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Jack McGovan

@jackmcgovan.bsky.social

12K followers 800 following 290 posts

Writer and environmental journalist @ Sentient, The Guardian, Hakai etc www.sower.world 🇬🇧🏳️‍🌈

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 23d

No matter what #Musk says or does, many on the left continue to post on and pay for X, a clear example of how progressive movements are beholden to the narrative that we don't have to change anything at all about our lives to achieve our political goals.

I wrote about why that's bad in July ⬇️

X reveals a weakness in left-wing rhetoric

Good principles mean nothing when you materially support a fascist propaganda machine.

www.sower.world

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 10h

"No fight against the slaughterhouses will ever be successful if we do not also confront capitalism. Likewise, no fight against capitalism will fully succeed unless we also fight against slaughterhouses."

Can't encourage people enough to read this essay, it's incredibly important writing.

How Industrial Slaughter Became the Blueprint for Modern Capitalism

Henry Ford learned mass production from slaughterhouses. A century later, our modern economy still resembles a meatpacking plant.

www.currentaffairs.org

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Reposted by Jack McGovan

Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 2d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 1d

See also: Jane Goodall. We spend way too much time deifying individuals instead of recognising collective contributions to knowledge or other forms of human creation.

Robert (Bob) Kubinec @rmkubinec.bsky.social · 1d

The Nobel Prize is the wrong way to think about science.

My heroes aren't the people with the endowed chairs at the Ivies. They are the people who do the hard work, day in and day out, and who would take a bullet rather than inflate research findings or block others' competing research.

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 4d

Especially because climate researchers were found to fly more often than others, which is a crazy inversion of how things actually should be

www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/24...

Climate scientists fly more than other researchers, first global study suggests

Cardiff University research also suggests climate researchers do more to offset their flying

www.cardiff.ac.uk

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Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) @doctorvive.bsky.social · 4d

Until people in the climate movement very publicly stop eating meat and flying, we're not going to seem trustworthy.

I will die on this hill.

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 4d

Meat is a blind spot for people who care about climate. When I used to have dinner with my colleague Wally Broecker, the climate scientist who coined the term “global warming”, he would always order a steak.

The climate movement’s biggest weakness

What the climate movement is getting dead wrong.

www.vox.com

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 6d

Every month for my newsletter, I round up stories I find of people taking action to make the world a better place in the hopes my readers find inspiration.

I also add in music other media recommendations (books, TV, recipes etc) for people looking for something new to enjoy ⬇️

What you missed in September and other recommendations

A round up of relevant writing, as well as other media and music recommendations.

www.sower.world

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Brandon Keim @brandonkeim.bsky.social · 7d

"I stopped eating meat some 50 years ago," wrote Jane Goodall, "when I looked at the pork chop on my plate and thought: this represents fear, pain, death."

Best as I can tell, not one obituary or article on her passing mentions this fact. It's worth knowing. news.janegoodall.org/2017/04/28/w...

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 6d

While I understand your thinking, it feels like it would be more productive to spend the time writing to representatives directly than posting on X for the fleeting chance that they see specific posts under a rigged algorithm

Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 8d

The longer the climate movement sweeps meat consumption under the rug, the longer we put off difficult conversations that we need to have as a society to move towards more sustainable food systems.

Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 8d

“Governments are reluctant to push hard on dietary change, livestock emissions, or fertilizer dependence because they trigger cultural sensitivities and risk political backlash," said @jessfanzo.bsky.social.

Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds

Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions

www.theguardian.com

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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 9d

I may have found my defining quote.

Pair this with my pinned post and you will see what I mean!

From a poster called “just shower thoughts“ reading: when people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically, changing the present by doing something small, barely anyone in the present to really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small.

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Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 9d

“Year after year, land and environmental defenders—those protecting our forests, rivers, and lands across the world—continue to be met with unspeakable violence.”

146 environmental and land defenders were murdered or disappeared in 2024

The political killings you don’t hear about

Across the globe, standing up for the planet can be a death sentence—and the perpetrators are almost never held accountable.

heated.world

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Reposted by Jack McGovan

Jolyon Maugham KC @goodlawproject.org · 13d

One of the unexpected things I've learned from my advocacy for trans people is how malignant parts of the State can be, how it can misuse data for positively evil purposes. It's taught me people can't be safe with a digital ID card and so I've signed this. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

We demand that the UK Government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID cards. There are reports that this is being looked at.

petition.parliament.uk

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 13d

After receiving a breakdown of my rent recently and seeing how my money helps maintain the communal areas, I was happy – despite realising that I've barely used them myself.

I wrote about community spirit, setting up roots as a renter, and what I wish living in my apartment complex looked like ⬇️

I wish my apartment complex had more community spirit

My apartment has everything one might need besides functional community spaces.

www.sower.world

Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 15d

Fair! I haven’t read the actual study, but I’m hoping the reporter did their due diligence in the reporting and considered these questions

Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 15d

what's wrong with it?

Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 15d

It seems like people are basically eschewing responsibility when they use "AI" tools, as if the "AI" itself is the one making the decisions and not them personally – or that line of reasoning provides them with plausible deniability.

In one experiment, participants would roll dice, report the number that turned up either honestly or dishonestly, and then they would get paid the same amount, with bigger numbers meaning a higher payout. Some participants were given the option of telling the number to an AI model — again, either honestly or dishonestly — which would then report the dice outcome to researchers.

The results were striking. About 95 percent of participants were honest when AI wasn’t involved — but that figure dropped to a sleazy 75 percent when people used the AI model to report dice numbers.

And participants’ ethics worsened even further when they were given the opportunity to manipulate an AI model with different data sets that either reported the dice numbers accurately every time, some of the time, or that would give out the maximum number of the dice anytime it was rolled.

In another scenario, participants could set the parameters of the AI model by either maximizing its accuracy or the amount of profit it could make from the dice rolls; over 84 percent cheated — as in they overwhelmingly chose maximum profit over accuracy for reporting the dice numbers.

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 15d

People have been shown to display more unethical behaviour when they use AI tools as an intermediary i.e it's not just that tools themselves produce inaccurate information, they actually encourage people to act in a dishonest way.

Using AI Increases Unethical Behavior, Study Finds

A new study in Nature reveals that people who use AI tend to be more dishonest compared to when they don't use AI for tasks.

futurism.com

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Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 15d

Yep – he already has their backing

Jack McGovan @jackmcgovan.bsky.social · 15d

Reform and other far-right political parties are against immigrants because of xenophobia, for sure, but also because they're more likely to support or vote for progressive policies.

We should be giving immigrants more rights, not less, as I argued last week ⬇️

Not letting immigrants vote is holding back climate action

Extending the vote to immigrants could garner wider support for climate policies, as foreign nationals are more likely to vote left.

www.sower.world

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Reposted by Jack McGovan

Joey Grostern @joeygrostern.bsky.social · 15d

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Vanessa is the name of the Doctor! @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 16d

Would gently remind all the people pointing at our potential next government and saying "but that's Illegal/impossible!" that things being illegal and incredibly stupid do not matter to fascists, see also: USA.

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Christopher Owen @oysta.au · 18d

Yeah man we should really fight back by staying on X

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Riley Black 🦕 🏳️‍⚧️ @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 20d

I’m pissed this is even a question. Science writers like myself have been scrabbling for work in a collapsing industry for years. The pond keeps shrinking. And now, rather than supporting *people*, Science is checking out if AI can replace us yet.

I will never, ever use genAI in my work.

Matt Shipman (he/him) @shiplives.bsky.social · 20d

In 2024, a team of science writers at AAAS ran a long-term experiment to see if ChatGPT could cut it writing news items about scientific research. Here's what they learned. Worth a look. 🧪 #scicomm
www.science.org/content/blog...

Can ChatGPT help science writers?

www.science.org

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Reposted by Jack McGovan

Sam Bright @writesbright.bsky.social · 19d

🔴 NEW - The meat industry has been monitoring thousands of animal welfare activists, gathering information on their biological ties and even their romantic relationships.

Vital, shocking exposé from @clarecarlile.bsky.social for @desmog.com

Revealed: ‘Chilling’ Surveillance of Activists by Meat and Dairy Industry

The U.S. meat industry has engaged in intrusive surveillance of animal rights groups, including monitoring relationships between activists and tracking employees of leading charities. The industry-fun...

www.desmog.com

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