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.

What I've Been Reading, October 2020

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

• Howard Zinn: Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court, by Howard Zinn, The Progressive
  "It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice."
• The Tragedy of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, by Matto Mildenberger, Pocket— Scientific American
  "The man who wrote one of environmentalism’s most-cited essays was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamaphobe—plus his argument was wrong."
• A response to Pollin and Chomsky: We need a Green New Deal without growth, by Jason Hickel, on Jason's blog
  Good stuff, but one needs to be aware of EROEI and the surplus energy problem to really have an intelligent discussion of Green New Deals. And to be aware that as we speak the planet's carrying capacity is decreasing, and so the sustainability target we are aiming for is continually moving.
• Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game, by Jeet Heer, The Nation
  "Trump is refusing to concede and purging the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. The moment requires vigilance rather than panic."
• 'Sustainability is wishful thinking': get ready for the energy downshift, by John McCrone, Stuff—Environment
  "Renewables can’t deliver in this way so energy abundance is about to become energy poverty. And we need to get ready."
  "Focus on eliminating the need for energy rather than on worrying how to keep increasing its supply."
• San Francisco just banned gas in all new buildings. Could it ever happen in Australia?, by Susan M Park and Madeline Taylor, The Conversation
  Perhaps all those who are eagerly awaiting their gas hook ups here in Kincardine should ask if this could every happen in Ontario.
• Degrowth: A response to Branko Milanovic, by Jason Hickel, on his blog
  This is a must read, even if it is ridiculously optimistic about the likelihood of such policies ever being implemented. It is important to know what we are going to say no too, as we rush on toward collapse. And do follow the links, which lead to a bunch of good articles.

Miscellaneous

Things end up in this section not because they aren't important, but because I can't figure out what other section they should go in.

• My Neighbor Joined a Sex Cult; it Explains A Lot About Trump’s America, by Karyn S, Medium—Politically Speaking
  "The end of NXIVM might shed light on where the country is headed"
• Why do Pro-Life people support Trump, who left children at the border in cages and concentration camps, some who have died?, by Christian Winter, Quora
• A Philadelphia Local Is Unamused by the Fuss, by Dave Eggers, The New Yorker—Election
• You Are Not Free to Move Out of the Country, by Nick Slater, Current Affairs
  "An American passport isn’t worth what it used to be—but it’s also never opened as many doors as you might’ve thought. "

Suddenly, "liberal" is a dirty word

And with good reason, it seems.

• David Graeber on the Extreme 'Centre', by David Graeber, YouTube—Double Down News
  “It strikes me that what’s called the moderates are the most immoderate people possible”
  "Previously unreleased video of David Graeber talking about liberalism. Originally filmed at the start of 2020. We planned to make a dedicated film on the subject with David upon his return to London. We release this video with the blessing of his beloved wife Nika.
  Rest in Power David Graeber"

Coronavirus

• Why is Spain being punished more than any other European country by Covid 19)? by Eduardo Marqués Collado, Quora
  

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• The radical aristocrat who put kindness on a scientific footing, by Lydia Syson, Aeon—Psyche
• Economics for the people—the challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism, by Dirk Philipsen, Aeon
  "Against the capitalist creeds of scarcity and self-interest, a plan for humanity’s shared flourishing is finally coming into view"
  We should be concerned about the "tragedy of the private", not the "tragedy of the commons".
  While this article recognizes the role of fossil fuels in driving growth of the private, it also makes a statement like, "We produce and grow enough for every child, woman and man to have a good and dignified life wherever they live". True, but we must consider the cost to the planet of producing and growing that much, and ask ourselves how long it can be sustained. (Not long, in case anyone is wondering.)
  Scarcity is real, capitalism only makes it worse, even as we produce more and more while ignoring the consequences
  Ordinary people these days have tastes borrowed from billionaires (comfort, convenience, entertainment) and no idea of frugality, so when you say "we produce enough", and talk about prosperity for all, it is taken as something entirely different from what this article means.
• Are You An Anarchist?, by David Graeber, YouTube
• David Graeber on basic income, by David Graber, YouTube
  "David Graeber speaking at 'Basic Income: How do we get there?' Basic Income UK meet-up at St Clements Church Kings Square, London, 3 December 2015."
• David Graeber on a Fair Future Economy, by David Graeber, YouTube
  David Graeber was an anthropologist, a leading figure in the Occupy movement, and one of our most original and influential public thinkers.
• The Future Is Worker-Owned, by Douglas Rushkoff, Medium—Team Human
  "It’s time for businesses to work for people, not the other way around."

The New Fascism, 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.

• Why do fascists "come for the socialists first"? by Christian Winter, Quora
• An Intimate History of Antifa, by Daniel Penny, The New Yorker

Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

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

• The fall of an empire, by Felix Salmon, Axios
  "The decline of ExxonMobil has been remarkable in its magnitude and unexpectedness."
• Shell To Shut Down Louisiana Refinery, by Irina Slav, OilPrice.com
  "Royal Dutch Shell will shut down its Convent refinery in Louisiana after failing to find a buyer for the facility, Bloomberg reports, citing a statement by the company."

Climate Change

• Russian Arctic Sea Fails to Freeze , The Moscow Times
  "Russia’s Arctic Laptev Sea has not yet frozen for the first time since records began, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre."

Gardening

• Nearly 40% of Russia’s Food Still Comes From Small, Family Gardens, by Sara Burrows, Return to Now
• 10 Herbs You Can Grow Indoors in Water All Year Long, by Linda Parker, Gardening Soul
  We actually have basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme growing in pots on our south facing window sill.

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.
• Food for bots: Distinguishing the novel from the knee-jerk in the GMO debate, by Nathanael Johnson, GRist— Panic-free GMOs

Practical Skills

• Make a mid-century modern-style coffee table, by Patrick Laperrière and Matt Wallace, YouTube— Lee Valley
  "Lee Valley’s Patrick Laperrière and Matt Wallace show you how to make a mid-century modern-style coffee table out of black walnut."
  I watched this video because I am at the moment seriously considering making a coffee table. It presents some good ideas.
• Using a Blanket Pin, by Coalcracker Bushcraft, YouTube

Canadian Politics

• The real #WeScandal is the loss of #WeCharity, by Andy Stillman, Friends of WE

Politics

• How is Jacinda Ardern able to achieve so much with seemingly little compromise? by Nicholas Smeaton, Quora
  

Linguistics

• What is the Hopi time controversy? by Spencer Alexander McDaniel, 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
• , by,

Science

• What Does 'Scientific Consensus' Mean? by Ethan Siegel, Forbes—Science
  I've been looking for a good articles explaining what the scientific consensu is. This one will do.
• ‘Believes In Science’ Is Now A Kitchen Table Issue, by David Leibowitz, Medium—Dialogue & Discourse
  "When did science become a debatable election topic?"

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.

• You Don’t Have to Win Friends or Influence People, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium—splattered
  "Six lessons, illustrated with discontent cats."
• 7 Methods for Recovering From Internalized Capitalism, by Anna Gragert, Medium—Forge
  "Your self-worth is not connected to your productivity."

Gender and Sexuality

• The Big Little Joys of Being Trans, by Victoria Strake, Medium
  "It’s the small things in life that often bring the most happiness moment-to-moment."
• Toward a Better Future for Transgender Health Care, by Bex vanKoot, Medium—LGBTQIA
  "The scientific advancements in trans medicine could be revolutionary—if our culture can change to accept them."
• Transitioning Into the Man I Always Knew I Could Be, by BFoundAPen, Medium— BFoundAPen
  "Learning how to love myself."
• Anti-Trans Bathroom Beliefs Unintentionally Targets Cis Women, by BFoundAPen, Medium—BFoundAPen

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.

• 10 Questions I Have Never Been Asked About Atheism… Answered, by Courtney Heard, Atheist Mom
  Pretty good questions, although I am a little concerned that some of the sarcasm will go right over believers' heads. Number 2 in particular—to be clear atheism is NOT a form of Satanism.
• Another 10 Questions For Atheists, by Courtney Heard, Godless Mom

Humour

These are great times for political satire.

• Mike Pence Quotes as Dennis the Menace Comics, by Jack Shepherd, Mediukm—Sharks and Spades
  "'Pence the Menace' is the comic literally nobody asked for"

Books

Fiction

• Semiosis, by Sue Burke
• Interference, by Sue Burke
• Attack Surface, by Cory Doctorow
• A memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
• Ancestral Night, by Elizabeth Bear

 

Non-Fiction

• Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science, by Alan Levinovitz
  Overall, this book does a pretty good job of highlighting much of the nonsense done in the name of nature. If anything, he is a little too kind to the "natural" nuts, especially in the section on medicine. Personally, I just haven't found the medical profession to be as uncaring and inhuman as Leviowitz would have us believe. But then I don't live in the U.S.
  Anyway, if the idea that everything natural isn't necessarily good is new to you, this one is definitely worth a read.

What I've Been Reading, August 2020

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

• David Graeber, anthropologist and author of Bullshit Jobs, dies aged 59, by Sian Cain, The Guardian
• We’re Living In a Dystopian Future Now, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium—Apeiron
  "The sooner we accept it, the better."
  Along with accepting it, it would help I think to understand the surplus energy problem and the limits to growth in general. Such an understanding would help make sense of it all.
• Green economic growth is an article of ‘faith’ devoid of scientific evidence, by Nafeez Ahmed, Medium—Insurge Intelligence
  "For absolute resource decoupling to make sense as a global goal, we would need a scenario where, in ca. 30 years, the economy produces 2.6 times more GDP out of every ton of material used, under conditions where material use diminishes ca. 40 percent globally. Currently, no trends corresponding to this scenario are observable and, to our knowledge, no concrete proposals with such a level of decoupling have been presented."
• West’s ‘dust bowl’ future now ‘locked in’, as world risks imminent food crisis, by Nafeez Ahmed, Medium—Insurge Intelligence
  "The implications reach far beyond food security…. Farmers turned climate refugees will need to vacate, find new work, and support families and households that suddenly find themselves uprooted and with little means to start over."
• The Unraveling of America, by Wade Davis, The Rolling Stone
  "Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era"

Miscellaneous

• Here's The Real Truth About That 'Election Day' Asteroid on Its Way to Earth, by Jacinta Bowler, Science Alert

Suddenly, "liberal" is a dirty word

And with good reason, it seems.

• For my Dad: on what’s wrong with, ‘Being liberal’, by Neil Howard, Open Democracy
  "The historical misdirection involved in 'being liberal' persists today and affects those vulnerable to ideological revisionism. We must protect them."
• The anti-liberal moment, by Zack Beauchamp, Vox
  "Critics on the left and right are waging war on liberalism. And liberals don’t seem to have a good defense.">br /> The author is a liberal and sets out to defend liberalism, but along the way he makes some good points against it.
• The difference between ‘left’ and ‘liberal’ – and why voters need to know , by John Broich, The Conversation
  

Black Lives Matter

• Examining Vicky Osterweil’s Case for Looting, by Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker

Coronavirus

• More COVID-19 Reinfections Are Being Reported. Here's Why You Don't Need to Freak Out, by Aylin Woodward & Hilary Brueck, Business Insider/Science Alert
• How Many Lives Would a More Normal President Have Saved?, by Ross Douthat, The New York Times
  "Trump failed to meet the Covid-19 challenge. But it’s harder to judge whether the overall response was catastrophic or merely mediocre."
• What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19, by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
  "The White House’s new science adviser says: nothing. The science disagrees."
• Herd Immunity Is Not a Strategy, by James Hamblin, The Atlantic
  "What the term actually means, and what it doesn’t"
  "...there’s never been a real case of herd immunity through infection."
• The Most Likely Way You’ll Get Infected With Covid-19, by Dana G. Smithy, Medium—Elemental
  "You don’t have to sanitize your apples anymore, but you do have to wear a mask."
• Am I correct in presuming that once we get a COVID-19 (Coronavirus) vaccine, life can pretty much go back to normal?, by Ron and Marla Chapleau, The Kincardine Record

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

• Property vs. Possession & why communism won’t take your toothbrush, by Storpip, Medium
• Marxist Business Consulting, Existential Comics
• The Possibility of Life Without Money, by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs
  "The prospect of a “cashless” society is upon us. But could ordinary life be “moneyless” entirely?"

The New Fascism, 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.

• This Is How It Happens, by Colin Horgan, Medium History
  "A study of men in Hitler’s Germany shows how people allow tyranny to spread"
  "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise,” the philologist told Mayer. The Nazi dictatorship was “diverting,” he said, in that it kept people “so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us."
• Fascism Has Arrived in America. Now What? by Danielle Moodie, Medium—Zora
  "Trump is an autocrat, and here’s why you should care"

Collapse

• Why We’re Underestimating American Collapse, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
  "The Strange New Pathologies of the World’s First Rich Failed State"

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.
• Is extremism in defense of GM food a vice? by Nathanael Johnson, Grist

American Politics

• Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État? by Sasha Abramsky,
  "Many observers—including Republicans—worry that he is. They’re organizing now to stop him."
  "Fried, a student of history who chooses his words carefully, has concluded that Trump and his team are 'certainly racist, contemptuous of ordinary democratic and constitutional norms, and they believe their cause, their interests, are really the interests of the nation and therefore anything that keeps them in power is in the national interest. Does that make you a fascist? It kind of looks that way, doesn’t it?'"

Canadian Politics

• Why are Atlantic Provinces of Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI and Newfoundland) so much pro Liberal Party (even be called as 'deep red region')? by Michael Barnard, Quora
  

Linguistics

• Real talk, by Vyvyan Evans, Aeon
  "For decades, the idea of a language instinct has dominated linguistics. It is simple, powerful and completely wrong."

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

• What scientific "fact" do people keep referring to that just drives you insane?, by Jeremy Strickland, Quora
  
• The weird space that lies outside our Solar System, by Patchen Barss, BBC—Future
  

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.

• 4 Tips for Talking to People You Disagree With, by Megan Phelps-Roper, Pocket—TED Ideas

Gender and Sexuality

• As a Black Trans Man, Walking Into Church Can Cause Me Harm, by BFoundAPen, Medium—Level
  "If you look at history, religion and violence against people like me go hand in hand"

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.

• The Worst of ‘Christianity’ In One Instagram Post, by Dan Foster, Medium
  

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

• Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state, by Alicia Adamczyk, CNBC—Make It
  

Humour

These are great times for political satire.

• Local Woman Just Thinks Flaming Forest Could Find More Peaceful Way to Protest Climate Change, by The Needling, Seattle's Only Real Fake News
• Climate wondering how much it has to change before humans notice, by Ian MacIntrye, The Beaverton

Books

Fiction

• The Lady Astronaut of Mars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers
• The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel, by Mary Robinette Kowal
• The Fated Sky: A Lady Astronaut Novel, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Non-Fiction

• The Utopia of Rules, by David Graeber
• Weapons of the Weak—Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, by James C. Scott

What I've Been Reading, April 2020

Links

Above the Fold

• 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.
• Economic growth is an unnecessary evil, Jacinda Ardern is right to deprioritise it, by Jack Peat, The London Economic
  I can't help wondering how far Ms. Ardern can go in this direction before running afoul of some very powerful people.
• Sam Harris Has a Problem, by Johnathan Rash, Medium —ARC
  "This is what it looks like when a public intellectual doesn’t know what he’s talking about."
• Universal Basic Income Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Scam, by Douglas Rushkoff, Medium —Basic Income
  "As appealing as it may sound, UBI is nothing more than a way for corporations to increase their power over us, all under the pretense of putting us on the payroll. It’s the candy that a creep offers a kid to get into the car or the raise a sleazy employer gives a staff member who they’ve sexually harassed. It’s hush money."
  "Whether its proponents are cynical or simply naive, UBI is not the patch we need. A weekly handout doesn’t promote economic equality — much less empowerment. The only meaningful change we can make to the economic operating system is to distribute ownership, control, and governance of the real world to the people who live in it."
• Overpopulation, by Jason Godesky, Medium
  "This is the true response to eco-fascists: not that overpopulation isn’t real, but that they have utterly failed to understand the problem, and they’ve leapt to the most cruel and awful conclusions purely out of their shocking lack of imagination. Overpopulation is the crisis of civilization itself: of agriculture and the hierarchies and elites it allows for, of the connected systems of exploitation that it is made of. Fascism seeks to create even more of those things, the very things that created the problem in the first place. While the food race goes on, mass murder is just another step along the track. Overpopulation is a problem, perhaps even the problem — and fascism makes it worse."
  But read the whole article, the author has a lot of things right, maybe a few wrong, but on the balance it's pretty good stuff.
• The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months , by Rutger Bregman, The Guardian
  "When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman"
  I am not surprised. The idea that humans are selfish has been spread to justify the selfish behaviour of the elites, and simply isn't based on reality.
• Just Because It’s Natural Doesn’t Mean It’s Moral: A Conversation With Alan Levinovitz, by Alex Ronan, The Nation
• The Best Solution to Capitalism in One Word: Subsistence, by Wyatt Edward Gates, Medium

Miscellaneous

• A Love Letter to My Curmudgeonly Big Brother, by Steve Friedman, Outdoors
  "A Pessimist and an Optimist Hike 28 Miles in the Woods Together"
• The Evolution of Grand Parents, by Rachel Caspari, Scientific American
  "Elders play critical roles in human societies around the globe, conveying wisdom and providing social and economic support for the families of their children and larger kin groups.... Research my colleagues and I have been conducting indicates that grandparent-aged individuals became common relatively recently in human prehistory and that this change came at about the same time as cultural shifts toward distinctly modern behaviors—including a dependence on sophisticated symbol-based communication of the kind that underpins art and language. These findings suggest that living to an older age had profound effects on the population sizes, social interactions and genetics of early modern human groups and may explain why they were more successful than archaic humans, such as the Neandertals."
  "...have shown in their studies of several modern-day hunter-gatherer groups, grandparents routinely contribute economic and social resources to their descendants, increasing both the number of offspring their children can have and the survivorship of their grandchildren. Grandparents also reinforce complex social connections..."
  Note: for the purposes of this article, "modern" starts about 30,000 years ago.
• Grandparents 'give humans evolutionary edge', The Telegraph
  "After examining a large body of evidence from traditional human societies the evidence suggested that the presence of some grandparents can substantially increase the chances of a child surviving during the high risk period of infancy and childhood."

Coronavirus

• Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes, by Peter Forster, Lucy Forster, Colin Renfrew, and Michael Forster, PNAS
• No matter how you crunch the numbers, this pandemic is only just getting started, by William Hanage, The Guardian
  "People are understandably looking for good news. But the truth is, we’re nowhere near controlling coronavirus."
• When it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, is the cure worse than the disease?, by Charles Fishman, Twitter
  "That is, do the stringent public health rules imposed in 42 states—mandatory closing of non-essential businesses, stay-at-home orders—do so much economic damage that they are worse than the pandemic?"
  "Deaths are not just events of personal sadness and grief.
  They have a huge economic impact — on the families involved, of course, but on companies and communities as well.
  The economy isn't separate from the people in the economy—an excellent insight from @ezraklein in a recent podcast on this topic.
  The economy is the people in it.
  We don't balance saving the people against saving the economy.
  It turns out, we save the economy by saving the people."
• The Grim Truth About the “Swedish Model”, by Hans Bergstrom, Project Syndicate
  Seems to me the Swedish model was based on some critical misinformation, and the results are deadly.
• The Three Most Likely Scenarios to Defeat the Coronavirus, by Andy Slavitt, Medium —Coronavirus
  "Unlike new treatments and a vaccine, wearing a mask doesn’t require scientific breakthroughs to stop the spread of Covid-19"
• The Dr. Erickson Covid-19 briefing: What they got RIGHT and what they got WRONG., by pleiotropy, YouTube
• These are the 7 things we must do before we open up America. , by ProPublica, Twitter thread
• Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing, by Ed Yong, The Atlantic
  "A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend"
• The USA has 5% of the world’s population, but about 30% of COVID-19 cases, despite being the richest nation on the planet. Where did it go wrong?, by Christian Winter, Quora

The New Fascism, 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 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.

• Madeleine Albright Warns of a New Fascism —and Trump, by Robin Wright, The New Yorker

Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

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

• ‘This Feels Very Different’, by Tamir Kalifa and Clifford Krauss, New York Times
  Fracking goes bust in the Permian, with photos.
• Roving bandits and looted coastlines: How the global appetite for sand is fuelling a crisis, by Melissa Marschke et al, The Conversation
• Is the world running out of sand? The truth behind stolen beaches and dredged islands, by Neil Tweedie, The Guardian
  "The insatiable demand of the global building boom has unleashed an illegal market in sand. Gangs are now stealing pristine beaches to order and paradise islands are being dredged and sold to the construction industry."

Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

• Coronavirus: the economic recovery won’t only be U-shaped —it’ll look like a wheelbarrow , by Karl Schmedders , Jung Park and Robert Earle, The Converstation
  

Energy

• The Limits of Clean Energy, by Jason Hickel, FP (Foreign Policy)

Hazard and Risk

• Four things you didn’t know about nuclear waste, by Laura Leay , The Conversation

Gardening

• The Secret World of Radishes, by Karen Bertelsen, Lee Valley Tools
  I tried this articles recommendation of planting radishes one inch deep, fully expecting to have them not come up. A week and a half later and they are up and doing well.

Recipes and Cooking

• 5 Shortcuts to More Flavorful Soup, by Mark Bitman, Medium-Heated

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.
• Genetically engineered food: Allergic to regulations? , by Nathanael Johnson, Grist

Practical Skills

• How To Make Your Own Sugar, by Stephanie Dayle, The Home Front
  This is a pretty crunchy article, as shown by the author's concern about GMO seeds.
  I have actually tried this, and I would say that there is no need to cut the beets so fine, but I would put the cooked mush in a bag and press it to get more of the liquid out. If you boil it too long, it goes from a thick syrup to a burnt mess very quickly. 40 to 45 degrees above boiling sounds way to high to me.
  The article is full of what I have often called "mother Earth News enthusiasm". Actually you will find the syrup is quite bitter and has pretty rustic flavour. It could hardly be called sugar at all, but if you had no other sweetener, you'd still be glad for it. The syrup can be treated to get rid of the compounds causing the bitter flavour, but that would probably be going beyond "kitchen chemistry".

Linguistics

• Chomsky, Wolfe and me, by Daniel Everett, Aeon
  "I took on Noam Chomsky’s ideas about language and unleashed a decade of debate and ridicule. But is my argument wrong?"

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

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.

• Hugs and kisses: Research connects affection, attachment style and marriage satisfaction, by Binghamton University, Medical Express
• How Philosophy, Yes Philosophy, Can Help You With Anxiety, by Samir Chopra, Medium —Forge
  This fellow apparently has a doctorate in philosophy. He ranges from the Buddha, through William James and Soren Kierkegaard, and finally to Thomas Hobbes in this piece, but not too deeply into any of them. Still, I think he has a point.

Intelligence and Consciousness

• What we can learn about respect and identity from ‘plurals’ , by Elizabeth Schechter, Aeon

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

• The New York Renters Who Can’t Pay May, by Zach Helfand, The New Yorker
  "As the coronavirus economic shutdown stretches on, some tenants are turning missed rent payments into a movement."

Humour

These are great times for political satire.

• Meet Trump's New Press Conference Advisor, The Late Late Show with James Corden
• Bar Officially Cannot Be Lowered, by Andy Borowicz, The New Yorker
• Doug Ford rattles bars on cell as imposter continues to competently manage COVID-19 pandemic, by Luke Gordon Field, The Beaverton
  Some pretty good zingers in the one, especially about Jason Kenny.
• Trickledown Economics – Honest Government Ad, by Giordano – with big helps from Dbot and Jake, The Juice Media

Books

Fiction

• A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
• Children of the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

Non-Fiction

• Behind the Urals, by John Scott
  "An American worker in Russia's City of Steel"
• The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman
  Finally finished this. Written by a conventional economist who doesn't even seem to know what causes economic growth, or what its consequences really are, it is pretty tough going. Important to know how the other side thinks, though, I guess.