Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Someone who needs hope sent me this video from the Kurzgesagt: In a Nutshell folks. The videos produced by these people are generally slick-production info-tainment, generally STEM focused, generally enjoyable and uplifting… but also often just plain wrong. Or perhaps a better descriptor would be to say that the producers present a limited narrative in… Continue reading False Hopes
The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe Matthew Gabriele and David Perry 2021, Harper To understand racism and misogyny — or any kind of thing-ness — and the violence entrained in these ideas, you must understand the history of the Middle Ages, what we pejoratively label the Dark Ages and what Matthew Gabriele… Continue reading The Bright Ages: Review
Last week I ranted on about Putin’s idiocy and its ramifications for human survival, focusing the question on our ability to produce food (or potential lack thereof). But a lack of food is not actually the story that is getting the most headlines in this disaster, is it. Understandably. Fortunes are not made — and… Continue reading Economics of Needs?
I watched the Oscars on Sunday because we all are trying to reengage with our traditions. I suspect you all probably were doing the same thing, so I will avoid most of the obvious… only… Kevin Costner seems in critical need of antidepressants… and Will Smith really needs a vacation (though I’m pretty sure he… Continue reading We Won’t Talk About Bruno
The Overstory Richard Powers 2018, W. W. Norton & Company What makes some people so utterly convinced that the only living being with awareness and will is humanity? I understand that many of these people have spent millennia believing in deities that placed humans above the rest of creation, but this seems to me to… Continue reading A Meditation on The Overstory
Sometimes I get the feeling that the human world might actually be running in some form of the Matrix. However, instead of random aliens directing the program, it’s a rogue corporate AI demon hell-bent on profit maximization at any cost for ‘Choose-Your-Evil-Megacorp’. Probably a cabal of several. Likely on the military-industrial end of things. I… Continue reading A Way Off?
World Water Day is 22 March 2022. This annual observance was organized by the UN in 1993 to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and to promote sustainable freshwater management. Each year a different theme is chosen, centered on topics relevant to clean water, sanitation and hygiene. The theme for 2022 is Groundwater —… Continue reading World Water Day: Groundwater
My kitchen faucet started leaking last week. Once upon a time, this would have been cause for something close to panic. I am not a handy person. The skills I possess come through hard work and practice, and I don’t practice plumbing. It takes quite a lot of remedial tutoring for me to even get… Continue reading The Lesson in an Ex-Leak
For many years now, I’ve been talking with folks about universal basic income and the need to divorce health care from employment and other ideas to assure that everyone can meet the basic needs of their bodies. Our current system is, shall we say, not working. Most people agree that we need to change things.… Continue reading The Wages of Wages
How do you own a tree? What part of “tree” are you controlling? Where are the property boundaries? Do you own all the elements that contribute to your tree’s continuing existence? There are vast fungal networks feeding your tree, creating essential flows of nutrition and information between the visible tree and other organisms both above… Continue reading Tragedy of the Uncommons Part 2
By My Solitary Hearth 