Ocean acidification, megastorms, megadroughts, climate genocide, dismembered journalists, global kleptocracy, the world literally on fire. It’s all out there. We can look back at the predictions from James Howard Kunstler and Sarah Kendzior and note where they got a few details wrong, but it’s roughly shaking out like they said it would.
And still, here we are. Getting up in the morning. Going to work. Saving for retirement. Putting children through school. Cleaning the house for company. Making a meal for friends and family. Planning for the future, as though there were a future to plan for.
Humans are nothing if not optimistic. Or just carried by inertia. One or the other. The motivation hardly matters if the result is the same.
Twitter rewind
From September, a Noah Smith thread on elite disaffection and the rise of socialism.
From 2015, AV Flox on the difference between being a freelance writer and a sex worker. (One of them gets no respect, and the other one has sex for money).
From 1929, a note about a force of convicts building US Route 29. (“Convicts” in this article means black laborers enslaved on a pretext.)
Rain of Blood
Indian medtech startup idea: Blood delivered by drone. What could possibly go wrong?
International Relations
Two New Zealand women wrote a letter to Kiwi pop star Lorde urging her to cancel a planned concert in Israel. Lorde canceled her show. A handful of Israeli teens who had planned to attend the show sued the letter-writers. An Israeli court awarded them a judgement of NZ$18,000. It’s not clear what this means, although the Kiwis aren’t likely to be welcome at the Tel Aviv Lorde Fan Club meeting next month.
I’m taking econ 101 here are my hot economics takes
One of the key concepts in economics 101 is opportunity cost: The thing you don’t do while you’re doing something else. Once you start thinking about it, it’s everywhere. The cost of a deli sandwich isn’t simply $8, it’s everything else you could have done with that $8, everything else you could have done with the time you were waiting in line at the sandwich shop, everything you could have done while you were eating. You could have worked harder. You could have changed the world. Instead you were eating some overpriced unsatisfying sandwich. (This message brought to you by Soylent, the food that provides nutrition and convenience and nothing else; the opportunity cost is joy and the possibility of human connection while eating a meal together).
Cultivating joy
Bunny eating a strawberry.
Hey: send me some joy, guys. It’s getting pretty bleak in here.
Secretly Ironic 