I have a powerful air purifier inside my home, but for leaving it, I would really like to protect my lungs from particulates (my area is being hit hard by wildfires right now). Is my best option just buying and wearing KN95s like usual or is there something better I could get and buy a box of filters for?

Gently reminding everyone that a well-fitting N95 mask can filter out a lot of particulates. Particularly helpful for people with asthma going outside, but tbh, on days like this I just wear them everywhere. I’m already wearing them in indoor spaces to protect me from covid, why not keep it on outside to protect me from smoke

Seconded! A book club sounds really cool :D

Yeah, exactly. I have my news feeds curated to give me the information I need. But when I’m here I want to be talking about what we can do, getting inspired, making connections, not just getting more sad and more cynical

The thing is, it’s a lot easier to copy and paste a news article than it is to make a new post from scratch - I think people are posting other stuff, or at least I am, but it gets drowned out pretty fast. I wonder if we could have a separate community for news articles? Or a sticky post for sharing news articles? I think the news is super important but I also think part of creating a space for change means that we need to foster discussion rather than doomscrolling

UPDATE: I gave it a shot with the smaller fan pulled back from the window about one and a half feet (I didn’t have anything to rest it on to move it further back) and there was very little air movement. I tried with the box fan pulled back as well and it was the same. So for last night I just put the box fan back in the window because I was roasting XD

Haven’t seen the video yet, but I’ve been placing our box fan facing outward in the room adjoining our bedroom and opening a window beside the bed. It feels like it’s blowing hot air out and sucking cold air in but I could be wrong.

EDIT: incredible!! I’d have never thought to move the fan away from the window but it makes so much sense. I wonder if it could be related to Bernoulli’s Principle as well? I’ll be giving this a shot tonight when the temperature drops again. I’m thinking I can set up our smaller fan back from the window and use the box fan to move air from one air of the house to the next.

I didn’t think about that… thank you!! I can definitely get my hands on an old cellphone.

Absolutely, yeah. There’s AI now that can detect cancer better than humans, I’m all for that. I try to remember to say “genAI” instead of just AI but I do often forget, thanks for the reminder!!

No, but it’s not the energy use I’m talking about (though I’ll do some research on video games now, there’s always more for me to learn!) - I’m referring to the water usage. The average ChatGPT session (with multiple queries) is the equivalent of destroying roughly a bottle of water. But if we are thinking about power, data centers also run diesel powered generators when there’s a high demand for queries which spew out pollution. And then its worth considering that each data center as a whole is pretty awful, and if there were less demand for them, i.e. people not using genAI, the CEOs would be motivated to make them less shitty… every query shows them that, yeah, this IS a great idea and they should build more data centers :/

I don’t mean to like make you feel bad for making a quick tl;dr using AI, it’s just that this is pretty important to me! We all have to pick and choose our battles, but of all the things we do in our day-to-day lives that impact the environment and the world around us, typing up our own summary instead of using AI seems like a really easy option to me.

Very true, but when it comes to something like ChatGPT (or Claude or whatever new AI assistant we have with a cutesy name), people need to understand that using these services is a bad thing, until things change

thank you for being honest about it but please remember that each and every AI query is absolutely devastating to the environment!! It’s pretty easy to just type up a quick summary (or let someone else do it) rather than do that damage

oooh very useful, thank you! I am hella broke (like rationing my SNAP money broke) but I’d quite like to get into this hobby

Unironically, reading this made me so inspired I got really emotional. An internet of the community for the community. This whole post is beautifully written <3

May this man rot in hell, and may people like him who are still around live in agony and loneliness.

I imagine actions such as snacking on the bourgeoisie would make the biggest difference, realistically speaking

EDIT: okay I read the article and this is actually pretty cool!! It’s very practical and offers concrete actions for all of us.

In previous work, we showed how inequality constrains many people’s capacity to participate in climate action, whether that’s sustainable investing, protesting, or simply having the resources to make different choices. The same people with the most freedom to act often have the biggest footprints.

That’s cool as hell!! Am I understanding correctly that this was made by a high school club? Maybe the kids are alright

The consumption of Elon Musk has been proven to be significantly more effective at reducing carbon than eating pork, beef or chicken

If OP hopes to retire or purchase a home (or farm land) someday, investing is pretty much a necessary part of that. I won’t say it’s true for every case but it’s probably true for OP. Spending all your money isn’t a great long-term financial strat (though the farmstead plan, if someone can somehow afford it without investing, seems pretty damn solid to me)

Very well written article. We need to hold CEOs responsible for hammering the delicate window of our spaceship