Links
Miscellaneous
- What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today, by Sam Scott, Medium—Stanford Magazine
"Sixty years after the nuclear tests, the groundwater is contaminated and the coconuts are radioactive. But are the coral reefs thriving?" - A radical legal ideology nurtured our era of economic inequality, by Sanjukta Paul, Aeon
"...economic coordination is increasingly accomplished through the mechanism of large, powerful firms, while economic cooperation among smaller players is increasingly disfavoured. These choices are fundamental to the policy prescriptions made by the law-and-economics approach. Again, we find ourselves with a choice that is necessarily moral and political: we can allocate coordination rights in a way that exacerbates imbalances in economic power, or in a way that ameliorates them. What we cannot do is pretend not to make the choice."
Capitalism couldn't function without government support in the form of laws that govern economic activity in favour of capitalist and against the working class. This article does a pretty good job of explaining how this works in the U.S. - Fully Automated Luxury Communism Isn’t Our Future, by Robin Whitlock, Medium—OneZero
Collapse
- Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children, by Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker
Read this article and tell me you think the U.S. isn't already in a state of decline and collapse. - Open Letter to EXTINCTION REBELLION, by Geoffrey Chia, Doomstead Diner
Peak Oil
- First Signs of IMO 2020 Starting to Rock the Oil Market, by Jeffrey Bair, Bloomberg/GCaptain
"They may still be six months away, but new rules on marine fuels are already sending shock-waves through the little-known world of refinery feedstocks." - Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending, by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone
"The world would be richer and healthier if the full costs of fossil fuels were paid, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund"
Climate Change
- An object lesson in greenwashing, by Tim Watkins, The Consciousness of Sheep
"... if our intention is to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, then we need to stop doing all of the things—including economic growth and having babies—that cause greenhouse gas emissions. We cannot grow our way out of the consequences of growth; but it is easier to brush over this inconvenient truth in bright green paint than it is to take the hard decisions that are now essential." - Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to tackle climate crisis, by Damian Carrington, The Guardian
- Planting trees cannot replace cutting carbon dioxide emissions, study shows, by Lauren Lipuma, Geo Space
A careful reading shows both this article and the one above are saying much the same thing—first cut back on carbon emmissions, then plant trees to reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. - Deconstructing Federal Conservative Climate Policy, by Bill Hullet, The Guelph Backgrounder
"I'm getting sick of writing post after post about how awful the Conservatives are right now. It makes me feel that somehow I'm not being "fair" or "balanced". But the fact of the matter is that currently they have their heads shoved up their butts in a truly spectacular way. These are not ordinary times. I have always tried to be as honest and objective as possible in everything I write—and it is just a fact that there is something really wrong right now with conservatives all over the planet."
Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality
- #152: Stuffed—why the monetary lifeboat won’t float, by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
" Conceptually, it’s useful to think in terms of ‘two economies’. One of these is the ‘real’ economy of goods and services, its operation characterised by the use of labour and resources, but its performance ultimately driven by energy. "The other is the ‘financial’ economy of money and credit, a parallel or shadow of the ‘real’ economy, useful for managing the real economy, but wholly lacking in stand-alone substance."
Agriculture
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 being 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.
- In the immortal words of Tom Petty: "I won't back down", by Christie Wilcox, Scientific American
This is a continuation to another article that I linked to in April 2019, examining the myths surrounding the supposed superiority of organic agriculture. - Farm Babe: No, wheat isn’t drenched in glyphosate, by Michelle Miller, AGDaily
Food
- Confused about what to eat? Science can help, by P.K. Newby, The Conversation
Practical Skills
- The Nomad's Ger, Producer: Daniel Grossman , Aeon
"Mongolian nomads building a traditional yurt is a master class in cooperation"
Politics
- On Juneteenth and every day: Black lives matter, Black citizens matter, Black families matter, by Elizabeth Warren, Medium—Politics
Ontario Politics
- People are Finally Noticing Ontario's Spending Was Not 'Out of Control', by Ryan McGreal, Raise the Hammer
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
Science
- Richard Feynman was wrong about beauty and truth in science, by Massimo Pigliucci, Aeon
Science Based Medicine
- A Breakthrough in the Mystery of Why Women Get So Many Autoimmune Diseases, by Olga Khazan, The Atlantic
- 10 Findings That Contradict Medical Wisdom. Doctors, Take Note., by Gina Kolata, The New York Times
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.
- Positive Mental Hygiene Includes Healthy Personal Boundaries, by Shannon Ashley, Medium—Honestly Yours
- How to Be a Better Friend, by Josh Ocampo, Lifehacker
- How to Make Friends, According to Science, by Ben Healy, Pocket/The Atlantic
"To begin, don’t dismiss the humble acquaintance."
Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Housing
- Do the Rich Deserve to be Rich? — Basic Income Ethics, by Robert Jameson, Medium—Bob's Economics
I don't agree with a lot of what this article has to say about the role of the market and the supposedly positive things the market does. But it's main point is that the market doesn't give people what they deserve, and with that I agree completely. - Is taxation theft?, by Phillip Goff, Aeon
"The assumption that you own the contents of your pay-packet, although almost universal, is demonstrably confused."
Humour
These are great times for political satire.
- Scheer marches in Pride after mistaking parade for Yellow Vest demonstration, by Alex Huntley, The Beaverton
- Before You Call Out Our Hypocrisy, Let Us Remind You That We Don’t Care, by Lawrence Wang, McSweeney's Internet Tendency
Books
Fiction
- Dies The Fire, by S,M. Stirling
This is a favourite among kollapsniks, and while it is certainly an entertaining read, the picture it gives of collapse is pretty unrealistic. - A Meeting at Corvallis, by S,M. Stirling
Non-Fiction
I am reading a couple of excellent non-fiction books at the moment and hope to list them here at the end of July.
2 comments:
Glyphosate is sprayed on wheat to "desiccate" it, that is, dry it evenly before harvest. It is a common practice, particularly in wet years, in northern climates.
Also, spraying 300 million pounds of glyphosate in America has the very real effect of exterminating pollinators, so to say that there is no health difference between organic and non-organic is simply wrong. In addition, to say there is no difference between the potatoes I grow in my garden, and those GMO potatoes grown by effectively killing the soil to start, with a battery of herbicides and fungicides and pesticides throughout the growing process, is equally wrong.
@ William Hunter Duncan
Almost every month I get a comment from someone of your ilk, and I am always amazed by the level of naivete and gullibility.
The organic farming and food industry is a multi-billion dollar a year business that relies on fear to make people buy its products. Sadly, they provoke most of that fear by telling lies about conventional farming and food. It is pretty clear that they have done a good job of convincing you and I suspect that there is nothing I could say or do that would change your mind.
Most of what you are saying is either irrelevant or outright wrong, though, and I don't want the readers of this blog to encounter such with out access to fact to counter it.
If you had read to the end of Michelle Miller's article on wheat and Roundup, you would have heard that Roundup is indeed used in the northern US and southern Canada for just the purpose you mention. But so what--at the concentrations used the people who end up eating that wheat are in no danger. Dose determines the toxicity, something that the organic folks don't want you to understand.
That organic food is not superior to conventional food has been proven again and again in well designed, peer reviewed studies. Facts versus fear.
Glyphosate has nothing to do with the extermination of pollinators--it is a herbicide, not an insecticide. Not toxic to insects at the concentrations used. Neonic insecticides may be doing something to pollinators, but this has not been solidly established as yet.
The idea that pesticides "kill" that soil is just more organic nonsense. And in any case, organic farmers use pesticides too, and the ones they use are more toxic, less effective and less targeted than modern synthetic pesticides, and as such should be even harder on the soil. I strongly suggest reading the two articles in Scientific American that I linked to.
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