Month: January 2024

Categories
Uncategorized

‘The Arkenstone and the Ring: wilful objects in Tolkien’s The Hobbit’

A series of seminars to commemorate the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, to be held in 2023/2024 in the University of Oxford. The talks present an introduction and further background to Tolkien’s life, work, and legacy. They have an academic approach, but they are also aimed at those who have read Tolkien’s work but are interested in gaining a bit more insight into his life, career, and writings.

Week 1 – 19 January (MERTON COLLEGE T.S. ELIOT LECTURE THEATRE)
Mark Atherton (University of Oxford)
The Arkenstone and the Ring: wilful objects in Tolkien’s The Hobbit’

Draft

Wilful objects in the Tolkien’s work, thinking about embedded AI in ten years, and mobile phone now. This world could become like Tolkien world after the #climatechaos claps in 50 years.

Dwarfs are the geeks, control #geekproblem

Elves are the #fashernistas, appearance, humanists

The humans are the Oxford union, power politics

The hobbits? – the wholly greens

Orcs? –

Categories
Uncategorized

A cobra effect in a greening world: can Earth scientists find the antivenin?

The planned energy transition signed by world’s nations in the Paris agreement sets the target to phase out fossil fuels by mid-century. This “green reset” requires a build-up of fossil fuel-free energy capacities (in production, end-use, and storage) which will entail on an unprecedented demand in mineral resources. While the Earth crust hosts such resource in sufficient quantities, I will highlight the key bottlenecks in bringing these metals to the market and show that the target cannot be met in the allocated timeframe. Finally, I will explore the way earth scientists can cushion the commodity race until nations decide on and implement a better plan.

Very good event highlighting the hard facts and the needed actions to keep our current way of life and consumption. The issue of mining in the green transition – like most of the current #deathcult we are fucked on this one.

What was only lightly touched on at the event was that the change we need is social, let’s look at a group that have made this change over the last ten years. Boaters, they have shifted 90% from fossil fuels to solar to generative living power on boats. They have also shifted their behaver to using power during the middle of the day rather than in the evening. We should study this to find a way of rolling this “social/technological” change to other groups as examples to push this to wider society.

At the event in the room, the divide between social and science based thinking is strong in Oxford, tin the room the people look and behave very differently, his block’s meany basic conversations that are needed in the current mess.

Categories
Uncategorized

The mess we make without blind behavior

We have to focus for activism. How to change them and how to make us better at changing them, both are valid and needed for any real change to happen.

Most visible activism is the tension between fluffy and spiky, this debate is what pushes affective progressive change and challenge, dogmas of either side of this is the blocking of the possibility of the need change.

Our default behaver is to block this debate, in this we are actively blocking the desired and needed change and challenge.

This is an ongoing mess that we need to compost. To do composting you need tools, as much of our lives are online in part we need web tools https://unite.openworlds.info/explore/repos are examples of such “shovels” to use for this needed composting.

Categories
Uncategorized

Panel discussion: ‘Post-COP28 debrief: Does the agreement go far enough?’

COP28 closed with an agreement, that for the first time in three decades, includes oil and gas. But what does the agreement mean in real terms? And is keeping the global temperature limit of 1.5°C within reach. Join us as our panel of academics share their thoughts after attending COP28 and look forward to what it means for COP29 and the world over the coming years.

Panel:

Professor Myles Allen, Director, Oxford Net Zero
Dr Abrar Chaudhury, Senior Associate, Oxford Net Zero
Professor Benito Müller, Managing Director, Oxford Climate Policy (Chair)
Professor Nicola Ranger, Senior Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on Net Zero Regulation and Policy
Professor Mette Morsing, Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment

This talk is in conjunction with Oxford Net Zero and Oxford Climate Research Network.

God these people are #deathcult worshipping at the Martin school Oxford event, the room is full of the green great and good, I wonder how meany are not worshipping?

“Sack all the panel and then evict the building occupations” comes to mind as a path/spark out of this mess, likely more chance of working than these people staying as the gatekeepers to the change that is needed.

This thinking is reinforced during the businessmen presentation. Nothing on the subject, he is vile. Academic finance is next, all the speakers start nice and move onto there pointless subject then end vile, this is the nature of #mainstreaming people in the room.

In the era of #climatechaos they are insane, most Tories, some blinded liberals, it’s the Oxford mess, ideas please?

Categories
Uncategorized

If you do not change your behaviour: preventive repression in Lithuania under Soviet rule

Who is targeted by preventive repression and why? In the Soviet Union, the KGB applied a form of low-intensity preventive policing called prophylactic. Citizens found to be engaging in politically and socially disruptive misdemeanors were invited to discuss their behaviour and to receive a warning. Using novel data from Soviet-occupied Lithuania in the late 1950s and the 1970s, this talk explores the profile and behaviours of the citizens who became subjects of interest to the KGB.

——————————–

Archives -we dont know what we have.

We need to add metadata.

KGB in Lithuania political prophylactics

Is the exact same process as the oxford police in the political graffiti scene in the turn of this century.

All the KGB strategies were also done as common sense policing here in Oxford.

One is written down and ideological and the other is “our” common sense. We are blind to this, would help if people noticed.