Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Ramsey Nasser

i always say a trip to lebanon is a trip to the future.

my village gets basically zero power from the central government so people increasingly rely on solar energy. so many conversations here now center on battery capacity and the power draw of various appliances and machines. this kind of consciousness is entirely the result of the collapse of the central power grid. i expect the world to follow suit, waking up reactively instead of proactively, and probably too late...

8 comments
glyph

@nasser

i can relate; i say the same thing about living in south africa.

Bruno Girin

@nasser the Ukrainian devs in my team do the same thing to deal with blackouts.

Job

@nasser I live in Sweden these days, where electricity generation is already mostly hydro, nuclear, and wind (in that order), with enough surplus for now to export it. On the one hand reassuring, on the other I legitimately worry about them reaching Norwegian levels of smugness about it, as well as getting complacent.

DELETED

@nasser I was in Lebanon in 2018 and returned in 2022, and my gosh, it was a shock to the senses. I have thought about it every day.

For anyone who's interested in a glimpse, this diary captures it quite well:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/ch

Ramsey Nasser

@minorhistory yeah the collapse is very real, and 2018-2020 straddles the most critical changes... my parents say it's worse than the civil war in a lot of ways. it's something I've dreaded my whole life and it's agonizing to sit with it.

Go Up