#the book of settlements

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars”

In A City On Mars, biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith set out to investigate the governance challenges of the impending space settlements they were told were just over the horizon. Instead, they discovered that humans aren't going to be settling space for a very long time, and so they wrote a book about that instead:

https://www.acityonmars.com/

The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that ever aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What's more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool).

Every place we might settle in space – giant rotating rings, the Moon, Mars – is vastly more hostile than Earth. Not just more hostile than Earth as it stands today – the most degraded, climate-wracked, nuke-blasted Earth you can imagine is a paradise of habitability compared to anything else. Mars is covered in poison and the sky disappears under planet-sized storms that go on and on. The Moon is covered in black-lung-causing, razor-sharp, electrostatically charged dust. Everything is radioactive. There's virtually no water. There are temperature swings of hundreds of degrees every couple of hours or weeks. You're completely out of range of resupply, emergency help, or, you know, air.

There's Helium 3 on the Moon, but not much of it, and there is no universe in which is it cheaper to mine for Helium 3 on the Moon than it is to mine for it on Earth. That's generally true of anything we might bring back from space, up to and including continent-sized chunks of asteroid platinum.

Going to space doesn't end war. The countries that have gone to space are among the most militarily belligerent in human history. The people who've been to space have come back perfectly prepared to wage war.

Going to space won't save us from the climate emergency. The unimaginably vast trove of material and the energy and advanced technology needed to lift it off Earth and get it to Mars is orders of magnitude more material and energy than we would need to resolve the actual climate emergency here.

We aren't anywhere near being a "multiplanetary species." The number of humans you need in a colony to establish a new population is hard to estimate, but it's very large. Larger than we can foreseeably establish on the Moon, on Mars, or on a space-station. But even if we could establish such a colony, there's little evidence that it could sustain itself – not only are we a very, very long way off from such a population being able to satisfy its material needs off-planet, but we have little reason to believe that children could gestate, be born, and grow to adulthood off-planet.

To top it all off, there's space law – the inciting subject matter for this excellent book. There's a lot of space law, and while there are some areas of ambiguity, the claims of would-be space entrepreneurs about how their plans are permissible under the settled parts of space law don't hold up. But those claims are robust compared to claims that space law will simply sublimate into its constituent molecules when exposed to the reality of space travel, space settlement, and (most importantly) space extraction.

Space law doesn't exist in a vacuum (rimshot). It is parallel to – and shares history with – laws regarding Antarctica, the ocean's surface, and the ocean's floor. These laws relate to territories that are both vastly easier to access and far more densely populated by valuable natural resources. The fact that they remain operative in the face of economic imperatives demands that space settlement advocates offer a more convincing account than "money talks, bullshit walks, space law is toast the minute we land on a $14 quadrillion platinum asteroid."

The Weinersmiths have such an account in defense of space law: namely, that space law, and its terrestrial analogs, constitute a durable means of resolving conflicts that would otherwise give rise to outcomes that are far worse for science, entrepreneurship, human thriving or nation-building than the impediments these laws represent.

What's more, space law is enforceable. Not only would any space settlement be terribly, urgently dependent on support from Earth for the long-foreseeable future, but every asteroid miner, Lunar He3 exporter and Martian potato-farmer hoping to monetize their products would have an enforcement nexus with a terrestrial nation and thus the courts of that nation.

But the Weinersmiths aren't anti-space. They aren't even anti-space-settlement. Rather, they argue that the path to space-based scientific breakthroughs, exploration of our solar system, and a deeper understanding of our moral standing in a vast universe cannot start with space settlements.

Landing people on the Moon or Mars any time soon is a stunt – a very, very expensive stunt. These boondoggles aren't just terribly risky (though they are – people who attempt space settlement are very likely to die horribly and after not very long), they come with price-tags that would pay for meaningful space science. For the price of a crewed return trip to Mars, you could put multiple robots onto every significant object in our solar system, and pilot an appreciable fleet of these robot explorers back to Earth with samples.

For the cost of a tiny, fraught, lethal Moon-base, we could create hundreds of experiments in creating efficient, long-term, closed biospheres for human life.

That's the crux of the Weinersmiths' argument: if you want to establish space settlements, you need to do a bunch of other stuff first, like figure out life-support, learn more about our celestial neighbors, and vastly improve our robotics. If you want to create stable space-settlements, you'll need to create robust governance systems – space law that you can count on, rather than space law that you plan on shoving out the airlock. If you want humans to reproduce in space – a necessary precondition for a space settlement that lasts more than a single human lifespan – then we need to do things like breed multiple generations of rodents and other animals, on space stations.

Space is amazing. Space science is amazing. Crewed scientific space missions are amazing. But space isn't amazing because it offers a "Plan B" for an Earth that is imperiled by humanity's recklessness. Space isn't amazing because it offers unparalleled material wealth, or unlimited energy, or a chance to live without laws or governance. It's not amazing because it will end war by mixing the sensawunda of the "Pale Blue Dot" with the lebensraum of an infinite universe.

A science-driven approach to space offers many dividends for our species and planet. If we can figure out how to extract resources as dispersed as Lunar He3 or asteroid ice, we'll have solved problems like extracting tons of gold from the ocean or conflict minerals from landfill sites, these being several orders of magnitude more resource-dense than space. If we can figure out how to create self-sustaining terraria for large human populations in the radiation-, heat- and cold-blasted environs of space, we will have learned vital things about our own planet's ecosystems. If we can build the robots that are necessary for supporting a space society, we will have learned how to build robots that take up the most dangerous and unpleasant tasks that human workers perform on Earth today.

In other words, it's not just that we should solve Earth's problems before attempting space settlement – it's that we can't settle space until we figure out the solutions to Earth's problems. Earth's problems are far simpler than the problems of space settlement.

As I read the Weinersmiths' critique of space settlement, I kept thinking of the pointless AI debates I keep getting dragged into. Arguments for space settlement that turn on existential risks (like humanity being wiped out by comets, sunspots, nuclear armageddon or climate collapse) sound an awful lot like the arguments about "AI safety" – the "risk" that the plausible sentence generator is on the verge of becoming conscious and turning us all into paperclips.

Both arguments are part of a sales-pitch for investment in commercial ventures that have no plausible commercial case, but whose backers are hoping to get rich anyway, and are (often) sincerely besotted with their own fantasies:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Both AI and space settlement pass over the real risks, such as the climate consequences of their deployment, or the labor conditions associated with their production. After all, when you're heading off existential risk, you don't stop to worry about some carbon emissions or wage theft.

And critically, both ignore the useful (but resolutely noncommercial) ways that AI or space science can benefit our species. AI radiology analysis might be useful as an adjunct to human radiological analysis, but that is more expensive, not less. Space science might help us learn to use our materials more efficiently on Earth, and that will come long before anyone makes rendezvous with a $14 quadrillion platinum asteroid.

There are beneficial uses for LLMs. When the Human Rights Data Analysis Group uses an LLM to help the Innocence Project New Orleans extract and categorize officer information from wrongful conviction records, they are doing something valuable and important:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

It's socially important work, a form of automation that is an unalloyed good, but you won't hear about it from LLM advocates. No one is gonna get rich on improving the efficiency of overturning wrongful convictions with natural language processing. You can't inflate a stock bubble with the Innocence Project.

By the same token, learning about improving gestational health by breeding multigenerational mouse families in geosynchronous orbit is no way to get a billionaire tech baron to commit $250 billion to space science. But that's not an argument against emphasizing real science that really benefits our whole species. It's an argument for taking away capital allocation authority from tech billionaires.

I'm a science fiction writer. I love stories about space. But I can distinguish fantasy from reality and thought experiments from suggestions. Kim Stanley Robinson's 2015 novel Aurora – about failed space settlement – is every bit as fascinating and inspirational as "golden age" sf:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-aurora-space-is-bigger-than-you-think/

But still, it inspired howls of outrage from would-be space colonists. So much so that Stan wrote a brilliant essay explaining what we were all missing about space settlement, which I published:

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html

With City on Mars, the Weinersmiths aren't making the case for giving up on space, nor are they trying to strip space of its romance and excitement. They're trying to get us to focus on the beneficial, exciting, serious space science we can do right now, not just because it's attainable and useful – but because it is a necessary precondition for any actual space settlement in the distant future.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

[kropotkindersurprise]

August 3, 2024 - Activists blocked the boat of Booking.com at Amsterdam canal pride, to stop their corporate pinkwashing of the Israeli occupation and genocide.

Booking.com promotes and rents out holiday properties in illegal Israeli settlements. As in, not just in occupied Palestine, which is all of Israel, but in Israeli settlements that are considered illegal even by the UN. [video]

[ruvviks]

All That's Left follows two journalists and their friends in post-apocalyptic United States as they travel from the fallen east coast megalopolis Opportunity back to Los Angeles, crossing through a harsh wasteland overrun with zombies— only to find out that there is a lot more life left than what the protected cities want them to believe. On their journey they meet dozens of people living their lives as peaceful as possible away from military forces, corporations, and corrupt governments; and they learn that the same mutated ghouls that took down Opportunity are spreading rapidly through the country, destroying everything in their path. Will this finally be the end of the world as we know it?

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[samantha-and-nellie]

i’ve been re-reading the american girl history mysteries on and off here and well. let’s just say that miss brown and miss guerrier from “under copp’s hill” sure seem gay

[kaurwreck]

I'm reading a collection of tales recounting the early days of the Yokohama Foreign Settlement (Suribachi City, in bsd-verse), and the sheer amount of shenanigans deserves a list but I don't even know where to begin.

The noodle-makers' dispute over flour that led to the Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture committing seppuku? The Japanese-government sponsored brothel with a moat? The two-sword wielding assassins in the swamp who kept killing foreigners? That the foreigners still went bird hunting in the swamp filled with two-sword wielding assassins? The Japanese soldiers quartered nearby bonding with the troops England sent to do something about the two-sword wielding assassins? The English merchant who had his American assistant illegally arrested resulting in a lawsuit against the English merchant in the English court that had to be litigated by the American Consul since he was the only American lawyer in Yokohama, during the course of which the salty editor of an English newspaper decided to settle a personal vendetta by publishing remarks about the American assistant so scathing that the American assistant then hid in wait only to pop out and horsewhip the editor in front of God and everyone, resulting in another trial, but this time in the American court, which meant the American Consul became the judge, a position which he used to imply the English lawyer, the now-judge's former opposing counsel, was worth a sum of 6 1/4 cents, with such insinuation sparking community-wide protests? Blood Town?

[spurgie-cousin]

shoutout to whoever recommended the Year of Polygamy podcast, I am just eating it up I love it. I didn't start at the beginning so I still don't know why it's called that yet lol, but I'm just jumping around based on what titles seem interesting and I've already ordered a book by one of the authors that was interviewed. highly recommend to anyone else that is fascinated by Mormonism, both mainstream and fundie.

[trainsinanime]

A City on Mars

It's really good!

"A City on Mars" is the newest popular science book by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (@zachweinersmith). Besides their popular science books, they're mostly known for @smbc-comics (like xkcd but sometimes meaner and in color). This book deals with the question of space settlement: Where can we settle in space, how would we settle in space, which questions are still unanswered, and is this even a good idea? They review all the applicable research to come up with answers.

Interestingly, the answer to the question "is this a good idea?" turns out to be no, even to the author's surprise. As a result, they expect that the space settlement community, who helped a lot with creating the book, will absolutely hate it. My guess is that here on Tumblr, the conclusion "we shouldn't let Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos use their incredible wealth to build weird semi-independent company-controlled colonies on foreign planets" will prove to be rather popular. I think they make good arguments for their point of view. They conclude that if we want to do space settlement, the best solution is to "wait and go big". That means first do a lot of research, maybe with some temporary research outposts, and only then start with a long-term settlement once we worked out most of the kinks. And that first settlement should be very big, at least in the thousands of people, from basically the start, because anything less than that will cause way too many problems.

The book itself is really well written, full of fun anecdotes and drawings, and it makes all of its topics accessible without ever feel like it's talking down to people. It's funny, informative and well researched. If I have any criticism, it's that I almost wish it was twice as long. Its goal is to provide an overview into a field that is incredibly broad, reaching from physics, geophysics and biology all the way to international law and philosophical questions about property rights, and it does an admirable job with all of them. But the book can't go into too much depth on any of these issues, and some (like how an economy on such a settlement would be set up) needed to be skipped entirely. There's more than enough material here to write at least two to three more books like this, and I would absolutely love to read them if they ever happen.

But really, this book is great. I intended to only look into the first chapter yesterday, and accidentally ended up reading through all of it. Very much recommended.

[agentfascinateur]

Israeli illegal settlers jumping the gun on Lebanon

Alon misses the picturesque views of Lebanon from his bedroom window, saying in the book that “This is Lebanon, it is beautiful. I love to go to Lebanon and stroll there”. When he is told, however, that “It is dangerous; you cannot go there; it is not ours yet”, the book then narrates that “Alon thought and said, Lebanon is ours.”

[birthqueen]

on another fo4 kick! working with a totally fresh game and it feels like i finally got my mods just right. everything is so pretty

[drsonnet]

From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine

Edited by Sai Englert, Michal Schatz and Rosie Warren

In the final months of 2023, as this ebook is published, Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Israeli officials have repeatedly made their intentions to do so extremely clear; talking of collective punishment, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing in newspapers, at press conferences and on television. All the while, European and American states have continued to support Israel, to claim its murderous campaign is justified self-defence, and to send weapons, troops, war boats and spy planes in support. While Western governments have supported the unjustifiable, or spoken inane words of condemnation while failing to take any concrete action, millions around the world have poured into the streets to denounce their complicity, to demand a ceasefire and a free Palestine. From the River to the Sea collects personal testimonies from within Gaza and the West Bank, along with essays and interviews that collectively provide crucial histories and analyses to help us understand how we got to the nightmarish present. They place Israel’s genocidal campaign within the longer history of settler colonialism in Palestine, and Hamas within the longer histories of Palestinian resistance and the so-called ‘peace process’. They explore the complex history of Palestine’s relationship to Jordan, Egypt, and the broader Middle East, the eruption of unprecedented anti-Zionist Jewish protest in the US, the alarming escalation in state repression of Palestine solidarity in Britain and Europe, and more. Taken together, the essays comprising this collection provide important grounding for the urgent discussions taking place across the Palestine solidarity movement.

With contributions from: Dr. Reda Abu Assi, Asmaa Abu Mezied, Tawfiq Abu Shomer, Khalil Abu Yahia, Dunia Aburahma, Spencer Ackerman, Hil Aked, Dr. Yousef Al-Akkad, Jamie Allinson, Dr. Hammam Alloh, Riya Al’Sanah, Soheir Asaad, Tareq Baconi, Rana Barakat, Omar Barghouti, Sara Besaiso, Ashley Bohrer, Haim Bresheeth-Žabner, Nihal El Aasar, Mohammed El-Kurd, Sai Englert, Noura Erakat, Samera Esmeir, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Toufic Haddad, Adam Hanieh, Khaled Hroub, Rashid Khalidi, Noah Kulwin, Saree Makdisi, Ghassan Najjar, Samar Saeed, Reema Saleh, Alberto Toscano and Eyal Weizman, alongside a number of Palestinian writers published pseudonymously. Published in collaboration with Haymarket Books. Cover design: Tom Greenwood.

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"In the Penal Colony" is available to read here

*Originally published in German under the title "In der Strafkolonie", sometimes translated as "In the Penal Settlement"

[alliluyevas]

book asks - 1, 11, 15!

book you’ve reread the most times?

aside from books i first read as a child, which i think is kind of cheating, (because i've probably read Little House in the Big Woods about a hundred times), it would be Blood and Beauty by Sarah Dunant, which is my absolute favorite historical fiction novel--it's really poetically written with great character work. I'm currently rereading it for the fourth time.

11. what non-fiction books do you like if any?

oh, I love non-fiction, the majority of what I read is non-fiction (almost exclusively history). If I had to list all the non-fiction books I've really liked we'd be here all day! Most of what I've been reading for the last couple years has been related to Mormon history but I'm also very interested in general early American history and Russian/Soviet. I often incline towards biography because I love the human narratives, or really niche focuses on some small topic. Mormon history has been a really rewarding field for me because there's a lot out there that is very emotionally impactful, especially focusing on the history of women in Mormonism. See below for a recent example (sort of).

15. recommend and review a book.

the most recent book I've read was Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young by Virginia Kearns, which I could not recommend highly enough. I think it was particularly powerful for me as someone who has read a ton about early Mormonism, polygamous families, and Brigham Young's wives in particular, but it's a really well-done and fascinating book in general. Learning about Sally and her life gave me a window into a unique and valuable perspective on the colonization of Utah and the relationships between the women in the Lion House. I feel like the book does justice to the story of someone who was profoundly marginalized in her life and has really been erased from what historical discussion there is about this period to the point where I, known Young family historical anecdote researcher, knew almost nothing about her. I think it really opened my eyes and gave me new ways to evaluate white Mormon women during this period (and in this particular case Brigham Young's wives particularly) as both victims of an extremely patriarchal system and intimately involved in settler-colonialism, and I think the book is written with a lot of empathy and nuance.

[divorceiswar]

Prenuptial Agreement

No one should get married without a Prenuptial Agreement in place! It doesn't matter how much or how little you have, you always have to protect yourself! You are making the biggest decision of your life to marry someone.

And second and sometimes third marriages—and the extended families that sometimes come with them—require financial and estate planning. Forty percent of new marriages include at least one spouse who was previously married. A Prenuptial agreement is especially a necessity when getting married after the first time.

There are two key issues every Prenup should address:

The first is how the assets will be divided in the event of a divorce or a death. The time to address this is before you get married. Divorce rates for second marriages, third marriages, etc. are even higher than those for first marriages. While you hope this marriage will work, you just never know. You should have at least three to six months before the wedding to work out the details and have the Prenup finalized.

The second is deciding how your personal accounts and other assets, such as real estate will be kept separate after marriage. It's crucial that you keep them separate.

Typically a Prenup will spell out what each partner is bringing to the marriage—including income, real estate, retirement savings—and whether each asset will be treated as separate or joint. Most important is that a prenup can shield one partner from any liabilities accumulated prior to the marriage, including student loans, credit card debt, and alimony and/or child support. It is very important that how to treat debt should be decided prior to the marriage and in the Prenup. In the event of a divorce, sometimes courts try to divide debt equally between the two parties. You have to be sure to protect yourself.

Any gifts given during the marriage should not be considered marital assets but should belong to the person receiving the gift.

More than one-third of adults said Prenups make smart financial sense, according to a Harris survey. “The time to plan for a divorce is not when you’re in a state of hate,” says Suzie Orman. You can’t fully protect yourself against a marital heartbreak, but at least you can protect your assets.

Be sure to have a divorce attorney write the Prenup. Just any attorney cannot know the specifics that have to go in one. It has to be done right so there are no loopholes. Unfortunately, in today's world, Prenups are being challenged in court.

[profeminist]

"The Don't Say Gay Law has been cut down to size in more ways than this.

- LGBTQ+ students and staff may now be protected by anti-bullying and anti-discrimination measures

- Libraries are free to restock LGBTQ+ books

- LGBTQ+ topics may be discussed freely

GO CRY IN A CORNER RON

Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender ID under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill settlement

[vaguelyhauntedcornfield]

We had our final session in our campaign last night and our dm had us do epilogues for all of our characters and my rogue ended up the softest guy on earth. Truly subverting the edgy rogue allegations

[tenth-sentence]

Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied, and quitted the house under the delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly see her daughter settled at Netherfield in the course of three or four months.

"Pride and Prejudice" - Jane Austen