as you dream of electric cars

There's currently only 70-years worth of cobalt reserves -- at present levels of consumption.  Cobalt is an essential ingredient in lithium-ion, nickel-cadmium, and nickel metal hydride batteries -- the types of batteries used in your cell phones, laptops, and electric cars.

Most of the current supply of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country of 107 million French-speaking people -- more French-speaking people than in France! -- where the per capita annual GDP is only $500.  Yes, your high-tech zero-emissions lifestyle depends on the labor of people who make 25 cents per hour.

Many people expect that the rich countries will switch to electric cars over the next few decades to stop their contributions to global warming, which would increase the annual consumption of cobalt by 50x.  This would use up the entire world's reserves of cobalt in 17 months.

70 years of reserves -- that's the same duration of reserves we have for oil, at present levels of consumption.

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I've written before about how we on the Left focus obsessively on global warming and peak oil as our twin existential crises, ignoring the similarly limited supplies of all the other minerals we dig up out of the earth.

As you speculate on Tesla stock and prepare to buy your own electric car, as you promote your Green New Deal in your neighborhoods and on Capitol Hill, maybe spend a moment thinking about where all that cobalt will come from, and who will dig it out of the ground, under what horrible labor and living conditions.

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As we say about so many other things: dealing with global warming is addressing a symptom, not a cause.  The cause is runaway human population and runaway resource consumption.  Switching over to electric cars will not help.  As you run out of one mineral you can switch to another one, sure, but you're still consuming non-renewable resources at rates that assume the human race will die out before this Third Millennium is finished.  Or even before this 21st Century is finished.

What will be left to dig out of the ground in 2999?  There will be no "Party Like it's 2999" song, the party will have ended long ago.

Stop having babies, and let's share what's left.

no safe!?!

Everything about this Lock Him Up project has gone awry so far.  Now the safe that was supposed to arrive by 8am this morning is "running late" with no estimate for delivery time.  I'm told I may cancel for a refund.

Well, I could freeze the keys inside a block of ice in the freezer ... how about I do that?

OK, I got a small tupperware container, a size that would store half a tomato.  I took the keys and wrapped them very loosely in about half a square foot of aluminum foil and placed the foil in the container.  I filled the container almost all the way with water, enough to cover and penetrate the folds of aluminum foil.  Covered the container, put it in the freezer!

Should be frozen in about an hour :-)

I could keep the keys this way indefinitely.  But if I do, I'll put the container inside a small paper bag and label the bag so T doesn't casually throw it out while cleaning out the freezer two years from now, heh.

So, now I've canceled the safe!

Solo Saturday!

T has left for B's until tomorrow.  This morning I did my weight lifting routine, and just finished lunch.  After my tummy settles I'll shower and then go pick up beverages from the convenience store.  I'll give Dax a walk, and then it will be play time.

The keys are not totally frozen yet.  I don't know why I should bother checking, of course they will freeze and then they'll stay frozen until I decide to thaw them out.  But I want to see them frozen.  I'm half-expecting the freezer to break now!  I think I forgot to account for the insulation factor of the tupperware when I figured it would take an hour to freeze.

This weekend I'll decide on some new toys, either the FMJ cage or butt toys for the house.

I have some work I must do before Monday morning, but I'm going to put that off until tomorrow.  I want to do some more keyboard lessons tomorrow also.

OK, I'm going to read quietly while my tummy settles.

ice ice Bug

The ice is not yet completely frozen, after five hours?  But getting there, it's mostly frozen, except for some air bubbles moving around with a little bit of liquid water.

After I'd started freezing it, I realized, because of course this entire project is ridiculously faulty, that I'd started to freeze one correct key and one wrong key to something else.  I still had a key to this cage on my keychain!!!  So, I had to open it up, and stuff in the third key.  Not sure exactly what other key is getting frozen in there ... but now both keys to this Leopard are getting frozen.  But it is taking forever.  But this should deter me from unlocking when I'm intoxicated later.

But I hate how the Leopard looks!

So I will probably order the FMJ tomorrow, and then in a few weeks I'll swap.  I'll probably give my cock a week of freedom at that time so it can stretch and feel clean and peel if necessary.  Then into the FMJ until some Sir wants to let me out for his own purposes.  If that even ever happens.

Frozen!

All right!  These keys are definitely frozen!  Plus, some, other, random, key that (I stuck in there by mistake), um, (maybe later I will be missing a key to something, um,)

Frozen!

My OCD may compel me to relive episodes of my life repeatedly but I've never fuckin' frozen my cock cage keys before :-)

The freezer is my new Sir, LOL.

lyric

we get wiser as we get older until we fall apart

"politics"

If your politics isn't about treating everybody the same and making sure everybody has the same basic rights and access to critical needs -- and by "everybody" I mean regardless of who they are or where they live or when they live -- then I'm not sure I should call it "politics". If you aren't on board with providing basic and critical human rights for every human on the planet, and protecting the planet's resources for future generations, then you're just making excuses for why you should get more and they should get less.

You can call it conservatism or liberalism or capitalism or socialism or pragmatism or whatever. But if you don't have a plan for reducing the disparity between your income and the $500/person in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

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Here in the US I'm pleased that the Democrats just barely took control of the federal government, but what they will do with that smidgen of control is so far away from what I'm talking about. Hey, we suck just a little bit less than before. But the way the pendulum swings in the US --> in two years Republicans will control the House again, and flip a coin as to which party will occupy the White House four years from now. I feel like I keep getting sucked into a pointless game in which I help push a rock partway up a hill and then it rolls back down on top of me.

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But politics is the art of the possible, they say. Which group of bandits do you want in charge of the Titanic as it sinks? The ones who treat LGBTQ, immigrants, and racial minorities a bit more fairly? Or the ones who want to lock you below decks and take all the lifeboats for themselves?

best novel ever?

yeah, while doin' every other fuckin' thing during this past year of hell, I've been sifting through the silt for the best novel ever, people were like War and Peace, or, this, or that, as they turned their Quarantines into their My Best Life, ugh,

and I thought, I'm stuck with the Mars Trilogy, reading that over again, but,

I think I might have started reading the best novel ever today?

some of you received texts from me and know what I'm blabbing about,

I was about to start Moby Dick, but,

then,

Shadow & Claw