What I've Been Reading, January 2019

Links

Miscellaneous

• The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome, by Adam Entous and Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker
  Unexplained brain injuries afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies. What happened?
• We Two Made One, by Hilton Als, The New Yorker
  "Why did identical twin sisters decide to speak only to each other in a way no one else could understand?"
• How a 6-Year-Old Survived Being Lost in the Woods, by Emma Marris, Outside
  Or maybe this one should have gone under "practical skills", in this case "perseverance".
• Caught in the Act — Astronomers Get Their Best Look Yet at a Supernova Blowing Up, by Shannon Hall, Medium—Scientific American
• Meet Farout, the New Most Distant Member of Our Solar System, by Neel V. Patel, Medium—Popular Science
• Primate Vocalizations Are Much More Than Gibberish, by Jay Schwartz, Medium—Sapiens
  "Nonhuman primates clearly do more than just screech meaningless sounds at each other, but what are the limits of their communication?"
• What We’ve Learned About Ultima Thule From NASA’s New Horizons Mission, by Kenneth Chang, The New York Times
• The unacknowledged fictions of Yuval Harari, by Jeremy Lent, Open Democracy—Transformations
  I have a little trouble with Lent's first point— I mean, clearly, nature is a machine. But just not the kind of machine many people think it is. The conclusion he reaches, I certainly agree with: "Recognizing that natural processes, from the human mind to the entire global ecosystem, are complex, nonlinear, and inherently unpredictable, is a necessary first step in crafting truly systemic solutions to the existential crises facing our civilization."
  The rest of his points I can take pretty much straight up, and it all makes me wonder if I should bother reading the copy of Harari's book that I got recently.
• An Exploding Space Cow Could Be Linked to a Newborn Black Hole, by Neel V. Patel, Medium—Popular Science
  The first time we’ve caught a baby black hole in action

Collapse

Note the various ways the authors look at overshoot and dieoff, ranging from choosing not to mention it at all, to focusing too much on it.

• 2018: the tipping point—My year in review— looking back, looking ahead, by Nafeez Ahmed, Medium—InsurgeIntelligence
  Largely a list of what Mr. Ahmed has been and will continue to work on, with many link to articles that will likely show up here in the months to come. And most of it is to do with collapse, so I've included it in this section.
• Your World Is Going to Shatter—A letter from the future, by Eric Hinton, Medium—Future
• Collapse? It’s already here, by Surly, Doomstead Diner
• Does Rebar Rust? By Practical Engineering, YouTube
  In this case "collapse" has a much more literal meaning, referring to the failure of the steel reinforced concrete that so many structures are built of today. Many existing structures were built without using the advanced techniques discussed in the video to prevent rusting of rebar, and they are and will continue to fail earlier than they might otherwise need to. With funds for replacing infrastructure in short supply, this will lead to the very literal collapse of much of industrial civilization.
• Climbing Everest in high heels, by Tim Watkins, The Consciousness of Sheep
  "Politics matter, of course. In a future of economic contraction it is far better to be governed consensually by people who understand the predicament and who plan a route to deindustrialization that has as few casualties as possible on the way down… one reason not to keep voting for parties that dole out corporate welfare at the top while driving those at the bottom to destitution. That road tends to end with guillotines and firing squads. "For all of its passion and drama, however, the role of politics in our current predicament is somewhat akin to the choice of footwear when setting out to climb a mountain. Ideally you want to choose a pair of stout climbing boots; but nobody is offering those. For now the choice is between high heels and flip-flops to climb the highest mountain we have ever faced. If we are lucky, the political equivalent a half decent pair of training shoes might turn up, but while the world is focussed on economic growth; that is the best we can hope for… and we still have to climb the mountain whatever shoes we wear."
• How collective intelligence can change your world, right now—An open source toolkit for self and social transformation, by Nafeez Ahmed, Medium—InsurgeIntelligence
  Some good stuff in this one, but a little too much mysticism for me. Getting everyone to agree is way harder than that. So much so that it shouldn't even be our goal.
• Why American Collapse is Only Just Beginning (Not Ending), by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  "Six Megatrends That Will Shape the Future"

Responding to Collapse,

• C5 Defines The Adapters Movement- In Four Parts. Part I-Introduction, by Category 5, Dark Green Mountain Survival Research Centre
• C5 Presents-The Fallacy Of Bugging Out -Part I- by Survival Acres, by C5 and Survival Acres, Dark Green Mountain Survival Research Centre
  "Bugging out is embracing the refugee lifestyle—a very bad idea."
• The Top 4 Reasons Why You’re Not Going to Survive Bugging Out to the Woods, Ready4ItAll.org
• Living Off The Land: Delusions and Misconceptions About Hunting and Gathering, by Ross Gilmore, Wood Trekker

Peak Oil

• The Shale Oil Revolution Actually Reflects a Nation in Decline, by Christ Martenson, Peak Prosperity
  "Faster consumption + no strategy = diminished prospects."
• Is An Oil Supply Crunch Looming? By Nick Cunningham, The Fuse
  "The global oil industry needs to come up with 35 million barrels per day (Mbd) of fresh supply between 2017 and 2025 in order to compensate for rising demand and natural decline from existing oil fields, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2018 World Energy Outlook. Projects that are already under development could add roughly 11 Mbd over that timeframe, the IEA said in November. Additionally, the IEA said U.S. shale liquids could add another 7 Mbd of new supply, although it would require a heroic effort to achieve – the rate of production growth over the ten-year period of 2015 to 2025 would slightly exceed the ramp up in Saudi Arabia between 1967 and 1977, making it the 'fastest rate of growth ever seen,' the IEA said."
• The Next Big Threat For Oil Comes From China, by Philip Verleger, OilPrice.com

Climate Change

• Greenland’s Melting Ice Nears a ‘Tipping Point,’ Scientists Say, by John Schwartz, The New York Times
• Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt, by Daisy Dunne, Carbon Brief

Food & Agriculture

• Foodie localism loves farming in theory, but not in practice, by Sam Haselby, Aeon

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 expensive products instead of the more reasonably priced ones of conventional agriculture. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are about equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

• Scientists engineer shortcut for photosynthetic glitch, boost crop growth by 40 percent, by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• The 7 Craziest Ways CRISPR Is Being Used Right Now, by Emily Mullin, Medium—Health
  I'll say two things, one con, one pro:
  Many traits we'd like to see bred into plants and animal are polygenetic—they are determined by large numbers of genes in ways that aren't well understood. These sorts of things are out of reach of current genetic engineering techniques, which are still just picking the low hanging fruit.
  Even so, there are lots of very useful things that genetic engineering can do and because these advances can be inherited, they will be a valuable legacy for a future when this sort of high tech may not be available.

Politics

• Questions About Anarchism—Noam Chomsky (2006), Barry Pateman interviews Noam Chomsky on YouTube

Secession

• A dangerous exercise in self-delusion, by Tim Watkins, The Consciousness of Sheep
  Some observations on (and against) Brexit.
• Why No Deal Is the Real Deal: Brexit and the Politics of the Interregnum, by Maurice Glasman, The Nation
  "Leaving the European Union is the necessary goal of the left in Britain."
  A different view of Brexit.

The Scientific Consensus

• The concept of a “chemical-free lifestyle” is absurd, by Fallacy Man, The Logic of Science
• Getting it right, by Michela Massimi, Aeon
  "Truth is neither absolute nor timeless. But the pursuit of truth remains at the heart of the scientific endeavour"

Science Based Medicine

• Wellness Is A Waste Of Time, by Gid M-K; Health Nerd, Medium—Lifestyle
  How “wellness” is often one big con
• The Only Diet Tip You’ll Ever Need, by Gid M-K; Health Nerd, Medium—Lifestyle
• Post-Holiday Detoxes Are A Waste Of Time, by Gid M-K; Health Nerd, Medium—Lifestyle
  Why you should ignore the nonsense of detoxing
• Why Your Detox Is Bullsh*t, by Yvette d'Entremont, Cosmopolitan
• Amid a Measles Outbreak, an Ultra-Orthodox Nurse Fights Vaccination Fears in Her Community, by Amanda Schaffer, The New Yorker
  "One woman looked at me and said, ‘Are you trying to tell me that my pediatrician cares about my kid, if he gets sick or not?’ And I said, ‘Of course! Why else would someone listen to screaming children all day for a hundred thousand dollars if they didn’t care?’"

Lacking an Owner's Manual

• Introversion Is Not a Life Sentence., by Wyatt Edward Gates, Medium
• Why You Should Trust People First, by Niklas Göke, Medium—Relationships
• Hidden Variables of Human Behavior, by Wyatt Edward Gates, Medium—Self
  Four sensible assumptions to avoid letting others get us down. This may not sound like much, but it is actually pretty important.

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 believe 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.

• Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians, by Sigal Smauel, The Atlantic
  "A new study shows how poorly we understand the beliefs of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular."
  But then, religion always has been a matter of making it up as you go along.

Intelligence

• IQ Is a Really Stupid Concept—It’s stacked against most of the world, by Sara Chodosh, Medium—Popular Science

Refugees and Migration

• There Are Still Migrant Children Separated From Their Families, by Michelle Chen, The Nation
  "The coercion and cruelty at the border is not over."

Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI

• Cuts to legal aid: a hidden factor in the UK homelessness crisis , by John Gallagher, Open Democracy
• Take One Leave One – a new way to help rough sleepers, by Stefan Simanowitz, OPen Democracy
• Homelessness rose just a bit this year in the U.S. Here’s how Seattle compares. By Scott Greenstone, The Seattle Times
• On Being Poor: I’ve Been Up and I’ve Been Down, and Up is Way Better Than Down, by Laura Mohsene, Medium—Publishous
• A Progressive Rejection of Universal Basic Income, by Ron Rivers, Medium—Basic Income

Autonomous Vehicles and Artificial Intelligence

• Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars, by Simon Romero, New York Times

Books

Fiction

• Home Run, by Nathan Lowell
• The Seventh Path, by Don Hayward
• Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Non-Fiction

• How to Feed the World, by Jessica Eise and Ken Foster
  "By 2050, we will have ten billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change. How can we meet this challenge? In How to Feed the World, a diverse group of experts from Purdue University break down this crucial question by tackling big issues one-by-one."
  But... "The book is light on practical and sustainable solutions."

What I've Been Reading, June 2018

This note used to say that the links below appear in the order I read them and was meant imply that they were more or less random in their subject matter, other than being of interest to me. Recently I started a few new sections at the bottom of the links on subjects that are of particular interest to me. But I can see that as time passes I am moving to a greater degree of "curation", which the dictionary tells me is about organizing and maintaining a collection. Applied to this collection of links and books I guess this will mean selecting links less randomly and trying to make them relevant in the context of this blog and whatever is going on in the world during the month.

But my originally statement still applies to the first section of links—they are pretty much random and just in the order I read them.

Links

• A brief history of pharming; Monsanto is not trying to make you sterile, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
• Abortion and Love, by Katha Pollitt, The Nation
  Ireland’s wildly successful movement to repeal the Eighth Amendment has given us a new way to frame reproductive rights.
  Or as I would have it, "pro life"="slavery for women".
• Feeling Isolated?, by Adam Taggart, Peak Prosperity
  If so, you're not alone.
• Why Grandmothers May Hold The Key To Human Evolution, by John Poole, NPR
  I think over the next few decades as industrial civilization withers on the vine we are going to have to relearn how to live a human beings did for most of our pre-history. Working together in small groups. Having a clear idea of how that actually worked might be quite helpful. And I also think there may be room for improvement. As discussed in this article—"man the hunter" providing 3.4% on the food might not be the best use of men's time.
• Is Sleeping With Your Baby As Dangerous As Doctors Say? by Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR
  Are three of our children slept with us from when they were born until the next one came along, or in the case of the youngest until he was about two and a half years old. The benefits hugely outweigh the risks. Which, as this article says, are pretty minimal.
• I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People, by Kayla Chadwick, Huffington Post
  "Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society."
• FDA approves Golden Rice as anti-GMO activists spin lies to keep kids blind, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
• Fracking’s fundamental flaw, by Tim Watkins, The Consciousness of Sheep
• Hedge fund star David Einhorn calls fracking companies a joke, by Patrick Gillespie, CNN MOney
  "A business that burns cash and doesn't grow isn't worth anything."
• OPEC’s Dilemma: Demand Destruction Or Production Boost, by Nick Cunningham, Oil Price.com
• Lessons I learned from communicating science on social media, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
• How Trump Voters Decide Who to Trust, by Francesca Tripodi, Medium
  Google keywords, fact-checking the news, and the occasional sophistication of conservative media analysis.
• It’s employment Jim, but not as we know it, by Tim Watkinsa, The Consciousness of Sheep
• GFC II: The Anatomy of the Next Crash, by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
  " most of the recorded “growth” in world GDP since 2008 has been cosmetic, amounting to nothing more substantial than the simple spending of borrowed money"
  "what we are looking at is a 10% ($7.6tn) increase in world prosperity trying to support a 54% ($98tn) expansion in total debt. Moreover, the 10% increase in aggregate prosperity has barely matched the rate of growth in population numbers. People have not been getting more prosperous, then, but they have been getting ever further into debt."
• How Worried Do You Need to Be About Those Cancer Warnings for Your Coffee?, by Jenny Splitter, Self
  “The first principle of toxicology is the dose makes the poison,” Carl Winter, Ph.D., a food toxicology scientist at the University of California at Davis, tells SELF. “It’s the amount of the chemical, not its presence or absence, which determines its potential for harm.”
  It makes much more sense to look at “dietary patterns [rather] than [the presence of] single chemicals,” she argues, adding that, “This whole decision in California just confuses people about coffee and its effects on health.”
• What If India And China Used Natural Gas And Oil Like The U.S.?, by Jude Clemente, Forbes
  Of course it is not going to happen, but it is useful to understand current energy usage in developing versus developed nations.
• Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border, by Ginger Thompson, ProPublica
  ProPublica has obtained audio from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, in which children can be heard wailing as an agent jokes, “We have an orchestra here.”
• What are natural foods?, by Joseph LaPorte, Aeon
  Putting forth some uncommonly sensible ideas about the meaning of the word "natural", while largely managing to avoid the naturalistic fallacy.
• The People Who Are Afraid of Food, by Virginia Sole-Smith, Medium—Trust Issues
  New kinds of eating disorders feed off our cultural obsession with healthy diets.
  I've posted similar articles to Facebook, only to be told by commenters that orthorexia is nonsense—no one has such a problem. Interestingly those who objected loudest had a keen interest in "clean food". I've said it before and I'll say it again: conventional and organic agriculture both produce food that is quite safe. Unfortunately both are about equally unsustainable.
• We’re In an Epidemic of Mistrust in Science, by Gleb Tsipursky, Medium—Trust Issues
  "Academia isn’t immune to the scourge of misinformation."

Intelligence

• Adoption and Cognitive Development: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Adopted and Nonadopted Children’s IQ and School Performance, by ,van Ijzendoorn et al
  
• A Dynamical Model of General Intelligence: The Positive Manifold of Intelligence by Mutualism, by Han L. J. van der Maas et al, University of Amsterdam.
  

Refugees and Migration

• Five myths about the refugee crisis, by Daniel Trilling, The Guardian
  "...how likely is it that states which treat migrants with such callousness will behave similarly towards their own citizens?"

Poverty, Homelessness, Minimum Wage

• After 25 years of being homeless, I learned there’s one simple thing you can do to help, by Gregory P. Smith, The Guardian
• The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor, by Erynn Brook, Flipboard—Longreads
  
• This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like, by Alana Semuels, The Atlantic.
  Many seniors are stuck with lives of never-ending work—a fate that could befall millions in the coming decades.

Books

Fiction

• Babylon's Ashes, by James S. A. Corey
• American War, by Omar El Akkad

Non-Fiction

I'm still wading slowly through The Bell Curve, in order to be able to criticize it with some degree of credibility. Almost half way through at this point. This has also lead to reading some scholarly articles about IQ on the web, further slowing down my other reading. I did read a couple of short non-fiction works this month, though.

• This is Water, by David Foster Wallace
  "Some thoughts, delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassionate life."
  As a committed atheist, I don't agree with the author's thoughts on the impossibility of not worshipping. I do agree that many people do worship things other than God, that are a bad or worse than God. But the important part is what the author has to say about the importance of seeing things from the other guy's viewpoint.
• Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, by David Graeber
  An excellent little book about anarchism.

What I've Been Reading, May 2018

This note used to say that the links below appear in the order I read them and was meant imply that they were more or less random in their subject matter, other than being of interest to me. Recently I started a few new sections at the bottom of the links on subjects that are of particular interest to me. But I can see that as time passes I am moving to a greater degree of "curation", which the dictionary tell me is about organizing and maintaining a collection. Applied to this collection of links and books I guess this will mean selecting links less randomly and trying to make them relevant in the context of this blog and whatever is going on in the world during the month.

Links

• Art Berman: Think Oil Is Getting Expensive? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet., Art Berman interviewed by Chris Martenson,
  A global supply crunch approaches...
• How babies learn—and why robots can’t compete, by Alex Beard, The Guardian—The Long Read
  "If we could understand how the infant mind develops, it might help every child reach their full potential. But seeing them as learning machines is not the answer."
  This one could have gone under Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence, so I put it here instead.
• Rotten results: Sainsbury's drops project to halve food waste, by Rebecca Smithers, The Guardian
  "However, the year-long experiment fell far short of its 50% target, with households believed to have cut food waste by only 9% – and telling Sainsbury’s the issue was not a priority for them."
• Do we need science and scientific discoveries to survive as a planet? Would we have been better off without science?
  A Quora Question with some excellent answers. I do think all the answers are missing the distinction between science and technology, and the idea that much technology was developed before the existence of science as a formal discipline.
• Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires, by Jerry Z Muller, Aeon
• You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to, by Daniel DeNicola, Aeon
  "If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right."
• 10 Best GMO Memes, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
• A Half Dozen Reasons to Reject the “Dirty Dozen”, by Kevin Folta, Medium
  "An activist marketing campaign harms food choice."
• 100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it, by Brian Resnick, Vox
• Were you GMO fooled this year? Here are the biggest GMO jokes to watch out for, by Michael Stebbins, Medium—GMO Answer
• Beyond the Label: 3 Truths & No Lies About GMOs, by GMO answers, Medium
• The EmDrive, NASA’s ‘Impossible’ Space Engine, Really Is Impossible, by Ethan Siegel, Medium
• Bananas have died out once before—don’t let it happen again, by Jackie Turner, Aeon

Intelligence

• The unwelcome revival of "race science", by Gavin Evans, The Guardian
• Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability Of IQ In Young Children, by Eric Turkheimer et al, University of Virginia
  "Results demonstrate that the proportions of IQ variance attributable to genes and environment vary nonlinearly with SES. The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse."

Poverty, Homelessness, Minimum Wage

• Old and on the Street: The Graying of America’s Homeless, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times
  The emergence of an older homeless population is creating daunting challenges for social service agencies and governments already struggling to fight poverty.

Puerto Rico

• We Don’t Always Have Electricity, But We Accept Bitcoin, by Anne Mueller, Medium
  "The strange dynamics of survival and growth in a post-catastrophic Puerto Rico."

Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Vehicles

• Frontier AI: How far are we from artificial “general” intelligence, really? by Mark Turck, Medium—Hackernoon
  
• Did Google Duplex just pass the Turing Test? by Lance Ulanoff , Medium
  The answer is no, getting closer, but only in very specific, narrow domains.
• No, Google Duplex Hasn’t Passed the Turing Test, by Junaid Mubeen, Medium
  "We’ve just relaxed our human ambition."
• Tesla Model S With Autopilot Slams Into Fire Truck At 60mph As Another Key Exec Departs, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
  To be fair, we don't yet know (as of this moment) whether the car was on autopilot or not.
• Witness recalls horror of Tesla crash that killed two teens, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
  Again, we don't yet know if the car was on autopilot, but it is interesting to note that car caught fire, even without a tank of gasoline. Clearly an issue with the Tesla itself, not the autopilot.
• Tesla’s Autopilot engaged during Utah crash, by Julian Hattem, Associated Press, The Detroit News
• Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser, by Brittny Mejia, LA Times

Books

Fiction

• Step to the Stars, by Lester del Rey
  I originally read this when I was about 10 years old. Re-read it purely for nostalgic reasons.
• Nemesis Games, by James S. A. Corey
  Book five of the Expanse series.
• On a Red Station Drifting, by Aliette de Bodard
• Into the Fire, by Elizabeth Moon
  Another episode in the "Vatta's Peace" series
• After the Last Day, by Don Hayward
  The author is a fellow I actually know, who lives in Goderich, the next town south from Kincardine along Lake Huron. What mainly attracted me to the book, though, is that it is a story of life after the collapse of civilization in the area where I grew up. It starts in the town where I went to high school, and then the plot expands to include most of Southern Ontario and a small part of Northern Ontario. Don has done a pretty good job of sketching out the events following a major financial collapse.

Non-Fiction

I'm still wading slowly through The Bell Curve, in order to be able to criticize it with some degree of credibility. This has also lead to reading some scholarly articles about IQ on the web, further slowing down my other reading. So I didn't read any other non-fiction books this month, even those I have a growing pile that I'd like to get to. To make up for this lack, here is a short list of some gems from my bookshelf:

• Yes, We Have No Neurons, by A. K. Dewdney,
  An Eye-Opening Tour through the Twists and Turns of Bad Science
• The Quark and the Jaguar, by Murray Gell-Mann,
  Adventures in the simple and the complex
• Visions of Caliban, by Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall,
  on chimpanzees and people.
• The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, by Kevin A. Carson
  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
  Also available as a free ebook or pdf
• A Matter of Scale, by Keith Farnish
  A book, A Solution. A Future.