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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • For me it is a convenience thing – I spend a lot of time working from home and sometimes it’s nice to just be able to grab my phone and join a meeting while I’m sitting on the couch or w/e without needing to go over to my home office room. My team almost never does anything outside of work hours, so it’s not like I’m getting pinged or anything. In the rare situation where I get some notifications from a chat channel outside of working hours (usually someone in a different time zone) then I can just turn off work apps in Android and it goes away.







  • Thanks for your reply. I think I might have introduced a bit of confusion here, as I’m making two points in a bit of an implicit way.

    My first point is a bit of a refutation of the OP. It’s basically the same as you’ve heard from any other political non-profit: “you can make a difference with just 5 minutes of your time! It doesn’t matter if you’re broke and struggling under late-stage capitalism just like the rest of us, your voice matters!”

    There is both truth, and deception in that statement.

    The truth is that small actions do make a difference. I’ve seen the link between how getting more contacts from my district to congressional offices helps me set meetings with the office. Anyone can pick up the phone and call Congress, it doesn’t take a special skill, or money. Similarly with the postcard thing – if someone felt like doing it, and if postcards & stamps were provided by the group, it wouldn’t take a lot of extra time or money to do like a couple dozen, and I’m sure that person would feel more involved and empowered. I’m not trying to say everyone should do it, just that it takes less effort than you might think to make a real noticeable difference, even if you’re struggling under late-stage capitalism.

    The deception is thinking that it is enough for a movement to rely solely on these actions as a strategy. It is not enough on its own and leads to slacktivism, and is probably part of why most of us have felt so burnt out for so long on the idea of making changes – we’ve been burned before (remember Net Neutrality?)

    Therefore, my second point, and the reason that I shared a bit more about what I’ve been doing, is that I’m trying to give people a little bit of hope. I’m trying to build on the first point (it’s easier than you think to take a small action). And what I’m building on that to say is: “don’t worry that you (person who has very little time/money to contribute) aren’t doing enough, because I’m here to pick up the rest. I’ve got this. We are a team, so pass the ball to me, and put me in the play”.

    What I’m trying to say is, a movement needs both pieces. Again, movements that have the first (popular pressure) but lack the second (volunteer development, engagement, active lobbying, etc.) tend to fizzle out like the Net Neutrality movement.

    On the other hand, some movements have heavily dedicated and invested volunteers, but can’t convince an average American to do things like regularly contact their representative. The feedback we get in my state from congressional offices is something like 100 contacts per month, every month on a particular issue will cause them to start taking it more seriously. Without meeting that threshold, a movement will never get traction no matter how enthusiastic their core volunteers are. Nobody will take them seriously.


  • I’m sure that many will be thrown away, and the cynical take sounds logical at face value. But that’s not what the data shows:

    https://www.environmentalvoter.org/results

    Postage costs were spread around among volunteers. Some people have more time than money, some have more money than time. Personally, I paid for about 250 postcard stamps, and got a roll of 100 from the group. Others got more or less rolls of stamps.

    Cynicism among folks who care about climate change is understandable, and widespread, which is a big motivation for sending postcards targeting climate voters. The data shows that we tend to vote less than the average voter. If we really want the political changes that we say we do, then we need to show it and take action.

    It’s entirely possible that it is too late to do anything about climate change. But if we act as if it’s true then we make it a certainty, where now it is only a probability.


  • You are absolutely right about all the challenges facing average Americans that keep us too busy to do a lot about issues like these.

    Still, there are lots of different ways to help. Some do require more time, and are probably out of reach for someone who’s just barely getting by. But some require less.

    Today I dropped off at the post office 350 hand written postcards to low propensity climate voters in my state. I wrote and addressed the postcards while I was watching TV, so it didn’t really take much more of my free time (I would have been watching TV anyways). Elections in my state have been decided by only a few hundred votes, so actions like this do make a difference.

    Next week, I will be meeting with staff for my member of Congress in person in D.C. I have the luxury of having the time and money to make this happen, but if you pick up the phone or write an email every single month to your congressional office and mention climate change, it makes it much easier for us to get these meetings and get our point across. Pressure on congressional offices alone doesn’t get the job done, but it makes them take us more seriously when we meet with them and present a bill that we want them to support.

    Congress is pretty dysfunctional right now, but we still have managed to get some climate friendly legislation through. Every bit of help and support we get along the way makes a difference.

    The group I volunteer with is Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and I think they are the best, but there are other groups out there. The American Conversation Coalition is more right-leaning and has been gaining traction recently. The Sunrise Movement is more left-leaning, though for some reason I haven’t heard much from them recently, at least in my state. I’m sure there are other groups out there besides those three.








  • Rail also has a sort of hidden economic benefit in that once you overcome the network effect, it boosts economics on a larger scale. Some people in China thought it was crazy for the government to build high speed rail at the speed and scale that they did, and that it would never compete with flights, etc. And yes, the line all the way out to Xinjiang is not profitable and subsidized by other lines. But the overall benefit to the Chinese economy by connecting all the major cities together can’t be underestimated.