Raised Orthodox Reductionist, recently converted to New Systemism. Loops, not lines. Everything in layers. Both brains required, not just the one we keep using.
London
Joined August 2012
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I’ve posted this image before but find myself repeatedly returning to the tension it expresses. It is effectively a Rorschach test for people's intuition about climate change and biodiversity problems. 🧵
Duncan Austin retweeted
One of the hidden benefits of reading old books is that they rescue you from the arrogance of the present.
Duncan Austin retweeted
People say "I've lost my attention span" as if it's a spare set of keys and not the seat of existence
Duncan Austin retweeted
Wendell Berry: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures & people who wish to live as machines.”
The Creature in the Machine (Essay), by @NJHagens
natehagens.substack.com/p/th…
ALT The creature in the machine (essay)
Duncan Austin retweeted
ALT Quote by Prime Minister Mark Carney: The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”. The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.
Duncan Austin retweeted
Determining the meaning of your life by purpose is actually really dangerous.
Why?
Because most people think of purpose as something which you're working towards (some ultimate goal).
That's a very dangerous way of framing meaning:
- If you never reach it, your life was meaningless
- And if you do, the sense of meaning often vanishes once it’s achieved
There is something more important: Orientation
Purpose can be very egocentric (what I most want to have) whereas orientation is reality-centric:
What do I most need to be in order to be in touch with reality...to be deeply in touch with myself (with other people) and with the world?
Duncan Austin retweeted
Reform is now funded by 3 billionaires.
Christopher Harborne - a tax exile living tax free in Thailand under their special tax regime
Ben Delo - a tax exile living tax free in Hong Kong under their special tax regime
Sasan Ghandehari - a tax exile living tax free in Switzerland under their special tax regime
The party of the people.
Duncan Austin retweeted
🦔Amazon emitted 80.9 million metric tons of CO2 in 2025, more than the entire country of New Zealand. Emissions rose 16%, the largest annual increase since Amazon pledged net zero in 2019. Google's emissions rose 18%, also its largest annual increase, with electricity demand up 37% and water consumption up 34% to 10.9 billion gallons. Microsoft's emissions rose 23.4% from its 2020 baseline while energy use jumped 168%. All four major AI companies blamed AI infrastructure for the increases.
My Take
Every one of these companies made net zero pledges before the AI buildout. Amazon pledged 2040. Google and Microsoft pledged 2030. Every one of them went backward. Amazon is up 58% since its pledge year. Google now calls its own target "getting harder." Microsoft calls the path "significantly more complex." Those are corporate euphemisms for "we're not going to make it."
The combined AI capex this year is close to $700 billion, and all of it requires electricity, water, concrete, and steel. Communities blocked $130 billion in data center projects because they saw the resource drain coming. DRAM prices jumped 700% partly because the chip factories serve AI first. The BIS compared the AI boom to three financial crashes. And the environmental cost is on top of all of it. These companies told the public they'd be carbon neutral by 2030 or 2040, then spent $700 billion on the most energy-intensive technology since the industrial revolution and blamed it for missing every target. Nobody forced them to build this fast. They chose the timeline and now they own the emissions.
Hedgie🤗
Duncan Austin retweeted
AI data centres are hungry for land, water & power.
I’m calling on every major AI company to publicly disclose the full environmental impact of its systems – as a matter of transparency
No more hidden costs.
No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it.
It is time to come clean.
Duncan Austin retweeted
I was born into a sternly Presbyterian culture. Politically, I’m more Orange than Donald Trump’s skin tone. But today I am on my knees giving thanks to the Pope.
He has produced the most powerful political document of the year, taking on the greatest challenge of our times. His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, deals with the changes which will be wrought to all our lives by artificial intelligence in the months and years ahead.
AI will transform our economies and societies massively and irrevocably; it will change what it means to be human; it may even mark the end of humanity itself. If it takes the Pope to alert us to this revolution then perhaps the Reformation wasn’t such a good idea after all.
✍️ Michael Gove
Article | spectator.com/article/the-po…
Oozes ‘systemic understanding’. Not surprisingly.
When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.
Duncan Austin retweeted
I’m not a Catholic, but wouldn’t it be great if we could get #Ilovethepope trending as he’s plainly a good, decent, principled human being, and, on Musk’s platform, this will annoy a lot of powerful, evil people. Do please repost.
Duncan Austin retweeted
The Vice President is abroad campaigning for a dictator.
The President is threatening to wipe out an entire civilization.
Congress is on recess.
This is a total collapse of American moral leadership — at a historic scale.
Duncan Austin retweeted
There is no way the UK should be allowing the USA to use British bases to,carry out these attacks. They would be War Crimes.
Please RT if you agree.🇬🇧
Duncan Austin retweeted
Americans, you voted for this president. Follow this link to his latest TruthSocial, and try to convince me that Trump still has all his marbles. In psychiatry, this is called “loss of decorum.” Loss of decorum refers to a breakdown in socially appropriate behavior, often manifesting as inappropriate jokes, foul language, or impulsive actions without embarrassment. It is a core feature of disinhibition syndromes seen in neurodegenerative conditions such as behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), where patients exhibit loss of social tact and impaired self‑criticism. Clinically, this symptom reflects damage to brain circuits that normally regulate moral reasoning and social conduct, leading to behaviors that violate conventional norms. He should be removed from office as soon as possible.
truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT…
