In the New York Review of Books, this essay Real Americans by Joseph O’Neill is noteworthy. O’Neill reviews two books, This America: The Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore and This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto by Suketu Mehta. O’Neill delivers a fine essay covering many points of the current state in … [Read more…]
Yet another reason why you should turn off the TV, it makes you stupid. How trashy TV made children dumber and enabled a wave of populist leaders, Washington Post, Andrew Van Dam July 20. By 1990, 49 out of 50 Italians could watch Mediaset — half of the country had gained access in just five … [Read more…]
From July 20, 2019:
Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian. Paul Mason Fri 17 Jul 2015
To write his new novel, Red Moon, the sci-fi author became an expert on lunar colony tech IEEE Spectrum – By Sally Adee But for Red Moon, which is set so close to the current moment, the underlying “really” is the same thing as the explicit plot—it’s about China taking over the moon. China and … [Read more…]
Scientists shocked by Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted Ice blocks frozen solid for thousands of years destabilized ‘The climate is now warmer than at any time in last 5,000 years’ Reuters Tue 18 Jun 2019 12.02 EDT Last modified on Tue 18 Jun 2019 12.58 EDT A cemetery sitting on melting permafrost … [Read more…]
24 May 2019 – IEEE Spectrum TELCOM By Lucas Laursen “Rural Cooperatives Deliver High-Speed Internet for Less,” tired of waiting, some rural residents are funding their own Wi-Fi networks to bring broadband to their homes.
The Washington Post published an engaging essay about a nuclear waste depository on the Marshall Islands. Some good background and discussion of the meeting of two critical issues, climate change and nuclear waste. Beyond the comments from a shill or two from the pro-nuclear camp, the concerns of us common folk is quite clear in … [Read more…]
From the Guardian: Executive pay is skyrocketing in the US. But I froze the salaries of my top team to benefit other workers – and it worked. What seems like a real world example of how smart leadership can help fix wage disparity.
Plant owner Exelon said the reactor would shut down by September 30. from Ars Technica by Megan Geuss, 05/09/2019.