Contemplations – 13

I'm incurably curious about many aspects of this journey of ours. Here are a few noteworthy items I've stumbled across that I'm making a note of so I can revisit them from time to time.

Quick links to this page's content ∨ 

Appetizer:

"The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness."
– Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.

2024

Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert

You know, I'm not a big music person, but Keith Jarrett's 1975 recording, The Köln Concert, has always deeply touched my heart and soul. I've owned it in almost every format—vinyl, cassette, CD, MP3—and it has always transported me as I've listened to it again and again. It is one of the few recordings that I always have with me.

I was entirely stunned when I learned just now the circumstances of that concert, especially that the piano he sat down at to play was dilapidated. That he was able to bring himself into harmony with those circumstances and that piano to improvise one of the greatest jazz piano recordings of all time speaks to how magical life can be.

What Keith Jarrett did so brilliantly was to take this broken piano and use it to play music that only that piano could have played. He didn't hide away from the faults of the piano; instead, he embraced them and put them in the music. This is the very essence of improvisation.

How a total disaster became the world's best-selling piano album⩘  by musician and educator David Hartley, YouTube, Jun 1, 2024. Website: David Hartley⩘ .

Keith Jarrett has posted the entire concert in four parts on YouTube:
The Köln Concert⩘ , Köln, January 24, 1975.
I'm listening to it again right now. The music is sending shivers of pleasure and joy through me. And waves of nostalgia. So good for my heart.

Rebel optimism

Person sitting on mountain⩘  / photo by Cristofer Maximilian⩘  / Unsplash⩘ 

I really appreciate this essay by Joan Westenberg, which explores pursuing a stoic stance of optimism in the face of a world that is "crumbling in real time".

Radical optimism insists that things could be better if we acted with courage and purpose, not apathy and unadulterated grief.

In her essay about optimism as rebellion, she explores the optimist's toolkit: stoic optimism, technological optimism, and systemic optimism; as well as how to turn rebel optimism into action: start small, live practically, and believe – but do the work.

Rebel Optimism: How We Thrive in a Broken World by Joan Westenberg, Westenberg at ghost.io, Nov 21, 2024. Note: This essay is no longer available at ghost.io, but is still available under a slightly different title at Medium: Westenberg⩘ .

Universities are a pain for extremist governments

Photo by Alex Wild⩘ 

Excellent, sobering, and frightening article about what is happening at the University of Texas at Austin, which until recently had been one of the top universities in the nation, but is now being knee-capped by the Republican-led Texas government. It's a long read, but well worth the investment of time to better understand what we face over the coming years. It's not pretty.

[Craig Campbell, anthropology professor who's taught at UT for 15 years] said it's true there are few far-right professors at UT or on college campuses anywhere, but the idea that most are progressive activists is mistaken because professors are trained to think in more complex terms than right versus left and many are politically agnostic. Campbell added that the right's complaint about intellectual diversity is a case of projection.

"Intellectual diversity is essentially a fake problem that is used to create cover for ideologically committed, far-right faculty who are not intellectually honest," he said. "Universities are a pain for extremist governments, because they're full of people who are committed to careful exploration of the world and how things work and function – stuff that doesn't jibe with the fantasies the politicians are trying to create or the policies they want to enact."

Bravo Austin Chronicle for running such a well researched, in-depth article.

The Right-Wingification of UT: Texas targets liberal enemies within one of the top U.S. schools⩘  by Brant Bingamon, Austin Chronicle, Nov 22, 2024.

I learned about this article through a post on Mastodon by Alex Wild⩘ , Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin and photographer. His Mastodon account also is full of incredible photographs of insects.

Hurricane Helene – A Love Letter To Appalachia

A friend who lives in Asheville shared this video with me. Tanya, who made and narrates this powerful video, shares both scenes of the horrifying flooding and of the pre-storm beauty of the region, which she obviously loves and deeply appreciates. It gave me the clearest understanding yet of what they went through during the hurricane and have been going though during the subsequent weeks, as well as the challenges they will face in the coming months and years.

While the devastation is immense, the spirit of this region and its people remains unbroken. One thing that comes through clearly is the strength of community in the face of an event like this.

Hurricane Helene – A Love Letter To Appalachia⩘  by Tanya, Looking Glass Studios, Oct 29, 2024.

Related: End of an Era at the Heartbreak Hotel⩘  by Erica Heilman, Rumble Strip.

"This summer, a one-in-a-thousand-year flood hit the village of Plainfield, Vermont. A local apartment building, which everyone called the Heartbreak Hotel, collapsed and washed away down the Great Brook. Twelve people were living there at the time, and they all survived. Most of their cats did not. We talk a lot about the importance of affordable housing and community and village revitalization. For over a century, the Heartbreak provided all three. This is a story about what was lost that night, and what it might suggest about how we move forward."

The Aphasia Choir

Rumble Strip⩘  is my favorite podcast, and has been for years. Better than anyone else I've come across, Erica Heilman has the gift of knowing how to chat with people in her local community, and how to listen to what they share.

This is an excellent and heartfelt episode about people who have deep thoughts to share, though they find it challenging to express themr.

There are about 15 million people in this world having thoughts and ideas that they can't put into words. People who have had had strokes or traumatic brain injuries often live with aphasia, or difficulty talking or using language. Their thoughts are intact, but the language gets stuck. But music mostly originates in the undamaged hemisphere of the brain. People with aphasia can often sing—even people who are entirely non-verbal.

The Aphasia Choir of Vermont was founded in 2014 by singer/songwriter and former speech-language pathologist Karen McFeeters Leary.… I asked Karen if I could record a rehearsal and talk with a few members of the group. We take language for granted, like breathing. So what is it like to struggle to speak … in a world that is uncomfortable with silence?

The Aphasia Choir⩘  by Erica Heilman, Rumble Strip.

Related: Notes about additional episodes of Rumble Strip by Erica Heilman:

• End of an Era at the Heartbreak Hotel⩘ 
• Speaking Whale⩘ 
• One of Those Teachers⩘ 
• Our Neighbor⩘ 
• Last Chapter⩘ 
• Surviving COVID, a Fever Dream⩘ 
• The Bear Man⩘ 
• 1900 Cars⩘  (see the postscript note)
• After the forgetting⩘ , this is a two-part Rumble Strip episode that I've never written about but have shared with others several times, so I want to make a note of it. It is about an amazing, joyous woman, Marjorie, who has dementia. and the two wonderful people, Greg and his husband, Bob, who care for her. It is a reminder that we may forget much as we wander into dementia, but we continue to carry our hearts along on our journey.

Disability rights are technology rights

I respect and appreciate so much the work being done by Cory Doctorow and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is another example, advocating for the right of technological self-determination for users with disabilities.

At EFF, our work always begins from the same place: technological self-determination. That's the right to decide which technology you use, and how you use it. Technological self-determination is important for every technology user, and it's especially important for users with disabilities.

Assistive technologies are a crucial aspect of living a full and fulfilling life, which gives people with disabilities motivation to be some of the most skilled, ardent, and consequential technology users in the world. There's a whole world of high-tech assistive tools and devices out there, with disabled technologists and users intimately involved in the design process.

The accessibility movement's slogan, "Nothing about us without us," has its origins in the first stirrings of European democratic sentiment in sixteenth (!) century⩘  and it expresses a critical truth: no one can ever know your needs as well you do. Unless you get a say in how things work, they'll never work right.

And he makes an important point in the article's conclusion: we are fighting for everyone's rights. This impacts all of our lives.

Even if you're able-bodied today, you will likely need assistive technology or will benefit from accessibility adaptations. The curb-cuts that accommodate wheelchairs make life easier for kids on scooters, parents with strollers, and shoppers and travelers with rolling bags. The subtitles that make TV accessible to Deaf users allow hearing people to follow along when they can't hear the speaker (or when the director deliberately chooses to muddle the dialog). Alt tags in online images make life easier when you're on a slow data connection.

Fighting for the right of disabled people to adapt their technology is fighting for everyone's rights.

Disability Rights Are Technology Rights⩘  by Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Oct 24, 2024.

Loving our country: Our country is worth fighting for

I've had a lot of both exhilarating/inspiring and strange/frightening experiences during my many decades of life here in our Unites States of America, but our current time is certainly the strangest and most frightening I have lived through. Certainly, we are on the cusp: in a few days, we could begin the walk forward into a better future, or we could tumble into our darkest period yet as a nation. At times I feel incredibly hopeful, at other times, I am actually nauseous with concern.

Over the past couple of days I was both shocked and not surprised that the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post took a knee to Trump and refused to allow their editorial teams to run editorials supporting Vice President Kamala Harris for president. I don't typically subscribe to the big, national papers, preferring to support smaller, more focused, more personal, and more courageous writers and outlets. However, a couple years ago, I subscribed to The Washington Post to reward them for their excellent reporting relating to Jan 6, 2021 (see: Four Hours of Insurrection⩘ ). Yesterday, I canceled my subscription in disgust.

I've been reading James Fallows for years and deeply respect his thoughtfulness and insights, so I was grateful to come across his essay today that puts what I'm feeling into perspective: Election Countdown, 11 Days to Go: Reasons to be Brave.⩘  Most of his essay is available to all, but the final section—in which he discusses the rallies being held by Vice President Harris, and at which she has been joined by, among others, Liz Cheney—is for subscribers only. The focus of that section is what Kamala Harris says beginning at minute 50:00 in the following publicly available video: VP Kamala Harris Conversation in Wisconsin with Liz Cheney & Charlie Sykes⩘ , Oct 21, 2024. It's worth watching, but here's the key excerpt:

This is not as much an issue of what we are against, as what we are for. And I'll end where I started: We love our country. And our country is worth fighting for. That's how I think of this. We, our democracy, will only be as strong as our willingness to fight for it.

Election Countdown, 11 Days to Go: Reasons to be Brave.⩘  by James Fallows, Breaking the News, Oct 25, 2024.

See also:

• The never-ending mission of forming a more perfect union⩘ 
• China Airborne by James Fallows⩘ 
• Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, Our Common Purpose. It's a good time to revisit this essential report.

Our stunning universe

Upper: The Cartwheel galaxy – NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO
Lower: The Ring nebula – ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow

Our universe is infinitely wondrous and insane.

I am a huge fan of the images of our universe taken by the Hubble space telescope, but less so of the images from the Webb because I don't like the reddish tint that results from its infrared cameras. However, sometimes the glimpse of new things provided by the Webb blows me away. The two examples shown above, the Cartwheel galaxy and the Ring nebula, are my favorites from this article: 10 stunning James Webb Space Telescope images show the beauty of space⩘  by Alex Wilkins, The New Scientist.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope's best shots.

See also the book that is the source for the article: Webb's Universe by Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Harry N. Abrams, Oct 08, 2024. Bookshop.org⩘ .

The collapse is coming

When I talk to my closest friends about our world today and our focus turns to the coming election, I share that I am guardedly optimistic, though not in any way certain, that Kamala Harris will win. That would have the short-term effect of preventing what I think would be a catastrophic outcome for our country and the world. Trump's first term was a disaster, but he was a lazy fuck during that term, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been. I'm fairly certain he and the people around him won't let a second opportunity slip through their hands in a similar manner.

That said, if Kamala Harris does win, I think we are still fucked in the longer term because I have no optimism that she, as talented a leader as I think she is and will be, or any other world leader or political institution is going to be able to adequately address the imminent climate catastrophe we are facing.

Peter Watts is an author whose writing I have appreciated in the past, at least some of it⩘ . In this article⩘ , he chats with someone he has known for decades, Dan Brooks, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Senior Research Fellow, H. W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology, University of Nebraska State Museum, and Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, about Brooks' new book co-authored with Salvatore J. Agosta, A Darwinian Survival Guide⩘ . It is subtitled, "Hope for the Twenty-First Century", but in this case I think "hope" is a real stretch term.

Watts quotes directly from the book about why our governance systems are unable to rise to meeting the challenge of these times.

Our governance systems, long ago coopted as instruments for amplified personal power, have become nearly useless, at all levels from the United Nations to the local city council. Institutions established during 450 generations of unresolvable conflict cannot facilitate change because they are designed to be agents of social control, maintaining what philosopher John Rawls called 'the goal of the well-ordered society.' They were not founded with global climate change, the economics of wellbeing, or conflict resolution in mind.

And Brooks expands on this theme of institutional inadequacy in response to one the questions posed to him by Watts.

Generally speaking, the larger the population, the smaller the number of people who actually control the social control institutions. So you have five different language groups in the city, but somehow it turns out that the people in charge of the religion, or the banks, or the governance only represent one of those language groups. They end up controlling everything. This is a breeding ground for sociopaths to take control. And sure enough, by about 9,000 years ago, when this is all in place, we begin to see religious and governance and economic institutions all support the notion of going to war to take from your neighbors what you want for yourself. And we've been at war with ourselves ever since then, and this was not an evolutionary imperative; this was a societal behavioral decision. It's understandable, in retrospect, as a result of too many people, too high a population density. So you live in circumstances where people cannot identify the sociopaths before they've taken control.

During the chat, they talk as if collapse is inevitable and coming soon, something I agree with. Basically, it is fundamentally too late to avoid the imminent collapse, especially given our response now and over the past fifty years or so when we've known this is coming. The real question now is how the first post-collapse generation responds. Their response will determine whether some form of humanity holding onto at least some of the beneficial aspects of our technological achievements will emerge, or whether our species will be yet another in the long history of our planet that disappears as a consequence of another one of its mass extinctions.

The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?⩘  by Peter Watts, The MIT Press Reader, May 11, 2024.

More from the book itself.

The Major Metaphors of Evolution

1. The only sense of progress in evolution is persistence in time (it is all about survival).
2. The vast majority of traits that species use for persistence and coping with the conditions are persistent elements of conservative inheritance (its all about using what you already have, not about waiting around for the "right adaptation at the right time").
3. If a species persists long enough, evolution may result in a better solution for coping with the conditions, but the solution will always be contingent and temporary because the conditions are always changing (todays fittest variants might be unfit tomorrow, and todays low-fitness variants might be tomorrows fittest).
4. There will always be unanticipated consequences no matter how good a solution appears to be (all conflict resolution produces new conflict).
5. The consequences of overgrowth can be deferred but never escaped (there is no unlimited growth in biology).
6. The longer the penalties for overgrowth are deferred, the greater the chance of extinction (the larger the system grows without diversifying, the more vulnerable to the gamblers ruin it becomes).
7. Evolution is powered by renewable inherited information, but inheritance systems are open to change and constantly changing.

The Four Laws of Biotics

These are guidelines for how technological humanity should interact with the rest of the biosphere.

• Zeroth law: humanity may not harm the biosphere, or by inaction, allow it to come to harm. The most fundamental form of "harm" is restricting the biosphere's ability to cope with changes, including those produced by any species.
• First law: humanity may not injure any portion of the biosphere, or through inaction, allow any portion to come to harm, except when required to do so in order to prevent greater harm to the biosphere itself. Humans can use some portions of the biosphere, and protect themselves from others, so long as the ability of the biosphere to cope and persist is not endangered.
• Second law: humanity may exploit any portion of the biosphere, except where such exploitation would conflict with the first two laws. Humanity can use its understanding of the biosphere to determine the maximum amount of allowable exploitation.
• Third law: humanity must protect its existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first three laws. Humans cannot destroy the biosphere in an effort to preserve themselves. Humanity must live within its means or go extinct.

A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for the Twenty-First Century⩘  by Daniel R. Brooks and Salvatore J. Agosta, The MIT Press, 2024.

Most evil thing: fossil fuel industry's continuing systematic lying

I think it's spot on what Peter Kalmus, climate activist and climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab says about the decades of continuing systematic lying by the fossil fuel industry and government inaction as the continuing burning of fossil fuels overheats our planet more and more, causing the intensification of storms like Hurricane Helene, which just devastated vast swaths of U.S. Southeast.

PETER KALMUS: Yeah. So, the planet's overheating. It's irreversible. It's caused by the fossil fuel industry. And the reason I say "industry" specifically, not "fossil fuels," is because this industry has been systematically lying and blocking action for almost 50 years, for decades and decades. And they've said publicly, testifying in front of Congress, that they plan to continue systematically blocking action.

And this will get worse as the planet continues to get hotter. It's getting hotter every day. Every day we continue burning fossil fuels and allowing this industry to continue spreading disinformation and blocking action, the planet gets hotter. Hotter ocean fuels these storms, causes them to intensify more rapidly, causes them to get much more powerful. And a hotter atmosphere, because we're living on a currently overheating planet – hotter atmosphere holds more water, so we get these intense, intense rainfalls, which cause the sorts of flooding that's happening right now. It's still high waters in the western part of my state.

I think that this is the most evil thing that it's possible to imagine, that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists will continue to lie so that they can line their bank accounts more at the irreversible expense of our planet and the future of humanity.

We have a dear friend who lives in Asheville, NC. Thankfully, their home survived, but they are now living amidst a calamity: no water, no power, no cell service, roads and bridges destroyed, vast devastation. A few years ago when we had a large wildfire nearby that caused us to have to evacuate for a brief period of time, she said we should consider moving to Asheville because it was then considered a climate change haven, safe from the worst impacts of our overheating planet. Nowhere is safe. We have to change our ways if we are to save any remnant of our home planet and our ability to survive.

It is important to note that in this interview, Peter Kalmus is speaking on his own behalf, not on behalf of NASA.

Media Fails to Link Hurricane Helene to Fossil-Fueled Climate Change⩘ , interview of Peter Kalmus by Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow! via Truthout, Sep 30, 2024.

Related: Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus Fled L.A. Fearing Wildfires. His Old Neighborhood Is Now a Hellscape⩘ , interview of Peter Kalmus by Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow!, Jan 10, 2024.

I don't know what it's going to take for us to stop all these stupid wars and come together and actually deal with the emergency that our planet is in the process of becoming less and less habitable and everything that means. We, humanity, we've got a real crisis here, and we're ignoring it.

Commercial surveillance is out of control

I fucking hate the modern tech industry. And I hate that the U.S. government allows this to happen and doesn't do anything to help protect the privacy of its citizens.

A new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report⩘  confirms what EFF has been warning about for years: tech giants are widely harvesting and sharing your personal information to fuel their online behavioral advertising businesses. This four-year investigation into the data practices of nine social media and video platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and X (formally Twitter), demonstrates how commercial surveillance leaves consumers with little control over their privacy. While not every investigated company committed the same privacy violations, the conclusion is clear: companies prioritized profits over privacy.

So grateful for the work that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)⩘  is doing on our behalf.

FTC Report Confirms: Commercial Surveillance is Out of Control⩘  by Lena Cohen, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sep 26, 2024.

See also:

• Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data by Carissa Véliz⩘ 
• Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill⩘ 
• McLuhan lecture on enshittification by Cory Doctorow⩘ 
• Finally, some good news about surveillance: FTC Bans Location Data Company That Powers the Surveillance Ecosystem⩘  by Joseph Cox, 404 Media, Dec 3, 2024. "Venntel is a primary provider of location data to the government or other companies that sell to U.S. agencies. The FTC is banning Venntel from selling data related to health clinics, refugee shelters, and much more."

Our broken healthcare system

Laufer showing Sovaldi, and Four Thieves' version of sofosbuvir

I just read an article that blew my mind … but didn't surprise me. So much seems fucked up and broken these days as a result of blatantly out-of-control corporate greed, the drive to maximize profits in order to funnel big bucks to wealthy shareholders. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the area of healthcare, and especially the drug industry. This excerpt, about hepatitis C, a virus that kills roughly 250,000 people around the world each year, pretty much sums it up.

In our call, [Mixæl Swan] Laufer had just explained that Four Thieves' had made some miscalculations as part of its latest project, to create instructions for replicating sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), a miracle drug that cures hepatitis C, which he planned to explain and reveal at the DEF CON hacking conference.

Unlike many other drugs that treat viruses, Sovaldi does not suppress hepatitis C, a virus that kills roughly 250,000 people around the world each year. It cures it.

"Normally you have a virus, and your body fights it off or your body fights it to a standstill and you just have it forever, basically, and hope it remains dormant more or less," Laufer said. "The holy grail for every virologist is to find a way to drain the viral reservoir, and Sovaldi does this. You take one pill of Sovaldi a day for 12 weeks and then you don't have hepatitis C anymore."

The problem is that those pills are under patent, and they cost $1,000 per pill.

"Literally, if you have $84,000 then hepatitis C is not your problem anymore," Laufer said. "But given that there are other methodologies for managing hepatitis C that are not curing it and that are cheaper, insurance typically will not cover [Sovaldi]. And so we've got this incredible technology and it's sitting on the shelf except for people who are ridiculously wealthy."

So Four Thieves Vinegar Collective set out to teach people how to make their own version of Sovaldi. Chemists at the collective thought the DIY version would cost about $300 for the entire course of medication, or about $3.57 per pill. But they were wrong.

"It's actually just a little under $70 (83 cents per pill), which just kind of blew my mind when they finally showed me the results," Laufer said. "I was like, can we do the math here again?"

'Right to Repair for Your Body': The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine⩘  by Jason Koebler, 404 Media, Sep 4, 2024.

See also: Wikipedia: Plague doctor costume⩘ 

Related:

• The public reaction to the murder of the UnitedHealthCare CEO has revealed just how angry the U.S. public is about our dystopian healthcare insurance system. Here's a related exploration of this broken system from the excellent journalists at ProPublica: UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer's Inner Workings.⩘  by David Armstrong, ProPublica; Patrick Rucker, The Capitol Forum; and Maya Miller, ProPublica, Feb 2, 2023.
  
  • It's interesting to note that the nightmare experienced by the patient in this article happened to a person and a family who are relatively well off in our country, a student at a prestigious university whose parents were longtime professors at the same university. They were able to pursue first class health care providers and legal help when they had to resort to a lawsuit to get justice. Imagine if this had happened (is happening) to the majority of Americans in the middle/lower classes who do not have access to the necessary resources to try to get justice.
• "Not Medically Necessary": Inside the Company Helping America's Biggest Health Insurers Deny Coverage for Care ⩘  by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica; Patrick Rucker, The Capitol Forum; and David Armstrong, ProPublica, Oct 23, 2024.
• My Daughter Desperately Needs Brain Surgery. Our Insurance Company's Response Has Been Shocking.⩘  by Beth Swanson, Huffpost, Dec 7, 2024.
  
  • "I'm not giving up. But this could have been so easy. Natalie should be in New York, well into her surgical recovery. Instead, she remains at home, wearing her cervical collar, nauseous, dizzy and in pain, with zero control over her fate. She is the one who has gone from choking on food to choking on water while we wait for the insurance company, a piece of a multibillion dollar industry, to nickel-and-dime its way to an agreement. In the end, it's always the patients who suffer. It's egregious. It's immoral. And for Natalie and the thousands of other patients just like her, it's a terrifying wait.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper ("Grandma COBOL")

I've seen and appreciated multiple short clips of Admiral Hopper talking over the years, but it is a real treat that this full talk has been retrieved from the obsolete media it had been stored on, and is not available as a video on YouTube. Admiral Hopper was an exceptional computer scientist, teacher, and leader, which comes through clearly in this insightful talk, still relevant today. Admiral Hopper focuses on the correct approach to computers and operating systems, but also on leadership. And I certainly enjoyed a good laugh when she told the story about finding the first computer bug as well as when she shared various funny little anecdotes about her career. I also appreciated the way she explained what and demonstrated what a nanosecond is, and why computer programmers need to be careful not to waste any.

From Wikipedia:

Grace Brewster Hopper (née Murray; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. She was also one of the first programmers on the Harvard Mark I computer. She is credited with writing the first computer manual, "A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator."

We can now watch Grace Hopper's famed 1982 lecture on YouTube: The lecture featured Hopper discussing future challenges of protecting information⩘  by Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, Aug 29, 2024.

Loving our country: Hope, enthusiasm, and even joy

Image by @RachelBitecofer / X

From Jennifer Rubin's newsletter:

Give credit where credit is due: Voters – at least Democrats, Democratic-leaning independents and "Never Trump" Republicans – have decided to engage in politics in a big way. Hundreds of thousands have joined Harris-Walz Zoom calls; tens of thousands have gone to rallies, volunteered or given money. The sense of ennui and fatalism has lifted. The prospect of putting Trump in the rear view mirror has invigorated the electorate.

The media calls it "vibes." But vibes are actually people – happy and engaged people. "We are living through a season of hope now in America, with scenes of enthusiasm and even joy at Harris-Walz rallies, but hope is also part of a longer-term political strategy," writes historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat. "Hope means refusing to give in to the fatalism and cynicism that autocrats foster with their messages that they are omnipotent and their victories inevitable."

Trump's decline: His interviews and lies get worse⩘  by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post, Aug 16, 2024.
See also: Real Pic of Crowd at Rally for Harris and Walz in Detroit?⩘  by Sean Eifert & David Emery, Snopes, Aug 12, 2024.

The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burns
Chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history.

A powerful documentary film.

In the 1920s, the Great Plains were the bread basket of America, with millions of acres of wheat replacing the wild grasses that had originally grown there. But bad ecological practices, in part driven by unadulterated greed on the part of land speculators, created a disaster in waiting. When drought and accompanying winds hit in the 1930s, and the Great Depression drove down prices on wheat below the cost of production, the disaster hit with gale force, and it lasted for a decade.

It was the result of a whole bunch of things that are just innate to human beings.

While we learned some lessons, like contour plowing, we are now rushing towards another, perhaps far worse disaster, as now irrigation water is being pumped from the great reservoir beneath the great plains that was deposited there during the last ice age, and it is being used up so fast, that we have perhaps a decade before there won't even be drinking water left for the entire region, let alone irrigation water.

And while the Great Plains makes up a significant portion of the U.S., it is small compared to the world, and we are now treating the entire world with the same greedy disregard as we treated the Great Plains in the 1920s. As devastating as the Dust Bowl was to the people who lived there, they did at least have the option, unattractive as it was, to leave their entire lives behind and at least try to restart somewhere else. What will we do as our entire planet becomes enveloped in ecological disaster and we have nowhere to escape to?

The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burn⩘ , PBS, 2012.

See also:

• Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb⩘ 
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck⩘ 

Hubble is back!

Credits: Image – NASA⩘ , ESA⩘ , STScI⩘ , David Thilker (JHU)⩘ 
Image Processing – Joseph DePasquale (STScI)⩘ 

I really appreciate Hubble images (much more than the infrared images produced by the newer James Webb Space Telescope). I'm really glad Hubble is back online.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken its first new image since changing to an alternate operating mode that uses one gyro.

The spacecraft returned to science operations June 14 after being offline for several weeks due to an issue with one of its gyroscopes (gyros), which help control and orient the telescope.

This new image features NGC 1546, a nearby galaxy in the constellation Dorado. The galaxy's orientation gives us a good view of dust lanes from slightly above and backlit by the galaxy's core. This dust absorbs light from the core, reddening it and making the dust appear rusty-brown. The core itself glows brightly in a yellowish light indicating an older population of stars. Brilliant-blue regions of active star formation sparkle through the dust. Several background galaxies are also visible, including an edge-on spiral just to the left of NGC 1546.

As I've said before … we live here. Wow!

NASA Releases Hubble Image Taken in New Pointing Mode⩘ , Hubblesite⩘ , Jun 18, 2024.

Daydreaming amongst the stars

Image credit: NASA⩘ , ESA⩘ , Hubble Heritage⩘  (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration;
Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin and Robert Gendler.

Okay, time to let my heart soar amongst the stars for a few moments, far out beyond the ugly chaos of earthbound news.

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 66 lies a mere 35 million light-years away. The gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across, similar in size to the Milky Way. This Hubble Space Telescope close-up view spans a region about 30,000 light-years wide around the galactic core. It shows the galaxy's disk dramatically inclined to our line-of-sight. Surrounding its bright core, the likely home of a supermassive black hole, obscuring dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep along spiral arms dotted with the tell-tale glow of pinkish star forming regions.

Astronomy Picture of the Day⩘ , Jun 13, 2024.

Ps: So long, Adobe. And good riddance!

I've dabbled with using Adobe's creative tools for decades at work and for my personal websites. While never a main focus, I used the tools to edit photos and create images, for example, images depicting the designs for my polyhedra lamps.

I used to have a personal copy of the entire suite, back when you could own the software. Then they abruptly changed the terms and offered only subscriptions. The software I had purchased was no longer mine to use.

For me, the entire suite was not worth the cost of full subscription, so I narrowed my use of their tools to Photoshop. At the same time, I purchased another photo editor, Pixelmator Pro, which is good, but I was lazy and Photoshop was deep in my muscle memory, so for years I continued to pay the fee to keep using it for my photos.

Then the other day I went to open Photoshop and was confronted by an Updated Terms of Use pop-up, which I was forced to accept in order to continue using their products, stating that Adobe "may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review."

Nope!

I immediately uninstalled Photoshop and deleted my Adobe account.

Since then, there has been a lot of pushback in the creative community, which eventually forced Adobe to do a stumbling partial retreat. Jesus Diaz captures the situation well in his Jun 7, 2024 article in Fast Company: Creatives are right to be fed up with Adobe and every other tech company right now⩘ .

A similar situation is happening with Microsoft and their ill-advised Windows Recall AI initiative. They're also backpedaling right now.

So, fuck you, Adobe. And fuck all the greedy tech companies that are so focused on acting like vampires and screwing their customers in every way they possibly can rather than on earning trust and loyalty by creating tools and products worth using.

Update: Looks like Adobe got the message: Adobe to update vague AI terms after users threaten to cancel subscriptions: Adobe scrambles to earn back user trust by updating terms next week⩘  by Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica, Jun 11, 2024. But it's too late for me. Adobe has lost me as a customer.

Related: Microsoft 'recalls' screenshot feature after outcry⩘  by Liv McMahon, BBC News, Jun 7, 2024.

Microsoft is making changes to a controversial feature announced for its new range of PCs powered by artificial intelligence after it was flagged as a potential "privacy nightmare".

The company billed the "Recall" feature for Copilot+ as a way to make users' lives easier by capturing and storing screenshots of their desktop activity.

But after people claimed hackers might be able to misuse the tool and its saved screenshots, Microsoft is making the feature opt-in instead.

Related: How to Quit Google, According to a Privacy Expert⩘  by Justin Pot, Lifehacker, Jun 7, 2024.

Don't just switch to another company

You might be tempted, while facing the prospect of having to slowly replace every single Google product one at a time, to instead switch wholesale to another company's suite of apps. [Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton who publishes work on human computer interaction] advises against this.

"You don't jump out of the frying pan into someone else's frying pan," she told me. This approach has a few benefits. First, it avoids a situation in which one company has access to all of your information. Second, it keeps you experimenting with new tools.

"The key thing, for me, is to have a lot alternatives,"" said Vertesi. "When people ask 'what do you use instead of Google' I say 'a lot of things.'"

See also:

• How to delete the data Google has on you⩘  by David Nield, The Verge, Apr 24, 2024.
• Google-Free Living (it's better here)⩘  by Janet Vertesi, The Opt Out Project, Sep 28, 2022.

2025 follow-up: I am so glad I dumped Adobe. What a fucked up company. Adobe to automatically move subscribers to pricier, AI-focused tier in June⩘  by Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, May 20, 2025.

The Notorious RBG

Justice Ginsburg was an amazing person with an incredible legal vision, a deep and abiding concern for humanity, and a fierce conviction to uphold the constitution of the United States and help create a better, fairer world for all of us. Her integrity stands in stark contrast to the current shameful state of the Roberts Court.

Professor Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American post about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg⩘  (Mar 31, 2024) inspired me to watch this film.

RBG Movie⩘ 

A solar filament erupts

Image credit: NASA's⩘  GSFC⩘ , SDO AIA Team

It blows my mind when I contemplate a photo like this and think about how this seething chaotic inferno is what gifts us with life each day.

Astronomy Picture of the Day⩘ , May 26, 2024.

See also: NASA: Fiery Looping Rain on the Sun⩘ .

An invitation to analysis and action

Meredith Whittaker is someone I listen to carefully related to AI (and many other tech-related topics). In her May 2024 prizewinner's speech for the 2024 Helmut Schmidt Future Prize, she shares her concerns related to the way AI is being implemented and marketed, as well as her personal optimism about a possible path forward.

Make no mistake – I am optimistic – but my optimism is an invitation to analysis and action, not a ticket to complacency.

She pulls no punches when talking about the companies at the forefront of this AI push, as well as their very real contribution to crimes against humanity.

The metastatic shareholder capitalism-driven pursuit of endless growth and revenue that ultimately propels these massive corporations [the companies driven by the surveillance business model to push the technologies that are being labeled "AI"] frequently diverges from the path toward a liveable future.

It is a speech well worth the time to read and reflect upon.

Meredith Whittaker's prizewinner's speech for the 2024 Helmut Schmidt Future Prize⩘ 

Greedy fucking assholes

Photo by John Guccione www.advergroup.com from Pexels⩘ 

I really hate the way so many fucking companies behave in such an evil manner, placing profit above everything else, include the health and well-being of people and our planet. This is yet another example, in this case 3M and the way they hid what they knew about the harmful effects of chemicals they were producing and selling for decades, so that by now, all of us have these toxic forever chemicals in our bodies and they are widely distributed throughout our environment.

In her excellent article in ProPublica⩘ , Sharon Lerner shares the way organizations conceal information like this by slicing it into smaller components, and compartmentalizing those components so that very few people understand the whole picture.

Much of my reporting, which started in 2015, focused on what 3M and DuPont knew, even as they continued to produce PFAS. But, as I reported on the cover-up, I wondered what it meant for a sprawling multinational company to know that its products were dangerous. Who knew? How much, exactly, did they know? And how had the company kept its secret? For many years, no one inside 3M would agree to speak with me.

Lerner shares the reflections of a scientist who used to work at 3M, Kris Hansen, and who discovered decades ago that the toxic compounds 3M was producing were showing up in everyone's blood.

Hansen knew that if she could find a blood sample that didn't contain PFOS then she might be able to convince her colleagues that the other samples did. She and her team began to study historical blood from the early decades of PFOS production. They soon found the chemical in blood from a 1969-71 Michigan breast cancer study. Then they ran an overnight test on blood that had been collected in rural China during the '80s and '90s. If any place were PFOS-free, she figured, it would be somewhere remote, where 3M products weren't in widespread use.

The next morning, anxious to see the results, Hansen arrived at the lab before anyone else. For the first time since she had begun testing blood, some of the samples showed no trace of PFOS. She was so struck that she called her husband. There was nothing wrong with her equipment or methodology; PFOS, a man-made chemical produced by her employer [3M], really was in human blood, practically everywhere. Hansen's team found it in Swedish blood samples from 1957 and 1971. After that, her lab analyzed blood that had been collected before 3M created PFOS. It tested negative. Apparently, fluorochemicals had entered human blood after the company started selling products that contained them. They had leached out of 3M's sprays, coatings and factories – and into all of us.

Stories like this leave me feeling disappointed, angry, and much the way former Air Force firefighter Brad Creacey, who was exposed to high levels of these chemicals and decades later is facing serious health issues, feels:

"It makes me feel like I was a lab rat, like we were all disposable," Creacey told me. "I've lost faith in human beings."

Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe ⩘  by Sharon Lerner, ProPublica, May 20, 2024.

See also:

• 3M knew firefighting foams containing PFAS were toxic, documents show⩘  by Rachel Salvidge and Leana Hosea, The Guardian, Jan 15, 2025.
• Dark Waters⩘ .

Loving our country: The Sixth

A extraordinarily important documentary about the horrifying events at the United States Capitol on Jan 6, 2021 as told by Washington D.C. filmmakers Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine.

The film is told from the firsthand perspectives of six patriotic Americans who were at the center of the maelstrom: DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers Daniel Hodges and Christina Laury; photographer Mel D. Cole; MPD Chief Robert J. Contee III; U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland's 8th District; and Congressional staffer Erica Loewe, Deputy Communications Director for U.S. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn.

While I found it at times a really difficult film to watch because of the horrendous nature of the violence of the treasonous MAGA mob, it is certainly an essential watch.

A true patriot watches "The Sixth" with a deep sense of shame that this happened to our country and a deeper determination to never let it happen again.
– From the review by Ty Burr, The Washington Post (May 3, 2024)⩘ 

The Sixth is designed to reinvigorate. It might be uncomfortable to look back on, but it's not nearly as uncomfortable as what might happen if we don't.
– From the review by Sam Adams, Slate, May 9, 2024⩘ 

The Sixth Movie⩘ 

See also: Four hours of insurrection⩘ 

Warming can be stopped

Climate expert Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania.
Elizabeth Hanlon/Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

I appreciate the way Michael Mann has and continues to tenaciously fought for a recognition of the impact of climate change while maintaining a positive attitude that we can and must have the will to address this existential issue.

Keeping the Earth's warming below the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold that scientists believe will stave off climate change's worst effects is a tall task, but one of the world's top climate scientists believes climate "doomism" won't help the fight. And Michael Mann is all about the fight.

"I push back on doomism because I don't think it's justified by the science, and I think it potentially leads us down a path of inaction," said Mann during a talk last Thursday at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "And there are bad actors today who are fanning the flames of climate doomism because they understand that it takes those who are most likely to be on the front lines, advocating for change, and pushes them to the sidelines, which is where polluters and petrostates want them." …

Mann noted that a difficult road lies ahead, but there is time still to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C. He cited as encouraging the U.S. passage of the Inflation Reduction Act – which contains significant provisions to fight climate change – and the global agreement in 2021's COP 26, whose commitments, if enacted, would limit warming to 2 degrees C, which Mann acknowledged is still too high.

"It's not too late for us to take the actions to keep warming below 1.5 Celsius. The obstacles at this point aren't physical, they are not technological, they are entirely political," he said. "And political obstacles can be overcome."

Mann's lecture (YouTube): Can Lessons from Earth's Past Help Us Survive Our Current Climate Crisis?⩘ 

Forget 'doomers.' Warming can be stopped, top climate scientist says⩘  by Alvin Powell, The Harvard Gazette, Apr 3, 2024.

Origin

 
Cropped portion of the poster designed by Bianca Moran Parkes⩘ 

Such a powerful film! Origin, written and directed by Ava DuVernay, focuses on Isabel Wilkerson's life as she gets the inspiration for and then researches and writes Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor does an wonderful job of portraying Wilkerson as she goes through an incredibly challenging time in her life, during which her husband and mother both pass away, and when the nation is shaken by the murder by an asshole vigilante of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin as he is walking home in his own neighborhood.

While the book and the film focus on caste in the United States, throughout our history and until today, Nazi Germany, and India, it is clear that caste degrades humanity worldwide.

   And so, there is a connection between us. The African Americans, the Dalits, the Indigenous People around the world, the Palestinian people, the Roma people, Buraku people. The outcasts of Africa are still fighting for their rights. Be it Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal. You go to Latin America, you find outcasts within the Mexican society or Brazilian society. And if we think about our histories through the wonderful ability of love, the symbols of hate and diets of violence will be replaced by compassion, care and solidarity. This is the world that we have to imagine for ourselves and for others who have not yet seen the beauty that human beings have to offer.
   – Dalit scholar Suraj Yengd

The film concludes with a deeply heartfelt statement about how it is the responsibility of all of us to deal with the system of caste in which we all find ourselves living.

   When you live in an old house, you may not want to go in the basement after a storm to see what the rains have brought. But you choose not to look at your own peril. We're all like homeowners who've inherited a house on a piece of land that's beautiful on the outside. But the soil is unstable. People say I had nothing to do with how this all started. I never owned slaves. I didn't mistreat untouchables. I didn't gas Jews. And, yes, not one of us was around when this house was built. But here we are. The current occupants of a property with stress cracks built into the foundation, and a roof that must be replaced. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We didn't erect the uneven pillars, but they are ours to deal with now. The cracks won't fix themselves. Any more deterioration is on our watch.
   Caste is not simply hatred. It is the worn grooves of routine and expectation. Patterns of a social order that have been in place so long, it looks natural… when it isn't. Caste is everywhere, yet invisible. No one avoids exposure to its message, and the message is simple. One kind of person is more deserving of freedom than another kind. Freedom ot love whoever you want to love. Freedom to go wherever you want to go. Freedom to express yourself however you want to express yourself. Freedom to resist and fight for your human right to do so.

As the book itself concludes: "A world without caste would set everyone free."

The strength of the film inspired me to immediately begin listening to the book again, which I last did so when it came out in 2020. I'm a few hours into it, and it is every bit as essential, eye opening, powerful, chilling, haunting, and inspiring as I remembered it to be: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson⩘ .

Film website: Origin⩘ , Neon, 2023.

Starburst after galaxy collision

NGC 7714 (cropped).
Image credit: NASA⩘ , ESA⩘ , Hubble Legacy Archive⩘ .
Note: This is the original Hubble image of NGC 7714⩘  from 2015.

Normally, I enjoy images of galaxies, especially those taken by the Hubble, because I appreciate their harmonious symmetry. In contrast, this lopsided galaxy has been torn asunder and distorted after another smaller galaxy smashed through it.

The reason I'm noting this image is because the description of it on Astronomy Picture of the Day caused me to stop and deeply contemplate.

NGC 7714 is located about 130 million light years away toward the constellation of the Two Fish (Pisces). The interactions between these galaxies likely started about 150 million years ago and should continue for several hundred million years more, after which a single central galaxy may result.

It's so astonishing to ponder our existence. On one hand, day-to-day life seems so full, so huge, sometimes even overwhelmingly so. But when compared to our bigger environment, a place where things take place on scales of hundreds of millions and even billions of years across incomprehensibly vast distances, we are just tiny, insignificant blips. At the same time, I just finished reading Einstein: A Life in Science by Michael White and John Gribbin⩘ , so I was immersed in the universe of photons, neutrons, protons, and electrons, the tiniest of things. And yet, these tiny things somehow exert influences on and across the vastness of our universe.

How can I begin to grasp all of this, except to deeply appreciate the wonder of it.

Astronomy Picture of the Day, Mar 17, 2024⩘ .
Note: The APOD Mar 17, 2024 version of NGC 7714 highlights different details, but is copyrighted, so I'm not showing it here.

Brain waves radiating outward at the speed of light

Credit: Kavli IMPU

I enjoy having my mind blown by astronomical speculation such as what is presented by Dr. Ethan Siegel in this article in Big Think, the idea that black holes give birth to baby universes, that we ourselves live in one of these and are surrounded by them. I can feel my brain waves radiating outward at the speed of light, dancing into the universe(s).

Key Takeaways:

• Our Universe appears to be expanding and cooling, having originated some 13.8 billion years ago in a hot Big Bang.
• However, it's plausible that what we see from inside our Universe is simply the result of being inside a black hole that formed from some parent Universe.
• If the black holes that form in our cosmos give birth to baby Universes, perhaps we arose from the formation of a black hole ourselves.

Are we living in a baby universe that looks like a black hole to outsiders?⩘  by Dr. Ethan Siegel, Big Think, Jan 22, 2022.

In this sense I am religious …

Image licensed from Alamy⩘  (Courtesy Everett Collection)

This is a short speech given by Albert Einstein to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, in 1932. Nearly every paragraph left me reflecting in an awed silence.

Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of' others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own.

I am often worried at the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them.

I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: “Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills” accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper.

I never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal

My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as did my aversion to any obligation and dependence I do not regard as absolutely necessary. I always have a high regard for the individual and have an insuperable distaste for violence and clubmanship.

All these motives made me into a passionate pacifist and anti-militarist. I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult.

I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state.

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.

In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.

This speech can be found in Einstein: A Life In Science by Michael White and John Gribbin, Dutton, 1994, pages 262 – 263: via Internet Archive⩘ 

See also: How Albert Einstein Used His Fame to Denounce American Racism⩘  by Matthew Francis, Smithsonian Magazine, Mar 3, 2017.

Enshittification

Based on my personal transactions, being a customer these days—especially online and particularly when trying to get even minimal customer service—can best be described in most cases as an incredibly shitty experience, a shout out loud and tear my hair out shitty experience. And it's rapidly getting noticeably worse.

At the Transmediale festival in Berlin on Jan 30, 2024, Cory Doctorow gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture. It is an excellent talk on the subject of enshittification, a term coined by him in late 2022 and selected as the 2023 Word of the Year⩘  by the American Dialect Society.

He uses the term enshittification to describe what is happening in today's business environment, especially reflected in the way business is being conducted by the big tech firms like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and so on. He talks about why this is happening and what can be done about it.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.…

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it.…

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.…

[I]t may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification⩘  by Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, Jan 30, 2024. (Video on YouTube: Transmediale McLuhan Lecture 2024 with Cory Doctorow and Frederike Kaltheuner⩘ .)

Cory first used the term enshittification in a blog post dated Nov 15, 2022: Social Quitting⩘ , which was the published in the January, 2023 issue of Locus Magazine. He subsequently wrote a followup blog post⩘  further explaining the concept, and has been talking about it since, as has much of the tech world and the press.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

On May 9, 2023, he wrote about how to solve this problem in a post on Electronic Frontier Foundation: As Platforms Decay, Let's Put Users First⩘ .

Protecting users from platform degradation starts with giving users control: control over their digital lives. Users deserve to be protected from deceptive and abusive platform rules, users deserve to have alternatives to the platforms they use now. Finally, users deserve the right to use those alternatives, without having to pay a heavy price caused by artificial technical or legal barriers to switching.

He discusses two principles that can help, and provides realworld examples.

Principle 1: End-to-End: Connecting Willing Listeners With Willing Speakers.

The End-to-End Principle is a bedrock idea underpinning the internet, the idea that the role of a network is to reliably deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers.

Principle 2: Right of Exit: Treating Bad Platforms As Damage and Routing Around Them.…

Making it easier for platform users to go elsewhere has two important effects: it disciplines platform owners who are tempted to shift value from users to themselves, because they know that making their platforms worse, such as by allowing harassment and scams, or by increasing surveillance, raising prices or accepting invasive advertising, will precipitate a mass exodus of users who can leave without paying a high price.

Just as important: if platforms aren't disciplined by this threat, then users can leave, treating the bad platform as damage and routing around it.

See also:

• Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?⩘  by Cory Doctorow, The Guardian, Oct 5, 2025.
  
  • "Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term 'enshittification' explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about it."
• Disenshittify or Die⩘  by Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, Aug 17, 2024.
  
  • "A new, good internet is one that has the positive aspects of the old, good internet: an ethic of technological self-determination, where users of technology (and hackers, tinkerers, startups and others serving as their proxies) can reconfigure and mod the technology they use, so that it does what they need it to do, and so that it can't be used against them.… We can have nice things. We can build for the people we love, and give them a place that's worth of their time and attention."
• Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain⩘  by Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, Feb 21, 2024.
  
  • "A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit."
• How Trump pushed Silicon Valley off the rails⩘ , opinion by Kara Swisher, The Washington Post, Feb 15, 2024.
  
  • "The Trump tech summit was a major turning point for me and how I viewed the industry I'd been covering since the early 1990s. The lack of humanity was overwhelming. My minor in college was in Holocaust studies. I studied propaganda, and I could see Trump was an expert at it. I knew exactly where this was headed. I ended my original Recode⩘  column that broke the story with this epigram: 'Welcome to the brave new world, which is neither brave nor new. But it's now the world we live in, in which it's Trump who is the disrupter and tech the disrupted. Yeah, you can say it: F---f---f---.'"
  • The couple who took on Google and cost the tech giant £2bn⩘  by Simon Tulett, BBC News, Oct 26, 2024.
    
    • "In its 2017 judgement, the European Commission found that Google had illegally promoted its own comparison shopping service in search results, whilst demoting those of competitors⩘ ."

Loving our country: The Fourteenth Amendment

Excellent post this morning by Professor Heather Cox Richardson on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, providing historical context and current applicability.

It seems clear that the men who wrote the Reconstruction Amendments expected men like former president Trump to be disqualified from the presidency under the Fourteenth Amendment, as 25 distinguished historians of Reconstruction outlined in their recent brief supporting Trump's removal from the Colorado ballot.

But the Fourteenth Amendment did far more than ban insurrectionists from office. Together with the other Reconstruction Amendments, it established the power of the federal government to defend civil rights, voting, and government finances from a minority that had entrenched itself in power in the states and from that power base tried to impose its ideology on the nation.

Letter from an American⩘  by Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Feb 4, 2024.

Snow at Nakazato

When I stumbled across this woodblock print by Yoshida Hiroshi, it brought me a sense of beautiful calm; it so perfectly captures the serene atmosphere of a snowfall.

Snow at Nakazato (Nakazato no yuki), from the series Twelve Scenes of Tokyo (Tôkyô jûni dai no uchi)⩘ , Yoshida Hiroshi, 1928; woodblock print, ink and color on paper; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston collection.

Fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954

'They were omnipresent in this space,' said Carroll Muffett,
chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law.
Composite image: The Guardian/Special Collections & Archives,
UC San Diego/Lyndon B Johnson Library

Fucking hell, this makes me nauseous and pissed off: the fossil fuel industry knew of the climate danger for longer than I've been alive, and I'm a pretty old fart.

And then they lied about it publicly. My bolding …

The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research⩘  funded by oil companies.

In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center⩘ , and published⩘  by the climate website DeSmog⩘  – Keeling's research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify "changes in the atmosphere" caused by the burning of coal and petroleum.

"The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization," Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.

'Smoking gun proof': fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show⩘  by Oliver Milman, The Guardian, Jan 30, 2024.

An intersection of art and math

French software engineer and artist Etienne Jacob creates some incredible and mesmerizing animations (follow the links to the see the original GIFs or MP4s).

The still shot pictured is from his animated GIF titled Rotating Dandelion⩘ , which was featured in an article in Colossal: Dizzying Gifs by Etienne Jacob Infuse Mathematical Equations into Endless Loops⩘  by Grace Ebert, Jan 12, 2024.

Looking at some of his work, like his Rotating Dandelion, makes me feel like I'm getting a glimpse into the dance of our universe. Others provide me with a sense of what it might be like to dive into a black hole⩘ .

His Snake Spirals⩘  animation brings to mind the intriguing theory explored in the book White Holes by Carlo Rovelli⩘ .

Finally, his Cubes camouflage⩘  animation (made in collaboration with jn3008⩘ ) brings to mind The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman⩘ .

See also:

• The website by Etienne Jacob featuring his animations: blueje⩘ .
• Etienne Jacob's Mastodon account: @bleuje@mastodon.social⩘ .

Winter winds in the foothills of the Rockies

Cameras above Boulder on Dec. 30, 2021, caught another view of the wildfire and the smoke and wind "wave" created by 100 mph downslope winds and a "jump" near Louisville. (Provided by NOAA)

We are experiencing some crazy wind gusts today. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecast for today said: "gusts as high as 55 mph", and some of them definitely have felt like they were in that range. Winds gusting eastward down the slope of the Rocky Mountains through the foothills where we live are not uncommon here during the winter, though they only get this blustery once in awhile.

At the end of December two years ago, we had one of the worst days we've experienced with sustained fierce winds gusting to well over 100 mph. We had had a very dry December, and just south of us, two fires started. The winds quickly pushed them out into the dry grasses of the plains, and within hours, more than 1,000 homes had burned to the ground, the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.

Fortunately, we've had more moisture this December and early January, but winds like this still scare me. I came across an article by Michael Booth in the Colorado Sun⩘  this afternoon (Jan 10, 2024) as I was scrolling through Mastodon⩘ , and it brought it all vividly back: Colorado's most destructive wildfire also had hurricane-force winds, researchers say two years later⩘ .

While Boulder and Jefferson counties see a handful of wild downslope winds each year, the storms almost always gust their dangerous blasts and then offer relief by falling into periodic lulls, according to a new study by Boulder researchers from NOAA and the National Weather Service. But the Marshall fire on Dec. 30, 2021, blasted well over 100 mph and stayed at hurricane force for 11 straight hours, they said.

The scientists call it "nothing short of miraculous" that only two people died as winds pushed a wall of flame dozens of miles east into packed suburbs, in a study published in December in Weather and Forecasting⩘ , a journal of the American Meteorological Society.

I have noticed that the NWS is more likely to issue red flag warnings during windy conditions since that event, so it appears they learned a lesson from it.

We had a closer brush with wildfire a year before in Oct 2020. We already were on alert due to the monstrous Cameron Peak Fire that was burning northwest of us up in the mountains. That one became the largest wildfire in Colorado history and the winds often were blowing in our direction, so the air was filled with dense smoke. We had our go bags packed and ready. Then, another fire, the Calwood fire, broke out nearby in the hills just southwest of us. While not as big as the Cameron Peak Fire, it did quickly grow to become the largest fire in Boulder County history, and it ended up destroying about two dozen homes. We had to evacuate our home and spent a mostly sleepless night at a friend's place watching as the fire lit up the sky as it burned towards our neighborhood, coming within about two miles of our home before an unusual and unexpected weather event occurred, an inversion that brought a cold misty fog that hung over the fire and stalled its progress.

The drama went on for several more days, but ultimately, we were spared. Even now, three years later, I still get a clenched stomach when I think about it. Writing about it helps calm me down. Here's what I wrote about the experience at the time, along with some photos⩘ . And yes, we remain always ready to evacuate quickly.

To build a better world

The year 2024 must be a turning point for shifting policies away from gross domestic product and towards sustainable well-being. Here's why and how.

Protesters in New York City in September joined thousands of others around the world in urging governments to act on climate change. Image credit: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters (cropped).

This is both an alarming and hopeful look at the state of our world and our future.

The alarming bit:

The past year has given many of us reason to pause. We are losing in a race to prevent planetary tipping points⩘  – the climate is changing faster than expected, and humanity has already breached six of the nine sustainable planetary boundaries (for biodiversity loss; climate, freshwater and land-system change; biogeochemical flows; and novel entities). Summer Antarctic sea ice shrank to its lowest recorded extent in 2023 (see go.nature.com/4f86req⩘ ), a year that is on track to be the warmest on record (see go.nature.com/4f9ykdj⩘ ).

The danger of the reliance of gross domestic product to measure our progress:

As the European conference emphasized, GDP was never designed to measure societal well-being – only market production and consumption. GDP says nothing about the distribution of income, unpaid work or damages to natural or social capital. The misuse of GDP as a policy goal is driving societies towards an unsustainable future that benefits an increasingly small proportion of the population while impoverishing the vast majority.

The hopeful bit:

In a stirring opening address [at the Beyond Growth conference at the European Parliament], Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said that governments must stop misusing growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as their goal and instead move swiftly and urgently to sustainable well-being within planetary boundaries. She got a standing ovation. Agata Meysner, the young leader of Generation Climate Europe, a coalition of climate and environmental networks across the bloc, concluded the event with a call to join the "movement of movements" to create a new economy based on sustainable prosperity, justice and sufficiency. Everyone rose to their feet.

The article goes on to describe and define measures we can use instead of (or in addition to) GDP, as well as how we can develop and implement policies to support sustainable well-being by focusing on protecting the planet, creating a more equal society that provides basic services and rights, and encouraging active democracy.

Definitely a worthwhile read at the beginning of 2024 as we race headlong into an existential climate crisis that is impacting all life on our precious planet.

Robert Costanza is professor of ecological economics at the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London, UK.

To build a better world, stop chasing economic growth⩘  by Robert Costanza, Nature, Dec 20, 2023.

See also:

• U.S. oil production hit a record under Biden. He seldom mentions it.⩘  by Evan Halper and Toluse Olorunnipa, The Washington Post, Dec 31, 2023.
     "The flow of huge amounts of crude from American producers is playing a big role in keeping prices down at the pump, diminishing the geopolitical power of OPEC, and taming inflation. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide has dropped to close to $3, and analysts project it could stay that way leading up to the presidential election, potentially assuaging the economic anxieties of swing state voters who will be crucial to Biden's hopes of a second term.…
     "'You can't solve the climate crisis without keeping fossil fuels in the ground,' said Jamie Henn, founder of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit focused on ending oil and gas use. 'Record oil production stands in the way of the energy transition … An 'all of the above approach' leads to flip-flopping on fossil fuels. It is bad policy, and also bad politics.'"
• Wealth shown to scale⩘ . One pixel wealth, created by Matt Korostoff⩘ .

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