Jussi Pasanen

Collapse: A Framework for Understanding and Navigating the Decline of Industrial Civilisation Global industrial civilisation is collapsing and there is nothing we can do to prevent it.

'This is not a call to despair, but an invitation to understand the forces driving the process of collapse, and to explore how we might navigate the descent with integrity, purpose, and care for the living world.'
adrianlambert.substack.com/p/collapse-a... via @inevernu.bsky.social

Scary stuff

Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ Have it your way?

Deeper into dystopia each passing day

'The OpenAI-powered Patty serves as the “voice” of the BK Assistant platform, which combines data across drive-thru conversations, kitchen equipment, inventory, and other areas of the Burger King business.'

www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

“the Department of *War* displayed a deep respect for safety” according to the guy who is being sued eleventy times because his product tells children to kill themselves

War is fundamentally unsafe and so is your piece of shit chatbot but COOL STORY BRO

How could the U.S. strikes in Iran affect the world's oil supply? Despite sanctions, Iran is one of the world's major oil producers, with much of its crude exported to China.

Here's our first story about the U.S. strikes on Iran and impacts on global oil markets for @npr.org 🎧📻🛢️

With @camilareads.bsky.social

(NB these days I'm helping w oil coverage, my old beat was oil, But I still cover climate. Roughly 70% of planet-heating gases come from burning fossil fuels)

Data Centers Are Driving a US Gas Boom Gas projects in the US pipeline explicitly linked to data centers increased by almost 25 times over the past two years, according to new research from Global Energy Monitor.

i was actually shocked to see the numbers on new research from Global Energy Monitor on new gas projects in the US: nearly 100 gigawatts of power—enough to power tens of millions of homes—are currently in development explicitly to power data centers. At the end of 2023 that number was 4 gigawatts

Kun työttömyys kasvaa, muttet ole itse vielä työtön

Thank goodness we still have independent media like Fox News, the Wall St. Journal, the NY Post, the Wash. Post, and X.

Suomalaiset nuoret aikuiset toivovat tulevaisuudelta talouden kestävää kasvua ja hyvinvoinnin oikeudenmukaista jakautumista Suomen talouden tulevaisuuden pohtiminen kiinnostaa nuoria aikuisia, osoittaa Turun yliopiston tutkijoiden tekemä selvitys.

Todella kiinnostava tuore @utu.fi raportti nuorten aikuisten käsityksistä ja toiveista! Nuoret painottavat näkemyksissään luonnon kantokyvyn suojelua ja oikeudenmukaista yhteiskuntaa, jossa heikkoja autetaan. Tällainen tutkimustieto on huomattavan arvokasta demokratialle ja sen kehittämiselle.

A close view of a shrimp perched inside a curling branch of coral (© Seong-Cheol Cho / UPY2026)

A close view of two young seals in shallow water (© Matty Smith / UPY2026)

A close view of the wide-open mouth of a leopard seal, seen underwater (© Sam Blount / UPY2026)

Five or six sperm whales swim very close together towards a shark, seen underwater. (© Ventura Romero / UPY2026)

Winners of the 2026 Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest - A collection of honored images from this year’s competition celebrating “photography beneath the surface of the ocean, lakes, rivers and even swimming pools.” Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/photography/...

Digital products and services are getting worse – but the trend can be reversed A new report from the Norwegian Consumer Council shows how enshittification affects both consumers and society at large. Luckily, it‘s possible to turn the tide.

What a great report by the Norwegian Consumer Council on how digital products and services are getting worse (enshittification)!

Lots of good explanations and examples, but also very actionable with policy recommendations.

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

Citrini taking AI fearmongering to the next level:

'The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis
A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future'
by Citrini and Alap Shah

www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

Had to think of this cool vintage graphic from 1906. I love how it displays population density in a beautifully simple way. Best practice #dataviz if you ask me. Source: buff.ly/3AA35vO

Winter hazard season: the price couriers pay for your warm meal - PAM In winter couriers face ice, crashes and cold, while platforms profit. Couriers demand hazard pay, real protections and recognition.

Every winter, Finland freezes. Dalim Fakhrul, board member of PAM Couriers Finland, writes that while most people stay indoors, couriers are pushed harder than ever. @pam.fi

"Couriers deserve fair compensation, real hazard pay, and recognition of the risks they endure."

www.pam.fi/en/stories/w...

Figure 2. Overshooting 1.5 °C risks crossing Earth system tipping points. Illustrative temperature overshoot pathways, exceeding and then returning to below 1.5 °C (solid black line) and other stabilisation pathways (dashed black lines), dependent on uncertainties in future emissions and Earth system feedbacks. The depicted temperature overshoot pathway at least temporarily crosses several Earth system tipping points: whether tipping occurs depends on the peak warming, time spent beyond the tipping point and the element’s response timescale. Icons denote tipping elements (global tipping elements are shown with a solid edge; regional tipping elements are shown with a dashed edge; local tipping elements are not shown; best-estimate tipping points based on data from Lenton et al (2023), and in case of no updates, from Armstrong Mckay et al (2022)). Uncertainties of tipping points are shown as shaded bars. Current policies & Actions lead to temperature increases of 2.6 °C (Climate Action Tracker 2025), which is far from the upper limit of 1.8 °C where a return to 1.5 °C by 2100 appears feasible (Reisinger et al 2025).

Not sure about the legibility of this diagram but it sure looks ominous

From 'The implications of overshooting 1.5 °C on Earth system tipping elements—a review' (2026)
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

via the @cser.bsky.social newsletter

Onfim’s drawing of himself on horseback as a warrior defeating an enemy.

Two of Onfim’s works. On the left is a copy of a passage from the Book of Psalms he did for schoolwork. On the right is an apparently autobiographical depiction of a monster labeled with “I am a wild beast.”

Some more spelling practice by Onfim with some human figures who have round heads and varying numbers of fingers on their big hands.

Onfim’s writing practice accompanied by 7 little people in his particular drawing style, who tend to have very big hands with many fingers.

Nice AI-image-generating tool, but it will never be as great an artist as Onfim, a child who lived in the Novgorod Republic in the mid-1200s and who scribbled these drawings and schoolwork writings on birch bark at the age of 6 or 7.

The E.U.’s Burgeoning Repair Movement Is Set to Get a Boost Europe’s new Right to Repair Directive will make it easier — and cheaper — for consumers to get their household goods fixed, rather than buy something new. Part of the E.U.’s Green Deal, the plan is expected to slash waste, promote recycling, and cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

Some manufacturers have made it deliberately hard to repair household goods, pushing consumers to buy new products rather than fix old ones.

A new E.U. directive will require companies to provide affordable repairs, helping to slash waste and emissions.

'And look, it does look like the AI generated thing splashed across tiktoks and reels and shorts and stuff, but the amount of work going into synthesizing and subtly distorting and reducing this - quite obscure! - story into AI clickbait - and thinking: Oh,this is what is happening to *everything*.'

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account Our national project of elite impunity

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account. “The answer to why powerful people in some other parts of the world face consequences, while in America they rarely do, is that elite impunity is now an American national project.” [theatlantic.com]

Pre-WWI cartoon on tariffs.

Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover

The richest man owns X.

The second and third richest men control Google.

The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.

And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.

See the problem here?

Well, extraction and exploitation, same diff
bsky.app/profile/jopa...

Bummer our whole economy is based on scambling.

Photo of a 'DO NOT SPIT' stencil at a train station, juxtaposed over a photo of a Bunnings staff member with a broad smile rotating a spit roast over a large barbecue

The associations, they are getting randomer

Maybe "vibe launching"

or perhaps "vibe nuking"

Well that’s not great news! Thank God for that company working with the Pentagon that genuinely cares about AI safety right?

Tekoäly | Suomalaisesta konepajasta tuli yllättävä AI-menestyjä, kun Yhdysvaltoihin iski sähköpula Iso osa Yhdysvaltoihin suunnitelluista datakeskuksista aikoo tuottaa sähköä omissa kaasuvoimaloissa. Ilmiö on tehnyt myös Wärtsilästä kuuman tekoäly-yhtiön, mutta kehityksessä on myös huolestuttavia p...

Pari huomiota:
- Dystooppista meininkiä rakentaa uutta fossiilivoimaa tekoälyä varten
- Kaasu ”siirtymävaiheen polttoaineena” on hevonkukkua kun ei ole mitään estettä rakentaa täysin päästötöntä energiataloutta (ydinvoima+tuuli+aurinko) per heti

www.hs.fi/visio/art-20...

Chronic ocean heating fuels ‘staggering’ loss of marine life, study finds Fish levels fall by 7.2% with as little as 0.1C of warming per decade, northern hemisphere research shows

“If we allow the pace of ocean warming to speed up by even a 10th of a degree per decade, we are expecting great losses to global fish populations that no management plan can easily fix.”

#Biodiversity

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A political cartoon by Megan Herbert, with the heading "Priority Housing". The image is divided into two panels, which look similar in that they are government offices of some kind with public servants behind glass windows answering enquiries. The office on the left is full of people from all walks of life lining up for assistance to find emergency and affordable housing . One anxious man, whose wife and small children are with him, is at the window saying, "We need housing. Something affordable and energy efficient to increase our security and improve our productivity." The answer from the person behind the glass is, "Well sir, there's a waiting list...". In the right panel, the office is crowded with a huge bank of data processors. A man in a suit is leaning on the counter smilingly saying to the person behind the glass, "These need housing. Something huge and energy and water intensive. To threaten job security in the name of increased productivity." To which the person behind the glass responds, "Yes sir, there's a fast-track..."

Priorities.
My cartoon in today's @theageaustralia.bsky.social