July 8 Safe Tech International News and Notes
FCC July 9, EWASTE, MINING, Bricking the Windows Operating System
Quoted in the article: The 3Rs of Unmachining: Guideposts for an Age of Technological Upheaval -"The Look of Silence", a scandalous proposal, and a practical beginning; from the substack School of the Unconformed.
EVENT
7/8 Children’s Health Defense Live Show The Radiation Dangers of Electric Cars July 8th at 10 am ET with host Kim Mack Rosenberg, Guests Paul Harding and Keith Cutter CHD-TV | Childrens Health Defense (May be subject to change)
NEWS AND NOTES
AI CNN: Opinion: AI is here. Get ready for a spike in your electric bill McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and S&P Global all forecast that US power demand will grow between 13% and 15% annually for the rest of the decade. Compared to recent decades, that kind of increase is meteoric — and far outstrips the capacity of US electricity generators. One of the main drivers behind this exploding demand for power? Artificial intelligence. [] But when you type a prompt into ChatGPT (or another large language model), your request is processed in a data center far, far away — and generating that response demands power. [] Training each model is also energy intensive: A massive volume of data, scrapped from webpages, Wikipedia, Reddit and transcribed YouTube videos are poured into these AI models. To process this data, hundreds of graphics processing units — electronic circuits capable of performing rapid mathematical calculations — run continually for thousands of hours. And all of that requires electricity — gigawatts upon gigawatts of electricity, on a scale that makes previous data center usage appear quaint. This is compounded by a national decarbonization effort founded on shifting many sources of energy consumption — vehicles, heating, manufacturing (supercharged by the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act) — to an electric grid powered by clean energy sources. So as AI’s demand on the grid surges, and as cars and industry shift to the grid, that means a significant portion of generators in the US grid remain “on” around the clock — and prices surge. The upshot: Energy costs using existing generation aren’t linear. A 15% increase in electricity demand doesn’t lead to a 15% price increase, as utilities rely increasingly on high-cost peaker plants to meet demand. Exponential cost increases means that a doubling of home energy prices is well within the realm of possibility. Beyond cost, if the grid is working at full capacity just to keep up, we can’t justify taking dirtier sources of energy generation offline — delaying progress toward climate goals. Within the decade, we’re looking at a grid infrastructure that can’t keep pace with rapidly rising demand, even with all sources running around the clock. This pushes us toward a scenario unimaginable for most Americans — an unreliable energy grid, marked by blackouts and rolling brownouts. Opinion: AI is here. Get ready for a spike in your electric bill | CNN
AI: Paris Marx Roundup: The data workers whose labor powers AI Over the past year and a half, tech billionaires haven’t been able to shut up about AI. They want us to know it will make life so much better (as long as it doesn’t kill us all), and that we can’t stand in the way of its purported inevitability. But one of the things you won’t hear them talk about is the people behind their products — not the executives and engineers, but the poorly paid data workers without whom none of this would be possible. Rather than providing my own commentary on the issue, I wanted to point you to a fascinating new project called the Data Workers’ Inquiry. https://disconnect.blog/roundup-the-data-workers-whose-labor-powers-ai 15 data workers in Venezuela, Kenya, Syria, and Germany conducting research with their colleagues in their respective workplaces and reporting on labor conditions and widespread practices in the AI industry. https://data-workers.org/
AI: AI chatbots turn conspiracy theorists into skeptics through dialogue Addressing conspiracy beliefs with tailor-made counterevidence delivered via AI chatbot works remarkably well. AI chatbots turn conspiracy theorists into skeptics through dialogue (zmescience.com)
ARTS Lionel Richie says these two elements were crucial in creating ‘We Are the World’ Michael Jackson co-wrote 1985 charity song to raise funds to fight famine in Africa When asked how Richie made it happen, he credited the unlikely event to "naivety." "We didn't have any distractions," he told CBS News. "There was no Internet, there was no cellphones, there was nothing but purity of a thought, an idea and how to get it done." Lionel Richie says these two elements were crucial in creating ‘We Are the World’ | Fox News
BIG TECH: Tristan Harris: Tech Is ‘Downgrading Humans.’ It’s Time to Fight Back (20190 The creator of the “time well spent” movement disappeared for a year, but now he’s come back with a new phrase and a plan to stop technology from from destroying free will, creating social anomie, and wrecking democracy. We were addicted to likes, retweets, and reshares, and our addiction was making us distracted and depressed. Democracy itself was faltering. Harris coined a series of phrases that became so popular they morphed into cliché. “The people behind the screen have a lot more power than the people in front of the screen,” he said, pithily explaining the power of engineers. He talked about the ability of technology to manipulate our basest instincts through “the race to the bottom of the brain stem.” The problem was “the attention economy.” As he struggled with the words, he had a few eureka moments. One was when he realized that the danger for humans isn’t when technology surpasses our strengths, like when machines powered by AI can make creative decisions and write symphonies better than Beethoven. The danger point is when computers can overpower our weaknesses—when algorithms can sense our emotional vulnerabilities and exploit them for profit. He fixated on E. O. Wilson’s concise observation that humans have “paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” “It feels like a downgrading of humans, a downgrading of humanity,” he remembers them saying, “a downgrading of our relationships, a downgrading of our attention, a downgrading of democracy, a downgrading of our sense of decency.” Tristan Harris: Tech Is ‘Downgrading Humans.’ It’s Time to Fight Back | WIRED
CANADA BARB PAYNE: UPDATE 2024-07-05 (& 07-03) Things you think you know Satellite news in telecom articles, A real-time map of some of the densest orbiting network infrastructure in this article (which provides a link to the map): HERE
CELL PHONES No cellphones at this Parisian cafe in Cambridge where patrons connect over wine, sweets (wcvb.com) “We'd rather go out of business then have people in here just, like, scrolling the whole time,” said co-owner Alexandra Whisnant, of ZuZu’s Petals.WEBSITE: a screen-free wine and dessert bar
in inman square cambridge ma
CHILDREN YOUTH SOCIAL MEDIA: Treating Childhood Anxiety with a Mega-Dose of Independence What therapists can do to help restore the play-based childhood Today’s post focuses on Act 2, the loss of play-based, free-range childhood, and its wide-ranging ramifications. Jon and Zach (and Lenore Skenazy, Peter Gray, and others) claim that the decline of a play-based childhood with ample independence caused children born in the late 1990s and later (Gen Z, and Gen Alpha) to become progressively more anxious. This dynamic prompted Camilo Ortiz, a professor of psychology at Long Island University and a clinical therapist, to wonder if the problem could be addressed by reversing the process: Could increasing childhood independence decrease childhood anxiety? HERE
CHILDREN YOUTH SOCIAL MEDIA: Aren’t You Lonely? Friendship has become another joyless thing to do on a screen Friendship has become another joyless thing to do on a screen there are other explanations for our loneliness: the decline of third spaces; the collapse of faith; the fallout from COVID-19 and lockdowns. But recently I was sitting at one of Jon’s talks in London and he asked members of Gen X and Baby Boomers to think back on their childhoods. He asked them to remember all the things they did, all the adventures they had, and then imagine removing 70% of the time hanging out with friends. At least 70%. Next remove hobbies, then risk, thrills, and adventures where you might have gotten hurt—imagine 80% of that gone. Now imagine growing up with what’s left. Here’s what happened: when phone-based social media platforms emerged in the early 2010s they did not just take time away from real-life friendships. They redefined friendship for an entire generation. They gutted it. They removed the requirements of effort, of loyalty, even of meeting up, and replaced them with following each other back, exchanging a #likeforlike, and posing for selfies together. Facebook made becoming friends as easy as clicking a button. Snapchat reduced staying in touch to sending a black screen with the word STREAK. They took teenage friendship—which used to be full of friction, thrills and adventure—and made it another joyless thing to do on a screen. Another thing to be performed and marketed and publicly measured. Aren’t You Lonely? - by Freya India - After Babel
CHILDREN: YouTube Is the Top Media Platform for Kids and Driving Their Purchases - Business Insider
DATA: How to Get Rich From Peeping Inside People’s Fridges Where other investors typically relied on market data and forecasts from big consumer-products companies to deduce what people in, say, India might start purchasing in the future, Stassopoulos spent days traveling around the country, asking them himself. He found the ethnographic process fascinating and threw himself into it, visiting informal settlements and working-class neighborhoods to chat with people for hours—but he still wasn’t getting the information he wanted. [] “I realized that the answer is the fridge!” he said. “The fridge could tell me how people would behave once they had some extra money—before they even know it themselves.” https://www.wired.com/story/get-rich-peeping-inside-fridges/ (nothing to celebrate)
EMF ACTIVIST OFFERING: Strengthen Yourself From the Inside Out Inner
Reduce exposures driven by unmet emotional needs and discomforts - idle or binge browsing, video gaming or social media when you really could be doing something better. Consider ways you use technologies to distract you from difficult feelings and situations, and address these more directly to reduce the need for escape/distraction. Pay attention to and pursue interests and goals you carry inside, that you may tend to neglect or ignore. https://www.theharmonicedge.com/emf-overload-protect-yourself.html ( I don’t know this group)
EMF CONSUMER PRODUCT; AegisGuard™ L (Life) Series standard models provide RF & EMF shielding protection up to 1.1 THz., exceeding all regulated and allocated radiofrequencies presented in the current FCC Online Table Of Frequency Allocations up to their maximum range. They protect users from electrical and wireless 1G - 5G EMF (electromagnetic fields) and RF (radiofrequencies), including 5G 96, 300 and 600 GHz., and future 6G 1 THz. technologies. Custom models up to 4.8 THz., including 6G 3.3 THz., are made to order. Initially developed for medical, military and aerospace shielding applications, this RF shielding range exceeds all regulated allocated and unallocated frequencies presented in the current FCC Online Table Of Frequency Allocations. They provide unsurpassed protection for personal, home, office, factory, healthcare, aerospace, military, security and government applications from unwanted electrical device, power line, transformer, and all fixed and mobile terrestrial, satellite and sea-based antenna and network airborne frequencies in use globally. All models are non-conductive, non-absorbent, contain no silver, copper, graphene, carbon, graphite, nickel (toxic), or other metal, and grounding unnecessary. They have been the #1 doctor recommended radiation shielding products protecting users worldwide since 2006, including electrohypersensitive (EHS, IEI-EMF, and ES) individuals suffering from adverse RF and EMF health effects. It is important to note the World Health Organization has recommended not to use shielding products claiming to absorb radiation since 1999, as do most telecommunication product manufacturers. AegisGuard RF & EMF Shielding Products Manufacturer (goaegis.com) (several individuals have sent this info, please do your own research)
EWASTE DEEP DIVE/RESOURCES: (COURTESY KATE) Witnessing the horrors these make-shift processing facilities are causing humans, wildlife and the Earth struck an even deeper cord now than it did years ago when I first learned about them. Below are a few links to coverage I found valuable. Particularly moving was the first video (about 50 minutes) where the journalist documented a week in which he lived and worked alongside the workers at Ghana's Agbogbloshie e-waste dump site. Agbogbloshie is the world's largest gadget graveyard facility (an apt term used in one of the videos) and home to 80,000 workers who slave away in absolutely horrendous conditions disassembling our mindlessly consumed and discarded mountains of (largely unnecessary) digital products.The documentary was deeply touching in parts as you got to "know" the workers personally and learn about their lives and struggles. You met the "burning boys" who essentially live in a world of filth and toxic smoke from spending long days burning heaps of copper wires to remove the plastic coating readying the copper for re-use. The viewer is taken on a visit to the makeshift "homes" the workers built where we witness the generosity and warmth with which they welcomed their new guest. After days of slaving away, the workers, mostly Moslem, attend prayer service. For Ramadan, we see them cut loose and despite their hardships, dance with joy.
Ghana: A Week in a Toxic Waste Dump 54 MINUTES
E-Waste Is Poisoning Malaysia And Thailand - What Can Be Done? | Insight 47 MIUTES
Until recently, China was the world's dumping ground for e-waste. But in 2020 (I believe that was the year) China stopped accepting the world's junk. So much of their e-waste processing shifted to Thailand and Malaysia. This video tells that story.
In Part 2 of the following video, about 12 minutes in, we are introduced to some young boys who must slave away after school to get enough money to pay for their food and schooling. The World's Junkyard for Electronic Scrap | Digital Dumping in Ghana | ENDEVR Documentary 24 MINUTES
The global E-waste Monitor 2024 – Electronic Waste Rising Five Times Faster than Documented E-waste Recycling: UN https://ewastemonitor.info/the-global-e-waste-monitor-2024/
The tragic costs of e-waste 12 MINUTES
5G INDUSTRY: Top 5 factors crippling RAN and 5G operations 1. Siloed tools 2. Multi-vendor operations that impeded end-to-end automation 3. Quantity of alarms and lack of visibility = slow resolution times 4. Complex security and privacy requirements 5. Lack of innovation hamstrings time to market Top 5 factors crippling RAN and 5G operations - SDxCentral
HEALTH The Power Couple: How to heal trauma with light therapy Auricular Chromotherapy | Vagal Tone | Chromopuncture If our eyes are the gateway to our soul, our ears are an oracle showing us the way. A colleague of mine, Sheena Symington of the Electrosensitive Society, recently peaked my interest in her use of light to treat chronic stress and trauma using light. Here’s what we’ll learn in this article: 1. What is auricular chromotherapy? 2. How can chromotherapy help children with trauma? 3. What do PTSD, EMF, and our vagus nerve have in common? 4. How does yellow light help calm our nervous system? 5. What is redox, and how does it help nerve conduction? 6. JOIN US for a webinar on chromotherapy! w/ upcoming paid event/fundraiser w/ Sheena Symington for the Electrosensitive Society HERE
HEALTH RESEARCH/ELECTRICAL SHOCK/OHM’S LAW: Conduction of Electrical Current to and Through the Human Body: A Review Raymond M. Fish, PhD, MD, FACEPa and Leslie A. Geddes, MS, PhD, DScb Published online 2009 Oct 12. PMCID: PMC2763825 PMID: 19907637 Objective: The objective of this article is to explain ways in which electric current is conducted to and through the human body and how this influences the nature of injuries. Methods: This multidisciplinary topic is explained by first reviewing electrical and pathophysiological principles. There are discussions of how electric current is conducted through the body via air, water, earth, and man-made conductive materials. There are also discussions of skin resistance (impedance), internal body resistance, current path through the body, the let-go phenomenon, skin breakdown, electrical stimulation of skeletal muscles and nerves, cardiac dysrhythmias and arrest, and electric shock drowning. After the review of basic principles, a number of clinically relevant examples of accident mechanisms and their medical effects are discussed. Topics related to high-voltage burns include ground faults, ground potential gradient, step and touch potentials, arcs, and lightning. Results: The practicing physician will have a better understanding of electrical mechanisms of injury and their expected clinical effects. Conclusions: There are a variety of types of electrical contact, each with important characteristics. Understanding how electric current reaches and travels through the body can help the clinician understand how and why specific accidents occur and what medical and surgical problems may be expected. [] The skin acts like an electrical device such as a capacitor in that it allows more current to flow if a voltage is changing rapidly. A rapidly changing voltage will be applied to the palm and fingers of one's hand if it is holding a metal tool that suddenly touches a voltage source. This type of contact will give a much greater current amplitude in the body than would otherwise occur.2 Conduction of Electrical Current to and Through the Human Body: A Review - PMC (nih.gov)
INSPIRATION: MATTIAS DESMET The de-souling of the world Initially, rationalism itself tries to provide the solution to the problems it causes. The proposed solution for problematic sexual identity is a mechanistic-surgical adjustment of the body; the solution for the threat of terrorism is the surveillance state; the solution for the detrimental impact of humans on nature is digitized "five-minute cities" where humans live in small housing units and never go more than a few kilometers from their homes, hyper-technological electric cars that can be switched on and off by the state at will, a forest of wind turbines, and plains of solar panels. And if that doesn't work – everyone knows, by the way, that it won't work – we will move on to exploding nitrate bombs in the atmosphere and installing manipulable mirrors between Earth and the Sun. The more the rationalist vision fails, the more desperately it claims the truth. With every new crisis, the representatives of the dominant narrative – the mainstream media, national governments, global institutions – respond with more censorship. Armies of fact-checkers and "digital first responders" scour the internet HERE
MINING: Thorough and excellent coverage of the current situation in the DRC regarding cobalt mining: https://theconversation.com/we-miners-die-a-lot-appalling-conditions-and-poverty-wages-the-lives-of-cobalt-miners-in-the-drc-220986 The DRC sits on 24 trillion dollars of resources that China, the US, along with a few other countries are clamoring for while leaving the people of the DRC slaving away to extract these elements under the harshest of conditions. Nothing has changed...as colonial as ever. The industry's focus is to maintain the supply chain as murky as possible to keep costs down and profits up. The only slight difference is that websites now host a new section on "sustainable practices" and "community building" to placate people's conscience for being complicit. Valued materials in the DRC include cobalt, copper, nickel, and coltan. For "the numbers"see chinaglobalsouth.com/cobalt. For a podcast discussion of the numbers: Mapping the Chinese Cobalt Supply Chain in the DR Congo (Courtesy Kate)
NATURE: Offshore wind farms threaten electro-sensitive sharks Wind farms and sharks Submarine electric cables These offshore wind farms rely on submarine electric cables (CES) that use either alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC), depending on their function, power output, and cable length. “Wind farms can induce noise, vibrations, interruptions to ecological continuity, and generate electromagnetic fields at the level of submarine electric cable,” said Julie Lucas, a research associate at France’s National Museum of Natural History. “They can affect the behavior of electro-sensitive species which use natural electromagnetic fields to move and feed, such as sharks.” “Currently, wind farms located less than 50km from the coast use AC current, whereas more powerful future wind farms are planned to be located more than 50 km away and will use DC current,” Lucas said. Both AC and DC currents produce strong magnetic fields in the water surrounding them. “These magnetic fields can affect the behavior of electro- and magneto-sensitive species such as elasmobranchs, which use natural electromagnetic fields to move and feed,” she explained. https://www.earth.com/news/offshore-wind-farms-threaten-electric-sensitive-sharks/
NATURE/ENERGY: “No” to a “Green Energy Transition”—“Yes” to an “Energy Reduction Transition” Sustaining life not lifestyles SPEAKING FOR THE TREES, NO MATTER WHERE THEY'RE FROM Substack With the case of solar, wind, and lithium mining, such habitat loss in the US is set to occur at an industrial scale in places that have so far managed to escape the worst ravages of civilization: the western deserts, which include the entirety of the Mojave and the Great Basin, and the northern portions of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan. Because agriculture was so challenging in these places, and marketable timber mostly absent, they were spared the wide-scale destruction suffered by the hemisphere’s prairies, wetlands, riparian valleys and forests from coast to coast. As such, though these areas have been negatively impacted by ranching, mining, and hydrological alteration for both, they contain some of the most intact ecosystems remaining in the Lower 48. Many species of animal, plant, etc., are found only in these deserts, including endangered ones. The Desert Tortoise is a particularly tragic case. [] The “green energy transition” is not about saving nature, it’s about saving industrial civilization. Some people might say, no, it’s about saving capitalism, but I disagree. HERE
NATURE: Smart Ocean, aka the Internet of Underwater Things - Safe Tech International has been updated
OUTAGE: Record Crowd at Arlington Heights 4th of July Parade Route May Have Caused Verizon 5G Outage Although CARDINAL NEWS has no confirmation from Verizon, and the wireless service provider had no staff available to handle a service request on the holiday, we suspect that at least part of the wireless service problem was that the Verizon wireless network was overloaded with a huge turnout of cellphone users at the Arlington Heights 4th of July Independence Day parade. The network possibly couldn’t handle all the people using their devices for streaming, sending photos and using voice and chat while standing and sitting along the parade route. Record Crowd at Arlington Heights 4th of July Parade Route May Have Caused Verizon 5G Outage – Cardinal News (arlingtoncardinal.com)
SPACE: China Planning to Smash Asteroid in Planetary Defense Test China is planning to launch a spacecraft with the aim of smashing a nearby asteroid, in an impact designed to test the feasibility of protecting against any Earth-threatening asteroids like the one that killed off the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Researchers outlined their plans in a recent paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration and spotted by The Planetary Society, saying that a test mission should happen before 2030 and that an asteroid with a diameter of about 30 meters will be the target. [] NASA has been conducting its own testing for a planetary defense system, culminating in the 2022 hit of the 560-foot-wide asteroid Dimorphos with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — billed at the time as "the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration." [] After DART struck the asteroid, NASA scientists concluded that the impact changed the satellite's orbit and its shape, showing that it's feasible to alter an asteroid's trajectory. To further protect Earth, NASA has been developing the NEO Surveyor (with NEO standing for Near-Earth Object), a space telescope slated to launch in June 2028 that's intended to detect any outer space objects that might threaten Earth. China Planning to Smash Asteroid in Planetary Defense Test (futurism.com)
ACTION ITEM FCC July 9
Your U.S. Representative may be on the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology (see member list below) that will be holding a congressional hearing on Tuesday, July 9th, questioning the FCC. a. Please email your contact in that office tomorrow (Friday) and Monday morning and follow up each time by phone. b. If you do not yet have a contact, please ask for the telecom staffer’s name and email. To find your electeds, call 202-225-3121 Capitol switchboard or https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials?iframe=1&iframe=1&iframe=1&iframe=1 Please copy this text in your email and bcc us at hello@thenationalcall.org: I am a constituent. Your Subcommittee will be holding a hearing with the FCC on Tuesday, July 9th. Would the Representative please consider the below information and ask the FCC about the following: Please ask the FCC why it has ignored since 2021 the DC Circuit Court of Appeals remand order to re-evaluate its wireless radiation exposure guidelines based on their docket submission of 11,000 pages of scientific evidence of biological harm to humans? Americans might protest less against forced deployment of wireless antennas outside their bedrooms, offices, children's classrooms and local parks - if they knew the government no longer Mwas ignoring safety or shielding Telecom from liability based on remanded limits. The current wireless safety guidelines are based on 11 monkeys and 12 rats exposed for less than one hour in the 1980s. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 does not allow for legal remedies of harm so long as Telecom is operating within the FCC’s guidelines, even if the harm is severe or fatal. The Act shields Telecom from liability when Telecom should be competing on safety.
Please ask the FCC the following questions: What is the status of FCC’s compliance with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals remand order of 2021 for the FCC to review the up-to-date scientific evidence in its docket on harm, including long-term exposure and exposure to children? We’ve had constituents write in and say that the current wireless safety standards are based on 11 monkeys and 12 rats exposed for less than one hour in the 1980s. Why wouldn’t the FCC want to review the up-to-date evidence so that it can reassure the public that the technology is it is rolling out (e.g., 5G) is safe for children and families?
///// For your quick reference, here are the committee members: https://energycommerce.house.gov/committees/subcommittee/communications-technology
Republicans: Latta (OH) Bilirakis (FL) Carter (GA) Dunn (FL) Curtis (UT) Joyce (PA) Weber (TX) Allen (GA) Balderson (OH) Fulcher (ID) Pfluger (TX) Harshbarger (TN) Cammack (FL) Obernolte (CA) Rodgers (WA) Democrats: Matsui (CA) – Ranking Member Clarke (NY) Veasey (TX) Soto (FL) Eshoo (CA) Cardenas (CA) Craig (MN) Fletcher (TX) Dingell (MI) Kuster (NH)\ Kelly (IL) Pallone (NJ)
Sincerely, Odette Wilkens Chair Lisa Smith Co-Chair The National Call for Safe Technology
CONTRIBUTE YOUR STORY ABOUT LIVING DIFFERENTLY IN THE DIGITAL AGE:
SCHOOL OF THE UNCOMFORMED Living Unconformed Lives in the Digital Age: Share Your Story The ubiquity of digital tech has changed us, not for the better. As a reader here you are likely either concerned about this, are looking for better ways to navigate daily life in the digital world, or are already living a life counter to the current zeitgeist. Most of us are familiar with the evidence of the myriad negative impacts of phone-based lives, especially on children. Most of us have heard about practical ways to reduce our device use. But we need inspiration to move us into action. Just as Antoine de Saint Exupéry said we must long for the immensity of the sea in order to build a ship, we must learn to long for the immensity of life if we want to turn back to reality. So here is our invitation to you:
Send us your real life stories of how you live life differently in a digital age. Length: 500 to 2000 words
We are interested in sharing stories from people of all ages and walks of life: [] The submitted stories will be collected and published in a new section on School of the Unconformed that readers can freely access to gain encouragement and inspiration.
If you are looking for ideas to get started, see Simple Acts of Sanity: A Seed Catalogue, Fasting from the Virtual, Feasting on the Real, or Sacred Synchronies: How to Restore Rhythms that Make us Human.
How: Send your stories in the body of an e-mail to: schooloftheunconformed@proton.me Please note: No attachments will be opened.
https://www.wired.com/story/get-rich-peeping-inside-fridges/
Quoted in the article: The 3Rs of Unmachining: Guideposts for an Age of Technological Upheaval -"The Look of Silence", a scandalous proposal, and a practical beginning from the substack School of the Unconformed.
In case you missed it:
July 2-3 Safe Tech International News and Notes Cell Tower Genetic Damage, ChatGPT re: COSMOS, Charlemont MA Moratorium, China and Minerals, Katie Singer, Jeremy Naydler
July 5 Safe Tech International News and Notes Natural vs. Synthetic EMF, Flip Phones, Why Everything is Becoming a Game, 3Rs of Unmachining, July 9 FCC, BioInitiative Report
Did you know? ‘Bricking’ Windows 10?
Microsoft will withdraw support for the Windows 10 operating system next year. Microsoft has announced the end of Windows 10, the world’s most popular operating system. And the decision will leave millions of users with a financial headache. Microsoft broke the news through an updated product roadmap, announcing that the current version of Windows 10, 22H2, released in October 2022, is the final feature update. The company also stated that all support for Windows 10 Home, Pro, Enterprise and Education, including security updates, will end for mainstream users on October 14, 2025. [] Despite claiming Windows 10 would be the “last version of Windows” in 2015, Microsoft released Windows 11 in 2021 with higher hardware requirements that exclude many older PCs and laptops. The most controversial was support for the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0 introduced in mid-2016. [] Moreover, with Windows 10 still accounting for > 70% of the total Windows market share (Windows 11 has just 20%), Microsoft has struggled to convince the bulk of its user base to upgrade. Whether that will change now Microsoft has sounded the Windows 10 death knell remains to be seen, but complaints remain that the operating system still lacks core Windows 10 features. That discontent can be seen in the comments section of the Microsoft announcement, which is mainly negative, both in terms of Windows 11 and a feeling of forced obsolescence [] -the options are to a) run Windows 10 without updates (not recommended), b) buy a new PC, and c) bypass the Windows 11 requirements. The last is the most realistic, and many workaround guides exist, but it isn’t for the faint-hearted. Moreover, Microsoft makes no promises that features or security updates will work or be maintained for these machines. In short: the countdown clock has now begun for 100s of millions of computers worldwide, and their users have a decision to make. Forbes
After viewing videos about mining and about how the world currently addresses e-waste (resources above) it is obvious that this is far more than a headache for consumers.
In combination with the energy and water demands for AI, big tech is a force multiplier for unrelenting consumption, and not a panacea for any of the challenges being imposed on society.
These massive waves of planned obsolescence ( aka smart meters) can be mitigated, by addressing the endless tech upgrade cycles and planned obsolescence caused by the current economic model that outsources costs.
It’s not about money. As the saying goes, humans are writing checks that nature cannot cash.
Or, as Kate Kheel noted in her update about the oceans, (where we plan to dump the International Space Station in 2031) “Earth can no longer sustain our violent, competitive, extractive way of life.”
Jung noted, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” We need to address the dark time, and we need - all of us - to weave a different story. Thank you for being a part.