Private soil farming is a great business model. Low cost, high demand. With fewer chemicals and wider practice, the trade will be more sustainable.

More houses will be 3D printed — and smaller — in the future.

The internal combustion engine is the largest technological mis-step in human history.

I’m starting to think that the Nobel Prize for Economics should be renamed the Nobel Anti-Peace Prize.

Basically, there has always been opportunity in disaster. The Shock Doctrine uncovers the methods of those who engineer or wait for crises in order to capitalize on, or pass profiteering legislation in challening times.

I read the Shock Doctrine back in '09. It crystallized the Bush II presidency in such detail and scope that I’ve never been able to forget it.

Things have only gotten worse. Even under Obama. Certainly under Trump and Biden.

The part about Yeltsin firing on his own Parliament was very insightful. Again, setting the stage for Russia’s current exercises of Shock.

Letting enough people die expedites certain forms of problem-solving; particularly those that involve the military, technology, heavy industry, reconstruction, and financial sectors of the economy. When the most expensive things are destroyed — like cities, infrastructure, and the concept of human security — that’s where the fuckiteering begins. Debt loads, overcharging, and profiteering on misery for companies /countries that caused the problems in the first place.

It’s gross.

47m here. This was my journey:

Remember that scene in Heat, where Robert DeNiro introduces himself to Edie at the café? Do that. Stay interested. This goes for everyone. Get to know people. Take genuine interest in people, uncover what excites them, and get them talking about their excitement. If you find you’re excited by the same things, great. If not, there are many more people to practice on.

Also helpful:

Read books written by women. Fiction, non-fiction, articles, TV shows, films… everything. Take on concerns as experienced by women (SA, undoing redpill /mensrights /manosphere, unequal pay, caring professions) as your own responsibility. You’ll do everyone around you a favour.

Care for other people — less insofar as what they can do to/for you and more about the ends they are in themselves. Keep up good relationships.

If she’s still around, and you have the emotional capacity to do so, call your mom or sister. Women like to know that their men can have a good relationship with a woman who is not a sexual object.

Finally, give a shit about yourself. Get better at what you want to be good at. Keep a clean living space. Eat healthy, get outside, and find enjoyable activities. If you plan on dating anyone, you’re better off knowing what you like so that you can share it. Then, when she shares what she likes, you can approach it openly.

I’m not a guru. I’m still working on this from within a long-term committed relationship. It’s hard. There will be closeness, rupture, repair, and growth in any relationship. The willingness to wash, rinse, and repeat is key.

Good trouble. This is the answer.

And good books, we’re not alone out here.

I just finished One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. Not just about Gaza and the collateral damage of empires, but also about the tiny manipulations we’re all subjected to that make us feel alone.

Great reading.

Note: the link is to the Chicago Review of Books.

Off and on since the late 90s. Mostly observational, stray thoughts, ideas for designs, or writing. Intense emotional moments are often channelled into my writing.

It was The Corporation for me. Then, I discovered Adam Curtis. Smartest Guys in the Room, some Michael Moore stuff, then I really started taking a look at War docs with Smedley Butler and Dalton Trumbo and Charlie Chaplin shouting at me from the 1930s and 40s. Errol Morris kicked ass in the Fog of War, John Pilger kicked ass in Occupation 101, and BBC kicked ass with the Death of Yugoslavia.

This was 20 or 25 years ago. All this seems trite by comparison to where we are now.

A little late to the game, aren’t they?

This may be anecdotal, but it may also be a canary in a coalmine.

I have seen a civilian population tear down its president and vice-president. Peacefully, and just before an election. It took months of activism. Weeks of protest and a 1-day general strike.

Look up Guatemala, 2015. Otto Perez Molina. #noletoca.

This was underreported, I think. Three presidents later, therr is Bernardo Arevalo. He is a president whose legacy hearkens back to before their Civil War, after WWII, and before US intervention.

Are you me?

Everyone in the Expanse. Naomi, Drummer, Fred Johnson, Bobbie Draper, Chrisjen Avasarala, Monica… Obviously, Amos, Peaches, Miller, and even Holden.

All of them do reprehensible things. Some did them and made up for it. Some still do them to win.

Wall-E v.0.1.0.

They know that Israel is at the eye of the global shit storm. Iran might close the strait of Hormuz, and the Yemenis are definitely going to take shots at ships heading for Bab-el-Mandeb (Gate of Grief). Iran may start boarding ships as well.

This is a business decision.

The rest of this post is bullshit. If it comes true, well, then, I’m an unprofitable prophet.

Goodness knows how this is going to go once the NATO-backed EU sanctions on Israel hit in mid-July. US will try to sanction/tariff their way around that, an attempt to support their pals, but, surprise! Domestic unrest will force the felon’s hand.

That frees up some space for more integrated transport across Europe, Canada, and emerging markets across north and west Africa, quelling some of the decolonial “unrest” in Mali, Burkina Faso with offers of “trade.”

The wedge in the anglosphere will widen, and the US will be more isolated. They’ll either attack Canada or suffer Civil War by November, about the time people start to realize they can’t pay for their heating this winter and can’t even afford “2 dolls instead of 30” this Xmas.

I look forward to Netanyahu making his case in court and watching every argument evaporate under the sheer gravity of reality. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, standing beside him, defiant. Gallant gave up.

If I said yes, I’d caveat that by saying, “we’re not special.” There’s no interaction, quid pro quo or otherwise, with whatever presence, energy, or overmind that I would conceptualize as a deity.

Not an architect. Not a creator. Omnipotence and omniscience defy temporality. There are, similarly, no subdivisions of the deity; there are no places that it is present, and others that it is absent. No underboss gods, angels, demons, heavens, hells, or purgatories.

The deity, in my understanding, is simply a unity: An answer to paradoxes, a solution to the incomprehensible, a layer beneath and above all other measurements, concepts, and capacities. A holographic whole that encompasses and inhabits every possibility. It is older than the universe and beyond our feeble attempts to comprehend it, let alone write its character and tell its story.

A bearded white dude who impregnated a virgin, hates masturbation, holds vendettas, destroys cities, sends plagues, and permits humans to hide from “HIM” in the garden of good and evil… it is all just silly by comparison. At that’s just from the tradition I was raised in.

I mean, a burning bush? Or tests of faith?

We, people and all other organisms that are aware of one another, need to get on with finding ways to coexist. Biodiversity is the scorecard.

/rant

The metric is biodiversity.

How many kinds of life are there, and are they thriving? What are the bottlenecks and boundaries for species that slow or stop their progress?

Well, as a living, all-consuming, extinction-level event, I’d say we are making the experiment more impossible. We are a confounding factor, a bias most foul, and the primary flaw in the experimental design.

If only there was guidance in terms of balancing our biological impact and capacity for sustainable development. If only there were some models that have and had worked for millennia. If only there were living groups who could share their wisdom.

If only.

So, for now, plunderous expropriation rules: violent, resource-heavy, rational modern warfare; apathetic, resource-heavy, throwaway consumer culture; and ignorant, resource-heavy, industrial machinations.

What could go wrong?

Nice to meet you, too. Thanks to 세종대왕 (Sejong Dae Wang, King Sejong) for creating a Hangeul, a stronger phonetic system. I look forward to its use for a long time to come.

IIRC, the food, therefore the word, was introduced to Korea. It is a transliteration. Like “tae-kwon-do” is a transliteration from the Korean 태권도 (taegwondo).

Note: Korean is not my first language. It is first non-English script I’ve managed to learn to read and write and makes me happy every time I interact with it.

My read/spoken Korean is atrocious and barely functions.

치즈 (chi-jeu)