What I've Been Reading, June 2021

Links

• Bypass paywalls on popular online publications for free, by 7 Labs.
  There is a lot of important information out there that is behind paywalls, many requiring expensive subscription to overcome.

Above the Fold

• Our Civilization is Dying Because It’s Addicted to Fossil Fuels, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  "Why We Need to Treat Clean Energy as Our Moonshot, Or Everything Collapses"
  Umair is right that our civilization is dying because it's addicted to fossil fuels. But he's wrong about finding a clean alternative. Even if we could, it would create as many problems as it solved.
• No, We Can’t Just Leave Assholes Alone Anymore, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
  “Left unchallenged, assholes took over America—along with most of the world. Now this class of assholes dominates our politics. They steer our economies. They run our media. They dole out promotions to other assholes, and punish anyone for trying to do the right thing. They tell us what to do and how to think. Now they’re even trying to tell us how to vote, and how to love.”
• The Myth — and Liability — of America’s Obsession with Rugged Individualism, by Scott Galloway, Medium—Marker
  “The Ayn Rand image of the solo entrepreneur — Hank Rearden toiling alone in his laboratory to invent a new kind of steel — is a pernicious deception.”
  Many of my fellow Canadians will feel smug that we suffer much less from toxic individualism than the USA, but being better than the USA is a pretty minor achievement.
• If You Think Socialism’s Unaffordable, You Don’t Understand Capitalism, by UmairHaque, Medium-Eudaimonia
  “How Hidden Hyperinflation Left Americans Broke, and What to do About It”
• We Can’t Afford for Everyone to Have Their Own Opinion Anymore, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
  “It’s getting us killed.”
• Why the American Right is Having a Meltdown About Race, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  “How White Rage Happens, And Why It Still Defines American Life”
• Lies and honest mistakes, by Richard V Reeves, Aeon—Psyche
  "Our crisis of public knowledge is an ethical crisis. Rewarding ‘truthfulness’ above ‘truth’ is a step towards a solution"
  "Working against this constitution are the forces of what Rauch labels ‘troll epistemology’. Trolls seek not the truth, but the destruction of an enemy, ideological or personal. Trolls not only fail to display the virtues of sincerity and accuracy, they work in precisely the opposite direction, deliberately offering up distorted visions of reality, based on cherry picked information."

Miscellaneous

• Why it took us thousands of years to see the colour violet, by Allen Tager, Aeon—Psyche
• Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare, by Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
  “How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years.”
• A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Is Brewing in the Northeast, by Oscar Schwartz, Medium—One Zero
  “EEE kills almost half of its victims, and cases are on the rise”
  Fortunately, there are only a few cases.
• Unraveling the Secret Origins of an AmazonBasics Battery, by Sarah Emerson, Medium—One Zero
  “One of Amazon’s smallest and most popular products has a surprisingly large footprint”
• Things My (Danish) Husband Still Doesn’t Get About America, by Anastasia Frugaard, Medium—P.S. I Love You
  “Two polar-opposite people from two polar-opposite countries”
• What Quitters Understand About the Job Market, by Derek Thompson, Medium—The Atlantic
  “More Americans are telling their boss to shove it. Is the workplace undergoing a revolution — or just a post-pandemic spasm?” YOLO=You Only Live Once
• Inside the Revolutionary Treatment That Could Change Psychotherapy Forever, by Ben Blum, Medium—Elemental
  “IFS therapy is upending the thinking around schizophrenia, depression, OCD, and more”
  IFS=internal family systems therapy
• 5 Looming Environmental Crises That Rival Climate Change, by Dustin T. Cox, Medium—Climate Conscious
  "Humans are transgressing planetary boundaries on several fronts"
  "Even if carbon sequestration and other technologies catch up to climate change, we must still learn to live on far less if we hope to survive the coming environmental crises."
• I’m an Environmental Scientist, and I Don’t Care If You Recycle, by Ono Mergen,
  "Here is what you can do instead"

Coronavirus

• The Last–And Only–Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out, by Michelle Cortez, Medium—Bloomberg
  “Virologist Danielle Anderson paints a very different picture of the Wuhan Institute”
• What Parents With Unvaccinated Kids Need to Know About the Delta Variant This Summer, by Alina Dizik, The Wall Street Journal
  "Is summer travel OK? How vulnerable are younger kids? Doctors answer your questions."

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• Are Mexico’s Zapatista rebels still relevant? by Duncan Tucker, Aljazeera
  “Twenty years after the uprising, activists say Zapatistas have influenced radical movements around the world.”
• The Zapatista Revolution Is Not Over, by Kurt Hackbarth and Colin Mooers, The Nation
  “1994 saw one of the most significant indigenous rebellions of the 20th century. Today, their political experiment continues.”
• How Capitalism Taught Americans Exploitation Was Good For Them, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimnia
  

The New Fascism, the Far-Right and Antifa

I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades (maybe just a few years) from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

• What “White Privilege” Really Means is We Live in a Fascist World, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  “How We Live in a Fascist World — and White People Have No Idea”

Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

The change in title stems from the fact that it's not just oil that is peaking.

• Peak Phosphorus May Be More Alarming Than Climate Change, by Dustin T. Cox, Medium—Climate Conscious
  “Phosphorus is essential to life and the world is running out of it”

Climate Change, or rather, actually, Global Warming

• This is Why We Should Stop Calling it Climate Change, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  “The Words 'Climate Change' May End Up Being The Biggest Lie Ever Told”
• This Is What the Earth’s Climate Will Look Like in 2050, by Julia Slingo, Medium—One Zerp
  “The future under climate change can seem frighteningly vague and variable. A top climatologist explains what to expect in 2050.”
• Debunking 25 arguments against climate change in 5 sentences or less (each), by Fallacy Man, The Logic of Science
  "Climate change is arguably one of the most misunderstood and controversial topics among the general public. Misinformation abounds, and many people are left debating whether or not we are causing it, and even whether or not it is happening at all. Among scientists, however, there is no serious debate, and there hasn’t been for many years. The evidence for climate change is extremely solid, despite what many blogs and politicians will tell you. Therefore, I want to try to correct some of that misinformation. Yesterday, I posted an extremely lengthy article debunking 25 myths and bad arguments about climate change. Today, I am posting the same information, but in a much more condensed form. I have attempted to address each argument in under 5 sentences. Obviously I had to leave out a lot of information, so if you want the more detailed explanations, please see the original post (each short response is accompanied by a link for the full-length explanation)."

Gardening

• the deep roots of the vegetable that ‘took over the world’, by Gemma Tarlach, Atlas Obscura
  “A study digs up the origin of the single species that gives us turnips, bok choy, broccoli rabe, and more.”

Genetic Engineering

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

• Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
  "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
  A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
• Soil proprietor: Do GMOs promote dirt conservation? by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  " Genetically engineered crops are supposed to make it easier for farmers to protect the earth by plowing less. But the record is spotty."

Practical Skills

• How to Free Up Space in Gmail, by Boone Ashworth and Lorne Goode, Wired
  “Google offers 15 GB of free storage with every account, but many users are hitting the limit. Use these tips to clear some room, and tidy your inbox while you're at it.”
  I've had a gmail account since shortly after gmail cameout, but I only recently switched to using gmail for all my email. Lots to learn.

American Politics

• Republicans Have Dug Their Grave, Biden Can Bury Them, by ED Mathews, Medium
  “3 things Biden can do to ensure progressive wins for years to come”
• Is Trump Crazy Or Just Stupid? by Caren White, Medium—Politics
  “His statements the past few days make very little sense”
• The Democratic Establishment is Panicking About Nina Turner, by Lauren Elizabeth, Medium—Politics: Fast and Slow
  “And it could be too little too late.”

Dancing on Graves

• How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered, by George Packer, The Atlantic
  “America’s worst secretary of defense never expressed a quiver of regret.”

Debunking Resources

These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

• Debunking, Wikipedia
• Pseudoscience, Wikipedia
• List of topics characterized as pseudoscience, Wikipedia
• Rational Wiki
• Science Based Medecine
• Quackwatch
• Snopes, debunks or validates urban legends
• Bad Astronomy
• The Skeptics Society
• The 8 Best Fact-Checking Sites for Finding Unbiased Truth, by Megan Ellis, MUO—Make Use Of
• Pain Science, by Paul Ingraham
• Techniques of Science Denial

Gender and Sexuality

• Nigella Lawson mobbed by transphobes, by Gemma Stone, Medium

There is No God, and Thou Shall Have No Other Gods

I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist, but I may not have made it clear that I think any sort of worship is a bad thing and that believing in things is to be avoided whenever possible. Indeed, I do not believe in belief itself. That's what the "Thou shall have no other gods" is about—it's not enough to quit believing in whatever God or Gods you were raised to believe in, but also we must avoid other gods, including material wealth, power and fame.

Further, many people today (including most atheists) follow the religion of "progress", which is based on the belief that mankind is destined to follow a road that leads from the caves ever upward to the stars, and that however bad things seem today, they are bound to be better tomorrow due to technological advancement and economic growth. This is very convenient for those who benefit most from economic growth, but it is hardly based on any sort of science and leads to a great deal of confused thinking.

• Scientists: There Is No Life After Death, by Clem Samson, Medium—The Haven
  Yes, I know this is supposed to be humour. As it happens I seriously agree with pretty much all of it.

Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Affordable Housing

• The Rent’s Too Damned High, by Cory Doctorow, Medium—Gen
  “A human right, commodified and rendered zero-sum.”
• Here’s Why You’re Broke, According to Wealthy Americans Who Skim My Articles, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
  “The view from the top is judgmental.”
  “These people are straight up bullies, and what they need more than anything is a hard punch in their pocket books. They need to be reminded that all their 'hard won success' was supported by an infrastructure that no longer exists for the vast majority of Americans.”

Humour

These are great times for political satire.

• Oh, That’s Why The Police Opened the Gates and Let the Trump Rioters in the Capitol! by Simon Black, Medium
  “The Purge was going to begin in two minutes!”
  I've chosen to classify this as humour. I could be wrong.
• The Letter From Donald Trump to Joe Biden Left in the Oval Office, by Jay Sizemore, Medium—Satire

Books

Fiction

• The Dreaming Stars: Book II of the Axiom, by Tim Pratt
• The Forbidden Stars: Book III of the Axiom, by Tim Pratt
• One Day All This Will Be Yours, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Expert System's Champion, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Non-Fiction

• What Makes Civilization, by David Wengrow
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
  Not so good. As one of the Amazon reviewers said: "Fast food for the mind."