What I've Been Reading, May 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.

• America's Disgusting, Boundless Hatred for Poor People, by Brittney Cooper, Alternet
  We're now legislating away poor people's right to be happy.
• People think juice is good for them. They’re wrong, by Heather Ferris, Elvira Isganaitis and Florence Brown, Washington Post
  Step away from the juice bar.
• More Rigs Don't Mean More U.S. Gas, by Christine Buurma and Naureen Malik, Bloomberg
  Gas rigs have doubled since August; output falls 1.2%
  Average Marcellus well produces 51% of what it did a year ago
• You're not going to believe what I am about to tell you, by The Oatmeal.
  "It's OK to stop, to listen, to change."
• Climate Change: The Forgotten People and the Displacement of Nations , by Aine Clarke, Warwick Globalist
  The multifarious struggles that nations, rich and poor, face against the impacts of a changing climate.
• What Will Kill Neoliberalism? A roundtable on its fate.
  By Joelle Gamble, Paul Mason, Bryce Covert, William Darity Jr. and Peter Barnes.
  A good read, but these leftists need to face up to the realities of biophysical economics, surplus energy and resource depletion. In other words, scarcity.
  And by the way, don't work too hard.
• Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry, by Scott Locklin, Locklin on science
• Book Review | When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen, at Filmers to Farmers
  A good review of Alice J. Friedman's When The Trucks Stop Running
• Think Resilience: Chapter 5 - Pollution, by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• Life-and-death thought experiments are correctly unsolvable, by Julian Baggini, Aeon
• When will Chernobyl be habitable again? From Quora.
  There are particularly good answers from Marcelo Pacheco and Virgil Fenn. Only one answer that misses the point and is largely motivated by fear of radiation, by "Anonymus".
• How to disagree with people online, by Johanna Drott, of Remix IT to the Streets.
  A handy guide that will keep you arguing for hours.But at least with some degree of civility.
• What know-it-alls don’t know, or the illusion of competence, by Kate Fehlhaber, Aeon, on the Dunning Kruger Effect.
• Decoupling wealth creation, energy consumption and CO2 emissions, by Roger Andrews, Energy Matter
  As we usually find when we look into it, we find that decoupling isn't happening.
• Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts, by Damian Carrington, The Guardian.
  No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change
• Say a Prayer for the Homeless: Trump’s People Will Not, by John Stanton, Dissident Voice
• What if People Owned the Banks, Instead of Wall Street? By Jimmy Tobias, The Nation.
  From Seattle to Santa Fe, cities are at the center of a movement to create publicly owned banks.
• Worrywarts Rejoice: Psychologists have great news for people who worry a lot
  by Jordan Rosenfeld, Quartz
• Peak Shale? Monstrous Declines May Kill US Energy Independence, by Dr. Heinrich Leopold, MarketSlant
  Shale Oil & Gas Production Costs Spiral Higher As Monstrous Decline Rates Eat Into Cash Flows
• My Family’s Slave, by Alex Tizon, The Atlantic
  She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.
• Over The Last 10 Years The U.S. Economy Has Grown At EXACTLY The Same Rate As It Did During The 1930s, by Michael Snyder, the Economic Collapse Blog
  The numbers are interesting, but I certainly don't agree with this guy's conclusions—the US needs higher taxes and a government that isn't starved for funds. Their military budget certainly could do with some reduction though.
• How to culture jam a populist in four easy steps, by Andrés Miguel Rondón, Open Democracy
  All very well, but the real, underlying problem in Venezuela is the low price of oil and no amount of politics will fix that.
• Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy, by Matt Ridley, The Spectator.
  We urgently need to stop the ecological posturing and invest in gas and nuclear.
  He's right about wind turbines, but I can't agree with the author's conclusion about gas and nuclear—what we need to invest in is conservation and a controlled, deliberate energy decline.
• Think Resilience: Chapter 6 - Political & Economic Management, by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• The Coming Seneca Cliff of the Automotive Industry: the Converging Effect of Disruptive Technologies and Social Factors, by Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's Legacy

Books

Fiction

• Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
  Great read, saturated with original ideas. But totally oblivious to the role of surplus energy in enabling civilization.
• Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon
  Another pirate/privateer/military story with a strong female protagonist. I wonder what Freud would say....
• Forty Words for Sorrow, by Giles Blunt
  A murder mystery, for a change. This one sited here in Ontario. I have a weakness for mysteries in unique locales: Walt Longmire in Wyoming, Jommy Perez in the Shetland Islands, Sonchai Jitpleecheep in Bangkok.
• Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow
  Another book full of ideas, some of which I had thought I'd originated, but here Doctorow is doing innovative things with them while I'm still in the starting blocks.

Non-Fiction

• Communism for Kids, by Bini Adamczak
  A strange little book which caused a bit of a stir when MIT Press published a translation from the original German.
• A Field Guide To Lies : Critical Thinking in the Information Age , by Daniel Levitin
  I can highly recommend this one.

And a few from my bookshelf that I have read over the last few years:

• The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload , by Daniel Levitin
  Another book by Levitin, also highly recommended.
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow
• Food Security for the Faint of Heart, by Robin Wheeler
  Keeping your larder full in lean times.
• Willow Basketry: A How-To Guide, by Jonathan Ridgeon
  There are quite a few willows growing along the lakeshore and river here in Kincardine. This spring and last spring I harvested a large armful and started teaching myself to make wicker baskets. This book was a big help.