What I've Been Reading, April 2017

Lake Huron Shore, April 30, 2017

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• Out of the ashes, by Lewis Dartnell, Aeon
  It took a lot of fossil fuels to forge our industrial world. Now they're almost gone. Could we do it again without them?
• Two Charts Why The Middle East’s Largest Oil Producer Is In Serious Trouble, by Steve St. Angelo, SRSrocco Report
• Termite clay kiln and pottery, from Primitive Technology
  How to build a full pottery workshop from the earth up.
• African Neolithic Populations Helped Create Sahara Desert, Research Suggests, from Sci News
• A fault in our design, Colin Dickey, Aeon
  We tend to think that technological progress is making us more resilient, but it might be making us more vulnerable.
• Think Resilience: Chapter 1 - Introduction, Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
  First of a set of 22 videos.
• Think Resilience: Chapter 2 — Energy , Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• Think Resilience: Chapter 3 - Population & Consumption, Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• Think Resilience: Chapter 4 - Depletion, Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• This map shows the US really has 11 separate 'nations' with entirely different cultures, by Matthew Speiser, Business Insider
• Vilas Capital: Tesla Is Going Bankrupt And Is Still A Great Short, from Vilas Capital
  Hard times ahead for the subsidy dumpster.
• Money Doesn't Grow on Trees, Industrial-Scale Renewable Energy Does, by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen, From Filmers to Farmers.
  None of this is to say though that "renewable" energies are all for naught, just that their large-scale application isn't going to work any better than "dirty" energies will at maintaining industrial civilization in light of the onset of peak oil and plummeting EROEI levels.
• How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind, by Tristan Harris, Thrive Global.
    From a Magician and Google Design Ethicist.
• Book Review — Failing States, Collapsing Systems: Biophysical Triggers of Political Violence, by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen, From Filmers to Farmers.
• The New World Order: Failing States and Collapsing Systems, by Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee.
  Our global dramas are now driven by the end of cheap energy, journalist Nafeez Ahmed argues.
• Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau. The man is a disaster for the planet., by Bill McKibben, The Guardian.
• What DNA Ancestry Testing Can (and Can’t) Tell You, by Zenobia Jeffries, Yes! Magazine
• The "True" Human Diet, by Peter Ungar, Scientific American.
  From the standpoint of paleoecology, the so-called Paleo diet is a myth.
• Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explains how emotions are made, by Angela Chen, The Verge.
  We don’t all make the same expressions when we’re sad.
• Scientists and their supporters march in favor of actual facts in D.C., by Megan Farokhmanesh, The Verge.
• Are Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden really doing as well as claimed by Bernie Sanders?, from Quora
• A Brazilian Thriller That Exposes the Sinister Side of Meritocracy, By Jiayang Fan, the New Yorker
• President Trump’s climate inaction sells the future short, Keith Kozloff, Resilience.org
• Scientists Are Marching Because Things Are Not Normal, by Zoë Carpenter, The Nation.
  The Trump administration threatens the integrity of scientific research and the citizens who depend on it.
• 12 Steps Plan for a Better Tomorrow on Planet Earth, by RE at The Doomstead Diner
• If Mortgage Rates Tick Up Even a Little, What’ll Happen to Canada’s House Price Bubble?, by Wolf Ritcher, Wolf Street.
  The question now being asked, years too late: How will this end?
• Why stories matter, by Paul Tritschler, Open Democracy
  Stories cultivate the frequently forgotten yet uniquely human traits that build solidarity.
• Country With The World's Largest Oil Reserves Runs Out Of Gasoline, Zero Hedge
• Sorry, Y’All—Humanity’s Nearing an Upgrade to Irrelevance, by Levon Biss, Wired Magazine
  More talk about a singularity, just the kind of drivel I expect from Wired.
• A World in Revolution: The Inevitable Backlash against Global Elites, by Jack Goldstone, George Mason University
• Grains piled on runways, parking lots, fields amid global glut , by P.J. Huffstutter and Karl Plume, Reuters
• Canadian Immigration Firm Sees a Boom in the Trump Era, by Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker
• Two fallacies that explain A LOT about energy discussions by J. M. Korhonen
• Did Humans Arrive in America a Hundred Thousand Years Earlier Than We Thought?, by Alan Burdick, The New Yorker
• Reddit/collapse AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Dmitry Orlov

Books

Fiction

• Revengers , by Allastair Reynolds
• Glittering World, by Robert Levy
  Not my usual thing, but a good enough read.
• A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers

Non-Fiction

• Shrinking the Technosphere, Dmitry Orlov
  Orlov once again proves himself to be the old Russian guy who wants women put back in their place and LGBT folks to just go away. Also rabid pandering to chrunchy fears: biotech, radiation, pesticides and "contamination" in general. But if you can ignore all that, he still makes some good points.
• We Want to Know, by Ryugo Hayano and Shigesato Itoi
  A conversation about radiation and its effects in the aftermath of Japan’s worst nuclear accident.
  Voices of fact based sanity on a subject that has seen little by panic and nonsense.
• Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, by Dmitry Orlov.
  One of Orlov's real classics, just to give him a chance to redeem himself.
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond
• The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, by Jared Diamond