Despite suffering from debilitating headaches and generally poor health, Weil completed her work during a remarkable burst of activity. She died later that year at the age of 34. The report was published in 1949. The first English translation appeared […]
Stop Solar Geoengineering
Geoengineering is the intentional, large-scale technological manipulation of the Earth’s systems, often discussed as a techno-fix for combating climate change. Climate geoengineering technologies include so-called solar radiation management, greenhouse gas removal and sequestration and weather modification. None of these technofixes […]
AI Chatbots and the Power of Language
In the mid-1960s, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created the world’s first chatbot. It was a relatively simple program modeled on the techniques of Rogerian psychotherapy, in which the therapist mirrors the patient’s statements often in the form of a […]
Humility and the myth of limitlessness
I might be wrong about this, but it seems that over the last couple of years more and more people have been working their way to the conclusion that modern society is fundamentally broken – not just broken in a […]
Low-tech solutions
Most mainstream responses to climate chaos today rely heavily on high technology and big business. We rarely hear about solutions – often rooted in the past – that are localized, low-tech, and don’t advance the interests of large corporations. These […]
How the FCC shields cellphone companies from safety concerns
The health complaints started rolling in within weeks of the activation of a new cellphone tower in August 2020 in Pittsfield, an old factory town in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains. Seventeen residents reported headaches, dizziness, insomnia or confusion. A few children […]
Can small-scale farmers feed the world?
One of the things I wondered about a lot during my first months of work in the food system was productivity. Growing up in a Minority World country, practically all of my food came from large-scale, industrial farms. As a […]
Of George Monbiot, mathematical modernism and the case for agrarian localism
When you read a book with which you profoundly disagree, I guess it’s usually best just to shrug, put it back on the shelf and get on with your work. The hatchet job review is a popular but ignoble genre. […]
The Gospel of Progress
Ever since the archaic divergence of humanity from other hominids, our systems of tools and symbols have developed at an accelerating pace. We depend less and less on the physical capacities of our bodies. We operate more and more in […]
Attending to the world
“Attention discourse” is my term for the proliferation of articles, essays, books, and op-eds about attention and distraction in the age of digital media. I don’t mean the label pejoratively. I’ve made my own contributions to the genre, in my […]
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