jez @jez@signs.codes

Bolted bok choy flowers and a bacopa bloom, I believe. #florespondence

royalty

The estimated cost to end world hunger is approximately $30 billion per year. Ending world poverty would cost $175 billion.

In 2018, the world had a collective military budget of $1739 billion.

Hunger and poverty could be eradicated with just 12% of the amount of money spent on "defence".

The USA alone could reduce its military budget enough to end hunger and poverty, and still have the largest military spending in the world.

Additionally, the US military is the world's largest consumer of oil.

In 2011, the US military used 117 million barrels of oil. Assuming average combustion engine efficiencies, that equates to around 13 million metric tons of CO2. There is no reason to believe they used less in 2018.

Emissions from the military are conspicuously absent from most publicly available information on CO2 emissions by source.

It's not so easy to find estimates for global military oil usage or CO2 emissions. Chances are, it's proportional to their available budget though.

It's safe to say that warfare is one of the biggest drains on our planet's resources and one of the largest contributors to the climate crisis.

In short, if humans could get over their obsession with weapons and violence, a lot of the world's problems could be alleviated or solved much more rapidly.

I'm just saying.

Establish boundaries and stick to them.

It is genuinely something else to realize anew that

we are not even the largest animal
on what is not even the largest planet
around what is not even the largest star
in what is not even the largest galaxy
in what is not even the largest galactic cluster
in what may be one of many universes.

beautiful day

I made these cards for my bulletin board. Most people don't look at it, but I wanted to celebrate myself even if other people won't know.

People who don't need to know probably won't get the symbols.

Image description/explanation:

One card has a genderqueer flag in the corner made from purple and green sticky note tabs. The bottom is covered with rainbow sticky tabs and says All things with love. It has 1 John 4:18, perfect love casts out fear

Apparently human staff at Amazon Alexa listen to what people say, even very intimate things (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio).

Alexa uploads your speech to be analysed on Amazon's servers. Siri, Cortana, Bixby etc also do this.

A better alternative is Snips, which doesn't upload your voice anywhere:

https://makers.snips.ai

https://github.com/snipsco

You install it on a Raspberry Pi, and access it directly or from your other devices.

(n.b. It's still in beta and requires tech knowledge to set up)

cats? cats.

This is really stunning.

Image at link has flashing light and rapid movement.

A woman pictured in various art styles and at one point as a dragon.

http://thymoss.tumblr.com/post/184145462937/starapture-starapture-rotoscope

If you don't have the right tools, invent them.