For real, this is sobering information. I already try to avoid microwaving plastics, but I’m gonna be even more careful now, and try to spread this study. Billions of nanoplastics per square centimeter, it’s scary to think about the size of containers, number that would likely be used in a day, and the fact that infants are so small with that information in context.
I think we gotta work on building community if we want to see people really move away from streaming services. One person with a NAS in a small apartment building could help a lot of their neighbors out with entertainment. It would be more work for the person hosting, but if the folks who benefit help their friend out too it might end up being less work overall.
I’d give someone access, teach them how to use the software, and download some of their favorite shows if they let me borrow their truck when I needed, shared dinner sometimes, or helped me clean house. I think a lot of folks would benefit from that kind of thing, but it would require us making friends with our neighbors. Which, on reflection, is actually really really hard. I imagine it would be kinda awkward to start the conversations around this, but you’d get around the step of everyone getting their own NAS at least!
It’s important to question the beliefs we’re raised with, especially when seeking truth as scientists tend to do. I’m glad to see research like this, and especially the bit at the end of the abstract about examining prior conclusions that were influenced by patriarchal cultural bias. There’s something about how hard this notion of, “men hunt, women gather and take care of children, in all human societies past and present” is to shake that has me reminded of something:
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
That heuristic is generally taken to be accurate among the scientifically literate, Carl Sagan coined it even, but it is deeply flawed. Cultural notions of ordinary define what is seen as extraordinary. An idea that is normalized in our society needs much less evidence to convince people of it, while one that goes against normality needs much more to even begin to gain traction. The concept is flawed because ‘ordinary’ is socially defined, so while it can be used to discredit obviously wrong ideas like the existence of ghosts, it can also be used to discredit obviously wrong ideas like the CIA using LSD to (try to) control peoples’ minds. Pretty extraordinary claim, but it did happen. Maybe you see the issue with this heuristic, while the idea expressed is intuitive, it hides a sneaky cultural bias.
I think something similar goes on with ideas like the one this study refutes. It seems so clear in our patriarchal society that men and women are different, suited to different roles as we’ve been told so many times growing up, that the opposite concept is extraordinary. So you get scientists coming up with truly extraordinary explanations of why women are buried with hunting tools to maintain their conception of ‘normal’, and anyone who wants to refute it needs to go above-and-beyond only to still be met with skepticism.
I absolutely agree. We have no idea if its ever even going to happen, Facebook has never had an exodus the way Twitter and Reddit have, for example. There are also a variety of scenarios where Discord fails and no one migrates to decentralized FOSS platforms. Some AI product steals our attention more effectively than social media, or the infrastructure supporting the Internet breaks down, or climate chaos upends all our lives and no one has time for Discord or anything like it. Frankly, I expect something like that to be what does in most online platforms.
I think you’re right in your original comment, it’s probably not gonna happen.
I think we already know what would have to happen to get people to move. Discord needs to screw up and drive people away. Like why most of us are here. Lemmy was around for years, it had most of the problems you list, less software support, fewer communities, higher barrier to entry, it still has most of that actually. Reddit gave Lemmy its chance, by screwing up their own platform, Discord will need to do the same thing to see an exodus.
That isn’t all though, Revolt needs to be ready, to have communities and people talking about it, while Discord pisses its users off. Matrix already has that capacity, the question is if/when will Discord screw up?
Wow, this is sick! Thanks for posting your art, it’s great to see even if I’ve never played the game.