Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

Total forest coverage is still declining.

And there's a graph here.

Deforestation in the Amazon has halved in the last few years under Lula da Silva's presidency.

There's a y-axis measuring square kilometers of forest cover, and an x-axis with years...

The square kilometres are that of deforestation, and we notice that this is stepping down after around 2008.

The peak seems to be in around 2004, and it has gone quite far down from above 25,000 kilometres squared to around 5,000 by the end of the graph.

Scott writes, I'm increasingly sympathetic to the complaint that there's little constituency for stories about things improving.

People who care about a problem want to scare you into action with stories of how bad it still is.

And the people who don't care want you to think that efforts to fight the problem are doomed or useless or counterproductive, so there's no point in trying.

50.

Lots of buzz over Ayla's appearance on the Whatever podcast.

I haven't seen it because I don't watch podcasts, but relevant excerpt here, full episode here, links in post.

I was most interested in Maxwell Foley's description of the Whatever podcast's premise.

Quote,

A, quote, Christian paleo-conservative debates, in quotes, OnlyFans models for eight hours on whether or not it's bad to have an OnlyFans or be a slut.

And the women sit through it because they know men watching it will subscribe to their OnlyFans after, end quote.