A shorter version of my latest column
-Hayes Brown, Bluesky
Transcription / Alt Text:
Panel one:
[off-screen] Fox News: Taylor Swift's plane is emitting soo much carbon
Angry Goose: Why are carbon emissions bad?
Panel 2:
[Man labeled Fox News being chased]
Goose: Explain why carbon emissions are bad, coward!!!
The problem I have with the "hypocrisy" argument is that, here, it's used as a cheap attack on the messenger.
As in the old meme:
(poor peasant doing labor: "we should improve society somewhat", grinning contemporary person: "yet you participate in society, curious! I am very intelligent.")
I can accept it when influential people, even those that cause a whole lot of emissions themselves, advocate for climate programs. We won't get anywhere if, whoever wants to talk about the environment, first has to become a cave dweller and give up their reach before they're allowed to speak up.
On the other hand, when Fox News, a channel that generally panders to the coal lobby, car industry and oil barons, suddenly becomes concerned about someone's CO2 emissions just to serve up another smear, that is hypocrisy, plain and simple.
This. Sorry, I'd give you Lemmy gold if that were a thing.
How would "Lemmy Gold" even work?
It might be something built using digital payments with no transaction fee (and a percentage for currency conversion)
Not possible globally, but in India and the Nordics, such standards are already in use. (No private apps like venmo which can't inter-operate don't count)
But where would the money go?
To the instance of the one paying or the one receiving the gold? What benefits would there be? Reddit gives 1 mouth free ads to the receiver, but we don't have ads in the first place. Would the comment of the receiver be boosted and by how much? If someone has 100 upvotes on their comment and, someone else has 50 upvotes and a gold on their comment would that comment be be boosted above the 100 upvoted one?
Implementating this is more complex than one might think.
My idea is that you would as the recipient get to nominate a charity from a list of effective charities, as well as send a tip to whatever Lemmy instance you use. You get the little digital gold mark on your comment/post too naturally.
Interesting idea