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deal or no deal?
I didn’t want to read about it, you don’t want to read about it, but it’s the biggest news of the week. So let’s bathe in existential dread together.
Doomscrolling is all 2000-and-late, but occasionally we have to bear witness. Climate change is among the sorest of subjects for younger folk, because we feel basically helpless to have any bearing on the situation.
We spent our adolescent energy doing disruptive shit for a solid half-decade, and entered adulthood realising it was largely pointless. The global emission reduction plan of 1.5C is all but dusted, global leaders are publicly denying climate change even exists, and half of Europe is on fire.
And while you’re scrubbing the remnants off of your Greek yoghurt containers so they can be recycled, a bastion of the G20 and G7, Mother Britannia, is vying to approve two enormous North Sea oil and gas fields.
‘Rosebank’ and ‘Jackdaw’ are billed as huge boons for the UK, with their economic value estimated at around £28.7bn. Sounds decent, given inflation has made olive oil about a tenner, until you hear that the caveat is environmental damage that could total anywhere between £119bn and £336bn, according to peer-reviewed research compiled by The Guardian.
I wasn’t exceptional at maths in school, but I reckon that’s a pretty sizable discrepancy.
Obviously this isn’t a literal tab Shell and Equinor will be asked to settle, and they never would. The figures are based on the social cost of carbon, and pricing future damage caused by the projected emissions in the way of heatwaves, floods, health impacts, crop loss, battered infrastructure, and all the other things climate change invoices us for indirectly – like train f*cking delays.
The cost of the damage attached to the North Sea drilling is disputed, and moral pricing has a tendency to be overly dramatic, but even the most conservative and tempered figures still engulf any project profit to be made.
The difference, of course, is that the benefit of an economy boost is far more immediately tangible than shifting weather patterns. Who cares if a few non Western nations go underwater in 50 years, or if our kids have to deal with the fallout?
The Treasury needs its slice of the pie, and the energy sector can roll out ads for jobs in the energy sector featuring smiling extras in hi-vis jackets. Meanwhile, the nastier side of the transaction is conveniently abstract and any assertions made about expensive blunders will be waved off as hysterical catastrophising.
We’re obviously still reliant on fossil fuels and we can’t just bin them off overnight. But it’s funny how the grandiose pledges of net zero up and vanished like a fart in the wind when actual deadlines started approaching.
touch grass
Young people are foraging their way out of the cost-of-living crisis – dazed
Talking of the cost of living crisis, should we all just bin off Tesco and Lidl and go foraging for berries in the forest? Apparently there’s an uptick in Gen Zers doing exactly that already. Online searches for ‘foraging’ are up by a third since last year, with the metrics saying young people are carrying the popularity in rural areas and cities, and specialist creators are turning wild garlic, nettles, berries, and things called ‘pineapple weed’ into food that actually looks pretty banging. Dazed also says that urban foraging walks are ‘booming’ across London, Leeds, Sheffield, and elsewhere. It certainly fits the criteria of being novel, amusing, and arguably performative, and it isn’t harming anyone – provided the Aussies don’t start picking random mushrooms for their bolognese. Read more
@theforagerscottage What would you make out of these cool little seeds? 🌳🍫 #foraging #wildfood #slowliving #forager
Kambo, the Frog Venom Making Suburbanites Puke Their Guts Out – vice
Whatever happened to a bit of controlled ayahuasca with shrubs and vines, or taking a f*cking Berocca? Why must the stakes always be insane? Well, anyway, the newest psychedelic craze is frog venom, and the results look certifiably mental. Known as Kambo, derived from giant monkey frogs in the Amazon, the secretion is being used as an ointment while other close variants are being ingested. Wellness is obviously having a huge moment with Gen Z, but there’s now an enduring belief in certain circles that conventional medicine can’t be trusted to help us. How anyone can get fomo at watching people flail around with eyes bulging like they’ve just seen Slender Man is beyond me, but Vice say young suburban Brits are lovin’ it. Read more
reality check
The Cat in the Hat is terrorising TikTok — but how did this horror trend get so out of hand? – euronews
Remember the killer clown bollocks that sparked mild online panic in 2016? This is arguably dumber. Police have been forced to confirm that the Cat in the Hat isn’t real. Yes, read that back. Creepy AI TikToks supposedly showing the Dr Seuss character prowling neighbourhoods in Britain and Ireland have been doing numbers, with clips showing him staring through windows and popping up on Ring doorbells. Some younger viewers apparently became frightened enough that police issued actual statements explaining the footage was fake. Wexford Gardaí went as far as clarifying that the Cat ‘was not in your driveway while you were out’ and wasn’t looking to break in to drink your bottle of semi skimmed or eat your tuna. Creepypasta would have loved this one, and a share will almost certainly send your technophobe aunts and uncles into meltdown on Facebook. Read more
@jordankillan2 When all you have herd about is cat in the hat from your children. We decided as parents to take the opportunity to scare the 💩 out of them 🤣🤣🤣 #catinhat #scary #fyp #viral #vi
They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started – wired
Kids have always found ways to degrade their teachers privately, but the modern crop arguably have it worse than ever with AI being what it is. Wired has spoken to four educators who say students made sexualised deepfakes of them and circulated the generations online. California substitute teacher Luis DeSantiago found an entire account impersonating him with crude images and stopped taking work until the issue was resolved – like he isn’t still being ridiculed in private to this day. In most cases, teachers say getting any semblance of accountability is incredibly difficult given the trail is often non-existent and students deny making the images. It’s a grim situation and it feels like the stakes have become so much higher overnight. When did a simple cock on the whiteboard stop sufficing? Read more
