What I've Been Reading, September 2019

Links

Miscellaneous

• How a Fake Mountain Range Slowed Down Arctic Exploration, by Cara Giaimo, Pocket—Atlas Obscura
• Want to Live a Lot Longer? Science Says Do These 5 Things Every Day. (Only, There's 1 Little Problem), by Bill Murphy Jr., Inc.
  Of course this is aimed at entrepreneurs and business people. But it seems to me like a pretty good argument for not wanting to be an entrepreneur or business person. And for making sure you have time for those five suggested things, and for "Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, and Friends", without having to pick just three of them.
  Really, I think the world could do without a bunch more people aspiring to be billionaires.
• The Tyranny of Economists, by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, The New Republic
  "Economists shared a creepy lack of doubt about how the world worked. But worse, they were wrong."

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 really 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.

"At some point, I have to trust that my deeply held values of seeing everyone as basically good until proven otherwise is better than their deeply held belief that there is a natural order where those on top should exterminate those below." —Alana Tallman

• Why Fighting Fascism Means Owning Your Own Failures, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia & Co.
  "So if you ask me, genuine progress fighting fascism comes from the failures of good people corrected, than in the foibles of bad people, prevented. For in the good people, at least, we may place some kind of limited faith. But it is up to those who suppose they are good to really make good on it, for their actions to at last, concord, in even a small way, with their pretty, empty words."
• How The Rebel Infiltrated Postmedia and Conquered Canada’s Largest Newspaper Chain, by Davide Mastracci, North 99
  The troubling and extensive connections between Canada's largest newspaper chain and the most notorious far-right personalities driving its rightward shift.
• The Neo-Nazi Murder Haunting Germany, by Jordan Stancil, The Nation
  "The assassination of a local politician is waking up the country to the threat of the radical right."
• A Former White Supremacist Explains How to Combat White Supremacy, by Max Ufberg, Medium—Gen
  "Christian Picciolini has dedicated his life to deradicalizing extremists and educating federal agents on best practices. But under Trump, the government no longer seems to care."

Collapse

• Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’, by Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
  "The scientist and author on his latest book – an epic, multidisciplinary analysis of growth – and why humanity’s endless expansion must stop."
• Consuming our future, by Satyajit Das, Australian Broadcasting Corp.—Big Ideas
  Essentially a podcast, audio here.

Responding to Collapse,

• Growing pain: the delusion of boundless economic growth, by Ian Christie, Ben Gallant, Simon Mair, New Democracy
  "Gambling on a future of continued economic growth is a bad bet with long odds and extremely high stakes."
  "...it will involve coalitions of the willing between capitalist big business and sustainability NGOs..."
  In my opinion there is no such thing as "willing big business" in this context, and relying on co-operation from capitalism just isn't going work.
• Green New Deal: How About A “Low Tech New Deal”?, by Low Technology Institute
  "The Green New Deal (GND) has garnered support and opprobrium since it was published. While this plan at least acknowledges the problem of climate change and identifies the proper scale of our reaction, we can point to large gaps in the plan that must be remedied: All this construction while still limiting emissions? Who will truly profit economically from this plan? How do we pay for it?"
  "The biggest gap is that this plan is essentially that it is a way to continue an anthropocentric, high-consumption way of life. LTI is not opposed to this or any other point of view per se. If we could continue to live a human-focused, materialist lifestyle with no negative repercussions to ecosystems, other living creatures, the climate, or society, then by all means laissez les bons temps rouler. But this isn’t the case."

Peak Oil

• $300 Oil: What If The Attacks In Saudi Arabia Had Destroyed Production? by Irina Slav, OilPrice.com
• Debunking ‘Lower Oil Supply Will Raise Prices’ by Gal Tverberg, Our Finite World
• To Defend Its Market Share, Aramco Looks To Import Crude, Gas & Other Products, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
• Has U.S. shale oil entered a death spiral?, by Kurt Cobb, Resilience
• Saudi oil production cut by 50% after drones attack crude facilities, by Yun Li, CNCB
• Peak oil in Asia: where will the oil come from for the Asian Century? by Matt, Crude Oil Peak
• OPEC’s New Saudi Kingpin Faces Demand Woes That Beat Predecessor, by Grant Smith, Bloomberg

Climate Change

• Climate Winners And Losers — In Two Maps, by Indi Samarajiva, Medium—Environment
• No One Seemed To Notice Greta Thunberg’s Critique Of The Green New Deal, by Jeff McMahon, Forbes
  “No matter how political the background to this crisis may be, we must not allow this to continue to be a partisan political question. The climate and ecological crisis is beyond party politics. And our main enemy right now is not our political opponents. Our main enemy now is physics. And we can not make ‘deals’ with physics.”
• ‘How Dare You!’ Greta Thunberg Rebukes World Leaders, by Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation

Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

• I am expecting a global recession; oil could go to $30 if not $20 a barrel: Raoul Pal, Real Vision, by ET Now, ET Markets

Energy

• Facing our inconvenient truths, by Tim Watkins, The Consciousness of Sheep

Emergency Preparation

• California May Go Dark This Summer, and Most Aren’t Ready, by Mark Chediak and Brian Eckhouse, Medium—Bloomberg

Agriculture

• Phosphate fertiliser 'crisis' threatens world food supply, by Damian Carrington, The Guardian
  "Use of essential rock phosphate has soared, but scientists fear it could run out within a few decades"

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
  "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."
  This is a series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs.

Practical Skills

• How to add a handle onto a willow basket : Twisted rod handle, by Hanna Van Aelst, YouTube

Canadian Politics

• The Conservative Party isn’t on your side, by The Public Service Alliance of Canada
  "The last time the Conservative party was in power, Canadians everywhere paid the price – especially those who deliver public services. If elected in October, Andrew Scheer is going to pick up where Stephen Harper left off. Here’s a list of reasons why we can’t let that happen."

Ontario Politics

• Fiscal restraint? Doug Ford's Ontario government spent billions more than Wynne had planned in 2018-19, by Jasmine Pickel, Financial Post

Geo/petro politics

• Trump’s Awful Middle East Policies Are Coming Back to Haunt Him, by John Cassidy, 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

Science Based Medicine

Science is properly reductionist for a reason. In order to understand the world, and to have reliable empirical knowledge, you have to build your theories from the bottom up, but also confirm them from the top down. This means that we correlate ultimate effects with basic knowledge about mechanisms. Scientific knowledge does not have to flow in any particular direction. At times we discover something fundamental about the world, and then look for implications and applications. At other times we observe effects in the world, and then reverse engineer their cause. In either case real scientific phenomena become increasingly embedded in this network of knowledge. When a claim remains persistently isolated at one level, and neither leads to further applications or to more basic discoveries about the nature of reality, that is suspect.
By Steven Novella, Neurologica blog

• Acupuncture Doesn’t Work, by David Colquhoun and Steven Novella, Science Based Medicine
• Acupuncture Points Don’t Exist, by Steven Novella, Neurologica blog

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.

• This Man Says the Mind Has No Depths, by Kevin Berger, Pocket—Nautilus
  "Nick Chater argues our brain is a storyteller, not a reporter from an inner world."
• This Is How to Age with Elegance, by John P. Weiss, Medium—Personal Growth
• How To Handle Other People’s Bad Moods Like a Pro, by Nick Wignall, Medium
• Lonely? Short of Friends? Try Looking at It Differently, by Oliver Burkeman, Pocket—The Guardian
  "You never see your friends at home alone in their pajamas, watching The X Factor, and feeling sorry for themselves."
• How to Make Friends the Hard Way and the Easy Way, by Randall Munroe, Medium—Forge
  "We can be shortsighted, and confused, and make lots of mistakes, but we can smell disdain and condescension from a mile away."
  "So while encountering people might be easy, there’s no single set of steps you can follow to befriend them — because friendship means caring about how people feel. And there’s no way to decide how they feel yourself, regardless of how much research or thinking you do. You just have to ask them… and listen to what they have to say."

Gender and Sexuality

• How a Trip to Disneyland Changed My Trans Family Forever, by Alithea Howes, Pocket
  "We thought we were being generous by giving my dad a week to live as a woman. But once we had that week together, we could never go back."
• Lou Sullivan’s Diaries Are a Radical Testament to Trans Happiness, by Jeremy Lybarger, The New Yorker
  "Lou Sullivan’s journals, kept for three decades until his death, in 1991, are a record of personal awakening and a document of cultural transformation."
• I Don’t Understand Straight People, Even Though I’m Married to One, by Darcy Reeder, Medium—Human Parts
  "I’m confident in my sexuality, but my husband’s makes no sense to me"
• Everything You Never Asked About My Open Marriage, by Molly Cornfield, Medium—The Bold Italic
  "Learning about love, relationships, and breaking boundaries through non-monogamy"

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.

• Hi, I Used To Be A Pastor, by Sigourney Humus, Medium—Interfaith Now

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

• Falling, by William McPherson, Pocket—The Hedgehog Review
  "There are a lot of people like me, exiles from the middle class who suddenly find themselves on Grub Street."
• How a Tuxedoed Sommelier Wound Up Homeless in California, by Thomas Fuller, The New York Times
  "As life unraveled, a skilled wine steward joined the swelling ranks of homeless people in tents across the San Francisco Bay Area."
• Homeless services in Alaska face uncertain future as state cuts back, by Ben Kesslen, NBC News
  "In the freezing and sparsely populated state, safe housing is the key to survival. But what happens when budget cuts make providing such shelter untenable?"

Books

Fiction

• Heavy Time, by C. J. Cherryh
• Hell Burner, by C. J. Cherryh
• Wild Fire, by Ann Cleeves
  Final book in the Shetland series

Non-Fiction

I am working my way through several excellent non-fiction books, and expect to finish at least some of them in October. Stay tuned....