Learnt a new word today, via one of those Special Ops memoirs I bought in a charity shop between bouts of writing.

rumint (uncountable) (US) “Information of dubious veracity, particularly when grounded in rumor.”

And of course, rumint is addictive, while also not being so great for building shared situational (or shituational, as I prefer it) awareness. Bad faith actors are trying to flood the zone/poison the well, and they are doing a very good job. They’re seriously cashed-up for this mission, and are going with the grain of human cognitive frailties (for a smart species, after all, we are as dumb as a rock).

On doom – well, I wrote a blog a couple of days ago about that, and since then it’s been all OVER the news (i.e. BBC and Guardian – front page), though tbc I didn’t check out GB News. We know enough, as the late Sven Lindqvuist said, in Exterminate The Brutes.

“You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.”

And further than that, we lack the skills to create and then enact a long-term plan once we have drawn those conclusions. We get stuck in the OOs of the OODA loop, without even – for most part – getting as far as the DA.

(And yes, there is so much to learn from how the military operates. But the “left” for the most part, for understandable but tragically misguided reasons, refuses to learn from this rich store of knowledge. What was that I said about dumb as a rock?)

So finally, to quote from a DM to a friend I admire enormously –

After my [redacted] experience, I no longer believe that small groups of people are capable of sustaining themselves/each other in any meaningful way. Not on climate, at least. It’s too big, it’s too ugly. There’s no smell of victory (as per something a very wise activist said to me back in 2006). We scatter. We can’t look into the abyss for long enough, calmly enough, in ways that are mutually supportive.

Or at least, I haven’t been in a group that could. AND, allowing for the fact that I am at best “Marmite” (others might have a more vigorous view) I haven’t ever been aware of functioning groups that do it.

And so I come back to the basic “Brown M&Ms” question – if we can’t get the small stuff right, what makes us think we can challenge the tragic suicidal trajectory of our organisations and institutions?

Meanwhile, if you haven’t already voted in my entirely unscientific poll, please do! Closes tmrw (7th October).

Hi #ClimateTwitter, entirely unscientific poll, just curious about when you think we will breach 2 degrees as a global average (already places far beyond that, Arctic etc).

Please share/retweet etc.

— All Our Yesterdays (@our_yesterdays) October 5, 2023