Hisham Zerriffi

Carbon offsets fail to cut global heating due to ‘intractable’ systemic problems, study says Analysis of 25 years of evidence shows most schemes are poor quality and fail to lower emissions

This game of Regulatory Whack-A-Mole with carbon offsets really needs to stop.

There continues to be massive problems with the offsets (esp. in the voluntary market) while the whole system gets bloated - all in an attempt to prove 1 ton C = 1 ton C.

There has to be a better way.

Hopefully the hotel has a good room service menu.

Kids 1&2 have recently discovered Dr. Who so we’re making our way through the seasons. Consider me a happy #NerdDad

One of the things Obama said early on—he liked sports analogies—was it’s hard to win if half your team is on the bench. And he was talking about women and minorities in science, technology, engineering, and medicine. A large fraction of the country’s talent base is not being effectively used because of lack of access, lack of inclusion, and lack of equity. And to the extent that we fixed that, we improved the system. There’s now a substantial amount of scholarly research that shows that diversity is beneficial in science and technology. And the idea that diversity, inclusion, equity, per se, are bad ideas—which is obviously the stance that the Trump administration holds—are very destructive to the future of this country in these fields.

Great to see John Holdren, Obama's Science Advisor, make a very clear statement about how equity and diversity improve science and technology. When I do EDI training for hiring I am clear. We're looking for great researchers and teachers and we risk missing out on those people.

buff.ly/JkgKiy6

One of the more incredible stories out of LA this year has been how a taco review blog became the best on-the-ground coverage of ICE raids in the city.

They do a dispatch every day, follow-up on the kidnapped people (which almost no media outlet has done), and fact-check government claims.

A Welcome from Theo Downes-Le Guin One of the great pleasures of my work as literary executor is the sense that we are creating a community around my mother’s writing and ideas. If I’m honest with myself, however, I know that this community already exists. Any time two people read the same book, and that book resonates with them, the potentiality for a community exists, and the chance that destiny will throw those two readers together increases exponentially. This is why text is a great tool for subversion, resistance, and revolution. So at best, I am slightly hastening this coming-together.

Ursula’s dear friend, moral compass, and tech mentor Vonda McIntyre had the foresight to set up early accounts for Ursula on Twitter and Facebook, to discourage impostors. We didn’t do anything with the accounts until after 2018, because Ursula had no interest in the style of communication that socials demand. After she died, things changed. As part of my grieving, I wanted to talk and write more about her, to as many people as possible. (I also learned, over the time, that this is my job description as executor.) Instagram, because it is image-based, allowed me to share glimpses of her life without crossing the line of privacy and intimacy.

Over the years, and with the deft guidance of my colleague Molly Templeton, we have created a tone (and a respectable following) on social media that my mother would have tolerated, if not embraced. I am certain that if she had ever jumped on Twitter (now, for us, Bluesky), she would have treated it as she treated her blog—a one-way channel that idiosyncratically alternated between intimate musings and fiery analysis of the political and ethical failings of society. I miss those tweets that never were. But it is not my job to try to simulate them—I’m not her, we have what she wrote, and we are fortunate for that.

In any event, social media was never an Ursula thing. A newsletter, though—that’s an Ursula thing. I tell you this with authority, because among many grueling tasks immediately after she died, I was responsible for reviewing her inbox, to make sure no email went unanswered. In so doing, I found a window into the breadth and depth of her email reading—which included a lot of newsletters! She was no stranger to unsubscribe buttons, couldn’t abide a messy inbox, so I know what I found there was of value to her (and no, I can’t tell you; that does cross a line).

Something new from this corner of the internet: a newsletter! It will be irregular, not too frequent, and full of Ursula-related news. The first one, which went out last week, contains a note from Theo Downes-Le Guin, explaining a bit of the why and the wherefore. Here's part of that note.

Greta Thunberg On Her Detention: I'm "Not The Story" — It's Israel Violating International Humanitarian Law “I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me. But that is not the story.”

Greta Thunberg, deported to Greece, says the targeting of the Sumud Flotilla is "not the story" @teenvogue.com — instead, she says:

"Israel once again violated international humanitarian law by preventing aid from getting into Gaza while people are being starved.”

Such a fun book. I even inserted Viv, the coffee shop and the whole crew as fun NPCs and setting for my players during a side quest in my home game.

FYI, Travis Baldree is on here.

Currently at:
— only buy tech too old to have AI built in
— painstakingly disable AI every time they add it to something that used to work perfectly well
— if it can't be switched off, abandon the platform or tool
— if there are no good alternatives, avoid the AI parts
— patiently wait for the crash

The discussion, debate and even protests around old growth are very much alive here. If you decide to head this way, let me know.

3) I have a hard time believing researchers will limit it to pilots even if that is seen as best practice.

Bottom line. If you want to understand people (whether it is perceptions, behaviours, choices, etc) you have to talk to people.

2) likely under-representation of certain population groups may mean your pilot doesn’t capture any issues with surveying that group.

(3/?)

Running a pilot survey on a “silicon sample” of LLM generated participants has two issues:

1) often the pilot reveals issues around question wording that can only be figured out by talking to the participants.

(2/?)

Surprising absolutely nobody who has run a model (I hope), model structure and input data greatly affect outcomes even when you are doing social science research on LLM generated participants.

Shocking, I know. Could this at least be used for piloting a survey? I’m skeptical. Here’s why:

(Cont)

3) I don’t fish but lots of my friends do and I gather the fishing here is quite amazing.

4) You definitely wouldn’t be escaping the debates over forests and forestry. It’s a big thing here (we’re hosting an event on future of forests next week for example)

But a few things to note based on your responses to others:

1) Vancouver is expensive. Consider Victoria area or a smaller town like Squamish

2) yes, lots of climate action happening and pushback against being transit for Alberta oil but we do have a fossil fuel industry (e.g. LNG).

Like others, I would say BC. The lower mainland (I.e. where Vancouver is) has pretty mild winters compared to the rest of the country if that is important (lots more rain than snow in winter) but it doesn’t take long to be in the mountains and in the snow if you want.

This btw explains exactly what you need to know to understand how the CEO of this site can resort to “humour” and keep doubling down when called out on their behaviour. They are focused on the tech and think that absolves them of any social responsibility or even basic decency towards users.

So let me get this straight. Bluesky users are not customers because we don’t pay.

So Bluesky doesn’t have to listen to its users because….we’re users.

So you can ignore repeatedly your users who point out a transphobe’s violation of your terms.

But also ban others at will.

Is that it?

The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems The global context has shifted dramatically since publication of the first EAT–Lancet Commission in 2019, with increased geopolitical instability, soaring food prices, and the COVID-19 pandemic exacer...

EAT-Lancet 2.0 report is out today, updating the influential 2019 report.

On my first read it seems to bring further data/evidence to support the big solutions for food/climate/nature: 1) improve productivity & env performance of agriculture, 2) reduce food loss/waste, 3) healthy/sustainable diets.

All of this would help, of course.

But I just don't see it having a huge impact (if it could even happen these days) on the absolutely bonkers world we seem to be currently living in. I mean, someone really needs to fire the screenwriters because this is turning into some pretty badly done satire.

Oh most definitely:

Look, we all know that this timeline is off the rails in really big ways.

I regret to inform you it is also off the rails in small and weird ways as well. 👇

The costs of interconnecting data centers to electricity transmission grids get paid by ratepayers - i.e., by you - 95% of the time, raising household electricity costs by billions, a new study finds.

Big tech companies can afford to pay for their own interconnections. Regulators should make them.

”We are again confronting a massive attack on the very foundations of democratic education … In the 1950s, the targets were individual teachers—communists, progressives, liberals—and their left-wing unions. Now the target is the system itself.”

McCarthyism 2.0 does seem worse in this respect

Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere.

Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself.

Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj

NGL - first reaction was going to use some pretty choice words from this new “LLM”

Well played @merriam-webster.com

A grassy hill with lots of cards in the shape of orange t-shirts with messages written on them. The messages are people's commitments to reconciliation and/or why they attended the march or who they were commemorating.

A grassy amphitheater with many people sitting, almost all of them are wearing orange shirts.

The UBC engineering cairn painted orange with the message "Every Child Matters" in white and white handprints. Two people are standing to the left after adding handprints to the structure.

Today was Truth and Reconciliation Day to recognize the ongoing legacy and survivors of Indian Residential Schools.

Very grateful to all who came to our Inter-Generational march at UBC on the land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people and to our wonderful team of volunteers and organizers.

Mychal is going to be amazing host for Reading Rainbow!

But if you’re an adult who wants Levar Burton to read to you, that can happen too you know.

pca.st/podcast/afd4...

It's easy to see this speech as just weirdly performative, but there's a lot more—and a lot worse—going on here.

The meeting & speeches are part of a larger project aimed at promoting the military leadership’s partisan alignment with the administration.

How? 1/

A) not going to happen

B) I think you missed the point of my post. It wasn’t about restricting the flow of capital.