gov trying to compete with supermarkets a la Kiwibank with banks.

31.10.2025 22:16 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Which, in this current environment is prob more possible than it has been in the past. Though you would obviously need a change in government.

How is it all going with coshop? I've been following you for quite a while because I was intrigued with the idea. Would 100% use it if I was in Auckland.

30.10.2025 19:32 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Ah, now thats a very different starting point! Having a workable pilot of an idea that can be expanded definitely changes the dynamics in play.

Assuming the pilot/project works as intended, that makes the key issue being social license + political will.

30.10.2025 19:30 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Especially if it's just groceries only, and not the rest of what supermarkets stock.

In Dunedin we have a store called Veggie Boys, which is mainly groceries and is def cheaper than the supermarket. One issue they have is the quality of produce is much lower, due to what I assume is less turnover.

30.10.2025 09:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

If we were to set up a Kiwibank style public option for groceries, we'd be talking about the government becoming a buyer from local food producers. I think the well managed and competitive part is definitely one of the harder parts.

You'd need to ensure demand, and for that much lower prices.

30.10.2025 09:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Oh really? I was definitely talking about the previous arrangement, not the current one.

I thought there was a whole network of local suppliers involved, and that there was some central organisation. But I may be mistaken on that.

30.10.2025 09:43 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I'm not exactly a food policy nerd, but I do think this is a conversation well worth having.

Watching the vid, I thought that a good starting point might be the school food programme the prev gov created. How did that entire system work, and is that idea something to build on?

30.10.2025 03:17 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

He's been banging on this drum, and taking a lot of grief for it, for a while now heh.

29.10.2025 21:39 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Leaflet tiny interconnected social documents

Makes sense.

What about leaflet? Blog on the atmosphere, and connects into bluesky.

leaflet.pub/home

28.10.2025 07:38 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I would be keen to hear your thoughts on how we might address these problems structurally.

28.10.2025 07:13 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

And that comes back to discourse, as you mentioned. A consensus approach seems out of reach for the foreseeable future. The right appears to have no interest in engaging in good faith.

So either the left waits until they do (might be a long time), or figures out a good plan and just goes ahead.

28.10.2025 07:12 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Preach.

Been thinking the same, the challenge here isn't wanting to build, it's taking the time and money to create the capacity to build.

And of course, the challenge there is keeping the public onside while you take the time to do it.

28.10.2025 07:11 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

On one hand, yes. But on the other, we gotta imagine stuff before we can bring it into existence.

If we want a brighter future, we gotta discuss how to get there.

28.10.2025 03:14 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Solar panel prices have fallen by around 20% every time global capacity doubled One of the most transformative changes in technology over the last few decades has been the massive drop in the cost of clean energy. Solar photovoltaic costs have fallen by 90% in the last decade, on...

ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

"Costs have fallen by around 20% every time the global cumulative capacity doubles. Over four decades, solar power has transformed from one of the most expensive electricity sources to the cheapest in many countries."

Now is good. Decades go was less feasible.

27.10.2025 20:33 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

i tend to see this similarly to people making claims about government being bad, or regulation being bad

ai (or gov, or regs) are not good or bad in and of themselves, but they can be done in a way that is better or worse

27.10.2025 20:30 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

That is definitely true from a rational perspective, but we don't always make judgments rationally. We also use intuition. And it's our intuition that's leading us astray in this context.

14.10.2025 11:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Notebook LM is a tool where you could add all the papers you're reviewing, ask questions about them, and the AI won't draw from anything else but the papers you've added.

Other models will pull stuff from the web and add it in, even if you ask it not to.

13.10.2025 23:49 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yeah, we look for signifiers that the other party knows what they're talking about, and LLMs can mimic the context you're used to operating in, which gives you a false sense of confidence.

Judging LLM output is quite different to human output.

13.10.2025 23:47 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I think calling them crypto libertarians takes a lot away from them, given how socially minded they are.

They didn't exactly set out to court this current user base, but welcomed them with open arms when they came.

Of course, then discovered that bad faith/context collapse isn't politically coded.

11.10.2025 23:10 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Who gets to decide and apply the cat 3 label?

Is this gonna be like local councils getting targeted by lawsuits over zoning land as at risk from sea level rise?

07.10.2025 20:11 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Yeap...

07.10.2025 00:10 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Therein lies the rub. There is much of great value that we cannot precisely define in a way that we can operationalise. Because it's fundamentally contextual.

Which brings up possibly the greatest use case for AI I've yet come across:

bsky.app/profile/hdev...

06.10.2025 23:44 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

And that comes down to acknowledging and understanding what the other person is trying to communicate.

If we look back at the major drama's in bluesky over the years, I'd say that good faith/bad faith is a much better marker of problematic behaviour than someone being rude/disrespectful/hostile.

06.10.2025 23:23 β€” πŸ‘ 17    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I would want to see 'bad faith' incorporated.

You can still have honest, useful and healthy good faith conversations where one person is rude, disrespectful, or even hostile.

But you can't have honest and healthy conversations with someone acting in bad faith. Very important distinction.

06.10.2025 23:21 β€” πŸ‘ 35    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Fervo Energy - Next-Generation Geothermal Projects Fervo Energy delivers 24/7 carbon-free energy through development of next-generation geothermal projects.

fervoenergy.com

06.10.2025 07:43 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

This would seem to be the type of thing that would be useful to implement on the platform.

Something that scans for bad faith, and then labels it. Or some variation thereof.

06.10.2025 07:36 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Hollow Knight is great, start there. Silksong is the sequel, and is way harder. Honestly, probably too hard for most people.

16.09.2025 00:15 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

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