The so-called ‘manosphere’ has existed for several years now, and in that time the personality types we’re subjected to have diversified. Dale Partridge is known for being a misogynist of the Christian persuasion, and he’s specifically famous for shaming women. The shoe is now on the other foot, however, as Derek Guy the menswear expert […]

By Willem Moore

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Willem Moore, Author at Canary

Articles by Willem Moore for Canary

^{Willem Moore (The Canary)}

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/11/06/chinas-clean-energy-revolution-will-reshape-markets-and-politics

From Sierra Leone to Milan, cities are introducing their own rules and innovations in the face of rising temperatures

‘Politicians actually taking action’: six world mayors defying climate-sceptic populist leaders

From Sierra Leone to Milan, cities are crafting their own rules and innovations in the face of rising temperatures

^{Daniel Boffey (The Guardian)}

The Trump administration is using lobbying and economic threats to thwart emissions-cutting and environmental initiatives around the world.

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The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened as it takes on the Trump administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/politics/sierra-club-social-justice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zU8.6c9-._hOAFanZfAkE

A man collapsed at a White House press events, and RFK Jr just runs out of the room.

I can't stand Dr. Oz, but at least he acted like an F'ing doctor here.

What the article describes means so, so much. Being able to have electric light, to charge a phone, this was not a given for so many people. I think it's huge.

AFAIK, alone air pollution from kerosene fuel in the house is in Africa a leading cause of death.

You know that feeling when you’re waiting for the cable guy, and they said ‘between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up?

Now imagine that, except the cable guy is ‘electricity,’ the day is ‘50 years,’ and you’re one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.

What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working.

Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.

And if you understand what’s happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.

[...]

What I am also thinking for a while that the switch to non-fossil power is a historic seismic shift in how huge streams of money are flowing. It changes how power is transmitted very much in a double sense.

And this is not the end of what is possible and what is needed. Tiny solar installations might not be enough for cooking, efficient induction stoves might now still be too expensive. Standard AC voltage systems for home appliances might not match these power sources well. Broken components might be difficult to repair and create waste.

But hey, that's life, isn't it - we solve one problem and in turn we get two new ones for free 😉

Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa

Or: How Africa is building the future by skipping the past

^{Skander Garroum (Climate Drift)}

ArcaneChat 2.25.0 is on its way to Google Play and f-droid and should be available in the upcoming days, can't wait? for other download options check arcanechat.me/

🔮 What's new?

★ Now it is possible to create channels that have invite links! (to join the official ArcaneChat channel update your ArcaneChat client and you will receive the invitation in Device Messages!)

★ More metadata protection (now Date header is protected!)

★ Better multi-device: synchronize group creation across devices

★ Data saving: reduce size of read receipts

★ Improved on-boarding speed

★ Now it is possible to save to storage files shared from inside in-chat apps

★ Fixed sorting of old media in the chat's gallery

★ Several other fixes and small improvements

💜 Help keep ArcaneChat (and several of its in-chat mini-apps and bots) independent and make it even more awesome in the future: arcanechat.me/#contribute

ArcaneChat - Apps on Google Play

Private secure chats for the family

^{play.google.com}

The industry keeps echoing ideas from bleak satires and cyberpunk stories as if they were exciting possibilities, not grim warnings.

In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael Henry argues that today's tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi aesthetics and ideas -- often the parts that were meant as warnings -- and repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were originally cautionary tales to avoid. "The tech industry is delivering on some of the futuristic notions of late-20th-century science fiction," writes Henry. "Yet it seems, at times, bizarrely unaware that many of those notions were meant to be dystopian or satirical -- dismal visions of where our worst and dumbest habits could lead us."

You worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy," America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film about social decay.

The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety, with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the tech industry's boldest visions of the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/magazine/ai-tech-industry-sora-science-fiction.html

Hey folks,

I run the site piratefeeds.net/. It's a free mirror for premium podcast feeds hosted on Patreon and works entirely from people donating feeds they subscribe to. I don't host the media files, just the RSS feeds. I don't make any money from it. If you wanna listen to any of the pods listed all you have to do is plug the feed URL in your podcast app of choice.

This is both self promo and a request for feed donations. If you subscribe to a podcast and are willing to collectivize your subscription, reach out! Sharing is caring... I anonymize the feeds before publishing them, so there's no risk of other users doxxing the donors. In the past there have been some issues with Patreon blocking some feeds, but I've improved the site's OpSec since then and there haven't been any issues in months now. Even then, the worst that can happen is that Patreon might block the specific link and issue the subscriber a new one.

I mainly mirror feeds hosted on Patreon because those are guaranteed to work, other hosts such as SupportingCast have better anti-piracy protections so I cannot use their feeds for now. If you want to donate a feed all you have to do is PM me your Patreon RSS audio feed URL.

So far most of the pods listed are lefty politics/media/culture commentary and comedy. I'm not picky about the donations I accept, as long as they're not actively reactionary/bigoted. A bunch of the feeds on the site are currently inactive for lack of working sources, I'd be particularly grateful for donations of those. If you have a subscription to a pod that is already listed you can absolutely still donate your link: backups are valuable.

Most of the pods listed are by independent creators who definitely deserve your money if you can afford to support them. The reason I run this is that, like most people, I cannot afford to subscribe to all creators I'd like to follow.

Do you have podcast X?

If it's not listed then nobody donated it yet, or it's hosted on a service I don't support.

NOTE: I've asked and received permission to post this in advance from db0, to make sure this didn't violate comm rules.