D&D General Tools for PCs?

[Maxperson]

Where are you getting that statistic from?

Can Holiday Shopping Boycotts Make a Difference?

We asked Yale SOM’s Zoe Chance, an expert on consumer behavior and persuasion, what makes boycotts effective and how companies should respond.

insights.som.yale.edu

The question is about holiday boycotts, but the information from the studies being used to assess are about boycotts in general.

Due to corporations going back on promises and a few other variables, they can't tell for certain how successful boycotts are, so it's in the 20%-40% range.

 

[Maxperson]

Something doesn't have to be perfect to be a step in the right direction.

I agree. I was just pointing out that there is a further step for folks who absolutely no longer want to support the company.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not explicitly.

Do you want to argue the implication isn't present?

Because, the question about alternate platforms could have been validly asked without any reference to Rowling. The reference, and how the entire thread became much more about Rowling and doing business with her, than platform, sends a message.

And there's no real problem with that. But people will react as if they live in an environment filled with such messages, and nobody should be the least bit surprised when folks get a bit defensive in that context.

I just think if one finds one’s self defending parties who are actively harming marginalized groups in order to defend one’s self from perceived implications that one is a bad person, merely because others are choosing not to support said parties financially… one probably ought to reflect on that a bit.

 

[Blue]

Pencil and paper.

Since we're digressing so hard in this thread . . .

How is paper still legal? I could probably buy some Meta glasses and write/read in thin air if I wanted to. (Not that I would.)

It may be possible that just the electricity generated and transmitted to charge meta glasses over the course of a campaign would be a higher environmental impact then a few sheets of paper, but when you count in all of the things like manufacturing the batteries and such it's not even close.

 

[GMMichael]

It may be possible that just the electricity generated and transmitted to charge meta glasses over the course of a campaign would be a higher environmental impact then a few sheets of paper, but when you count in all of the things like manufacturing the batteries and such it's not even close.

I was disparaging electric cars the other day, until I realized that some electricity does actually come from renewable sources. If only all of it did.

But if manufacturing and batteries (needed to create reusable writing devices) are worse for the environment than the paper industry, that suggests we somehow improve the environment by cutting down even more trees (and reducing manufacturing). Or is there a different conclusion I should draw?

 

[Blue]

I was disparaging electric cars the other day, until I realized that some electricity does actually come from renewable sources. If only all of it did.

To go off on a tangent, electric cars are interesting.

Gasoline is a use-one substance. Solar, wind, geothermal, and some other types of electrical generation are a harvest -- when the sun is out, when the wind is blowing, etc. A drum of gasoline is usable for a set total distance. An array of solar panels costing the same is unlimited over time. With the recent advancement in photovoltaics and in chemical batteries (the big ones that the 100s-1000s+ of acres solar farms use), for much of the US based on latitude, it is the cheapest form of energy in terms of operating expenses (OEX).

Batteries are crazy to make, agreed. However, they are also really easy to recover the materials from. There isn't yet a large scale EV battery recycling because there isn't the traffic for it yet. With the exception of the early Dodge Leaf (which had a poorly designed battery with no thermal protection, etc.), most EVs are still using their original battery packs. What we have are a tiny percentage replacements, more commercial use than personal, and vehicles that have been totaled.

However, as there are more EVs, there will become a profitable market for battery recycling. And battery use doesn't destroy any of the materials, it just forms molecular structures in it over time that impacts the ability to recharge. We already, with today's tech, can recycle 98%+ of the rare material from those batteries to make new batteries. We know how to take ore/old batteries and extract usable material from it. So what we have now is growing pains, not a permanent issue.

Oh, I mentioned solar and some people don't like that it "takes up space". Right now in the US there is a mandate for 10% ethanol in gasoline. We make it from corn because of, well, politics. Things like sugar beats (or specific algae IIRC) would be much better sources. But turning land that is currently making corn to feed into cars (which is also a nasty process to convert to ethanol) and instead making it solar farms in the same places that previously grew corn-for-ethanol like Iowa and Illinois (which are not the best places for solar via latitude, but are still decent) will result in orders of magnitudes more miles per year available than the miles-of-driving the corn ethanol was providing. So just converting existing space already used to move vehicles can provide so much more.

Yeah, this undermines my point about the impact of building meta glasses for your character sheet, but the power infrastructure technology has been making rapid strides in both generation and storage of electricity, and that makes electric cars really interesting. Renewable power is a big political point in some countries, but because we have simply come to the point that it will generate larger profits than other energy generation will mean that it will come.

 

[Charlaquin]

I was disparaging electric cars the other day, until I realized that some electricity does actually come from renewable sources. If only all of it did.

But if manufacturing and batteries (needed to create reusable writing devices) are worse for the environment than the paper industry, that suggests we somehow improve the environment by cutting down even more trees (and reducing manufacturing). Or is there a different conclusion I should draw?

Again, all production and all consumption has environmental impact. Period. Anything not made from animal or plant matter is made from minerals mined out of the ground. And animals and plants reproduce, by definition, while minerals are finite resources. Granted, the scale at which we use animal and plant based resources isn’t sustainable either, but you can’t abstain from all consumption and survive for very long. It therefore behooves the environmentally-conscious individual to try to understand the relative impacts of the products they do consume, and to try to make the most responsible decisions they can from the options available. And, yeah, paper is significantly less environmentally harmful than freaking smart glass.