"Minstrel shows were popular for two reasons. First it allowed white people to revel in all of the most base and hateful Black stereotypes in public. It validated all of their treatment of real Black people and turned that hate into entertainment. But secondly it allowed for a bit of taboo fantasy.... The audience got to engage with Blackness indirectly and yet still feel like they were experiencing something authentic. Another identity they could pick up and put down at will. What these AI creations make clear is that desire hasn’t gone away in the passing century."
" The proliferation of invasive plants is brought on by broken relationships between people, plants, land and more. Rather than viewing these plants as enemies to be combatted and discarded, we can instead work to value them and bring them back into balanced relation with us and the ecosystems around them. We can become the predators many of these plants lack."
"Green Software Engineering is an emerging discipline at the intersection of climate science, software practices and architecture, electricity markets, hardware and data center design."
well this is fucking horrifying. '“We call them tentacles,” Ricketts said. “When you see them wash up from the sea they’re very long, you know they can be eight feet to 30 feet (2.4m to 9.1m), and sometimes three feet wide,” she said. “When we’ve done clean-ups here, we’ve been digging 15 feet and still find tangles of clothing.”'
"a platform for resources, information and action steps to support intersectional environmentalism and dismantle systems of oppression in the environmental movement, led by environmental activists and sustainability advocates"