Saturday 5 February 2022

What I've Been Reading, December 2021

Links

Above the Fold

  • Solidarity Networks, by Gods & Radicals
  • Seattle Solidarity Network
    • "Seattle Solidarity (“SeaSol”) is a volunteer network of working people who believe in standing up for our rights. Our goal is to support our fellow workers’ strikes and struggles, build solidarity, and organize to deal with specific job, housing, and other problems caused by the greed of the rich and powerful. Join us! Let’s fight to win."
  • Microsolidarity, by Richard D. Bartlett, Microsolidarity
    "In late 2018, Richard D. Bartlett published a proposal to start a "microsolidarity" group — a small mutual aid community for people to do a kind of personal development, in good company, for social benefit."
  • Courage Before Hope: A Proposal to Weave Emotional and Economic Microsolidarity
  • Microsolidarity: Update 2020
    "How To Weave Social Fabric-- 3 Essential Pillars For a New Mutual Aid Community"

Miscellaneous

Reactions to "The Dawn of Everything"

  • Everything we “know” about the rise of Man is wrong, by David Wineberg, Medium--The Straight Dope
    "For 350 years, it has been common knowledge that Man went from bands of hunter-gatherers, to pastoralists, to farming, to industry. In parallel, Man lived in families, in tribes, in villages and then in cities, as technology improved. Technology, the third parallel, took us from the stone age through the bronze age and the iron age to the industrial revolution. All neat, tidy and clearly separable. David Graeber and David Wengrow claim there is no evidence for this. In The Dawn of Everything, they show proof of an unbelievable variety of living styles, governance and intellectual activity all over the world and throughout time. It was never a straight line progression. It was never the result of technology. And possibly most stunning, the larger the population was did not also mean more restrictions, more crime, more laws, or more inequality. This is an important book."
  • All things being equal, by Nancy Lindisfarne Jonathan Neale, Ecologist
    Based on it's harsh criticism of the antropological establishment it was inevitable that someone would write a negative review of The Dawn of Everything. This review reads like the authors only read parts of the book and didn't understand most of those. The only point I agree with is that Graeber and Wengrow are largely blind to the ecological and resource limits faced by human societies on this planet.

The Other News

News that is being ignored by North American mass media

Coronavirus

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

Food

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 sustainable.

  • 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.
  • Rat retraction reaction: Journal pulls its GMOs-cause-rat-tumors study, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Retractions are typically the result of big goofs and frauds -- but in this case, the problem was inordinate attention paid to inconclusive results."

Practical Skills

Debunking Resources

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

Pseudoscience, Quacks and Charlatans

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.

  • Surprises within latest data on decline of US Religion, by David Gamble, Medium-- Science and Critical Thinking
    " On 14th December 2021, Pew issued their latest update on the religious landscape in the US. For the non-religious, it appears to be very good news. The decline of religion in the US continues unabated."

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

  • Let There Be Money, Joe Manchin, by Sharon Woodhouse, Medium
    "Bathtubs, Modern Monetary Theory, and UBI"
    Not sure how valid Modern Monetary theory is--I'd rather do away with money altogether.

Books

Fiction

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