How sad to see my fellow old white men melting down over Greta Thunberg. They seem to be offended about the fact that she is chastising us for inaction, and worse, contributing to the ongoing problem. Learn to take criticism better, people!

Every day I seem to discover yet another old guy exposing the rot in their brain. The latest victim: Dan Simmons. That’s disappointing, since I read his book, The Terror, and enjoyed it, and heard that he’d written other good books that were on my list of future explorations. But now, no, I’ve scratched him off the list, I won’t bother — there are so many good authors and good books out there that I don’t need to patronize some weird ranty science denialist.

Not only is he petty and sneering at a young girl, he’s a climate change denialist. I looked at some of the other stuff he’s put online, and he’s also a bit of a gun nut and political reactionary, but it’s the scoffing at the science that kills his reputation for me. You know, if you’re going to spit on someone whose message on the climate is “listen to the scientists”, I’m not going to listen to you.

Greta Thunberg certainly has been an excellent crank detector.

These are the true stories we tell our children.

SMBC

Are you surprised, then, that it’s the kids who are rising up and fighting back? I’m not. I’m impressed that so many young people, especially young girls, are the heroes leading the way.

Along with Greta Thunberg, three young climate activists of color you should know are Autumn Peltier, Mari Copeny, Xiye Bastida. Don’t forget their names and include them in climate conversations. pic.twitter.com/EDbZ9hdMl2

— ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐃᐧᐢᑫᐧᐤ (@darbyj_) September 25, 2019

Far more depressing, and predictable, is that there are older men who are harassing and threatening the activists. My generation, my gender. My population seems to have been enriched in ignorant assholes.

In a sign that the threats, online and in person, are ramping up against the activists, Jamie mentioned how Zero Hour had a problem with a stalker that resulted in the group hiring armed security for a youth training summit in Miami in July.

The main threat, Mebane clarified, was made against a celebrity supporter, but there was concern about the danger extending to the young activists. “That was the first time a serious threat was made,” Mebane said.

In another case of escalating safety concerns, Haven, who has been striking on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol building in Denver, has had recent intimidating encounters. One man passed by her going up the stairs only to come back down, go up to her, and tell her that her striking was “stupid.” Another man wearing a MAGA hat kept taking pictures of her from across the street. Haven’s mom had been chaperoning on her strikes, but after the recent incidents, her dad will start accompanying her too.

I appreciate it when they self-advertise with the MAGA hats, but I’d be even more appreciative if they’d crawl away in shame at what they’ve become.

A couple of years ago, Elon Musk bought a company called Neuralink, which is trying to build a bigger, better brain-machine interface. The hype was incredible. Here’s a small sample (note: the author confuses a concept called a “neural lace” from Ian Banks’ science fiction novels with Musk’s Neuralink over and over again, which tells you how unreal every thing is):

As an immediate application, Neural Lace could potentially help patients suffering from brain injuries and certain illnesses. However, the utimate goal and mission of Neuralink are to successfully merge the human brain with machine, fusing human intelligence with Artificial Intelligence. As a result, this is expected to bring humanity up to a higher level of cognitive reasoning.

At some point, Neural Lace is going to enable humans to upload and download information directly from a computer. Just in a similar way how Neo from the Matrix does in order to learn new skills and acquire new information.

In order to insert Neural Lace, a tiny needle containing the rolled up mesh is placed inside the skull. The mesh is then injected and unveiled upon injection, encompassing the brain.

The Neural Lace integrates itself with the human brain. It creates a perfect symbiosis between human and machine. This technology could be the catalyst for the technological Singularity.

Nope. None of that is true. It serves Musk’s interest to have these absurd claims floated about. I wrote about this nonsense at the time. I pointed out the reality then: “Elon Musk has bought a company, and is cunningly trying to inflate its value by drowning the curious in glurge, techno-mysticism, and making shit up, which, because he has this mystique among young male engineers, will probably succeed in making him more money and fame.” That’s what it’s really about, not science, not cool biomedical engineering, not even impractical wish-fulfillment. It’s a game for Elon Musk to pump up his ego and pretend to be cutting-edge in yet another thing, while skimming off lots of money.

Also, he’s got this bizarre paranoia about artificial intelligence, which he doesn’t understand either, and he thinks this is a way to combat the existential risk of the robots taking over.

Anyway, I bring this up again not because Musk has done anything useful with his hype machine, but because a pretty good video came out explaining the details.

She also makes the very good point that this is not gadgetry to benefit the masses, but to make the rich richer and widen the divide between the haves and have-nots, if it worked. Which it doesn’t.

It’s overdone, overused, and ridiculous. We could greatly reduce our garbage output if there was less packaging, and if more of it were biodegradable. So this is a good step, that at least one gaming company is switching to cardboard packaging.

The new packaging replaces the now-standard plastic DVD case used for most game discs with a folded, reinforced cardboard sleeve made of 100% recycled fiber. The shrinkwrap surrounding that package has also been replaced with a low-density LDPE polyethylene that’s highly recyclable. Even the ink on the cardboard has been changed out for a vegetable-and-water-based version (so it’s technically vegan if you’re desperate for a snack).

I haven’t bought any games or DVDs, so this isn’t going to make any difference to my purchasing habits. What would, though, is food packaging. We’ve been having those Beyond Meat burgers^* maybe once a week, and they’re ridiculous — I think they throw away any ecological advantage by the absurd packaging. They’re individually nestled in plastic wells, sealed in plastic, and then enclosed in a cardboard wrapper. Why? Are they fragile or something? Or are they just trying to make them look like a prestige item? Whatever, stop it.

^*Also, on a completely different point, I’ve been noticing that there’s been significant variability in the texture, week by week. It makes me wonder how they’re made, and whether there might by some pressure on the process by their popularity.