Orcocracy [comrade/them]

Th DRM is the real issue, especially when viewing habits are taken into account. The most watched shows on Netflix for years have been repeat viewings of old sitcoms. The re-watching of shows like Friends, The Office, Seinfeld, etc is especially energy intensive because of DRM. Viewers download the same episode again and again and again, only for the DRM to automatically delete the downloaded file every time. If Netflix was just a folder on a server of DRM-free .mp4 files it would be very efficient.

But it isn’t. Instead, capitalism demands an inefficient over-engineered mess of a system, with a confusing algorithmically reshuffled interface of self-destructing video files so that people can be charged money every month forever and ever.

AI, algorithms, and the statistics that power them are not that smart. They have no way of knowing for sure what is in your head when you hit the delete button.

Is having lots more green energy not a result?

Yay, happy hail Satan day everyone. I remember when Intel chickened out and rounded up their 666 megahertz pentium 3 processors to report as being 667 megahertz. Absolute cowards, no wonder China is kicking their ass.

Perhaps. Or perhaps what uses more over a lifetime is an ebook that is bounced around from device to device which all turn to toxic e-waste after a few years, constantly communicating with always-on servers for account data and DRM authentication hosted in a data centre based in a region powered by fossil fuels. All while a paper book just sits on a shelf causing no further environmental impact - potentially for hundreds of years.

To be fair, nobody’s preference for paper books or ebooks will change the environment in any meaningful way - the problems are much more systemic and require radical action from an unwilling corporate and political elite that has been ignoring the problem for decades.

Data centres and “the cloud” are not great for the environment either. DRM forcing people to have their files constantly deleted and redownloaded makes it even worse.

Also, “support” doesn’t have to mean a direct financial transaction. Libraries operate a bit differently from a McDonalds. Even just going in and sitting in a library reading a book without ever taking it out can help to support your local public library.

A train that has a stop somewhere in my neighbourhood.

Yeah, and telling people to just pay for a VPN isn’t a great answer either - that’s just another fucking pay-forever subscription with the price rises of Netflix plus the added jank and nonsense that comes with being a copyright infringement hobbyist.

Maybe I’ll just cancel everything and do totally offline ripping of borrowed physical media from the public library, like some kind of pirate hermit.

I have no idea if that’s bullshit or not, but this is definitely turning into a tragic bodycount measuring contest. I’m outta here.

Yes coal is indeed very bad and needs go away immediately. But I’m not so sure if coal being bad makes radiation cancers from Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield, etc etc etc not worth caring about.

I really don’t want to play top trumps over which tragic disaster is worse by measuring bodycounts, as this is all way too grim and I think we can agree that the worst case scenarios for all of these things are awful in their own distinct ways. But that number you put for nuclear is difficult to believe. Where did you find it?

Yeah a dam will wreck a valley. But a nuclear station can irradiate a whole region and coal ruins the planet.

Every modern law of economics?

Tidal, hydroelectric dams, and geothermal should all together be able to cover a pretty significant part of the Earth, shouldn’t they?

Yeah, I remember thinking all of these terms were strange and creepy back when I first learnt them as a kid for goodness’ sake. They’ve always been bad and I’m very glad they’re finally going away.

Yeah the consumerist rhetoric in game reviews (and the entire technology press more broadly) dooms all of their attempts at analysis to be extremely shallow. Maybe one day a journalist will pay attention in one of their media studies classes and read the fucking Adorno reading that one of their teachers assigned, but that day has not yet come.

Hold on to that leverage over your employer with a union

Yikes, that’s an ugly looking turn of phrase. I guess I’m blocking another racist.

If you can’t or don’t want to root the phone and install your own de-Googled Android rom then you could get an Android phone designed for mainland China, which will come with all of the Google stuff already removed.

Genuinely good films: 4,6,2,8

Ok but flawed films: 1,3,9,5,7

Derivative and unnecessary, but sometimes charming films: 11,13

Very few redeeming qualities and should never have been made: 10,12