Happy Autumn Equinox Bluesky!

The reason we have a dystopic digital society is purely quantitative: for every clear-eyed inventor genious like Tim Berners-Lee there are ten amoral tweakers like Zuckerberg and captured politicos like Nick Clegg. How can we ever change this ratio? observer.co.uk/culture/book...

The US and Europe have been compared to Mars and Venus but is more like a parent / child relation. Adult Europe committed suicide in WW II and has retreated into a happy childhood ever since, outsourcing the difficult and ugly stuff. But now the parent has gone mad, the child is dazed and confused.

It is no exaggeration to say that this will be the most consequential battle shaping digital society in Europe Yet, as has been said, ultimately you can only fight an entrenched bad paradigm with a new paradigm that is better Alas, a real alternative to US surveillance capitalism not yet in sight.

There is some really rotten with that fridge and its not the food inside.... www.theverge.com/news/780757/...

An erratic water cycle brings new drought, wildfire and flood patterns which also means an erratic food supply. For how much longer can we continue undermining the collective well-being of present and future generations?

We've received overwhelming demand for our webinar on #packaging #standards We've now made more spaces available - register today! Join experts from @ecos.ngo, @foodpackagingforum.org, The Global Alliance to Advance Reuse (PR3), and New Reuse Alliance ecostandard.org/news_events/... #PPWR #reuse

Apply for our 12-week hands-on WhatWorksCities sprint, hosted w @Results4America by 29 Sep! This will help city teams implement open contracting strategies – using better data & vendor engagement to drive measurable improvements in #publicprocurement. 👉 https://bit.ly/OCP-WWC-US2025

"the planet doesn’t care which country leads the charge toward sustainability as long as someone does"

remarkably, after a decade of #activitypub / #fediverse and several years of #atproto / #bluesky protocols, LinkedIn is the only major social media platform type that doesn't face *any* competition from a decentralized, #opensource platform. Not even a token effort. Interesting, no?

🌐 Geopolitical shifts and their economic impacts on Europe With the post-war international order rapidly decaying around it, the challenges facing Europe set to intensify. How should it respond? 🖊️ André Sapir, @jfkirkegaard.bsky.social & @jzettelmeyer.bsky.social 🔗 buff.ly/IxYuSWs #EconSky

Follow @opensustaintech.bsky.social for the most comprehensive directory of the #opensource ecosystem in the areas of #climatechange, sustainable energy, #biodiversity and natural resources. People are building amazing stuff out there, spread the 💚 word!

Een waterkrachtcentrale in Congo was bedoeld om groene stroom te brengen naar lokale gemeenschappen. Bij gebrek aan afnemers is een Franse cryptocowboy ingeschakeld, en voedt de centrale nu zijn bitcoinmijn. En Brussel ziet het als een succesverhaal.

Day two of the tenth annual research conference is now underway. Today’s programme includes a policy panel on “The Next Financial Crisis?” chaired by Executive Board member Isabel_Schnabel. Watch live link.europa.eu/RVgVFw @isabelschnabel.bsky.social

Are you passionate about creating a more sustainable future #ForPeopleForPlanet? UNEP is seeking qualified professionals in a wide range of fields to join the team. Avoid falling victim to fraudulent job openings and only access our vacancies via: unep.org/work-with-us

Some nations take #riskmanagement seriously ✔️

What can Inka Quipus teach us about data management A blog post about the ingenious methods used by the ancient Inca culture to encode information and what insights we might draw from them today for #datascience www.openriskmanagement.com/what-inka-qu...

🧵Data centers: the hidden backbone of our digital economy. As AI drives unprecedented growth, we're facing a sustainability crisis that threatens our climate goals. New report with @ecos.ngo reveals important challenges.

🚨 The EPA just gave polluters a free pass. For the first time in 15 years, the agency will stop collecting and publishing greenhouse gas emissions from factories, refineries, and other major polluters 🏭 Transparency matters. Accountability matters. Our health and climate depend on it.

the rise of open source software (including the platform we are using here) is imho the main thing that has gotten better in the past decade. Because its not a "thing", its a catalyst of many things, starting with how we communicate, which is the foundation of society...

one of the most remarkable gaps in education is the near universal lack of #financialliteracy around how monetary systems work, when contrasted with the (also near universal) obsession with money and the total reduction of society into monetarily intermediated relationships...

destroying society as an entropy increase event, like a cup smashing on the ground into pieces: fast and (in the short term) irreversible. building society as a decrease the entropy process, slowly forging links and structure out of the randomness of human behavior.

The 2025 Strategic Foresight Report shows the way to future-proof the EU in turbulent and uncertain times: 🌍 Build a coherent global vision 🛡️ Amplify security ⚖️Intergenerational fairness …and more. 📖 Read the report ➡ europa.eu/!bTrfJc

Interested in bottlenecks? Want to know more about the politics of our economy's circulatory system? Does it make intuitive sense that climate change is bound up with logistics? If you answer any of these questions w "yes," then you must read this book by the brilliant @susanzieger.bsky.social 👀

We didn't know that the Earth's ozone layer was a planetary boundary until chlorofluorocarbon chemistry deployed at scale made it so. This pattern repeats again and again as both technology and our footprint increases. Beyond piecemeal #sustainability solutions it calls for learning metapatterns.

The success of the Montreal Protocol versus the quagmire of the Kyoto Protocol is maybe the most important empirical datapoint about how the different #sustainability challenges will be met in the antrhopocene.

The "timeline" interface on #bluesky and/or #mastodon is not particularly useful if you follow many infrequently posting accounts. A simple way to (partially) solve this is to convert your follow lists into #opml and then import into your favorite #rss reader. github.com/open-risk/at...

On Sunday 14 September, @[email protected] Waag Futurelab and Modern Money Lab will host an extensive programme on the possibilities of public investment. (Amsterdam, NL). Workshop theme: public investment for public good (Good Money) #sustainablefinance #sustainability waag.org/en/event/goo...

"Europe should focus on cutting firms' reporting obligations rather than pursuing ends that are unrelated to the economic success of companies" Is the US turning into a giant stranded asset that the world will have to write off at some point? #sustainability www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

The US SEC chief has lost the plot and is threatening extra-territorial ban on European accounting rules over sustainability, time for the @ec.europa.eu to prepare countermeasures. www.ft.com/content/e4fb...

One in four people globally lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation, highlighting a critical worldwide resource crisis. #WaterCrisis #GlobalHealth #Sanitation

Less than a week before our free webinar Solid World September 2025! Join us for presentations on personal data vaults, and digital wallets that empower people experiencing homelessness to securely store and share vital records. Book now: buff.ly/bd5ljSV

There is no intrinsic reason why the #sustainabilitytransition should be happening alongside the #digitaltransition But there is no doubt that the two will interplay dramatically, as the digital architecture of societies increasigly influences their "physical" footprint. #sustainablefinance

📢 #SO & #GHGprotocol have announced a landmark partnership to align greenhouse gas standards and jointly develop a new product lifecycle assessment standard. This sets the stage for harmonized reporting and faster climate action. Learn more: bit.ly/4nlbtIs

Stock market concentration has reached what looks like a permanently high plateau 🤣

60-70% of EU soils are unhealthy - but EU first Soil Monitoring Law is coming! Join us to discuss its impact on policy, research & practice – and the role Soil Mission Living Labs can play in its implementation Register soill2030.eu/events/europ... Why is it important to talk about soil health?🧵👇🏽

In the Netherlands, communities are rewriting the story of how we source our food—choosing connection over convenience. Creating their own biological food co-ops, they’re bypassing supermarkets and going directly to the farms. This builds a system that prioritizes sustainability and community. 🍅🥕🌽🥬🍏

"Today’s world is primed for massive change. Its tightly linked economic, geopolitical, technological and environmental systems are under staggering stress and potentially close to tipping points" It will take extarordinary intelligence and empathy to avoid the worst. Traits increasingly scarce 😟

The @ecb.europa.eu will introduce a new “climate factor” into its system of guarantees... And this could be a major setback for fossil fuel companies. Find out how in our latest article ⤵️

ISO and the GHG Protocol will merge their emissions accounting standards, they announced today. “We’ll be watching to make sure that harmonisation doesn’t mean weaker rules,” said Mathilde Crêpy of ECOS, in the @wsj.com More here 👇 www.wsj.com/articles/iso...

Despite 140+ countries having committed to end deforestation by 2030, the world has not made progress yet, and if anything rates of forest loss are increasing. gfr.wri.org/latest-analy....

High versus low trust societies is an interesting paradigm that captures something very generic about how societies function. Fascinating to think of mechanisms that turn a high trust society into a low trust one and how this could be avoided in the digital age en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-tr...

The EU’s plan to “simplify” environmental laws means weakening vital protections for air, water, biodiversity, and climate. Have your say in the consultation by Sept 10. Every voice counts - act now! www.rainforest-rescue.org/updates/1418...

Its been a decade and I feel fine 🖖

If you are developing or using #opensource tools supporting #sustainablefinance please contribute to the list (on GitHub) or simply mention it here! 💚 #econsky #climatefinance github.com/open-risk/aw...

This is not the only way for this tech to be developed and used. But if we keep going down this path, AI will never gain a social license, and so many potential benefits of the tech will be lost.

US and EU Agree on Trade Framework Agreement – Implications for ESG/CSR Compliance corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/09/07/u... "the Framework Agreement is likely to be used as an additional justification by the pro-simplification camp within the EU for trimming ESG/CSR-related compliance requirements."

💡 Investing in nature isn’t just good for the planet, it’s smart business. Yet companies contribute just 18% of nature-positive finance. Our new research shows how businesses can move from planning to action — without big budgets or teams. Learn more: bit.ly/45yiNLj

Court rules that Google illegally surveils and sells user data even when privacy settings have been activated. apnews.com/article/goog...