What I've Been Reading, February 2022

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.
• Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.
  "Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page, and we'll try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article."

Above the Fold

• How Ottawa residents took care of each other when no one else did, by Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, AL JAZEERA
  "How Ottawa residents took care of each other when no one else did."
• Is the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau underestimating the power and/or political influence of Canadian truckers? by Rathkeale T., Quora
• In other words, the Emergencies Act will give Trudeau the authority to jail, evict, and confiscate the property of anyone he views as threatening his regime. Really Canada? by Danny Philp, Quora
  In short, no.
• The Limits to Growth at 50: From Scenarios to Unfolding Reality, by Richard Heinberg, Resilience
• Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth, by Richard Heinberg and Dennis Meadows, resilience

Miscellaneous

• SpaceX’s Latest Rocket Engine Will Dominate Space, by Will Lockett, Medium—Predict
  "Elon’s Raptor 2 engine is in another league."
  It is pretty amusing, really, when you get to the end of the article and find out they are having trouble controlling the build up of heat in the rocket engine, and it is a long way from delivering on the promises touted early in the article.

Coronavirus

• So far approximately 777,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the USA. That is about 0.25 percent of the total US population as of 2021 according to census. How does that justify lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations when it is so mild? by Samantha Morrow, Quora

Housing

• Housing Revisited: Part One, Do We Need Citizen Barracks/Dorms? by Bill Hulet, The Guelph Back-Grounder
• Housing Revisited, Part Two: the Housing Crisis—Branch and Root, by Bill Hulet, The Guelph Back-Grounder

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• ThedaCare Medics Row Shows Worker Clout, by Dawn Allen, Legal Reader
  "Seven ThedaCare medics quit for better jobs. At first, a judge said they couldn’t go, a stunning decision in an economy which should be golden for workers."

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. The following four paragraphs, by Shane Burley, are the best short defintiion of fascism I have yet come across.

There has to be a reliable base point when we are looking at something we think to be fascist, especially when it runs a certain level of subtlety that isn’t apparent on its own terms. I have defined fascism using two key primary points: inequality and essentialized identity.

Inequality: The belief that human beings are not equal for immutable reasons, such as intelligence, capacity, spiritual caste, etc. This inequality is not just fact, but it is a sacrament, meaning that society should be constructed with cleanly defined hierarchies, which are natural, and that society would then be healthier when those hierarchies are made explicit and enforced. This also lends itself to the importance of elitism, that there must be an elite ruler caste, even though they usually reject the existing ruling class.

Essential identity: Our identities are fixed and define us, they are not socially constructed or chosen. The most common of these is racial given white nationalism as the dominant form of Western fascism, but it could also include gender (male tribalism), specific ethnicities (inter-European nationalism), sexual orientation (extreme queer-phobia), or religion (Hindutva). And when I say essentializing identities I mean that it is not just an identity that is true (like being of African heritage), but that the identity defines you in some way as incidence.

There are several points that I consider very important in the definition of fascism, but often put just secondary to the two critical points. This would include a mythology about its tribal group, the sanctity of violence, revolutionary strategy (in some degree), authoritarianism, populism, and the appropriation of the Left. While these almost always exist in relationship to fascism, they are not defining of fascism because they may exist outside of fascism. It is not uncommon to interact with revolutionary left movements that are authoritarian or fetishize violence, and while that may be abhorrent, it does not make them fascist.

What Is Fascism? An Excerpt From “Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It”, by Shane Burley, Truthout

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 products. 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.
• Block party: Are activists thwarting GMO innovation?, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  "GM technology hasn't lived up to its hype. Genetic-engineering proponents blame activists. Here's a deeper look at the GMO blame game."
  I have to say that Mr. Johnson leans pretty heavily to the anti-GMO side in this one, even thought the facts he presents don't support that.

Practical Skills

• 9 Bandsaw Resawing Tips And Tricks You Should Know, by Bright Ochuko, Craftsman Pro Tools
• 8 Ways To Prevent Or Deal With Planer Snipe, by Bright Ochuko, Craftsman Pro Tools

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

Books

Fiction

• Light Chaser, by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell
  "Amahle is a Light Chaser – one of a number of explorers, who travel the universe alone (except for their onboard AI), trading trinkets for life stories. But when she listens to the stories sent down through the ages she hears the same voice talking directly to her from different times and on different worlds. She comes to understand that something terrible is happening, and only she is in a position to do anything about it. nd it will cost everything to put it right."
• A Desolatioin Called Peace, by Arkady Martine
  "A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel."
• Bright Morning Star, by Simon Morden
  "Simon Morden has won the Philip K. Dick Award and been a judge on the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He is a bona fide rocket scientist, with degrees in Geology and Planetary Geophysics. In Bright Morning Star he delivers perhaps his finest work to date, a ground-breaking take on first contact. Sent to Earth to explore, survey, collect samples and report back to its makers, an alien probe arrives in the middle of a warzone. Witnessing both the best and worst of humanity, the AI probe faces situations that go far beyond the parameters of its programming, and is forced to improvise, making decisions that have repercussions for the future of our entire world."
• Gallowglass, by Simon Morden
  "Jack Van Der Veerden is on the run. From his billionaire parents' chilling plans, from his brutal bodyguard, from a planet on the brink of climate chaos.
  "Seeking freedom out in space, he gets a job on a mining ship chasing down an asteroid. Crewed by mercenaries and misfits, they all want a cut of the biggest payday in history. A single mistake could cost Jack his life - and that's before they reach their destination. The bounty from the asteroid could change lives and save nations - and corrupt any one of them. Because in space, it's all or nothing: riches beyond measure, or dying alone in the dark."

Non-Fiction

• No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World, by Michael Albert
  "Providing hope and direction to sustain commitment on the path to change, No Bosses is about winning a new world.
  "Life under capitalism. Rampant debilitating denial for the many next to vile enrichment of the few. Material deprivation, denial, and denigration. Dignity defiled. Michael Albert's book No Bosses advocates for the conception and then organization of a new economy. The vision offered is called participatory economics. It elevates self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. It eliminates elitist, arrogant, dismissive, authoritarian, exploitation, competition, and homogenization. No Bosses proposes a built and natural productive commons, self-management by all who work, income for how long, how hard, and the onerousness of conditions of socially valued work, jobs that give all economic actors comparable means and inclination to participate in decisions that affect them, and a process called participatory planning in which caring behavior and solidarity are the currency of collective and individual success."

What I've Been Reading, January 2022

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.
• Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.
  "Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page, and we'll try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article."

Above the Fold

• Good Luck “Learning to Live With the Pandemic” — You’re Going to Need It, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  Why “Learning to Live With the Pandemic” is an Intellectual Fraud and a Moral Disgrace
• Why are these Canadian lorry drivers protesting about the Covid vaccine? What are the reasons? If they are vaccinated & catch it, any symptoms are mild, so what is the issue then? Danny Philp, Quora

Miscellaneous

• Living without ‘machines’, by Andrew Curry, Reslience
  A review of Mark Boyle’s book, The Way Home

Coronavirus

• Why does COVID-19 keep mutating to require new vaccines while smallpox, mumps, polio, etc. don't? by Dr Jo, Quora
• Was British prime minister Boris Johnson incorrect when he stated that the covid vaccines "doesn’t protect you from catching the disease and doesn’t protect you against passing it on”? by Gill Bullen, Quora
  I don't know if I agree with the author's unusually positive portrayal of Boris Johnson, but the rest of this is quite good.
• Are mRNA vaccines the main cause of the increasing spread of the COVID-19, because they help the way the SARS-CoV-2 virus replicates? by Richard Smedley, Quora
  In short, no.
• Why are COVID-19 vaccinations politicized with a lot of hesitancy in the United States when there was a national celebration when the polio vaccine came in 1955? by Mike Jones, Quora
  

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 Is Fascism? An Excerpt From “Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It”, by Shane Burley, Truthout
  "There has to be a reliable base point when we are looking at something we think to be fascist, especially when it runs a certain level of subtlety that isn’t apparent on its own terms. I have defined fascism using two key primary points: inequality and essentialized identity.
  Inequality: The belief that human beings are not equal for immutable reasons, such as intelligence, capacity, spiritual caste, etc. This inequality is not just fact, but it is a sacrament, meaning that society should be constructed with cleanly defined hierarchies, which are natural, and that society would then be healthier when those hierarchies are made explicit and enforced. This also lends itself to the importance of elitism, that there must be an elite ruler caste, even though they usually reject the existing ruling class.
  Essential identity: Our identities are fixed and define us, they are not socially constructed or chosen. The most common of these is racial given white nationalism as the dominant form of Western fascism, but it could also include gender (male tribalism), specific ethnicities (inter-European nationalism), sexual orientation (extreme queer-phobia), or religion (Hindutva). And when I say essentializing identities I mean that it is not just an identity that is true (like being of African heritage), but that the identity defines you in some way as incidence.
  There are several points that I consider very important in the definition of fascism, but often put just secondary to the two critical points. This would include a mythology about its tribal group, the sanctity of violence, revolutionary strategy (in some degree), authoritarianism, populism, and the appropriation of the Left. While these almost always exist in relationship to fascism, they are not defining of fascism because they may exist outside of fascism. It is not uncommon to interact with revolutionary left movements that are authoritarian or fetishize violence, and while that may be abhorrent, it does not make them fascist. "
• No, that’s not what fascism is, by Shane Burley, Gods & Radicals Press

Food

• 3 Huge Challenges Crushing Cultured Meat, by Sam Westreich, PhD, Medium—Sharing Science
  "We’ll need to solve these problems if we want “lab-cultured” meat to, well, grow."
• Rice Milk vs. Cow’s Milk, by Abbey, Medium—Food Science Fusion
  "There’s a clear winner here"

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.
• Is genetic engineering a doomed effort to reinvent nature’s wheel? by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  "It’s not very exciting to say that each avenue of research project should be funded on its merits. It would be much more powerful if I could make the case that GE food can just never deliver as much public good as money spent elsewhere. But there’s just not good evidence for that the case.
  Indeed, it’s clear that genetic engineering can provide a huge monetary return on investment. The success of commercial biotech hints that the technology also could provide return on investment for the environment, and for humanity, if we pursued the right avenues. We don’t need GMOs to save the world. But they could probably help."

Practical Skills

• 10 Bushcraft Knife Skills in 10 Minutes, by TA Outdoors, YouTube
  I found this trilogy of videos pretty amazing, in that it has some useful ideas that I hadn't encountered before.
• 10 Bushcraft Axe Skills in 10 Minutes, by TA Outdoors, YouTube
• 10 Bushcraft Saw Skills in 10 Minutes, by TA Outdoors, YouTube

American Politics

• What was the reason why Trump installed Tata in the Pentagon during the closing days of his administration? What role was he supposed to play in Trump's plan to retain power, and why did it fail? by Nelson McKeeby, Quora
  Scary, but not surprising, that people like Brigadier General Tata exist.
• The people who believe that Joseph Biden won fair and square can't base it on numbers, because these numbers were given to us. So, are they essentially basing it on the fact that the news simply declared it? by John Scott, Quora
  

Linguistics

• How the Chinese Language Got Modernized, by Ian Buruma, The New Yorker
  "Faced with technological and political upheaval, reformers decided that Chinese would need to change in order to survive."

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

Science Based Medicine

• Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield: Scientific fraud? by David Gorski, Science Based Medicine
• Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses, by Stanley Plotkin, Jeffrey S. Gerber, Paul A. Offit, Oxford Academic—Clinical Infectious Diseases

Gender and Sexuality

• Affirming transgender people’s identities is more than politeness, by David Matthew Doyle, Psyche

Artificial Intelligence

• Why Tesla Cannot Solve Full Self-Driving, by Rebel Science, Medium
  "Deep Learning Is Hopelessly Flawed"
  "The brain can instantly perceive any pattern or object in sharp detail even if it has not seen anything like it before. A deep neural net would be blind to it."

Books

Fiction

• Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Artifact Space, by Miles Cameron
• Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

What I've Been Reading, December 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.
• Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.
  "Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page, and we'll try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article."

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

• Does Wisdom Really Come from Experience?, by Rachel Syme, The new Yorker
  " In “70 Over 70,” we learn what binds—and separates—the old and the young."
• Can someone seriously explain to me how there's even an argument for completely unregulated abortion laws? by Gareth Jones, Quora
  "OK. The argument is called “Canada”, believe it or not."
• The Fading Ways of Indigenous Arctic Hunters, by Ben Taub, The New Yorker
  "Ragnar Axelsson’s portraits from Greenland reveal the effects of climate change on ice floes, sled dogs, and a traditional culture."
• The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness, by Jukka Savolainen, Slate
  "It’s not hygge, the welfare state, or drinking. It’s reasonable expectations."

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

• 'We Will Bury Neoliberalism': Global Celebration Follows Leftist Victory in Chile, by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
  

Coronavirus

• Why do so many medical personnel in the U.S. refuse to be vaccinated against COVID? by Edward Meeker, Quora
  "When I find the actual statistics reported by hospitals etc. the percentage is almost always below 1%"
• What Autopsies of Vaccinated People (With Covid Vaccines) Show, by Shin Jie Yong, Medium--Microbial Instincts
  " And why it’s important to know them (and their limitations)"
• When "experts" say artificial immunity created by a COVID-19 vaccine is superior to natural immunity, are they lying? by Jonathan Trueman, Quora

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• The Secret to the Weston Family’s Wealth Is Exploitation, Not Hard Work, by Mitchell Thompson, Jacobin
  "Canada’s ruling class is fond of praising the Westons for representing an ethical form of capitalism. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Westons made their fortunes by ruthlessly exploiting workers."

Food

• Cheddar has conquered the world, but it hasn't been produced in its namesake English town for years. Now, an award-winning dairy is putting Cheddar, England back on the map, by Lizzie Enfield, BBC--Travel--Food & Hospitality | Food | England | Great Britain
  I made a couple of batches of cheddar (among other cheeses) before Christmas. Should be ready to eat a Christmas 2022, although even longer aging would produce an even more flavourful cheese.

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

• Building complete and warm survival shelter | Bushcraft earth hut, grass roof & fireplace with clay, by Cyprien Outdoor Adventures, YouTube
  "I built my little mud house to hide in nature,I used dead wood for the structure,clay and stones for the fireplace and grass for the roof. Here there are a lot of wild boars,I settled on their territory!"
• Nålebinding tutorial part 1 - Oslo stitch, by HomeWithMyBookshelf, YouTube
  

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

Pseudoscience, Quacks and Charlatans

• Detox products are bunk, by Melanie Trecek-King, Thinking Is Power
• Six Exhausting Misconceptions That Many of You Still Hold, by Sean Kernan, Medium-- Lessons from History
  "Let’s set the record straight on a few historical and scientific myths."
• Looking at Iridology, by Joe Schwarcz PhD, McGill--Office for Science and Society
  "Separating Sense from Nonsense"

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

• Aurora Rising (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, 1) , by Alastair Reynolds
• Leviathan Falls (The Expanse Book 9) , by James S. A. Corey
• Elysium Fire (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies, 2) , by Alastair Reynolds

What I've Been Reading, September and October 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

• Reflections about My Rich Friends, by Tessa Schlesinger, Medium
  "They all started with nothing and became very rich…"
• If You Make $34,000, You’re Part Of The One Percent, by Matt Lillywhite,
  "A crash course in western privilege."
• When hope is a hindrance, by Samantha Rose Hill, Aeon
  "For Hannah Arendt, hope is a dangerous barrier to courageous action. In dark times, the miracle that saves the world is to act"
• The first David Graeber Foundation meetup, between Thomas Piketty and Michael Hudson, by Cory Doctorow, Medium
  "Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid"

Miscellaneous

• Kim Stanley Robinson on the structure of feeling of this perilous moment, by Cory Doctorow, Medium
  
• What Is Up With American Trucks? by Quinten Dol, Medium
  "We’re all suffering for your masculinity crisis."
  I'd say this is a case of vehicle manufacturers talking advantage of our innate, and often frustrated, drive to dominate. Culture takes advantage of those innate drives and uses them towards its own ends, in this case to make a tidy profit. And make no mistake, selling those trucks is a lot more profitable than selling smaller, more appropriate vehicles.
• Review: A “Dune” Sanded to Dullness, by Richard Brody, The New Yorker
  "Whereas David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation turned Frank Herbert’s fantasy world into a visceral cinematic experience, Denis Villeneuve’s version remains in the realm of worthy principles."
  I read Dune in highschool,around 50 years ago, and have re-read it at least once since then, as well as most of the sequels and prequels, but not recently. Still, it seems this reviewer has got some of his details mixed up and is clearly a fan of Lynch's version.
• Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Is A Future-Shock Masterpiece, by Chris Nashawaty, Esquire
  A more positive review. But I just have to say it, Dune is certainly not the best science fiction book I have ever read, and despite being praised for introducing a generation to ecological ideas, it makes at least one significant mistake, ecology wise. Only in an appendix does it address the question of where all the oxygen is coming from on Arrakis, and even then it doesn't answer the question of where the sandworms are getting the energy to release all that oxygen.
• The Enduring Appeal of “Dune” as an Adolescent Power Fantasy, by Ed Park, The New Yorker
  "When you’re a teen-ager like Paul Atreides, it can seem like authority figures are always forcing you to do pointless, excruciating things."
• Vikings lived in North America by at least the year 1021, by Bruce Bower, Science News
  "Scientists used tree ring data to more precisely date a UNESCO historic site in Newfoundland"

Coronavirus

• I am not an antivaxxer, I took all vacines I ever should according to my doctor, but I feel strange about covid vacines. I feel like they have not been tested enough (takes years for other vacines). Can you debunk my worries about long term effects? by Emily Doyle, Quora
  An excellent answer!
• Could there be more potential health issues with a rushed Covid 19 vaccine (vaccines usually take years of development) than the actual virus? by C Stuart Hardwick, Quora
  "It’s as safe as any medicine ever produced. The mRNA vaccine is safer than any vaccine ever produced because it’s made in a way that is inherently more targeted and less prone to contamination or allegen inclusion, using a technology that is new to the public but that has been successfully used in human cancer treatment for 20 years."

Co-operation, Mutual Aid and Direct Democracy

• Worker Cooperatives Are More Productive Than Normal Companies, by Michelle Chen, The Nation
  "When maximizing profits isn’t the only goal, companies can actually work better."

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• David Graeber American Anarchist, Brian Rose interviews David Graeber on London Real
  "When I say the word anarchist you probably have an image of a bomb-throwing skinhead shouting slogans and facing down riot police. This week’s London Real guest David Graeber is going to change that image forever. A self-proclaimed anarchist, David is far more the picture of the soft-spoken, thoughtful academic than a combative activist. But David’s credentials as a campaigner and anti-capitalist thinker speak volumes."

Agriculture

• The Myth of Regenerative Ranching, by Jan Dutkiewicz, Gabriel N. Rosenberg, The New Republic
  "The purveyors of “grass-fed” beef want you to believe that it solves meat’s environmental problem. But this is merely a branding exercise, not a climate solution."
• Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story, by Joe Fassler, The Counter
  "Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion-dollar crash course with reality."

Recipes and Cooking

• Lost In The Sauce, by Nicholas Hayward, Medium—One table, One World
  "Sauce Hacks, Simple-Delicious"

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.
• GMO labeling: Trick or treat?, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  "Many of the arguments against Washington state's GMO labeling initiative make sense. Here's why, despite that, it should pass."

Practical Skills

• The Real Secret to Non-Stick Cast Iron, by Paul Thomas Zenki, Medium—One Table, One World
  Sure, this might just as well have gone in the Recipes and Cooking section.

Writing Skills

• Comma Queen: To Whom It May Concern, by Mary Norris, The New Yorker
  

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

Science

• Astronomers spot first activity on giant megacomet beyond Saturn, by Elizabeth Howell, space.com
  "New Zealand-based astronomers had a time-zone advantage while watching the massive comet."
• The Moon’s South Pole Is Hiding Something Massive and Mysterious, by Neel Patel, Medium—Popular Science
• 5 cool things to know about NASA’s Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids, by Lisa Grossman, Science News
  "The spacecraft is the first headed to the space rocks that tag along in Jupiter’s orbit"

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

How do you handle a situation where someone shows up empty handed to a potluck and then wants to leave with a load of leftovers? by Karlea Morallo, Quora
Chock this up to the concept of mutual aid—one of the most powerful ideas in human culture.

How to maintain a healthy brain, by Kailas Roberts, Aeon-Psyche
"Adopt these lifestyle changes and you will not only sharpen your mind today but also reduce your risk of dementia later on"

Books

Fiction

• Dies the Fire, by S. M. Stirling
• The Protectors War, by S. M. Stirling
• A Meeting at Corvallis, by S. M. Stirling
• Daughter of the Morning Star: A Longmire Mystery, by Craig Johnson
• PROXIMITY: A Gripping Near Future Techno Thriller (iMe Series Book 1), by Jem Tugwell
• Invisible Sun (Empire Games Book 3), by Charles Stross
• Finwell Bay, by Nathan Lowell
• Agency, by William Gibson
• Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds
• Inhibitor Phase, by Alastair Reynolds

Non-Fiction

• Balancing Two Worlds: Jean-Baptiste Assiginack and the Odawa Nation, 1768-1866, by Cecil King
• The Tragedy of the Worker, Towards the Proletarocene, by The Salvage Collective
  Sadly, this book falls into the typical leftist mistake of discounting the possibility that there actually are too many people on this planet.
• The Complete Manual of Wood Bending: Milled, Laminated, and Steambent Work , by Lon Schleining

What I've Been Reading, May 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

• No. This is a Genuine Revolution - Interview with Graeber by Evrensel Newspaper, by David Graeber and Pinar Öğünç, Libcom.org
  This interview is about Graeber's impression of Rojava after visiting there.
• Learning My Left From My Right, by John Halstead, Gods & Radicals Press
  "We have witnessed the creep (and sometimes the sprint) of fascism in recent years into the center of American political life, and yet most people still have no idea what fascism is—much less its opposite, anarchism. (Even some on the left are confused.) Fascism will continue to shape our political future in the coming decades, so we need to educate people, in terms that they can understand, without the jargon or theoretical minutiae, about hierarchy and the state, and the possibility of a world without either. This is the lesson I learned after having my work co-opted by fascists: It is not enough to articulate a critique of capitalism—as I did in my article about distributism; if we do not also clearly distinguish ourselves from the fascists, then we will end up losing the debate to both."
• Divide And Brainwash: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, by Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin's Newsletter
  "One of the biggest challenges for a developing anti-imperialist, at least in my experience, is learning to differentiate between those who actually want to end the oligarchic empire and those who just want the empire to act a bit more cosmetically nice than it does. These are two completely different positions, especially because the latter is pure fantasy: you cannot have a globe-dominating unipolar power structure that doesn't use violent force to maintain that world order. Yet the two groups often wind up moving in overlapping circles."
• It’s Time To Ditch The Abundance Mindset — It Paves The Way to Inequality, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
  "We need collective growth, not just personal."
  "If you’re one of those positivity wranglers, maybe it’s time for you to shut up and listen. Follow some of that advice you give about having an open mind and hearing hard truths."
• What would happen if the world stopped shopping? by J. B. Mackinnon, Fast Company
  "Fast fashion is destructive and exploitative—and yet millions of people rely on it for work. In a new book, J.B. MacKinnon explores these complexities."
• How equality slipped away, by Kim Sterelny, Aeon
  "For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up?"
• The Poorest in Society are Not Worth Saving, by Adebayo Adeniran, Medium
  "Despite the yawning chasm between the haves and have nots and the perpetual gaslighting of the poorest in our midst, why do the poor keep voting against their interests?"
  "I am sorry that I have to say this, for as long as the poorest continue to vote against their interests, they aren’t worth saving — they should watch as the NHS is being dismantled and privatized to silicon valley, post Brexit or see how much smaller their world is about to become without the ECHR acting as a bulwark against the insatiably rapacious excesses of the tech giants."
  I have remarked many times about poor Americans voting Republican and poor Canadians voting Conservative. Here, at some length is an of similar behaviour in the UK.

Miscellaneous

• The Nenet Choom—Pitching the tent, by Nomadic Architechture, AEON
  "Cultural wisdom begets cozy temporary homes for the Nenets of the Siberian Arctic"
• Lumber Prices Surge, Hemp Blocks Get a Closer Look, by Jean Lotus, HempBuild Magazine
  If this would work on a localized, non-industrial scale then it would really have a future.
• Newly Excavated Viking Dwelling May Be Oldest Found in Iceland, by Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine
• Herr Professor, Sorry, But I am not Your Student. A Quick Rant., by Tessa Schlesinger, Medium
  “I am a professor, and I would like your email so that we can privately discuss your views on Medium.”

The Other News

News that is being ignored by North American mass media

• Massive Blaze Engulfs Tehran Refinery Hours After Sinking Of Iranian Warship, by ZeroHedge, OilPrice.com
  

Structural Violence

• Yes, it is all men., by Julie Cohen, Medium
  "Even normal ones."

Suddenly, "liberal" is a dirty word

And with good reason, it seems.

• The Centrist Delusion: ‘Middle Ground’ Politics Aren’t Moderate, They’re Dangerous, by Raoul Martinez, Novara Media
  "In a world of competing narratives serving competing interests, there’s always a temptation to gravitate to the political centre ground, the would-be midpoint between two apparent extremes, with its aura of moderation, reasonableness and realism. After all, isn’t the truth supposed to be ‘somewhere in the middle’, a composite of competing claims? The simple answer is no. Not in science and not in politics. When there are two opposing sides to a debate, sometimes the midway position is empirically false or morally abhorrent. In every civilisation, the centre ground of political opinion has been home to dangerous, inaccurate and oppressive ideas."

Coronavirus

• No, Science Clearly Shows That COVID-19 Wasn’t Leaked From A Wuhan Lab, by Ethan Siegel, Medium
  "It occurred naturally, and scientists know this for certain."

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• Six Myths that Capitalists Believe, by Tessa Schlesinger, Medium
  "We’ve been told some things so often that we think they’re fact. They’re not."

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.

• Is Britain Becoming a Fascist Society?, by Umair Haque, Medium— Eudaimonia & Co
  "Why Brexit Britain is Imploding into Rage, Hate and Stupidity"

Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

• PODCASTMay 26, 2021 KunstlerCast 344 — Chatting with Dr. Tim Morgan of Surplus Energy Economics, by James Howard Kunstler with Dr. Tim Morgan, kunstler.com

Agriculture

• Viewpoint: The outright lies coming from Impossible Foods’ VP, by Amada Zaluckyj—The Farmers Daughter USA, AgDaily

Recipes and Cooking

• 11 Vegetables You Grow That You Didn’t Know You Could Eat, by Linda Ly, Garden Betty
  "Plant 'scraps' aren't just for the compost bin. Go zero waste in the kitchen (and discover exciting new flavors and textures) simply by learning how to use the whole vegetable from top to tail."

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. (This month it's two closely related articles.)
• In the insecticide wars, GMOs have so far been a force for good, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  "Plants engineered to produce their own bug-killing toxins really have helped farmers cut the use of nastier chemical insecticides. "
• Roundup-ready, aim, spray: How GM crops lead to herbicide addiction, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  "Herbicide-resistant crops make it easy for farmers to rely on hefty quantities of weedkiller. Then the weeds evolve, and we have to up the ante."

Practical Skills

• How to make a kiln, by wildelycreative, Natural pathways

American Politics

• Are you satisfied that the 2020 presidential election was fair and honest? by Lee Thé, Quora

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

Science

• Nova in Cassiopeia brightens suddenly, by Bob King, Sky & Telescope
  "A star in the constellation Cassiopeia that flared into view during mid-March has erupted to naked-eye visibility. Catch it while you can!"
• Practical science at home in a pandemic world, by Daren J. Caruana, Christoph G. Salzmann & Andrea Sella, Nature—Chemistry
  "There are plenty of online resources to ensure that learning can continue for students who cannot access universities during a pandemic, but what options are there for practical aspects of science courses? Daren J. Caruana, Christoph G. Salzmann and Andrea Sella offer a manifesto for home-based experiments."

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

• The Most Important Factor for Wellness Has Nothing to Do With Food, Exercise, or Time Management, by Jessica Stillman, Medium

Gender and Sexuality

• The Fight for Partial Freedom in Vietnam, by Mèo Mun, libcom.org
  At the start, this piece seems to be about far left politics, but read a little further and you'll see it's really about LGBTQ issues. And of course, the two go together rather well.

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.

• Is Belief in God a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? by Tessa Schlesinger, Medium
  This article raises an interesting question, and ends up justifying belief in God, but not belief in religion. As it happens, I disagree, and see no justification for either.

Books

Fiction

I re-read several books by Steven Gould this month. Books which I find myself coming back to about once a year. Nothing profound, but a good distraction.

• Recursion, A Novel, by Blake Crouch
• Blind Waves, by Steven Gould
• Helm, by Steven Gould
• Wildside, by Steven Gould
• The Expert System's Brother, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Wrong Stars, by Tim Pratt

Non-Fiction

I finally finished reading A Peoples History of the United States. And I am over half way through Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm.

• Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm
  "Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong."

What I've Been Reading, March and April 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

• How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways, by Peter Gray Ph.D., Psychology Today
  "The important lessons from hunter-gatherers are about culture, not genes."
• On Graeber and Wengrow and Institutional Flexibility, by Eric Schliesser, Digressions&Impressions
• How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, Eurozine
  "The story we have been telling ourselves about our origins is wrong, and perpetuates the idea of inevitable social inequality. David Graeber and David Wengrow ask why the myth of ‘agricultural revolution’ remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors." "But on one thing we insist. Abandoning the story of a fall from primordial innocence does not mean abandoning dreams of human emancipation – that is, of a society where no one can turn their rights in property into a means of enslaving others, and where no one can be told their lives and needs don’t matter. To the contrary. Human history becomes a far more interesting place, containing many more hopeful moments than we’ve been led to imagine, once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there."
• A Lot of People Don't Want to Win | James Butler Meets David Graeber, YouTube—Novara Media
  "At The World transformed 2018 James Butler met with David Graeber to talk Momentum,dual power, co-option, the extra-parliamentary left and winning."
• David Graeber on the Value of Work, by David Graeber, YouTube
  "Does the world really need neuroadvertisers, PR researchers and branding consultants? Renowned academic and coiner of the ‘we are the 99%’ slogan, David Graeber is a passionate advocate for meaningful work. After famously condemning the 21st century phenomenon of ‘bullsh*t jobs’, in this short animation he investigates the philosophical underpinnings of employment, and calls for a reformulation of what work should be."
• The miracle of the commons, by Michelle Nijhuis, Aeon
  "Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight."

Miscellaneous

• Monkeys and wolves forge alliance that resembles domestication done by humans, by Tibi Puiu, ZME Science
  "In Ethiopia's grasslands, huge herds of gelada monkeys might be in the process of domesticating wolves."
• 15 Lies About Firearms Movies and Video Games Told You, by Cracked Writers and Andres Diplotti, Cracked
  "There's something about firearms. Regardless of our ideas about gun control, we can't help but admire a sleek, well-honed, lubricated death machine. Guns have two main purposes: First, being cool (and making you look and feel cool by association), and in a distant second place, causing an awful lot of harm. So they're kind of like mechanical cigarettes (and to some people, just as addictive).
  And yet, considering how many firearms most people have seen, the average person knows remarkably little about them. We're here to help fix that."
• A Bach cello piece played atop a mountain is as exhilarating as you’d expect, cellist Ruth Boden, Director: Gavin Carver, Aeon video
  "Andante (a musical term meaning ‘at walking pace’) follows the cellist Ruth Boden as she climbs 10,000 feet to a peak in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains for a deeply personal, yet breathtakingly public solo performance. With her prized cello strapped to her back, Boden reflects on how she wants to do something with music that transcends the commonplace, and on the particular joy of playing from Bach’s cello suite at ‘the top of the world’."
• The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity, by Corinne Purtill, Quartz/Pocket
  "We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril."
• Why I shut down an argument in my philosophy for children class, by Amy Reed-Sandoval, Aeon—Psyche
• What fat is for, Director and Animator: Ermina Takenova; Producer: Kellen Quinn; Writer: Nicola Williams,
  "Abundance has made fat an enemy, but it’s been a friend to humans for millennia"
• The interstellar dream is dying, by Chris Taylor, Mashable
  "Sending "generation ships" to colonize the cosmos makes less sense the more we look at it."
  Of course, many of us have doubts about our civilization making it to the 22nd century at all.
• Could you wear a dress for 100 days? by Emma Beddington, The Guardian
  "When Emma Beddington took part in a challenge to wear the same dress for 100 days, she wasn’t expecting to feel the positive force of sisterhood alongside a few neat cleaning hacks."

Black Lives Matter

• 5 Of The Most Hurtful Racial Microaggressions I Have Heard In My Life, by Rebecca Stevens A., Medium—Illumination
  "And you’d be surprised by what people can say"

Coronavirus

• On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest), how serious is the corona virus?, by Krister Sundelin, Quora
  
• How Herd Immunity Works — And What Stands In Its Way, by Thomas Wilburn, Richard Harris
  "What will it take to finally halt the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.? To answer that question, we've created a simulation of a mock disease we're calling SIMVID-19."

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.

• Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas announces “domestic violence review” at Department following January 6 fascist coup attempt, by Jacob Crosse, World Socialist Website
  "The fact is, backward, reactionary and fascistic attitudes have been allowed to fester within the ranks of the US police, military and intelligence agencies for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations."

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• The 'Capitalism is Broken' Economy, by Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study
  "feel like we've moved beyond 'burnout' and more to 'the pandemic has illuminated that nearly every aspect of modern society is fundamentally unlivable' "

Climate Change

• Biden’s Jobs Plan Is Also a Climate Plan. Will It Make a Difference? by Elizabeth Kolbert, The new Yorker
  "The Administration has an ambitious vision for combating global warming, but it’s only a start."
• Receding glaciers causing rivers to suddenly disappear, by Jenna Kunze, The Guardian
  "Global phenomenon known as river piracy demands urgent adaptation from ecosystems and people who rely on their flow"
• Antarctic Ice Sheet melting to lift sea level higher than thought, study says, by Juan Siliezar, Harvard Gazette—Science and Technology
  " New calculations show the rise due to warming would be 30% above forecasts"
• There aren’t enough trees in the world to offset society’s carbon emissions – and there never will be, by Bonnie Waring, The Conversation

Energy

• With a Blockbuster Week, VW Has Ignited a New Phase in the Electric War, by Steve LeVine, Medium—Mobilist
  "A multifront race in batteries, plants, and to be #2 behind Tesla"

Recipes and Cooking

• 11 Genius Cooking Hacks I Wish I Had Known Earlier in Life, by Karthik Rajan, Medium—Food | Parenting | Family
  Some interesting ideas here, none of which I have tried. There is a fad these days for recipes with few ingredients. For the most part I don't agree that this is likely to give good results. And doing things quickly, from where I sit, is almost always a bad idea.

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 products. 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.
• Are GMOs worth their weight in gold? To farmers, not exactly, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
  "Biotech seeds cost more and often return less than conventional crops or organic farming. But they do give farmers a kind of safety net."

American Politics

• Biden Meets, and Defeats, the Press, by Joan Walsh, The Nation
  "The president should postpone future news conferences. Not because he can’t handle them—but because the White House press corps can’t."
• Realistically, could there ever be a time when there are no leftists in the USA and everyone is conservative? by Alex Denethorn, Quora
  "No - if anything, the opposite is likely to be true."
  "Conservative ideology is dying out. There’s no chance of it ever becoming universal in the United States."
  ‘Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.’ - Francis Wilhoit

Ontario Politics

• Best of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver; Doug Ford of Toronto, by John Oliver, Last Week Tonight

Dancing on Graves

• The 5 Most Overrated Personalities on The Planet, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium—Apeiron Blog
  "Our heroes reveal our values."
  Of these five only Steve Jobs is actually dead. But for the other four, a head start on the dancing would be a good thing.
• Prince Philip Embodied European Bigotry and Xenophobia, by ElMehdi, Medium—Lessons from History
  "He is the symbol of a long racist, imperial, and colonial history, and should be remembered as such."

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

Science

• The Curious Coincidences of Alpha Centauri, by Salman Hasan,
  "The star system next door has its own share of secrets!"

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

Telltale Traits of Terrible People, by Brooke Meredith, Medium
"Steer clear! (Some of these might surprise you)"

9 Paradoxical Truths That Will Change How You Think About Life, by Moreno Zugaro, Medium—Mind Cafe

This One Thing Gives True Insight into Someone’s Character, by Jessie London, Medium
"This has helped me surround myself with wonderful people."

Gender and Sexuality

• In real life, transgender girls in sports are a non-controversy: Retired high school coach, by Larry Strauss, Opinion columnist,
  "We belatedly stopped excluding athletes of color from high school and college sports. How many more years will people try to exclude trans athletes?"

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

• Toronto residents get their massive landlord to donate an apartment to help feed tenants, by Olivia Little, blogTO

Education

• Why Are Some Kids Thriving During Remote Learning? by Nora Fleming, Edutopia
  "Though remote learning has brought many challenges, some students seem to be thriving in the new circumstances. What can we learn from them?"

Humour

• Shipsplaining with everyone's favourite Large Sea Boat expert, by Captain Onthemoon, First Dog on the Moon, The Guardian
  "The Evergreen Ever Given is stuck in the Suez canal. Is it briefly exciting and funny or some kind of global business disaster? Or both?"

Books

Fiction

• Fearless, by Allen Stroud
• Red Noise, by John P. Murphy
• Doors of Eden, by Adrian Tchaikovski
• Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovski
• Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovski
• Forge of Heaven, by C.J. Cherryh

Non-Fiction

I finally finished reading A Peoples History of the United States. And I am over half way through Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christoper Boehm.

• A Peoples History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
  The version I read (it was lent to me by a friend) was published in 1980, and not surprisingly, only covers up until that point in American History. I see Amazon has a newer version that covers up to the 2000 election and the war on terror. I intended to get a copy and see what Zinn thought of the decades following 1980. In the edition I just read, the very optimistic last chapter was titled "The Coming Revolt of the Guards". It hasn't worked out that way.

More information about Haward Zinn, from Wikipedia.