Letters to the Editor – Press Democrat
From July 20, 2019:
Politics
The end of capitalism has begun – Guardian Econ 101
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
Kim Stanley Robinson Built a Moon Base in His Mind
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…]
Arctic permafrost thawing
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…]
Rural Cooperatives Deliver High-Speed Internet for Less
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.
What could go wrong? The U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island.
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…]
We froze the salaries of 20 executives – and it improved the lives of 500 employees
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.
Cost Prohibitive — The last reactor at Three Mile Island is shutting down
Plant owner Exelon said the reactor would shut down by September 30. from Ars Technica by Megan Geuss, 05/09/2019.
Leona Helmsley, who, like Trump …
From a column By Daniel Hemel in the Washington Post: Trump just gave the House a very good reason to look at his tax returns Of course, anyone who has been following Trump-related tax news over the past several years should know by now that the president’s attitude toward tax compliance is cavalier, if not … [Read more…]
Goldilock’s Range – from The Uninhabitable Earth
The Uninhabitable Earth, Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells: Page 42: This (environmental warmth) is among the things cosmologists mean when they talk about the utter improbability of anything as advanced as human intelligence evolving anywhere in a universe as inhospitable to life as this one; every uninhabitable planet out there is a reminder of … [Read more…]