#there is an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE in difference between them and i am NOT equating them but finale fuckery comes from the same root

[mybrainproblems]

Just having a real downer of a morning thinking about the film and television industry and how much profit is prioritized over worker safety or literally anything else

[arden-in-the-garden]

Racism on PokeFarm Q

So! This is gonna be a long post, so i’ll be putting all of the content below a read more cut. The gist is that the staff of PokeFarm Q are racist and do not give a single fuck about the Indigenous communities, and explicitly stated they will not even attempt to do anything about cultural appropriation. In the past staff members have also voiced their lack of support for the BLM movement. I’ve gathered transcripts and screenshots from the conversation between myself and the member that started this and between myself and staff.

tw for below the cut: ment. of r*pe, ment. of cannibalism, the word wendig*ag repeatedly uncensored, racism ment., cultural appropriation ment.

This morning I came across a user by the name of  TrüêWêndïgø, and they were messaged in regards to their username

ArdenInTheGarden 09/Jun/2020 08:13:03 (1 hour ago) Hey, are you Alqonquin/Anishinaabe? TrüêWêndïgø 09/Jun/2020 08:17:17 (1 hour ago) I am an Algonquian Wendigo if that is what you are asking. Why? ArdenInTheGarden 09/Jun/2020 08:20:10 (1 hour ago) Figured I'd ask. There a lot of non-Natives that use the term for Wendig*ag trivially, and I promised nA friends that if I saw it I'd check on it, and to help try and deter its usage TrüêWêndïgø 09/Jun/2020 08:23:39 (1 hour ago) I am kinda obsessed with the Wendigo, so I read about them a lot. I am Australian, so if I have gotten this wrong in any way, I would like to correct myself. I hope I am using it correctly ArdenInTheGarden 09/Jun/2020 08:26:59 (1 hour ago) Ahh, let me help you out then! They're, like, NOT something to mess with. They're feared, through and through, to the point where speaking or even writing the name is forbidden (which is why it's usually censored). They're not able to be befriended or tamed or worked with; they are the pure form of evil distilled into a physical being, often from greed or due to cannibalism! They're definitely not the kind of thing to be revered or messed with, they're just evil, straight up. I don't think you can change your username, but I'd discourage you from using it in the future, especially as a non-Native TrüêWêndïgø 09/Jun/2020 08:30:46 (1 hour ago) I have already accepted death because I got a wendigo oc. I only discovered the creature becuase my oc was made before I learnt about them. My unusual deerman with the taut skin and a thirst for blood. I apologise if I upset anyone with my username. ArdenInTheGarden 09/Jun/2020 08:34:52 (56 minutes ago) Fwiw the, like, "fanon" (not the right term but you know what I mean?) depiction of them has no root in any of the beliefs? No one really knows where that came from (except, like, white people trying to steal things that aren't theirs and mainstream religious figures for their own gain) So your OC can very well just be an angry bloodthirsty deer man that isn't infringing on First Nations beliefs and appropriating from a closed belief system not open to outsiders. I doubt you meant any harm, but I'd STRONGLY encourage you to not use the term or name in the future TrüêWêndïgø 09/Jun/2020 08:43:15 (47 minutes ago) I mean, I didn't try to steal anything, I just think the creature is awesome, kinda like the Sirenhead thing. I love to learn about mythology and legends. I think the only problem is that I've used the term Wendigo too much, and once again, I am sorry for that. I respect wishes and all that, but me learning about the creature and having my oc being a Wendigo kinda helped me through bad times. I like to create art [stories or drawings] keeps me happy. Again, sorry, but I would like to continue using the term. Only because of an oc. I understand how disresptectful I am, and I understand if you don't like this, but I'm not trying to upset anyone. ArdenInTheGarden 09/Jun/2020 08:50:10 (40 minutes ago) "but please sir, that's my comfort cultural appropriation and misuse of First Nations beliefs". Like,,,yeah, it is really disrespectful. You're using it wrong, and it's not open to you, and you can't use it. Comparing it to Sirenhead is also REALLY disrespectful? Like, you're taking a sacred piece of a belief system and equating it to a shitty Internet monster :/ I obviously can't force you but you're wrong and you're well aware that you are, and you're being selfish and unkind :// you need to stop, and I've been really nice about this and handling it because I know Natives are tired of having to do it, but please do not mistake my kindness and composure as a sign you can continue because you cannot.

Unfortunately I was unable to get screenshots of this conversation before my account was locked. Screenshots of the rest are available.

I filed a support ticket with the staff regarding it, which received no response

About an hour later I was greeted with this error, stating my account had been locked indefinitely for harassment and violation of the PG rule

I filed a second support ticket in order to appeal my account being locked and give an explanation to the staff. The following is the conversation between myself and Eltafez

It's 4:30 in the morning so forgive my ineloquence.

My language might have been slightly harsh in PMs with TrueWend*go, but they were violating the rules and have an inappropriate username and are flagrantly disregarding the racist roots their actions have. The Native community in every part of the world has faced consistent harassment and dealt with their culture being slandered, torn apart, erased, and what was left being stolen by people to use as a fun culture symbol or as a "sPoOkY mYtH". They are glorifying a being that is rooted entirely in evil and is the embodiment of the worst a person is capable of. They have created an identity around a creature of cannibalism, of r*pe, of greed, and of violence. They disregarded the polite explanations of the ramifications of their actions and the benefit of the doubt that they did not know what they were doing. By locking my account for this, you are sending the clear message that you care more for not rocking the boat than defending Native belief systems. As a US resident, I am already witnessing the brutal effects of silencing those speaking out against racism. You are aligning yourselves with oppressors. I will agree that my defense was perhaps overzealous. Moderators on many other sites I have been on have failed entirely in the past to defend the Native community and I was frightened this case would be the same and reacted strongly. I am still afraid this is the case as I am the one punished and they are, at last checked, still free to continue. Please unlock my account. If I am unavailable on the PMs, I can be reached at [REDACTED] for further discussion.

Eltafez — 09/Jun/2020 12:21 The staff of PFQ do not condone or support any form of racism. In fact, the team is comprised of people living all over the world. Quite a few among us (myself included) are from a different culture and/or race. You're offended by a name - I'd like to counter that by saying you're offending the staff team by accusing us of something we're not. Cultural appropriation is something we cannot (and will not) enforce due to the sheer magnitude of it. You see books, movies, games - everywhere really, that handle mythical creatures and even real gods (take Egypt, Greece, Rome, ... to name a few). Like human beings, they develop and change over time. We can't lock someone for having the name Anubis or Iuno because there once existed a civilization that coined these names or terms. There's a public beach called "Wendigo Beach Resort" - if the term is so inappropriate, then why is it called that? The user you reported has done nothing wrong - our rules, as they're written, have not been broken. The site is British and it follows British laws. You, however, have broken them by harassing the user and mentioning words that are actually inappropriate in the English language. We are fine with people spreading awareness, but it stops when they try to force their own beliefs unto others.

The name of W"ndigo Beach is actively being fought by the Native community. It's not the "gotcha!" you think it is. The term is used (inappropriately) by garbage human beings who have gotten away with it and will continue to do so because of people like you who will never uphold any kind of justice for anyone but themselves. You have failed. You have failed, and you have defended your failure by attempting to deflect it. This is not the same as having the name of Old Gods. This is having a name equivalent to celebrating the lynching of the African American community. This is a name equivalent to saying "I support Nazis". This is a name that is, at its core, supporting pure evil. Your staff may be "diverse" but it is obviously still filled with narrow minded individuals who will step on the nA community to try and boost themselves. I am saddened. I am disgusted. I hope none of you are in any real position of authority around children because you are teaching them to do that which the British have always done: destroy, disregard, deflect. You have failed, and will continue to do so until you are capable of looking past your own biases to realize that you are wrong and you are disgusting in your defense of the status quo instead of justice. 

Eltafez — 09/Jun/2020 18:06 Since it doesn’t look like your mind is going to change, I’ll do us both a favor and bid you a good day.

Gargle my dick and balls

And thus ended all communication with staff

Don’t let them get away with this, and don’t let them get away with thinking that they can do whatever they like (or nothing) without any consequence. Idleness is complicity, and they are sending the dangerous message that racism is tolerated. “We don’t support racism in any form” and “we’re not gonna do anything about cultural appropriation tho” cannot co-exist. 

[rcardamone]

The Problem of Solutions

Quoted on the title page of Chapter One in “Living in the Environment,” are dire words from environmental policy expert Lester R. Brown: “No civilization has survived the destruction of its natural support system…nor will ours.” 1 As the chapter and other readings make clear, the destruction of the natural support system for all of humanity is well underway. And it is accelerating. 

This claim is not radical or new, but rather a reality that has been evident to mainstream scientists for decades. In 1992, more than 1700 of the world’s leading scientists signed “A Warning to Humanity.” Though the letter details dangerous human effects on numerous elements of the natural environment, the crucial message is made clear in the introduction: “If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.” 2 It was important enough twenty-eight years ago that scientists were willing to call for “fundamental changes” in our relationship to the natural world, not just mild adjustment of resource use. Unsurprisingly, they only wade into the highly political, yet critical territory of what those fundamental changes might be in generalizations (more on this below). From the update to “A Warning to Humanity,” (titled “A Second Notice”) published in 2017, it is clear that the change on the scale needed to mitigate or even slow the collision with the natural world foretold in the original is absent. In summarizing their findings, the writers of the update are direct: “Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse” 3​ 

Figure 1, Chart Showing the Trends since 1960 for the issues identified in the 1992 “ Warning to Humanity”. 4

 If we are to survive, Miller and Spoolman assert that we must understand and implement the principles of sustainability which have allowed the planet to sustain life for billions of years. They define three components essential to a relationship of sustainability between humanity and the planet. First, natural capital, or “the natural resources and ecosystem services that keep humans and other species alive and that support human economies”, must be preserved at all costs.5 Second, we must understand that human activities can degrade natural capital by “using renewable resources faster than nature can restore them and by overloading the earth’s normally renewable air, water, and soil with pollution and wastes.” 6  Similar to “A Warning to Humanity,” the authors of the text have pointed out a truth that should be self-evident and non-controversial: natural capital is the basis of human economies, and if we wish to see these economies continue to function, then natural capital must not be catastrophically depleted. Second, they correctly point out that the first step in reducing and reversing natural capital depletion is understanding how human activities cause and in many cases depend on it. Without this knowledge, it is impossible to know what must change. 

The effects of human activities on ecosystems has been well researched. The Millennium Assessment, compiled by the UN from 2001-2005, demonstrates the complex relationships currently existing between ecosystem services and human wellbeing. In the introduction to its five page “Summary for Decision Makers,” the report states that “[t]his transformation of the planet has contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development. But not all regions and groups of people have benefited from this process—in fact, many have been harmed. Moreover, the full costs associated with these gains are only now becoming apparent.”7  Although it is hard to argue the claim that the planetary transformation has led to “substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development” in the short term, by not using language to suggest how devastating these “full costs” will be without significant action (on par with the “fundamental change” called for in “A Warning to Humanity”), the large print introduction has painted too rosy a picture of its own findings. Further on in the summary, in smaller font, the truth is told more directly: “[T]hese gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people. These problems, unless addressed, will substantially diminish the benefits that future generations obtain from ecosystems.”8  In essence, the economic development and the gains in human wellbeing it has led to have come at a cost that is not simply “now becoming apparent,” but also actively growing as natural capital depletion accelerates and its effects have more time to manifest. While some (largely those already impoverished) are suffering the effects now, the full effects will be felt by future generations without action. 

Figure 2, Chart showing relationship between ecosystem services, human wellbeing, and drivers of change 9

There is a telling commonality between “A Warning to Humanity,” the Summary for Decision Makers in “The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment,” and Chapter One of “Living in the Environment: They all agree on the nature of the problem and acknowledge the absolute necessity of addressing it, but their calls for change are either vague or insufficient.  In “A Warning to Humanity,” five points of action are outlined. Their problem of vagueness becomes apparent in examining the first point, which is the most specific of the five. The warning states that, “[w]e must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth's systems we depend on.” More specifically, “[w]e must move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources...Priority must be given to the development of energy sources matched to Third World needs—small-scale and relatively easy to implement.” 10

The repeated use of “we must” is successful in driving home that these are not suggestions but non-negotiable steps for the long term survival of human civilization. However, poorly defined and oft-repeated calls for “[moving] away from fossil fuels” to “inexhaustible energy sources,” and giving priority to the development of “energy sources matched to third world needs” do not speak to the changes in social, political, and economic realities their successful implementation would entail. This is not to say that specifying the necessary actions further should be the sole job of scientists. They are, of course, not policy makers. However, as evidenced by the lack of progress at the time of the 2017 update, these vague calls for change were ineffective in catalyzing significant action on the parts of governments, organizations, or individuals. With more specific direction, it is likely these entities would be capable of more effective action. Of course, the problem with specificity is that it quickly divides people along political and ideological lines. That does not make them less necessary. 

The language of the UN Millennium Assessment is more pessimistic. The fourth major finding of the report is summarized as thus, “The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services can be partially met under some scenarios that the MA has considered, but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices that are not currently under way.” The Assessment goes on to state that “[m]any options exist to conserve or enhance specific ecosystem services in ways that reduce negative trade-offs or that provide positive synergies with other.” 11 

To be fair, the UN Millenium Assessment does offer much more specificity than “A Warning to Humanity” in suggestions for protecting and revitalizing some specific ecosystem services. However, their appraisal of possibilities for dealing with the more fundamental problem, “reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services,” does not exactly inspire hope. The report suggests that even to “partially” meet the challenge in “some” scenarios, we would have to commit to “significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices.” The message seems to be that the writers of the assessment cannot envision any scenario in which vital ecosystem services are not irreversibly lost. This is not to say that fundamental changes are pointless. They could still make a significant difference. However, as long as demands are increasing for ecosystem services, change--even if it is fundamental--will largely serve to slow ecological damage, not reverse it. 

“Living in the Environment” points to a similar reality as the UN Millennium Assessment, acknowledging that the rapid economic growth seen in recent times has improved the quality of life for many, but is built on an unsustainable foundation of perpetual growth. Miller and Spoolman point out that “about 1.4 billion affluent consumers put immense pressure on the earth’s renewable and nonrenewable natural capital.” Furthermore, they again quote Lester R. Brown regarding the rapidly growing consumer economies of the developing world. He asserts that, “The western economic model--the fossil fuel--based automobile-centered, throwaway economy--is not going to work for China...or for the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the ‘American dream.’”11 The point Brown is illustrating is that the amount of affluent consumers in the world is growing rapidly, and thus so is the amount of consumption. Increased consumption, given current practices and technologies, entails entails accelerating depletion of natural capital. 

The solution suggested in the textbook is a “sustainability revolution” to follow the first three major revolutions in human history (agricultural, industrial-medical, and information-globalization) which would involve “avoiding degradation and depletion of the natural capital that supports all life and our economies and restoring the natural capital we have already depleted.”12 The authors are correct that a revolution that changes the fundamental way that humans live is necessary. If this idea were better expounded upon, perhaps it would be stirring, especially in its connection to moments in history where humanity has changed their way of life dramatically. However, the technologies cited to give hope that such a revolution may be possible are almost laughably underwhelming. Miller and Spoolman cite “energy-efficient LED light bulbs and energy-efficient cars and buildings,” as evidence that an extraordinary technological leap is possible.”13  The technologies needed to move humanity into a state of sustainability are orders of magnitude more significant. Furthermore, Miller and Spoolman fail to say anything notable about how the accelerating growth of affluent consumers and accompanying exhaustion of natural capital could be slowed, much less reversed. Additionally, any kind of revolution of this scale would require an immense amount of public will. There is also no discussion of the dramatic cultural change that would be required to bring about this type of revolution. 

It is clear from the readings that there is widespread awareness and agreement among those who care to look that humanity is facing a colossal problem: the inevitable depletion of natural capital that allows our economy to function and enables the growth of affluence across the world. What can be done? Of course, no solution could be perfect for such a complex problem. However, those suggested in the readings are either lack in specificity or not far reaching enough. Perhaps even more than the unprecedented problem we face, that should worry us. 

Word Count: 1857 

Question:

Why does the UN Millennium Report make references to changes in “regional” climate but not global climate? Is this something to read into or not?                                      

1​ Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott Spoolman. 2018. ​Living in the Environment.​ (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning), 3

2Kendall, Henry. “1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed January 27, 2020. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/1992-world-scientists-warning-humanity.

3​ William, Wolf, Christopher, Thomas M., Mauro, Alamgir, Mohammed, et al. “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.” OUP Academic. Narnia, November 13, 2017. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229.

4William, Wolf, Christopher, Thomas M., Mauro, Alamgir, Mohammed, et al. “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.” OUP Academic. Narnia, November 13, 2017. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229.

5Miller and Spoolman, 6

6Miller and Spoolman, 8

7Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC, 1.

8Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC, 1.

9Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC, vii.

10Kendall, Henry. “1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed January 27, 2020. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/1992-world-scientists-warning-humanity.

11Miller and Spoolman, 14 

12 Miller and Spoolman, 15 

13Miller and Spoolman, 15 

[foxofthedesert]

Fanfic Snippet

Thought I’d drop a sneak preview of a story I’ve been slowly whittling away on over a long period of time.  Been tinkering on it some here lately.  It’s a Kalex fic, AU of course as I seem to be incapable of writing within canon, that changes up the paradigm between Kara and Alex in a way I’ve yet to come across.  It’s probably been done, though, and I just haven’t stumbled upon it.  Anyway, to be discrete, let’s just say Jeremiah disappears, just for a different reason...

I’ve got 30kish words into the story, but there is currently no deadline for publishing in sight.  I don’t feel so bad putting it out here for consumption when it might not ever see the light of day.  Does that make me a terrible person?  I hope not.  Anyway, this scene is set after Kara and Alex meet, sparks fly along with clothes, and our favorite alien is trying to decompress with her best buddy.

Kara nods, eyes wide with brimming excitement that she hasn’t read the situation incorrectly.  “Exactly!  She seems serious about this, and I...I like that.  I want her to be serious about the possibility of an us because I think I already am.”

Her friend’s eyes widen in surprise.  “You are?”

Kara shrugs noncommittally to deflect from how part of her harbors zero uncertainties about Alex.  It’s the part of her that remains an orphaned alien frightened of her own shadow that craves the approval of someone she cares about.

“I think so?” Her nose scrunches up a couple times as she talks.  “I mean, every time I think about my life any number of months from now, I can see her in it.  I’ve known her for all of a day and I’m imagining her as part of my future.  How crazy is that?”

“Pretty crazy.” Winn ducks when Kara uses super speed to toss a pillow she’d snatched up from the couch at his head.  He raises his arms to deflect the fluffy missile.  “Hey, you asked!”

Kara groans as she flops down beside him, her brief annoyance snuffed out like a match in a brisk gale.  “I know.  Argh!  I’m being crazy.  Am I being crazy?  I’m totally being crazy...aren’t I?”  She starts pacing, fidgeting with her glasses, brushing her hands through her hair...you know, all the usual signs she’s starting to panic.

To his credit, Winn doesn’t allow her to flounder long.  “You’re not crazy, Kara.” When she stops pacing to peer at him with barely concealed desperation, he gives her a reassuring smile, then stands and approaches.  He takes her shoulders gently and gives them a squeeze, then coaxes her chin back up when she ducks her head to hide.  “Don’t beat yourself up.  I promise, you are the least crazy alien person I’ve ever met.”

Kara chuckles a bit. Leave it to Winn to disarm her with a well-timed joke.  He really is the best.

“So you really don’t think I’m rushing things here?” she asks when her stomach has settled from the fit she’d almost worked herself up into.

“Only you can be the judge of that,” Winn says with a seldom used sagacity.

“C’mon...” Kara whines, wanting an answer.  Needing an answer.  Perhaps not so much to tell her what to do as to validate what she’s pretty much already decided to do.  It’s too late for her to back out with Alex now.  Her new lover may have been a self-proclaimed love ‘em and leave ‘em kind in her recent past, but she isn’t.  And that isn’t her being a prude either.  She can’t help how she’s wired.

By the time Krypton’s core went critical, individuals of high station such as hers had not practiced casual sex in centuries.  The primal urge to fornicate liberally was pruned from the noble gene pool in favor of sustainable pleasure after a tawdry affair plunged the country into a bloody civil war not unlike the ancient Greek conflict Homer wrote of in The Illiad.  Modern Kryptonians born into one of the major Houses confined their carnal gratification strictly within the boundaries of their marriages or with the long-term lover they kept while of age and still single or when their matrimonial matches proved less compatible than the genetic scientists who determined such things had predicted.  This structure virtually eliminated divorce and ensured optimally adjusted offspring.

Kara’s own mother and father had such arrangements on the side, and that was totally normal.  Though her exposure to her parents’ respective lovers was minimal, she knew them and respected both for the positive influence they contributed to her family.  Her Mom and Dad were happy, and that’s all that mattered to her. 

Her aunt Astra and uncle Non, though, did not need to seek out extra-marital fulfillment.  This confused a budding teenage Kara, who inquired of her mother not three months prior to Krypton’s destruction as to why Astra’s marriage was different from her twin sister’s. 

“You must understand, little star,” her mother had said, “marriages are arranged in the Great Houses with full compatibility in mind. But the science – advanced as it is – is not always able to account for every variable because it is limited by the conscious minds of those responsible for making those decisions.  On the other hand, matches freely made are inspired by areas of our brain that have been iterated upon and improved for nearly a thousand years.  As you know, your father and I did not have a choice when we were married, but that does not mean I do not love him.  I do, Kara, and with all of my heart and my mind.  Our bodies just do not have the same level of compatibility that Aunt Astra and Uncle Non do.  You see, your Aunt and Uncle married for love, not out of duty, and thus their bond is total: mind, heart, and body.  That is why their marriage is, as you say, different.”

Kara can remember thinking how she very much wanted to be able to choose her own partner like her Aunt did.  Looking back, she is pretty sure her Mom and Dad wanted that for her, too.  If she wished, she probably would have been permitted to make her own match, especially with Kal-El’s birth on the horizon.  The burdens of leadership would not have been incumbent upon her if she so desired to cede her position of preeminence as elder to her double first cousin.  There is no way of predicting what she would have chosen now, though she likes to dream that maybe, just maybe, for once she’d have ultimately bucked her own propensity to prioritize duty over happiness. 

Of course, there is not only that disposition for forming permanent attachments she has to account for.  Attraction for Kara is two-fold, as it is for humans, in that she can be enamored of a person’s personality or appearance or both.  The difference for her lies in her mother’s birds and the bees talk.  Her brain, and to an exponentially advanced degree beyond the more primitive human organ, is programmed to extrapolate sexual compatibility with a potential partner, subconsciously factoring in all variables at speeds orders of magnitude beyond any machine on Earth – variables such as the prospective individual’s health, measurements, personality and any other critical predilections detected by the ultra-highly attuned instinctual part of her mind.  Hundreds upon hundreds of years of refinement through the birthing matrix have made this process close to flawless, and the more she interacts with a person, the more accurate it gets. 

In other words, when picking out potential partners, her brain doesn’t make mistakes. The implications on Earth are significant.  Without the family to arrange a marriage outside of those parameters, she will, ninety-nine percent of the time, be drawn to individuals who will make exemplary lovers.  All that remains for her to determine the fitness of said individual to be a viable partner for life is her own willingness to be brave.  In her current dilemma, not only has her brain has already calculated out the equation, but she’s already acted out the solution.  For hours.  Thirty-two hours, forty-three minutes, and twenty-seven exquisite seconds to be exact.  And that math says she and Alex are definite life-mate material.

The point, though, is that she simply isn’t capable of sharing intimacy with someone without forming an insoluble connection.  In fact, had they been on Krypton and had she been allowed to choose her own partner, she would be probably be using the upcoming museum date to make things official with Alex.  Not proposal official, but certainly with a promise of that in the future.  Her own biology would demand that she cement their bond, and the honor of her House would depend upon it.  Of course, if this were Krypton, Alex would accept because she would be in the same boat as Kara is.  But this isn’t Krypton.  And Alex isn’t Kryptonian.   

Nevertheless, while Krypton may be gone, Kara still considers herself a Scion of the House of El above any Earthly designation, and with her body already yearning to be reunited with her lover, she has already determined she is pretty much done for.  Maybe if only one urge was in play, she could cut ties and write off her experience with Alex as a youthful experiment or a regrettable lapse in judgment.  But her sense of duty is screaming at her just as loud as her body is to make Alex hers, and she doesn’t think she has the strength to deny both cravings.

Hearing some encouragement from Winn sure would make her feel better, though.  A little, at least.  Not that she feels bad per se so much as she’s bull-rushed into an unnervingly unusual situation of her own making.  In essence, and at the risk of being crass, she has fucked herself in love.  With a human who won’t understand what she’s going through.  It’s all enough to make her head spin as is without having to worry about Alex’s reaction to her inevitably impending and bound-to-be-awkward clingyness.

So I had this idea that Kryptonian’s in the Great Houses self-evolved to be less messy with sex than humans are.  It makes sense to me this would be the case, not only for optimal child rearing, but for avoiding the potential pitfalls of a casual approach to intimacy such as social and/or familial instability.  Some of this is due to my abhorrence of hook-up culture.  Call me old fashioned in that way, but I prefer commitment.  My take on Kryponian society is that they do, too.  Feel free to disagree.   

Anyway, this is the result.  Poor Kara was set up from the outset to fall for Alex.  Her only concern is whether or not Alex will feel the same.  *spoiler alert*  She will!

[continuations]

World After Capital: Laying a Foundation (Scarcity)

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section provides a technological definition of scarcity (instead of an economic one) and provides a brief history of how scarcity has shifted over time from food to land to capital and is now shifting to attention.

Scarcity

In this book I will be arguing that capital is no longer scarce but that attention now is. Furthermore this constitutes the third major shift in scarcity in the history of humanity. The first shift was from food to land when we went from the Forager Age to the Agrarian Age. The second was from land to capital when we went from the Agrarian Age to the Industrial Age.

The words scarce and scarcity have come to take on a meaning that is derived from modern economics. Many people now think of something as scarce if its price is greater than zero. By this definition land is obviously still scarce as it costs a lot of money to buy a piece of land. And financial capital is still scarce because even in our current low interest rate environment, there is a price for borrowing money or raising equity financing (which makes it possible for me to make money from being a venture capital investor).

There is a fundamental problem with this price based definition of scarcity though: anything can be made scarce by assigning property rights. Imagine for a moment that ownership of the world's atmosphere belonged to Global Air Ltd (GAL). Now GAL could charge anyone who breathes air a usage fee. Air would suddenly be scarce. That may seem like an extreme example at first. Yet, some have argued that the solution to the problem of air pollution is to assign ownership rights to the atmosphere, on the theory that this will result in the owners having an economic incentive to maintain an unpolluted atmosphere.

I will use a different meaning of scarcity that is not based on price. Something is scarce when there is less of it than we need to meet our basic needs. If people are starving then food is scarce.

One can think of this as technological scarcity (as opposed to economic scarcity). The point is that technological progress makes things less scarce over time. The 18th century scholar Thomas Malthus was not wrong about global population growth, which he predicted could be exponential (and thus, he argued, would outpace growth in the food supply leading to hunger) [24]. He turned out to be wrong about the potential for technological progress to exponentially increase the amount of food we could produce. We have in fact gotten so good at agriculture that the amount of land needed for food production has started to decline even as the global population is still growing.

But what about wants? If people are not starving but want more food doesn't that mean food is still scarce? Is it possible to make a distinction between needs and wants? Modern economics has thoroughly equated the two, but intuitively we know that this is not the case. You need to drink water, but you want to drink champagne. You need to provide your body with calories, but you want to eat caviar. There is no bright line as the use of “starvation” above might suggest—we know that some food is healthier for the human body than other (although we are a surprisingly long way from understanding nutrition well). Still, the distinction is clear enough for this definition of scarcity to make sense. One may argue about degrees but not about the principle.

Just because something is no longer scarce doesn't mean that it is abundant. Instead there is an intermediate stage which I will call sufficient. For instance, there is sufficient land to meet everyone's needs for housing and food. For something to be abundant there has to be enough for everyone's needs to be met at zero marginal cost. Building housing and growing food still incurs significant marginal cost and hence these are not abundant. I am saying “still” because technological progress could make land and food abundant (imagine how much land we'll have if we can figure out how to live in space and make other planets habitable).

Is anything abundant? Yes, digital information is already abundant. We can make copies of it and distribute it at zero marginal cost. We can meet everyone's information needs at zero marginal cost.

Is anything scarce? Well, I will endeavor to show that human attention is scarce. It turns out to be scarce, in part, because digital information is abundant.

A Brief History of Scarcity

Food was the original scarcity for humans. We started out as hunter gatherers (foragers). And bad hunters at that. Before the development of weapons and tactics we were mostly hunting small animals and scavenging otherwise. There was one relatively simple solution to food scarcity: migrate elsewhere. And that's why humanity spread across the globe at a relatively decent speed. But once the human population grew past a certain density and migration was not an option, then food scarcity was the source of much violence both among and within tribes. It is important to note that tribes that were not in direct competition with others for food and had no systems for food surplus (no storage, so called “immediate return” societies) tended not to be violent [25].

Eventually, as far back as 10,000 BCE, we happened upon a series of technological advances including growing crops, irrigation and domesticating animals, that together gave us agriculture [26]. With agriculture, scarcity shifted from food to land (of course land had been a proxy for food to some degree but now the scarcity was land directly). Agriculture increased the food density of land by at least an order of magnitude [NEED CITATION]. That was enough for a meaningful surplus to be produced, which meant that a social hierarchy could be created. Rulers commanded armies. The more land a ruler controlled the bigger an army the ruler could afford, which brought us several thousand years of empire building among agricultural societies. The transition into the Agricultural Age was extremely violent with most forager societies wiped out altogether.

Then sometime in the 18th century a new set of technological advances began to emerge that together gave us industry, including steam/electrical power, chemistry, and mechanical machines. With these, scarcity shifted from land to capital. Why was land no longer scarce? Because the use of machines in harvesting and the increasing knowledge of fertilizers dramatically increased crop yields. The transition from the Agricultural Age into the Industrial Age wound up being incredibly violent with numerous revolutions and culminating in World War I and II.

At the end of the Agrarian Age, the ruling elites all came from controlling land. They still believed land to be the critical scarcity and saw industry as a means of building and equipping more powerful armies. For them industry did not mean a new age had started, instead it meant tanks and battleships. Even World War II was still about land, as Hitler and the Nazis pursued “Lebensraum” (literally: room to live). Once again the transition from one age to the next was brought about through extreme violence. It was only at the end of World War II that we truly exited the Agrarian Age.

We now live in the Industrial Age. Eventually we added service jobs to manufacturing but that did not shift the dominant scarcity which was capital. The success of the market based economy over the planned economy is the result of more effective capital formation. Competitive markets combined with entrepreneurial activity were better at allocating and accumulating capital.

Capital these days is frequently mistaken for wealth or financial capital, but what really matters is productive capital in the form of machines, inventories of goods, buildings. Financial capital is an intermediary step that allows for the formation of physical capital but it does not add to the production of goods and services directly (machines are not made of dollar bills). Companies only require financial capital because of their working capital needs, which arise when they have to pay for machines, supplies and labor before they receive payment for their product or service.

Much like the ruling elites at the end of the Agrarian Age came from land, the ruling elites today come from capital. They often don't take up political roles themselves, as we have devised ways of influencing policy indirectly, which exposes the owners of capital to less personal risk. A good example of this recently is the role of the Mercer Family in financing and supporting groups, such as Breitbart news, that influenced the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election [27].

The first major claim of this book is that capital is no longer scarce (in the technological sense defined above). We have sufficient productive capital to meet our needs for housing, clothing, transportation, education and healthcare. This is not a claim that productive capital or access to it are adequately distributed around the world. It is also not a claim that we cannot substantially further improve productive capital by making more of it and creating better versions. It is not even a claim that financial capital is currently being allocated properly for the creation of global productive capital (it is not). It is simply the claim that productive capital is sufficient for meeting humanity's basic needs.

At the same time, digital technology has massively expanded the space of the possible. Digital technology gives us a global network connecting all of humanity to each other and to information at zero marginal cost. Powerful general purpose computing is making artificial intelligence a reality for the first time. This combination of zero marginal cost and universality of computation can dramatically accelerate the creation of knowledge in the world.

Human attention, however, is fundamentally limited. We have 24 hours in the day. We need some of that time to eat and sleep. So that puts a hard limit on how much attention we have both individually and collectively (with population growth slowing down as a result of economic progress).

But why does that make attention scarce? How do we not have enough attention to meet our needs? This is the second major claim of the book. Individually, it is so because most of us are not spending nearly enough of our attention on the fundamental question of our purpose in life. Collectively, it is so because we are not spending enough of our attention on species level risks, such as climate change, asteroid strikes, infectious diseases and opportunities such as space travel, quantum computing, genetic engineering. We are also not paying nearly enough attention to democracy, to our communities, and to each other, including our friends and families.

Therefore the goals of this book are to convince readers, first, that scarcity is, in fact, shifting from capital to attention and, second, that we need new regulation and self-regulation in response to this shift.

Ideally, World After Capital contributes to a dialog that helps avoid another terrible transition. To enter the Knowledge Age we need a lot of changes that are not in the direct interest of the owners of capital who largely control policies at the end of the Industrial Age. This is a direct parallel to the end of the Agrarian Age, and we must learn from that transition, if we do not want to repeat its horrors.

Historians will have a lot of bones to pick with the preceding highly abstracted account. The periods didn't unfold as neatly and there were regional differences. Nonetheless, I think the overall pattern of scarcity shifting from food to land, from land to capital, and finally from capital to attention holds.

[whnvr]

Brain Drain

Chaos Equations & Proceduralism: Chaos Equations. I think I may be obsessed. A video published by CodeParade - a channel which explores proceduralism within code & computer generated, as well as machine learning - covers the topic. As always I am fascinated by generative and procedural art forms. Procedural artwork refers to art that has been generated algorithmically as opposed to manually; generative artwork refers to art that has been generated by the use of autonomous systems. Brian Eno is famed for his use of generative procedures within his music writing, as is Bowie - who’s ‘cut-up’ technique of cutting up newspaper clippings and extrapolating lyricism from them could be considered generative. I see generatism and proceduralism as an ultimate back-and-forth collaboration between chance, machine, and man. To me, proceduralism does not just stop at the output. It can be fed back in, twisted around, cut up and used as material for more ‘manual’ processes, or an array of other approaches. The sky is the limit. CodeParade have published a tool that allows users to create their own Chaos Equations which I am going to be downloading and having an experiment with at some point in the near future. Defining My Creative Processes: I believe this to be a perfect instance with which to define what I am drawn to as a practitioner within my creative practices. In short, I believe that I am drawn to ‘play’. Every creative impulse I receive is based upon seeing something new that I get to play with, be it AI, Unreal Engine, proceduralism, generatism, or anything else. These Chaos Equations are a prime example of this. I think that may be why I would like to ‘make it’ as an artist, so that I can lead a life of play. This may also be the key to hacking my own creative process in order to build creative success: to recognise that struggle within one part of my process may mean that that part is not playful enough, therefore the solution may be one of ‘finding a way of making it playful’. Take mixing for example: the process of arranging different elements in a song so that they are in balance with one another. Aguably, this is the most formulaic part of the music creation pipeline. How can I make mixing feel less like work and more like play? Or finishing projects as another example: how can I gameify completionism so that I produce a higher array of releasable works. Journaling has altered the way I make discoveries. Discoveries which I make through this process may not outnumber the amount of discoveries I would normally make on a day to day basis. However, through having somewhere to record those discoveries I find that I am paying them more mind than I ever would have before starting this process. Therefore, I am getting orders of magnitude more benefit through feeling as though I am making abnormally more discoveries than when I am not journaling, despite the quantitative difference - the same amount of direct input/output - likely being the same. Along that line of thinking: play is but one of three flow states I have discovered for myself through these journals that may allow me to ‘hack’ my creative process. The other two are ‘breaking through the morning’s creative block by writing these pages so that when I come to doing the actual work I am already in a flow-state’ and the type of ‘creative problem solving’ I experiened on my Unreal Engine 4 Serene Terraces realtime demo that I did on the July the 6th of allowing the problems presented within one creative step to guide my actions during the next. The benefits of journalling are already apparent to me, though not immediately, if I simply examine my wider life. On the 6th I put out my first piece of work, done via my own two hands, for the first time in over half a year. A piece of work I wouldn’t have done if it were not for journalling. So, even though this journaling process takes up more time than just about any task during my day, the fruits of my labour are more numerous than from a time where I simply did nothing and had all the time in the world. Next Steps: So with all of that in mind, today I would like to try to make an entirely generative, procedural piece of art with AI-generated music, procedural sound design, chaos equations, and sound/parameter driven visual movement - taking a break from learning Unreal Engine to just, simply, play.

[johnmauldin]

Economics Is Like Quantum Physics

I often say a writer is nothing without readers. I am blessed to have some of the world’s greatest. Your feedback never fails to inspire and enlighten me.

My last week’s That Time Keynes Had a Point letter brought many more comments than usual. Apparently Keynes is still provocative 73 years after his death, no matter what you say about him.

But my real point was about the twisted economic thought that is having dangerous effects on us all. And we can’t blame it just on Keynes.

Today I want to share some of the feedback I received, add a few thoughts, and then show you some real-world consequences that are only getting worse. But first, let me wax philosophic for a minute.

Economic Dispute

This economic dispute is, at its core, a very old argument about how we understand reality. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle might agree with some of today’s economists. He taught deductive reasoning with the classic syllogism:

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therefore, Socrates is mortal

In other words, Aristotle said to move from general principles to specific conclusions. That’s what the bulk of modern macroeconomics does, using their (much more elaborate) models to deduce the “best” policy choices.

Centuries later, Sir Francis Bacon turned Aristotle upside down when he advocated inductive reasoning.

Rather than start with broad principles and apply them everywhere, he said to presuppose nothing, observe events and move from specific to general as you gather more observations… what we now call the “scientific method.”

Today’s economists may think that’s what they are doing, but they often aren’t. They begin with models that purport to include all the important variables, then fit facts into the model. When the facts don’t fit, they look for new ones, never considering that the model itself may be flawed.

Furthermore, as I have shown time and time again, they assume away reality in order to construct models that are in “equilibrium” with themselves. This is supposed to give us insight into the reality that has been assumed away.

That process isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s not science. It is the opposite of science. Bacon would be horrified to see this. He tried to show the world a better way and now, centuries later, some of our most learned professors still don’t get it.

This is sadly not just a philosophical argument. It has real consequences for real people, including you and me.

Uncertainty Principle

Speaking of science, I received this note from an actual scientist (i.e., not an economist).

Dear John, having been an avid reader of your articles for many years now I wanted to write to say how much I tend to agree with your commentary, and in particular how much I enjoyed this week's article. I'd like to make a couple of comments about this week's material.

Firstly, reference was made to comparing economics with physics, and how economists suffer from "physics envy" (I should say that I have a PhD in physics from Oxford and subsequently worked as a physicist at the European Center for Nuclear Physics Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, although I left behind my career as a physicist a long time ago.)

Economies and financial markets are much more like the world of quantum mechanics than the world of classical physics. In classical physics there is complete independence between the observer and the system under observation. However, in the realms of quantum mechanics, the systems under observation are so small that the act of observation disturbs the system itself, described by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

This situation is similar to that of financial markets, where the actions of market players is not separate from market outcomes; rather the actions of market players PRODUCE the market outcomes.

Betting on financial markets is different from betting on the outcome of an independent event, such as the outcome of a horse race or a football match. The latter are akin to classical physics where there is independence between observer and observed. Whilst actions in the betting market change the odds on which horse/team is favored to win, they don't impact the outcome of the event, which is rather determined by the best horse/team on the day. —Paul Shotton

Thank you, Paul, for pointing out this important distinction. I can’t pretend to understand quantum mechanics but your point about independent observation is profound.

Economists don’t just build models; they (and all of us) are parts of the model. We are the economy and the economy is us. While discussing it, we also affect it.

George Soros calls this the principle of reflexivity, the idea that a two-way feedback loop exists in which investors' perceptions affect that environment, which in turn changes investor perceptions. (Here’s his essay explaining more.)

That means these macroeconomic models, which with their Greek letters and complex equations look very scientific to a layperson, are often at odds with the scientific method.

You can’t conduct independent observations and experiments on an entire economy. That doesn’t render the models completely useless, but greatly limits them.

Borrowing from Clint Eastwood, this might be fine if those who use these models would respect the limitations. All too often, they don’t. And this is where it gets a little complicated.

I confess that I use models. I build them and work with others who build even better ones. Models can help inform us of potential outcomes and better understand risk and reward.

But there are clearly inherent limitations on using historical or theoretical observations to predict future results.

(Dis) Equilibrium

Here are a couple more letters, taking issue with my comments on equilibrium.

Just to clarify… Even if the economy can be modeled in some sense by a sand pile that will ultimately collapse, that does not mean that the economy is, at any point in time, not in equilibrium. In fact, it must be in equilibrium in order to form the sand pile! You could argue that the equilibrium is “unstable,” perhaps, but it is certainly a (possibly unstable) equilibrium. —John Bruch

***

John, I’ve been a reader for years and love your letter. But your comment today is over the top; “The entire premise of equilibrium economics is false.” Efficient market hypothesis is over the top but the premise of equilibrium is perfectly modeled in your sand pile letter. Cycles have always existed and always will exist.

Natural market forces will always move markets towards equilibrium but government interference slows the process making the sand pile grow in size and magnitude. To say that the principle of equilibrium is false is just ignoring reality.

The economy is like our forests. When a fire starts in the forest you let it burn so that nature’s cycle can run its course. If you keep putting out the fire you build excess fuel and then at some point you have a catastrophic fire that no humans can control. Mother Nature eventually steps in and puts out the fire and puts life back into equilibrium.

I agree that we need to rethink economics. But the principle of equilibrium, however short lived that moment in time is, is a sure reality. —Dennis Carver

John and Dennis raise an interesting question. The mere fact that the “sand pile” exists intact for some period of time means that equilibrium exists for that interval. Fair enough. The grains of sand do, in fact, line up so that they don’t collapse.

But we are constantly adding more sand and each additional grain changes the equilibrium. The previous equilibrium ends at that point, having been so brief as to be meaningless.

Eventually a grain of sand will create an unstable equilibrium, causing the pile to partially or completely collapse (and then be in equilibrium once again). So if no single state of equilibrium can exist for more than an instant, I would argue it’s not really “equilibrium” for any practical purpose. We can’t rely on it to continue. Every moment brings a new, unknown situation.

Let’s look at it another way. The sandpile model assumes there will be moments of instability. In economic terms, we are experiencing transitory equilibrium. The sandpile model is inherently unstable, a perfect example of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis: Stability leads to instability and the longer the period of stability, the greater the instability will be at the end.

(Nassim Taleb’s Antifragility Principle is important to understand when we think about equilibrium, or rather the lack of it. His book Antifragile is important and you should at least read the first half.)

My old friend and early economics mentor Dr. Gary North sees this idea of “equilibrium” as not just wrong, but downright evil.

In his 1963 textbook for upper division economics students, [Israel] Kirzner wrote about the assumptions of economists regarding the use of equilibrium as an explanatory model. They use it to describe the system of feedback that the price system provides the market place. “The state of equilibrium should be looked upon as an imaginary situation where there is a complete dovetailing of the decisions made by all the participating individuals.”

This means not only perfect knowledge of available economic opportunities, but also men’s universal willingness to cooperate with each other. In short, it conceives of men as angels in heaven, with fallen angels having conveniently departed for hell and its constant disequilibrium, where totalitarian central power is needed to co-ordinate their efforts. “A market that is not in equilibrium should be looked upon as reflecting a discordancy between the various decisions being made.”

The heart of free market economic analysis is the concept of monetary profits and losses as feedback devices that persuade people to cooperate with each other in order to increase their wealth. “But the theorist knows that the very fact of disequilibrium itself sets into motion forces that tend to bring about equilibrium (with respect to current market attitudes)” (Market Theory and the Price System, p. 23). Presumably, even devils cooperate on this basis. They, too, prefer profits to losses.

Biblically speaking, this theory of equilibrium is wrong. It is not just wrong; it is evil. It adopts the idea of man as God as its foremost conceptual tool to explain people’s economic behavior. It explains the market process as man’s move in the direction of divinity. Economists are not content to explain the price system as a useful arrangement that rewards people with accurate knowledge who voluntary cooperate with each other. They explain the economic progress of man and the improvement of man’s knowledge as a pathway to divinity, however hypothetical. The science of economics in its humanist framework rests on the divinization of man as a conceptual ideal.

Setting aside the theology, the point here is that economists assume human beings are perfectly rational and consistent, or at least wish to be. That’s what makes equilibrium possible.

But we know humans aren’t perfect or consistent. So how can we have equilibrium? We can’t, unless we assume markets are in equilibrium because they act in a manner we deem appropriate or ideal.

Insane Ideas

Again, this isn’t an academic argument. People who believe these ideas either hold seats of power or have influence on those who do. They truly think they can twist some knobs on their models and make everything better.

If we just had better monetary or fiscal policy, if the government could tax the right people and distribute the money correctly, everyone would be so much better off. And of course, their highly complex models and theories will conveniently lead to their desired political conclusions.

It is increasingly obvious that conventional monetary policy is useless now that rates have been so low for so long, and everyone believes they will remain low.

Nothing the central banks do incentivizes anyone to make immediate growth-generating decisions. If you need to borrow money, you likely did it long ago.

A new Deutsche Bank analysis says the major world economies now have government debt, on average, exceeding 70% of GDP, the highest peacetime level of the past 150 years.

Source: Financial Times

This is obviously unsustainable but the economics profession (and the bankers) desperately want to sustain it. With monetary tools no longer useful, they are turning to fiscal policy. Serious people are mapping strategies like helicopter money, debt monetization, MMT, and worse.

These all, in various ways, essentially say that government debt doesn’t matter, and in some cases we actually need more of it. Historically, the only way that can be right is if we are on the cusp of another WW2-like crisis.

This horrifying but well-researched Bloomberg article is chock full of links to insane ideas. Some look superficially attractive, especially to those unfamiliar with even basic economics. Many have familiar, heavyweight names attached to them. All have, to me at least, a whiff of desperation. They are frantic attempts to make the world stop spinning.

I don’t think these ideas will work. I think we are beyond the black hole’s event horizon. Bad things are going to happen, culminating in some kind of globally coordinated debt liquidation I have dubbed the Great Reset. I really see no other way out.

Every day brings more signs of the impending crisis. Duke University’s latest quarterly CFO survey found more than half of finance chiefs foresee a US recession before the 2020 election. Possibly worse, they project only a 1% increase in capital spending over the next 12 months.

An economy in which near-zero interest rates can’t spur more investment than that is an economy with serious problems. And I expect them to get worse, not better.

Furthermore, an increasing body of evidence says that increasing sovereign debt is a slow but inexorable drag on GDP. It is like the frog being boiled in water, but so slowly that we as citizens don’t really understand what is happening to us. We do sense something is wrong, though. Hence today’s worldwide populist movements.

The driver for 1930s populism was the Great Depression and unemployment. Now the impetus is rising debt and underemployment, with people unable to improve their lives as past generations did. Millions no longer expect to be better off economically than their parents. That frustration is sparking unproductive political partisanship and has the potential to bring political chaos as governments try to protect their own technology and businesses.

The world in general has clearly benefited from globalization and automation, but that is a hard argument to make as jobs disappear. And more jobs will disappear as technology increasingly lets businesses replace expensive humans with cheap robotics and algorithms. Sigh… I wish I had answers. Well, I do, but I don’t think they’ll going to get a great deal of traction.

This won’t be the end of the world. I really do think there are ways that you can properly position your portfolio and your personal life to not just survive but to thrive. We will get through it and be better on the other side. But it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The Great Reset: The Collapse of the Biggest Bubble in History

New York Times best seller and renowned financial expert John Mauldin predicts an unprecedented financial crisis that could be triggered in the next five years. Most investors seem completely unaware of the relentless pressure that’s building right now. Learn more here.

[crowcialist]

PCT Day 127: A Worm in Horseradish

The trail itself was hardly singular today. After a few miles of downhill switchbacks, it opened up into a wide yellow field where spiderwebs hung heavy with dew between the stalks of dry grass. I crossed the Wind River over a footbridge; I did the same an hour later at Wolf Creek, filling up what I hoped was enough water to last me until the late afternoon--there were no water sources between the creek, which I hit at 9 am, and a small stream that I figured to reach around 2:30.

In between those two water sources, the trail was all uphill. I climbed the switchbacks through a quiet forest, in which the silence felt all the more pressing for the heavy moss that hung everywhere. Because the terrain was unvaried, save for an opening at the top of the ridge that showed Mount Hood to the south through a blinding sunlit haze, I had ample time to think about things. Regardless of what else the trail provides, it always gives one plenty of time to think.

Here is what I thought about, as the morning gave way to afternoon and my body slowly gave way to a hungry exhaustion: My generation is a remarkably unique one. We grew up with so many miracles, so much technological progress, that the only way for us to feel wonder is to go back to a world where none of that exists. The phone on which I am typing this is more powerful than the computer that sent us to the moon, by many orders of magnitude. It is quite literally a marvel of human achievement, and yet I spend no time thinking about what a baffling thing a smartphone is. Why would I? I get to buy miracles whenever I want.

So for me, the only way to really feel wonder, as a human being in this century, is to remove technology from the equation. To look backward instead of forward. To things older than I can possibly comprehend: a mountain, rose-gold, seemingly lit from within at the break of morning. A forest, green and heavy and still, a place where everything feels safe and everything feels strange. A river, flowing on into eternity, holder of so many contradictions and riddles--dipping a toe in the same place twice, etc. These are the things that make me feel wonder, awe, a sense of my place among the things of the universe. I don't feel this same way when I talk in real time to friends half a world away, or take an impossibly clear photo and instantly share it with hundreds of people. This is no condemnation of the smartphone--I absolutely love mine--just a reflection on how spoiled we are with marvels. To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish, and so forth.

I also reflected on my recent trouble with hornets. After the first sting and my ensuing panic, I was able to sort of laugh off the next two, though they ruined my morning both times. But my mom and my fiancée didn't take the same attitude: it freaked them out to no end. I didn't understand this at first; I felt piled on, and unnecessarily so. Didn't these incidents prove I was *more* safe than I previously thought? That my one horrific reaction, two decades hence, was the exception and not the rule?

But of course, I was looking at this from my own perspective, not the perspective of the people who love me. Ali, my fiancée, is a talented rock climber without the least bit of fear for herself. A high wall full of tiny fissures is a welcome challenge to her, and she's immune to the swooping, sick fear of falling from high places that I've dealt with my whole life. My mom is an adrenaline junkie in her own right, having done everything from dogsledding to skydiving to feed her appetite for thrills. I'd do the dogsledding for sure; there's not an amount of money on earth you could name for which I'd jump out of a plane.

So I hope I've made clear that these are two fearless women when it comes to their own lives. It was the reminder that I'm potentially putting myself in peril every day out here that freaked them out. And while I really resented that at first, I see it differently now. It actually makes me feel pretty loved. And it also makes me realize just how high the emotional cost of a journey like this one is. If you're a human being with loved ones and deep connections, something like a thru-hike is going to leave those people bruised and scared for you to some degree. I feel like I'm taking calculated risks; it doesn't feel that way for them. And why should it? They're not out here experiencing this; all they have is what I tell them, what they research, and their imaginations. I can't keep holding that against them.

(NB: my remaining notes from this day are: “Near collapse, flopped down sweating, ate slices of dry salami to restore myself.” There is nothing else, and I find myself unable to remember anything else about the day--a rarity for me, even all these months later. Oops!)

[useyourwordspodcast]

Self Care In 2020

I was recently interviewed on another podcast (links to come when it is published) and one of the questions that came up was how I am taking care of myself mentally in this time of Covid and forced isolation. I thought this was a good question - for a multitude of reasons - some of which I will get into below.

I have not been shy recently about my struggle with mental health issues - both past and current - and how a lot of the issues that came about from it is (honestly) are a result of me not learning at a young age how to process things correctly as well as how to care for myself mentally. And I will not lie - this Covid time really did have the potential to be very bad for me - and at the start of the isolation I was starting to feel the impact of isolation and seeing the same four walls day after day.

Covid has shown an increase in suffering - and we see people suffering from the forced isolation. Suicides, self harm, alcohol sales, drug use and depression have increased across the board in the United States across all age ranges. This is scary - yes we need to keep people healthy from the virus - but at the same time we also need to figure out ways to keep people mentally healthy as well.

So how do you keep mentally healthy in these days? Honestly this is going to be different from one person to the next - but there are some things which are consistent and applicable to everyone and self care/mindfulness is probably one of the most important parts of the equation that can benefit everyone.

If you searched on the web for a definition of self care you would find the medical terminology of self care being tied to ADLs - or activities of daily living. These ADLs include such things as eating, showering, brushing teeth, wearing clean cloths, and attending to medical concerns. But when talking about mental health self care - it is a little more focused and slightly different. While the things listed above are important - there are additional and varied steps you can take with self care to help keep yourself mentally healthy.

Self care (when talking about mental health) is an overarching idea and is not something that is the same for everyone - what I may do for self care may be completely different then what someone else does. The goal behind self care is to do something that you enjoy that is within your control - and typically it is something that will keep your mind busy and away from the troubles of the world. Now you may hear that and think - ok cool so what I enjoy - yes and no. Typically you want something that will busy your mind to keep it from dwelling on whatever is bothering you at the time - so sometimes just listening to music and letting your mind wander may not be the best thing to do.

You want something that takes your full attention - and again that is going to be different for each person. For me - listening to music can take my mind fully away from whatever is going on. I have a background with music - so not only am I listening to the words but I am listening to the interaction between all of the instruments as well. But those times when I just want to put music on as background music - that doesn't help.....and why is that? Well one of the secrets to self care is mindfulness. Now mindfulness is not the only method of self care that one can use - it is just one tool to keep in an arsenal to help out with keeping mentally healthy.

Mindfulness is essentially being present in the moment - both the good and the bad. Seems simple huh? Wrong. Mindfulness in other words is focusing on what is going on in the moment and not worrying about the other things in the future or in the past. Taking time like this allows you to experience your emotions and the things going on around you and be present in what is going on - this helps you not only be aware of your emotions as they change based on what is going on around you but also what is going on around you as well and the subtle things that may be missed while being busy with other things. Some examples of mindfulness (at least on the pleasure side) is taking time to enjoy the sunlight against your skin, the sound of the wind as it goes over the grass outside, the interaction of the music in the room, and whatever else is going on around you. And I'll be honest - this is not an easy undertaking - being mindful and living in the moment is a hard skill to learn and implement. It takes times and practice - and I will admit it took me many months to learn how to put this method of self care into practical practice - and I am still learning how to do this properly.

And see here is the thing - you might be thinking right now - But Paul you have some mental health issues so of course you need to do that - true - but I have found that even people without diagnosed mental health issues right now are looking for assistance on how to navigate through these times of covid and remain grounded mentally. People who used to be able to hang out with other people to recharge their mental batteries may no longer be able to do that - and they may not know how to handle this change. I'm finding that even teens who are used to living their entire life online are having issues as well - and are saying how they miss the in person interaction. It would be one thing if this was a slow change in the way society worked - but this was effectively a light switch being flipped with people being able to interact socially to all of a sudden being told to stay home - sometimes even with threat of jail or financial penalty.

Some practical examples of self care besides mindfulness include: getting a massage, cleaning your room, taking a shower, going for a walk, playing with your pet, journaling, enjoying a snack you like.

Now at the start I said that this was a good question to have asked during the podcast interview- and here is why. When people are willing to have this conversation and they ask others about how they are keeping themselves mentally healthy it reduces the stigma of mental health issues as a whole. It doesn't lower it by orders of magnitude, but just slightly - and even slightly is a great start. We have gone way too long as a society where we keep mental health issues as almost a secret thing that we deal with in the shadow - afraid to let others in. We are afraid to be vulnerable with others about our struggles - and being vulnerable about our own mental health issues is harder (at least for me) then being vulnerable about other areas of our life.

Life is hard, and sometimes we need support. And that brings me to the last thing I want to talk about today.

If you need support for a mental health issue, there are a multitude of resources available to you. If you or someone you know is in an immediate crises where there is the potential to harm - then call 911 or get them to an emergency room. The person may not appreciate it at the time - but you know - someone living is better then someone appreciating what was or wasn't done. That being said - if someone needs help and it is not an immediate sense of danger - there are a multitude of resources. There is always https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ which has a phone number as well as a chat resource available for those looking for help or those looking to find help for others.

There is also heartsupport.com. Heartsupport.com is a site which offers hope for people dealing with a whole host of things - addiction, depression, suicidal ideation, and other hard things that life throws their way. They have live streams, texting options, and a web based forum to seek and give encouragement. They also have links to youtube videos from various bands, medium articles, and books/devotionals. Check it out - I will be on there posting and responding on the wall a little bit more frequently now - but I will talk more on that at a later time on why that is.

Take care of yourself out there.

Paul

[incoherentham]

Strategic Review: July 2017

Every month or so I do a review of how my life is going. I’m posting these here now

Positives:

Got a new whiteboard

Lovely tea kettle introduced to the kitchen, I have silicon spatulas now and misc. good food to good.

[redacted] moved out, we have a nook and more kitchen space again

Had a positive fight with partner!

Got my work travel expenses reimbursed

Been reading machine learning papers, and am starting to comprehend the code I look at.

Made adjustments to my hip bag like a pro fixer-er of stuff

Negatives:

Lost my gold fidget spinner

Boxes boxes everywhere

Keep dropping social engagements

Anxiety feedback loops between partner and I. We've improved, but not solved this problem.

I really really want to set up a merchant stand but don't see how to

Fucking deleted last review by accident

What’s on my Hot Loop:

No soft edges. Demand personal space first.

Track hours usage

Daily

Testosterone

Meditate Breakfast

Evening Tea

Stick to the basics of reasoning

Do the most important thing first

Build Feedback Loops / play in the dirt

Trust your instincts

Clothes decimation

Sample new clothes from piles every Sunday, save what I actively like. (Autosave socks and underwear, because judging those is hard.)

Detailed Inventory

earplug necklace

eye mask

toothbrush, razor

suitcase

weighted scarf

glasses

wallet

supplements

phone, microusb chargers, portable charger

laptop, mac charger

makeup bag, backpack, hip bag

fidget spinners

laptop

clothes

current

suspended

Level Grinding

Assertiveness CoZE

Annotate code

Keep up with ML news

TensorFlow

ML papers list

Sort probationary clothes

Send refund cash to bank

[redacted] docs

Inbox zero: feedly x3, gmail, alumni forum

Study cuda programming

Listen to Stanford human behavioral biology lecture series on youtube

Learn low-level and hardware programming

Speak out loud along with misc. tech conference talks subtitles

Cultivate loving-kindness mindset

Write a CBT chatbot

Endorsed Heuristics

The goal of a postmortem is to expose faults and apply engineering to fix these faults, rather than to avoid or minimize them

Carry a dry erase whiteboard for notes

Use wet wipes periodically

Most critical piece of meditation is rewarding yourself when you notice distraction and return

Taste the supplements you take

80% confidence intervals = 10-90% = 1:4 bet

Government should default to inaction

Use "what situations would make this go away?" to consider confusing impulses

Loving-Kindness meditation

Look out for self-aggression when working on self-improvement, it’s counter-productive.

Python naming best practices

subset of 20 rules of formulating knowledge

PCK seeking

Write down my steps as I solve important or complex but infrequent tasks

Speak simply, slowly

Self-denial is unhelpful

Personal rules for alcohol use:

no more than 3 drinks in 2 hours

have a glass of water every other drink

no drinking when I am already upset

Know the source of a trivia fact for context and a way to verify

Narrow down what type of errors a classifier makes by looking at the confusion matrix

Enforcing optimism is cruel to people in objectively bad situations.

Quantify consequences: how often, how long, how intense.

Freezing or spacing out responses to stress often don't get recognized as stress at all

Buy experiences rather than objects

Scientific theories tend to be not so much wrong as incomplete

Communication

Self anti-silencing policy: Share "I disagree but don't expect to the thoughts to be welcomed, so I am not doing so."

Add "Like this comment to express skepticism or disagreement" to FB posts

Check my comments are at least two of (true, necessary, kind)

Instead of offering sympathy, offer money, effort, or time spent coordinating sympathetic people's money and effort.

Offer sympathy and support when friends are in the grip of distorted thoughts, not "reality checks"

Tips to engage cooperation from How to Listen.. parenting book

Ask for feedback with "what did you notice that might be worth looking at together" (h/t Malcolm Ocean)

Start off any rationalist meetup with a game of object-boggle

CFAR mailing list norms

Replace "Middle Class" with "Working Class" in conversation

Establish the shape of an idea to someone before teaching them

Iterated Critique

Push-Pull-Action Critique

Replace "sorry for taking time" with "thank you for giving me your time"

Replace "do not shout" with "talk in a quieter voice"

Replace "refuse" with "said would not" or "did not"

If you aren't describing events, you're probably evaluating them.

Dev

Master and Develop branches should be kept constantly shippable

Black-box monitering alerts preserve good signal-to-noise ratio

R tidbits

Seriously limit the amount of on-call and manual work time by a Site Reliability Engineering team members to ~50%.

little bit of Haskell type theory

Try turning it off and back on again

Prefer to prepend vs. append to lists

Python naming best practices

Check the base case in recursive types/functions

Check closed boundaries and midpoints in intervals

Make a function template for complex data definitions

A function returning a Boolean needs at least a true and false test case

Define your data type when directly manipulating similar values

Stub functions so you can test code with unfinished/broken dependencies

Syntax errors accumulate quickly, compile-check often

Write a failing test so you don't forget to finish a stubbed function

You need to write a docstring

Biases to notice

People want to benefit from dishonesty but also consider themselves good people (video)

Regression to the mean

Choice-supportive bias

Scope insensitivity

Gambler's fallacy

The procrastination equation

Anki

Memorize individual derivation steps to always follow the fastest path while solving a problem

Don't memorize whole books or articles unless you're about to have an important exam

I must have a specific reasong for wanting to make this anki card

Redudant information in the question of a card will slow down your learning process

When an experienced user starts forgetting cards, it's likely from similar cards with different answers.

Don't try to memorize unordered sets of more than 5 members

Flashcard questions should be short

Minutiae to absorb

1 thousand to 1 million order of magnitude difference = 15 mins vs 12 days

1 million or 1 billion order of magnitude difference = 12 days or 30 years

Cache associativity

MESI protocol

derivative rules

bash shortcuts

reader-writer locks

what is a store buffer

recognizing chump bets in the jane street protocol

Misc scraps

notes from Modern Operating Systems 4th edition

proposed rationalist life timeline

weekly timeboxing summaries

stuff Jake says

mathemetically modeling the usefulness of holding onto stuff

ml papers notes

location of Onward house

ADEPT explanations

formatted nvim text wrapping

relationship meta <3

daily timeboxes

prefix sums, reduction trees

sci-hub.cc lets you get ahold papers, apparently

notes from [redacted] docs

android app for getting around the mobile hotspot limitations

shipnames for rl couples

postmodern jukebox does modern songs in vintage style

Applied Information Economics (h/t Ian Moss)

math concept cheatsheets

how to transfer files between local computers with netcat

Activity cards I'd like to make

why is calibration so hard to practice?

some changes

add dry erase whiteboard carrying

refine going through clothes/posessions plan, changed current clothes in hotloop

chance tasc task

add ml papers

removed day plan

got more specific in my "endorsed" stuff here

add Annotate code, tenserflow learning to tasks

remove Learning C stuff

[mrrolandtfranco]

Happy Maps

World Happiness Report 

Every year, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases a measure of happiness for surveyed countries, then performs a statistical regression to estimate what factors might drive a sense of happiness up or down. It’s called the World Happiness Report.

It’s just amazing data. But amazing data is potentially amazinger when seen as a map!

When I look at the survey results I’m struck by the incredible disparity between Europe’s and Africa’s sense of well being. Change in latitude, change in attitude.

Here’s is a subset of the 2017 World Happiness Map, focusing on that narrow stretch of earth where the invisible equator bisects a stark contrast in happiness.

But what about the rest of the world? Here is a Story Map wherein, you might gain all sorts of enspatialized happiness understanding…

False Starts / Choropleth Rut

For the past two years I’ve struggled with how to make a map of this data, which is just begging to be mapped. But it was a tough nut to crack because I was stuck in a choropleth rut -and as a result easy prey for the ravenous MAUP monster. Countries are wildly differently sized. And some really interesting places are essentially invisible at a global scale. Here’s an example of one of my false starts…

What’s more, the Happiness Report has not just the single country happiness value to map, they also provide all sorts of insightful categories of possible drivers of happiness. Again, in my choropleth rut, all I could think to do was make a bunch of maps…

I was flailing. And then on the day of the release of the 2017 report, the sweet sweet Muse of Multivariate Symbology descended down to my shoulder, stepping lightly, and whispered…use graduated symbols, you doofus.

Multi-part Graduated Symbology

Ok, don’t know why that took me two years to realize, but finally I was on to something. I love the combination of benefits that graduated symbology maps offer: spatial patterns remain in-tact while avoiding the pitfalls of MAUP-heavy country size, and the intrinsic cognitive horsepower of mapping magnitude to visual size.

Rather than making a set of companion graduated symbol maps, one for each happiness-factor, I wondered if I could show them all the same time in some sort of chimera abomination symbol map…

Promising. Now to pick some colors. There are all sorts of innate and cultural meanings tied up with color so it can be risky to apply a handful them directly to social data (seriously, hit the brakes and go check out Rob Simmon’s tour de force on color on data visualization; I’ll wait). But, I felt like six variables was too many just to rely on an angular offset. Color would help map readers key-in to the variables. So I made some culturally-informed (I winged it) distinct hue choices.

Here is the palette I came up with for the six happiness factors. For reference, they are (left to right) Income, Trust, Health, Support, Freedom, and Giving. I like to compare the gras-scale values of visualization colors to ensure that some don’t vary too much in brightness, and I also run them through the Coblis colorblindness simulator. They sort of check out.

Here’s how they key to my symbol:

The graduated symbology would drive the visualization of how much each factor is thought to influence a countries perception of happiness, relative to all the other countries:

All together, you get a wacky beast that combines to illustrate patterns of happiness:

I love it when a plan comes together.

How to Make This in ArcGIS Pro

This is just six graduated symbol map layers shown all at once -each layer is given graduated symbology tied to one of the happiness factors.

Each layer is symbolized via a graduated symbol method, using fine standard deviations for the range breaking. This way, each countries color ring (representing some happiness factor) can be compared to other countries.

In order to avoid stacking, each layer is given an X and Y offset. I did this manually, pushing each layer in one of six directions. Note the “Offset Distance” section of the point symbol panel.

In order to get the offset spacing right, I relied on the alarmingly analog combination of 9th grade geometry memories and a whiteboard.

Then I dropped in a little hub-and-spokes graphic, and I was off to the happiness races!

ArcGIS Online Web Map

Now to blast this thing over to the internet. Back in the “Map” tab, I grouped all six layers and the hub and spoke graphic, then right-clicked the group and chose “Share As Web Layer.” This bundles it up and stores it to an ArcGIS Online account.

Then I just added it to a map with the trusty Dark Gray canvas vector basemap. I added a couple layers that show the happiness ranking at broad scales (since my mega-symbols start overlapping pretty fiercely at that scale) and played with their zoom-level visibilities.

Story Mapification

This map is fun, but it definitely bears some explanation. Story Maps are the universe’s single best method to wrap a map up into a guided narrative. Because the World Happiness Report is so interesting, and potentially complex, I felt like this map deserved to tell a story. So, I created a Cascade story map to introduce the concept, describe the happiness survey and factors, and guide readers through a tour of a global phenomenon. What could be more fun? I hope you check it out.

What’s more, I hope you try out a method like this, or, try something new if you are feeling like I was -in a choropleth rut. There are lots of different cartographic techniques to explore, and lots of fun to be had in the exploration.

Thoughts on Happiness

I wonder about the word “happiness” and the many dimensions of satisfaction and well-being it encompasses. I wonder about the cultural connotations of imagining myself being higher or lower on a ladder. I asked myself how high I imagine myself of a 10-rung ladder of my best possible life. I put myself at an 8. Life is terribly beautiful; I’m so happy -but I don’t want to estimate too high so as to assume I’m at a limit. I happened to show this map to my dad, as I am wont to do. He also put himself on the 8th rung. That made me even happier.

But, regarding the state of happiness, with an optimistic outlook…I wonder if imagining a ladder, and where we are on it, really translates to something like happiness or something even harder to know, like expectations of improvement or contentment. Many of the apparently happiest people I’ve ever met come from Sub-Saharan countries that rate themselves quite low on that ladder. Happiness is hard to pin down. But I am glad the teams at the United Nations are trying to understand it at a global scale, and what factors might influence it.

Recently I was moved to near tears when I read a short essay by my young son, Juneau. His sentiment of contentedness and satisfaction, primed with his inherent optimism and joyful energy, is a fantastic example for me.

Happy Mapping! John

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