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rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Squirrel the Riveted
@rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
240 followers 290 following 920 posts
Michigander. Doomer Optimist.
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rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
November 9, 2025 at 7:28 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
“In a world of widely distributed abundance”
In particular, we expect the future to provide new and hopefully better ways to live a fulfilling life, and for more people to experience such a life than do today. It is true that work will be different, the economic transition may be very difficult in some ways, and it is even possible that the fundamental socioeconomic contract will have to change. But in a world of widely-distributed abundance, people’s lives can be much better than they are today.
November 8, 2025 at 7:07 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Like anything, context matters. Find common ground on the right stuff.
January 24, 2025 at 4:06 AM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Another famous poster:
THE TRUE PARADOX OF TOLERANCE BY PHILOSOPHER KARL POPPER* YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE POPPER PARADOX THANKS TO THIS? I NEVER SAID THAT! (PICTOLINE.COM) POPPER ARGUED THAT SOCIETY VIA ITS INSTITUTIONS, SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO PROHIBIT THOSE WHO ARE INTOLERANT FOR POPPER, ON WHAT GROUNDS MAY SOCIETY SUPPRESS THE INTOLERANT ? When they "are not prepared to meet on the level of rational argument" "they forbid their followers to listen to rational argument... & teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols" THE ARGUMENT OF THE INTOLERABLY INTOLERANT IS FORCE & VIOLENCE "LINLIMITED TOLERANCE MUST LEAD TO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TOLERANCE" WE MISCONSTRUE THIS PARADOX AT OUR PERIL... ...TO THE EXTENT THAT ONE GROUP COULD DECLARE ANOTHER GROUP 'INTOLERANT, JUST TO PROHIBIT THEIR IDEAS, SPEECH & OTHER FREEDOMS *Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R. Popper Muchas gracias a @lokijustice y asivaespana.com
January 23, 2025 at 1:35 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Sam Knowlton (@samdknowlton) on Twitter: "The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter." - Bill Mollison
January 22, 2025 at 10:52 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Said goodbye to the sweetest chinchilla yesterday.
January 20, 2025 at 7:16 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
“It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”
Social media post (Hacker News perhaps?) If all farmers suddenly disappeared tomorrow we'd go hungry for a little bit before we figured it out and were just fine. And that's because it's a job that literally anyone could do. We have the farmers we do because they're the ones who inherited a shit ton of land from their great grandfather, not because they have some highly specialized set of skills the rest of us couldn't possibly figure out with just a few google searches.
January 5, 2025 at 5:24 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Final note. The ethical debate here is philosophical, not scientific. It is impossible to determine the ethical course of action without speaking of what it means to live.
There's one study I came across when researching for this episode in the Journal of Medical Ethics, and it was asking whether universities should mandate third-dose COVID-19 boosters. And they estimate that to prevent one hospitalization over a six-month period, you'd have to vaccinate between, roughly, 31,000 to 42,000 young adults. In order to do that, you're getting a handful of adverse events and up to 5,000 adverse reactions that would "interfere with daily activities." And as a result of that, they cor lude that university booster mandates are unethical because they don't take into account the low risk this group faces with Omicron, which was the wave at the time, and they're just not proportionate, among other reasons.
January 2, 2025 at 5:54 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
This bit is interesting. I feel like medicine is far more often closer to Bedard’s definition of public health, e.g. doctors treating us as statistical numbers on a spreadsheet even when we are speaking face to face. Her definition of medicine is how it ought to be practiced but rarely is.
Bedard: There are sort of two levels in thinking about how you answer that. First of all, there's a really important distinction to be made between public health and medicine, right? Public health is the creation of policy and intervention meant to apply to groups of people or universally across population in the interest of the many. Medicine is the practice of helping people improve their own health that's practiced individually with the patient in front of you.
January 2, 2025 at 5:54 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
I don’t care so much about how these things are coded, I feel like that obscures the horseshoe theory aspect of this which is that historically, skepticism about drugs and public health institutions exists all along the political spectrum.
And what I think is really important to recognize is: Really until the pandemic, a lot of what Kennedy talks about-the idea that government and Big Pharma are in cahoots with one another, and that we're overprescribing medications to ourselves, especially to our kids; the idea that we're poisoning the environment with toxins; the idea that food companies are tempting kids with high-sugar, high-fructose, dyed products that then are contributing to a childhood-obesity epidemic—all of those things, I think, coded as liberal critiques of the medical establishment until very recently.
January 2, 2025 at 5:54 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
As a reward from London Transport, Mr Gunter was given £10 (the equivalent of about £350 today) and a day off. He was awarded the cash at a ceremony, and when asked what he would do with the bonus, he said "five for me and five for the missus"
December 30, 2024 at 6:37 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
They’re not ripping each other to shreds, they’re debating. Internal debates are healthy, you guys should try it more often.
Micah @rincewind.run • 11h what's happening on twitter right now shows just how important it was for left of center people to leave it earlier these assholes need a target, and deprived of their preferred options they are ripping each other to shreds.
December 29, 2024 at 4:30 AM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
They haven’t confirmed these cases were bird flu yet.
"The infected cats died after severe worsening of their illness, and subsequently tested positive for influenza A, a rare result in cats," the release stated. Health officials are considering these "suspected H5 bird flu cases" and confirmatory testing is underway.
December 15, 2024 at 5:46 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
There’s a preserve along the Huron River near me that has old grey beaver chewed trees from many years ago. It was always sad to see them.

Yesterday the wife and I took a walk and…
Beaver chewed stump Beaver chewed trees Beaver chewed trees Beaver chewed stump
December 10, 2024 at 1:47 AM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Gratitude, sure, but also hard to square the “undeniable” need for undocumented migrant workers with the working conditions they face. Not to mention the omnipresent threat of deportation, which employers can and do use to keep workers from speaking out.
DAILY KOS The need for migrants to supply our food chain is undeniable and even more so as convicted felon and President-elect Donald Trump promises mass deportations when he takes office. "Mass deportations could affect our entire dairy industry throughout the U.S.," Maine dairy farmer Jennifer Tilton Flood told Newsweek. "The idea of mass deportations is frightening and scary, just on a humane level, with regards to our community." This vague data set reflects at least 12,300 migrant workers who live in Virginia's "350 migrant labor camps." Notably, the Virginia Dapartment of Health cited that the regulations on conditions at these camps including AC, heat and clean water-have not been revisited "in over 20 years."| LA Cooperativa released a report in 2023 revealing that 75% of California's farm workers were undocumented immigrants. While the West Coast state has historically advocated for workers' rights, many of California's farm workers (i.e., migrants) do not receive protections such as minimum wage, overtime pay, and other benefits. When it comes to the U.S.'s top turkey states, Minnesota is also migrant-reliant-and officials have openly acknowledged the state workforce's dependency on migrants. This state in particular saw a flood of migrants-some of them minors-working in meatpacking facilities across the state, sometimes being subjected to subhuman living conditions.
November 28, 2024 at 4:08 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Ah yes, GDP per capita, totally sensible way to measure poverty in pre-industrial times
“Reconstructions of living conditions over the long-run suggest that when Malthus wrote these words in 1789, he was right about t'e past. As the visualization here shows, GDP per capita - the average income of people - had remained extremely low.“ “GDP per capita - the average income of people - had remained extremely low” is highlighted
November 27, 2024 at 3:31 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
???
shaka (@beejonson.me) on Bluesky: Every once in a while you would hear western liberal and so-called "progressive" and green types say shit like: "The earth would be better off without humans." Yeah, I don't agree with that stupid and white supremacist logic. “White supremacist logic” is quoted
November 24, 2024 at 5:23 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Oh come on. Which crucial US national security secrets?
First page of wikipedia article: "Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American former NSA intelligence contractor and whistleblower[4] who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. He became a naturalized Russian citizen in 2022." "leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs" is highlighted.
November 22, 2024 at 6:08 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
Oh
“It’s definitely worth remembering as a parent that iPads are mobile devices with Wi-Fi and in some cases cellular transmitters. The panic over mobile phones and children has receded somewhat in recent years, but we should remind you that *in 2011 the World Health Organisation classed mobile phones as Group 2B “possibly carcinogenic to humans”*. This includes iPads with 4G Cellular Connection. According to Cancer Research UK this means that there is some evidence for risk, but it’s not that convincing.“
November 21, 2024 at 2:29 AM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
www.adlibris.com/se/bok/pythi...
4. Strömqvist (Ok I had 4!). Swedish cartoonist and contemporary critic who in his latest book specifically touches on criticism of medicine and the need for control. Illich is quoted liberally. Funny and apt. Easy to read and hard to digest for everyone about over-medicalization.
November 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
www.adlibris.com/se/bok/limit...
3. Illich. Austrian/American philosopher and priest who mercilessly sees the increasingly overshadowing role of healthcare in society. Radical medicine critic, nothing for the novice. No one and nothing is spared here. Man must learn to live with pain and adversity.
November 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
www.adlibris.com/se/bok/det-v...
2. Rosa. German sociologist who theorizes the disposal of the outside world and modernity's pursuit of perfect control: "a completely known, planned and controlled world would be a dead world at the same time. The encounter with the unknown is life" Short, thoughtful, shocking.
November 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social


www.adlibris.com/se/bok/can-m...
For those interested in criticism of medicine, over-medicalization and the contemporary need for control, I have three book recommendations: 1. O’Mahoney. Irish doctor who goes through the pitfalls and broken promises of modern medicine. Words and no rhymes. Grumpy in a fun way.
November 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
But healthcare, even with 100% of GDP invested, cannot cure either death or the doubts of existence. On the contrary, the spirit of life is pushed aside when everything becomes care. It is the task of healthcare to set limits in this. To prioritize the sickest, the most fragile, those in greatest need of care. It will create anger. Frustration. It's not a selling point. You're a mean doctor who doesn't want to examine everything, always. I wish for a stronger social movement against the power of medicine, which is not about alternative mumbo jumbo, but respect for the urgency of life outside the gray scale of the MRI machine and the pulse watch analysis.
November 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM
rivetedsquirrel.bsky.social
People like this. It gets "relevant information about their health" through their watches and apps. The body barely seems to exist if it is not recorded. At the same time, all the great medical advances are many decades behind us. Mortality and morbidity have decreased mainly due to sanitation and good food. There is such an overconfidence in the power of medicine. It is supposed to cure all human conditions. The disappointment when mortality is still a fact is endless. The magic of our time. Other social and community-based support networks have been watered down. Existential questions have no place. Healthcare should take them too.
November 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM