Do you think that these might be some of the subpar dwellings that they’re talking about: https://southamericabackpacker.com/exploring-slums-of-medellin-colombia/ ?

No, I’m not serious. Of course they don’t need roofs or windows or multiple storeys. I’m just joking about that stuff.

The ones in Texas are built of a “high performance polymer concrete”, so probably including cement and contributing to climate change. They appear to be single storey as well.

The things they have chosen as demonstrators have holes in the roof! They are not suitable as homes by any reasonable definition. I also think that light and security are necessary for a home. Certainly if you are trying to improve on an existing “subpar dwelling”.

If they wanted to demonstrate how they can 3D print homes in rural Colombia, why didn’t they print something that would be suitable to be a home in rural Colombia? They only had to load a different model into the printer, right?

Well, quite. They don’t appear to have windows or doors either (doorways, yes, but not doors), and they have holes in the roof. Yet the article mentions “homes” about a million times.

It’s almost like somebody who didn’t have any knowledge of construction had the idea of 3D printing buildings. Probably in the shower.

I notice that they fill the walls with natural fibers by hand (see the photo) - so they must pause the printers at regular intervals and get a ladder to get up to the top parts. So even what we see isn’t entirely 3D printed.

No reinforcement? What are the upper floors made of?

Millions? 7 billion more like.

Although we do still need to keep an open mind. Most approaches take years to roll out. For example, Solar wasn’t very efficient in its infancy, but there have been massive improvements since then. Nobody was talking about e-bikes replacing many car journeys; they might not have got anywhere if we hadn’t already had big investments in battery and motor technology thanks to e-cars.

What efficient means: switching from ecologically expensive foods like beef to lower impact vegetarian diets.

What efficient does not mean: using vast quantities of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

It would be the maximum possible sentence for assault.

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/outlines/assault/

On Armistice Day, EDL protesters marched towards the Cenotaph (without permission) and launched fireworks that were intended to hit people and did strike policemen in the face. Let’s see if they get 5 years.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/11/world/far-right-protestors-disrupt-armistice-day-london/index.html

You’ve shifted from “destroyed” to “damaged”, I notice. The varnish of The Hay Wain was damaged, but the painting was not. The frames of various other paintings were damaged. The glass of The Rokeby Venus was damaged. Nothing compared to what Mary Richardson did in 1914.

It is literally Just Stop Oil’s point that people will start wringing their handkerchiefs at these actions but they are doing nothing about the climate emergency which threatens all our lives. You think it will make a difference if these people vote for different parties? The current parties are already doing worse than nothing - Sunak is opening up new oil and gas fields.

It is not climate protesters’ responsibility to persuade people to save the planet that we all live on. It is up to everybody, and too many people are not doing their share. Just Stop Oil have a right to be angry. We should all be angry.

But they aren’t destroying them, are they? The stones have been standing in the rain and snow for 3,000 years. Some powder paint is just going to wash off the next time it snows. It’s not like they’ve taken a jackhammer to the Heel Stone.

If you make a painting now, it wouldn’t be based on those thousands and thousands of paintings since, although you have seen them, you apparently do not remember them. But, if you did, and you made a painting based on one, and did not acknowledge it, you would indeed be a bad artist.

The bad part about using the art of the past is not copying. The problem is plagiarism.

Inspiration is absolutely a thing. When Constable and Cezanne sat at their easels, a large part of their inspiration was Nature. When Picasso invented Cubism, he was reacting to tradition, not following it. There are also artists like Alfred Wallis, who are very unconnected to tradition.

I think your final sentence is actually trying to say that we have advances in tools, not inspiration, since the Lascaux caves are easily on a par with the Sistine Chapel if you allow for the technology? And that AI is simply a new tool? That may be, but does the artist using this new tool control which images it was trained on? Do they even know? Can they even know?

Maybe the AIs should mix their own pigments as well, instead of taking all the other artists’ work and grinding that up.

It concerns me that the article blames this on El Nino and continued burning of fossil fuels.

I’m sure those are contributing, but what about the wildfires that we saw last year? They are a feedback effect (higher temperatures makes fires more likely; fires release CO2; CO2 increases temperatures). If feedback effects have started, then everybody needs to panic.

Let them sell insurance against extreme weather incidents, like droughts, floods and hurricanes. If they’re right, they should be able to offer lower rates than the rest of the market.

It is a stretch to say that their motivation for protesting could never be relevant.

Not so long ago, we had protests which were illegal because the police refused to give them a permit. The protests were because a policeman had raped and killed a woman. The conduct of the police was simultaneously what made the protest illegal and also what they were protesting about.

In this case, the motivation is that the government is failing in its basic duty to protect the lives and future of its citizens (all of them), and it’s the government that has passed legislation to make protest illegal.