Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Odds And Ends

1. The "Can'ts" that a society must ponder, and weigh carefully, always:

You can't legislate against stupidity. You can't force people to mingle. You can't help someone who doesn't want, and/or isn't ready to be helped.


2. The "Musts" that a society must ponder, and weigh carefully, always:

You must provide equity of return for participation in keeping things going in a community, doing it via majority rule through the Democratic expression of a truly informed electorate.

Both the community as a whole, and the individual, must live by the rule of law, formed by the consensus of each community, representing themselves as participating citizens.

You must find a way to embrace, and facilitate, the ongoing difficulty of balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the community as a whole, no matter how hard that gets.

You must find a way to tolerate (mitigating the harm of bad choice behavior as humanely as possible), and care for the disaffected (even if it's just minimal food, shelter, and basic health care).

You must demarcate between criminal, and sick, with considered deliberation, recognizing the difficult tension between minimizing harm to the community, and seeking to help those who see they are sick, and are ready to be helped.

You must change how you conceive of incarceration so that it is no longer meant as punishment. Incarceration must be seen as a community's loss of trust in an individual, and the period of time involved seen as what it will take for the community to gain that trust back. And we must do this because society as a whole must never allow itself to think that it has the right to punish its individual citizens. And in this the right of the individual harmed to seek justice must end at the point of stopping the perpetrator from causing further harm. Society as a whole must do this because punishment, and vengeance, become too difficult to separate in the understandable emotions of the harmed. And once a society embraces vengeance as a way of life, terrible extremes of action become far too possible.

There are probably more things you could add to these two lists. I'd be curious to see what you guys think on that score.


Monday, May 29, 2017

What Is Freedom

To me freedom boils down to the ability to make your own choices. A notion that's pretty simple, basic, and shared by quite of few of you out there I'm sure.

The thing is, in the ruckus we have now over various kinds of "what can I own or not own," or "what can I believe in or not," or "who can I chose to associate with, or not (etc.)," we tend to lose sight of what is involved in making choices, at its most important aspect. And that is simply in having as much information as you can so as to make as an informed a choice as is possible.

This may seem to be stating the obvious, but it bares repeating because, on the one hand, when you are simply building one thing or another, the logic of informed choices is not only more procedurally obvious, but there is usually little else going on around you to distract as you proceed. Let us then, on the other hand, throw a little emotion into the equation and consider choices we make to plan our lives. The choices we make to achieve what we'd like to have. Etc.

How informed are we then, and where do we get our information. Are we, for instance, informed of all of the things that would be in our best interest to want? Does access to that information out weight the access to information of things to want that actually benefit someone else a great deal more than us? Are we given the chance to develop the habits that will have us always trying to seek better information? And the thinking skills to utilize that information so that we can make truly informed decisions?

There is also, of course, emotional information; emotional understanding, and choices that must accommodate these things. Objective information helps us to approach this other form of "fact" and choice, but the real understanding comes from being given the chance to have understanding interaction with others of more experience, as well as with your peers. One would hope that this would be patient, loving, empathetic interaction so that the connections of giving, and receiving, could be understood as the sharing it is meant to be, but that, of course requires generational stability.

The thing you have to ask yourself, though, is this: Just because I can own something, or can believe in something, am I really free?

If somebody other than you is making the choices on what you will be allowed to know, no matter what else they may allow you to buy, or to be sold on as an idea, are you really free?

And if they are incapable of providing any lasting stability (longer than a few quarters) are you ever to be allowed to acquire any emotional understanding either? Because you can sure as hell believe that there will be emotions aplenty being utilized against you; the easy emotions to help them keep you focused on only the most basic, and instinctual of our needs; so that, ultimately, the only thing you will understand is the "want" they want you to have, with no further thought of wanting anything deeper.

If that works as freedom for a majority of us then we are all well and truly fucked.





Sunday, May 28, 2017

Working America Is Facing A Very Basic Choice

And by working America I mean all hourly workers, as well as a majority of both salaried workers, and small, to medium business owners.

All of us working folks face a very basic choice.

What do you believe in.

Now, before you all start getting too excited there, let me be clear in stating that, in this question I am not wanting to draw attention to differences in whether a deity is involved or not, any more than I care which deity may hold sway, if indeed a deity is involved at all. Then, of course, as well to say, that the different strictures, or tenets, involved wouldn't matter here either.  What I am talking about is very specific to one component. And that component of course is money, and the system based on scarcity that supports money.

What I am talking about ought to be a fairly straight forward litmus test. Does what you believe in, in any significant way, require keeping that scarcity based system so much that it justifies the quite dubious mix of positives and negatives that said system creates?

There is also now, more than one reason for time sensitivity. The obvious ones, of course, are still there with what we've done to the planet, and that is only going to get worse. I will mention some others.

First: What's to become of how we value work? What, really, should work be in the first place?

Second: It is possible, with enough centralized control of media, that what you will be made to believe is going on around you, is, as they say in the disclaimers in fiction: "any references to actual persons, places or situations, are purely coincidental, and not the persons, places, or situations thus identified." In this we can argue at great length the degree to which this is, or isn't already in place, but that would be really stupid as far as thinking about the choice I'm talking about is concerned. The point here is that this situation is possible. And it is just that fact that we should be concerned about; especially as wealth, and market, concentration is continuing as I write this.

Third: The markets of today's Capitalism require stability to prosper the best, with "the more certainty we can get, the better" as the catch phrase. And of course, you only need to look at the subjective nature of "perceived value" in the first place to understand that, if we "perceivers" get all roiled up in one crisis after another, we might then have significant difficulty in perceiving much of anything very effectively. As such it is no stretch at all so assert that Capitalism is in no way a system robust enough to be able to see us through what is almost certainly to be a world in permanent crisis mode, and for a good number of decades to come as well.

Fourth: The only, non violent weapon, working people have, within the context of making established power pay attention, is to stop working. The window of opportunity to use that weapon is still open. But you must understand. It will not remain open indefinitely. And the following is why.

Right now there is not nearly enough automation in place to keep things going enough so that, even if large majorities of us stopped working altogether as a national strike, they could wait us out, whether through hunger, and little power, etc., or not, doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is that they still need us. But it may well eventually dawn on them that this should change; and the sooner the better. And that is without the already significant competitive pressures to replace us because we're just not cost effective any more.

So there it is. That's the very basic choice. Boiled down to its essentials as much as I think anybody's likely to ever get it. You have to make this choice. Each and every one of you, and everybody everybody knows down the line. And in making that choice, you have to find a way to take action. One way or the other.






Saturday, May 27, 2017

Have We Lost Our Drive, Or Have We Lost Our Ability To Do Crazy?

Because it is crazy to think we can continue to compete viably, skill wise, against machines.

It's also crazy to think we can continue to have livelihoods dependant on mass production for mass consumption; even when one or another item might actually be poisonous to us, and the planet; putting people in the position of either ending up on the streets, or doing what they always did.

It's crazy to think we can retrain, and retool, ever faster, like programmable machine tools, even if we could figure out a way to keep continuously paying for that retraining.


It's crazy to think that Democracy can survive when information itself is a precious commodity; therefore putting the idea of an informed electorate at the whims of those who hoard information for their own profitable ends.

And that's just a part of the crazy that Capitalism brings to the table.

I think it would surprise Mr. Cowen to see just how much drive we still have if we had something we could believe in that was worth putting drive into again. And that is the real problem.

Economist Tyler Cowen says Americans have lost their drive




We Are Inwardly Twisting, Outwardly Exploding, Chameleons...

...On electrified mirrors and, even worse, it is money, and profit, that control the feedback loop, churning us, faster and faster, with the mix of what sells the best; and in that, of course, you modulate to stimulate the basics in the lower brain. After all, Capitalism a system that lives by our scarcity, and that's where that part of the brain was born.

The problem with this, unfortunately, is that, just like a microphone too close to a speaker, the feedback can quickly escalate to the point of blowing out system circuits; that is, your circuits, and those of the operating system.

We are now living on the crazy energy of this iterating monster. I think the evidence for that is becoming ever more clear. What are you going to do about it.






Like I Have Said Before, We Truly Are At A Pivot Point

Either we pivot to a new direction, or we destroy ourselves, and much of the planet with us. And in my view the main key to that is whether we continue with the economics of scarcity or not.

Nothing could be more plain or obvious. Capitalism enshrines scarcity for the majority, and the most heinous acts of greed for the few. It is the hot house environment that exacerbates manipulation of all of our base instincts, and money is its first drug of choice. It is not only obsolete for purely technological reasons, it is making all of us ever more insane. And it will not stop unless the rest of us make it do so.

Think long and hard on this, but do it quickly. The clock is ticking.



WILL WE RISE OR COLLAPSE?


If humanity can get its act together, the future could be unprecedentedly good; but if tribalism, ignorance, and myopic thinking continue to dominate, the last generation may already have been born.





Friday, May 26, 2017

Just In Case Republicans Aren't Getting The Message...

...I'll let Morning Joe do a quick review.

Republican Party 'Is Going Straight To Hell’

Orphan Drugs As Hot Properties...

...If you know how to squeeze the system, and the right participants, at the right places. There's profit potential for you, and boy aren't they just making the most of it.

When the Patient Is a Gold Mine: The Trouble With Rare-Disease Drugs

With a flagship treatment that helps fewer than 11,000 people, how is Alexion making so much money?







Interestingly Enough, This Is One Of The Things We'll Have To Figure Out...

...How we share getting done in each community. Maybe automation can help a lot here, but we'd still need folks to get in there to clean and maintain the robots. As someone who used to wash dishes, and clean restaurants for his livelihood, I can tell you that cleaning up anything to do with organized food prep, as well as distribution, can be messy, smelly, difficult work. Which is exactly why nobody would want to do it if they didn't have to. But it still needs to be done if we want the thing that results from that process. And if we're all not willing to share in the many, difficult, smelly, jobs that have to be done to keep our communities going then we need to find a way to do without each of those things that make it so; which is certainly a fool's errand when taken very far at all, at least if you want a community really worth belonging to.

No Rocket Scientists is needed to figure that out.


LIKE NEW RESTAURANTS TO THE SLAUGHTER


Sellers of high-end pork, beef, and chicken agree: there simply aren't enough facilities to humanely and safely kill their animals.




Don't Be Surprised If You See More Of This In Your Well Entertained Future


TFW A POLITICIAN TRIES TO GET YOU FIRED


Saily Avelenda just wanted her congressman to meet his constituents. He complained to her employer.

Here's A Thought For You

Some of the merchants of Capitalism have been making some sizeable sums of money helping you to fantasize just how bad it could end up being continuing on with Capitalism. That's interesting enough as it is (if you look at things from the perspective of not shooting yourself in the foot), but consider also how curious it's been that so few have tried to help you fantasize how good it would be if we continue as we are. After all, if there's money to be made, wouldn't somebody be cranking them out?

The question then becomes: Which is worse, that you willfully ignore the first contradiction, or that you can so easily understand why the second situation isn't happening? All the while doing so little to change the situation in the first place.

One of the best things about the movie "TomorrowLand" was Britt Robertson's character, Casey Newton. And one of the best sequences of the production was Casey asking teacher after teacher, each spelling out the doom to come in various ways (paraphrasing): "But what are we going to do about it?"

But of course even that red waver got easily dismissed in the bigger waves of tepid reviews, and considerably less than profitable results at the box office. And on we go. Entertaining ourselves with our own demise. And we think the Capitalists are screwed up.





Thursday, May 25, 2017

What Exactly Are You Planning To Do In Space Mr. Vale?

I mean seriously, one hundred ton payload capacity an hour, 24/7? What kind of economic activity could possibly support that? Microgravity manufacturing might take hold eventually, but who knows how long from now? And further maned research might helpful, but who is going to pay for any of it?

This is what I would have been asking someone if they'd posted the piece I did recently on a better launch technology. I was surprised that no one called me on it. It certainly deserves an answer.

To start with, from my perspective, marketability shouldn't have anything to do with this at all in the first place. It's far too important for that. What we are talking about here is several, simultaneous needs that have to be addressed.

We first need to be finding every creative, long lead time endeavor we can, and be putting as many people as we can at work to do them. Weather that's creating the infrastructure for a hydrogen economy, the infrastructure to build floating cities, the infrastructure to build large fleets of hybrid dirigible blimp trains, the infrastructure for mass transit into earth orbit, or, preferably, all of them. The kinds of projects that leverage each other, and solutions to pressing problems we face now.

Then we need to start thinking about the kinds of automation infrastructure we'll require, out there, to do anything of any useful import. Especially if something down here suddenly trips a sequence of cascade events to really accelerate a lot feces hitting the fan, across large portions of the planet. And you can bet your ass that something, eventually, is going to occur that will suddenly make having even 100 tons an hour 24/7 look pathetically inadequate.

So, to do that we need a starting point and for lack of a better term we should call it Gateway City. And I do mean that it has to be a city sized project. It has to be that so every nation who contributes to its construction (via with resources, and or just labor) will get their reasonably large section with which to house those whom we will need to train for space operations, not to mention the need to provide housing, and entertainment for.

We will also need it to be a city because it will be, in effect, the port of entry for the planet as a whole. Which makes it doubly important that it be a city of the entire planet, cooperating in concert with the rest of the nations of the world, to equitably distribute not only what is on the Moon, but what it out and about in the rest of our solar system.

And that's right, I think this has to be built on the moon. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the size that would be required, but also because most of the materials needed to build it would be close at hand.

So how big ought we be talking? Nothing less than several miles in diameter, and several more miles than that in length, dug into the Moon's surface. Dome it over so light can get through, put a partially reflecting (on the inner glass surface), secondary barrier right at the hole's surface, and then rig whatever reflector satellites you have to so that, 12 hours on, and 12 hours off, a broad shaft of sunlight beams down the entire length of the city column (reflecting off of the bottom perhaps and re reflecting off of the two way mirror material of the secondary barrier). Providing, smaller, secondary light shafts along the outside circumference of the column might also prove useful for underground agriculture.

In any case, though, what you would have would be the living seed with which to begin the process of stepping off into the stars; a stepping off point that would allow everyone on Earth to have a piece of the action. And what action would we be talking about?

I'd like to think that it would be the shared action to begin building more habitats, of much greater scale, so we can begin to take the pressures of population off of our precious planet. But not just that. Science projects to dwarf even the imagination that created the Hubble telescope, or any of the deep probes we've sent out so far. We have to do this because another, perhaps more important, aspect of what the action is, is the need to provide a new sense of hope to people of all nations. A new sense of hope from a new frontier that everyone will have a chance to participate in if we do this right.

And just as sure as I am typing here, it is clear to me that we must also ditch Capitalism to have any chance at all of completing such an ambitious set of goals. Which makes what I've been talking about on this blog a package deal; hopefully a properly integrated package that will also address near term issues on the planet even as we keep our hopes and dreams lifted towards the stars. If we can start being an effort based economy, as opposed to a cost based one, we can do this. We just need to be on the same page together, as much as is possible, so that we can have that "shared vision" that makes Americans a force of nature.





The Juxtaposition Of Starving And State of Mind

This is also, I should add, another case of people saying both a great deal more, and a great deal less, than what they think they are saying.

The two stories depicted here (and linked below) illustrate just how profoundly people who have benefited the most from capitalism don't have a clue about what it really means to be human, any more than they understand deeper metaphor, and symbolism.

Saying that "poverty is a state of mind," for instance, not considering that perhaps the state of mind of highest priority here is not in the mind that people of privilege might suppose it to be. Perhaps the most tragic poverty in play here is the one where you have become deprived of any kind of deeper understanding; not only about how human nature works, but also about how human value can't be calculated only by abstract notions of output per hour, or profit and loss. Simply put, it cannot be about just counters, and being able to hold onto more of them than the other guy.

It's this other kind of poverty that makes seeing what ought to be obvious math very difficult for it. That's because this math resulted from investing in a simple human need, food. And doing it, heaven forbid, by simply giving it (or at least the ability to acquire it via counter substitutes) away.

"My god.  Simply giving it away... Are you crazy? That's something for nothing! That's just paying people to be layabouts and drags upon the more productive. You can't do that. We won't stand for it. And most importantly, even if there are numbers to indicate that helping people in need can actually be objectively beneficial, it goes against our common sense so the metrics presented must be bogus..."

Or something like that in the mind of such "alternative" poverty. And of course they can do that and still think nothing of giving themselves big tax breaks (to pay for as little as it takes to keep things going as they possibly can), or pass their counters on to their children so that they can stay privileged because they have numbers that be crunched, just by existing, into more numbers for further crunching, and greater counts, ad nauseum. Never really producing anything but more privilege.

Obviously some people are willfully lazy, even if we can accept that this is for a host of complex issues. But the thing is, both sides of the "poverty" question prove that concept. And another important thing is that being willfully lazy, or any other kind of thief by another name, are not normal human aspirations. Normal humans want to be meaningful contributors to their immediate families, and their communities. They want to prosper, but not by edging out the ability of someone else to do so, but cooperatively so that as many as possible can do so at the same time.

And let's be clear here. One of the most basic tenets of Capitalism is scarcity. So by that very fact alone the number of people who sit at the table of "success" must be limited. Because, after all, how can being at that table have any value (by Capitalism's lights) at all if nearly everybody is sitting there?

We have to get out from under both the mind set of Capitalism, and of the institutionalized detriments that have been put in place to separate us from working towards a balanced way of achieving the full spectrum of human need; that hierarchy that they used to teach within the social sciences that started with the basic physical requirements and went on from there to the higher needs of what are both animals, and something that aspires to be more. Detriments that have put so much shit into our heads because human need had to be hacked into, and subverted for the new needs of moving mass quantities for mass consumption, in a now mutated model of commoditization, and abstracted exchange. So now we have ever increasingly electrified fantasies going to keep the crazy energy pumped up. Which is, by the way, what we're all running on now. The result of which, of course, becoming ever more difficult to ignore.

Some more for you to think about. As always, you better be quick about it.

Ben Carson Says ‘Poverty Is a State of Mind’


Why Trump Cutting Food Stamps Could Starve America’s Economy



Wednesday, May 24, 2017

GerryMandering Is Why We Have A House Of Representatives...

...That's not really very representative at all. Why as well there can be a GOP majority that is made up of the most self serving, hypocritical, money suck ups our history has ever encountered. How can it be otherwise when even the GOP in the Senate has already started to show their disgust for what the current "administration" (feel free to wonder if there is any "there" there) has clearly been demonstrating in outright, damaging incompetence; while at the same time demonstrating very significant probability for outright criminality, and treason. Leaving us only with the question of just how disgustingly blatant does the incompetence have to before the House majority fulfills its constitutional responsibility to remove that administration from office.

In the meantime, however, you can demand that your state representatives, as well as your delegation in Washington, do something about the way that redistricting has been allowed to be manipulated so profoundly for the interests of "Big Money." Use this initial development to produce some momentum for real change here. It is obvious that we simply cannot let it continue.

SCOTUS Rejects Gerrymandered Districts, Cites Racial Bias -- All In -- MSNBC





Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Distributed Processing In Our Power Distribution System

Distributed processing used to be the cliche term that first went into vogue when minicomputers, and desktop systems, started taking over from the room sized mainframes. It was certainly appropriate, though, given the advantages that networking in general was beginning to be recognized as having.

It has always been interesting to me that we don't talk so much about distributed processing when we think about power production and distribution.

You could understand it early on, certainly, as power production necessarily started out as an endeavor centered on a quite significant installations; either damming a river, building the cooling and protection for a nuke plant, or placing big coal burners far enough away from where we normally live and work.

We've had fuel cells for some time now, though -- with their size coming down significantly over the last few years especially, and we've had the wind technology to solve the low power density problem (which the Yen Tornado Turbine does, as it happens) of wind, for many decades as well. As such, producing hydrogen at sea with wind power has also been quite possible.

Assuming you could deliver liquid hydrogen, point to point regionally regardless of whether it was over water or over land, fairly efficiently, why haven't we been asking ourselves this question: Why do we maintain a separate, expensive to maintain, single use delivery pathway, for electrical power over wires at all?

The thing is, we are certainly going to be keeping roads and highways going well into the future, in any case, for distribution of a lot of other things, and those right of ways offer integration advantages with the various sorts of piping any society has to have as well. Why don't we just accept that and look at delivering hydrogen to fuel cells, instead of electrons to a meter, and main power panel. And we do that to the best degree of granularity that we can with structures that require power, limiting the wire to the structure itself. That way, the water byproduct might at least be used to augment toilet flushing, or yard watering. And you would also get away from the triple+ whammy of wastage when you burn something to generate steam so that you can then turn the movement of magnets into electrons, lose some electrons on the way there to heat, and then use the electrons to create heat again for the house, or cooking. With hydrogen delivered (by pipe or cryogenic vehicle to storage tanks) you can burn it directly for heating or cooking, and the fuel cell gives you one of the most efficient ways there are to make on demand electrons.

This is just another reason why I think hydrogen is the way to go for our fuel requirements. Look into this yourself and see what you think. Do it quickly, though, because the clock is ticking.






No Sand Is Important If You Like Using Concrete

And we all know how ubiquitous concrete is for construction. And if we were suddenly faced with the need to build... I don't know, say, a whole lot of floating cities to make up for all of the coast lines that are going to be under water in the the next ten to twenty years, what are we to do then?

Fortunately my approach to building new structures at sea would use a hemp based composite material. So much of it, in fact, that it could easily become a new, viable export crop for a lot of nations that would find it hard to grow much of anything else. So it would be a win win for us and a significant portion of the rest of the world.

Just some more stuff to think about as we roll ever onward towards a world in permanent crisis mode.


A REAL MI-GRAIN


It’s one of our most widely used natural resources, but it’s scarcer than you think.







Monday, May 22, 2017

We Need An Alternative To Capitalism


It’s Not Just the Assembly Lines — Robots Could Wipe Out 40 Percent of Retail Jobs









On A More Positive Note For The Exploration Of The Ocean Floor

Egregious extraction of resources aside, we absolutely need a permanent presence on the ocean floors of the world. Just as we need a similar presence in the rest of our solar system.

For the ocean floors, however, we must begin cautiously. To the greatest extent possible, we must first understand how that ecosystem works before we place too great of a manipulative presence there. And you should understand, that is a completely different ecosystem down there, and we understand only a little of it now. One that, however different, still interacts in undoubtedly very important ways with things up here, which of course we also don't understand very well.

Interestingly enough, there is a way we could get that initial, physical presence, while still accomplishing something else very practical, in a much more direct way, outside of the oceans.

There is another public works project that I would like see our nation consider. A project that would be leveraged by the fact that the sea based, liquid hydrogen producing, Yen Tornado Turbines, project already recently described, would provide the ready made presence at sea of large scale, floating platforms. Platforms that could also support my alternative to space elevators, or rockets, as a way to move large quantities of cargo into low earth orbit. That alternative would be the world's first underwater, suspended tunnel. In this case a tunnel that would start on a deep part of the ocean floor (at the equator, naturally, and probably in the mid Pacific somewhere), and then, inclined at a somewhat shallow angle, would extend out till it exited the surface (perhaps for another 300 meters or so), down range, say, 300 miles or so. And in that tunnel would be a mass driver apparatus of best possible design.

The beauty of this, as far as the ocean is concerned, is that it provides an operations base for exploration we've never had before. A base for which the automated, and manned stuff could go out and observe, 24/7. A base of operations for exploration that would be quite separate from launch operations which would do no more than make noise, and generate heat, which, I believe could be managed adequately, and appropriately, for that environment.

This would be, you see, a chance to start the real exploration of both unknown realms at the same time, and we could do it all as a part of setting up what would be an extension (with hybrid dirigible/blimp trains) to a world public transportation system, I have also proposed.

This may seem a "dream too far" to most of you but I assure you it is not. Getting out there is fundamental to the survival of our species. That means being able to get out there in a very big way. Which then means industrial sized materials flow. And if you aren't talking something that can at least do 100 ton payloads every hour, 24/7, than you are dicking around. And precisely because this is so important, it must be made so that all people on this planet have a chance to benefit from it, and I, for one, cannot see that happening if we leave this to purely "market" forces.

Just some more stuff for you to be thinking about as you make that effort to become better informed. As well as the effort you are going to make to have something better be created with which to organize ourselves with. If not what I'm suggesting, then find a better alternative.



What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

...With a wild West Attitude, and mega huge sums of money involved, not to mention feuding national interests as well?

Perhaps the better question is whether anything really good will come from it at all; at least as far as the rest of us, and the planet, are concerned. And don't start with the whole "jobs" carrot they'll probably trot out. Between the depths involved, and the move towards robots in manufacturing anyway, just how many good paying jobs, at work that won't be hazardous to your health, do you really think this will generate at all?

As things are, in the end it will likely be a lot of damage done, through a lot of strife, so that a few will make huge profits. Oh happy day.


IN OVER OUR HEADS


In the coming years, a new gold rush will begin. Deep beneath the ocean’s waves, from scalding hydrothermal vents to the frigid stretches of the abyssal plain, ocean processes have deposited vast quantities of valuable minerals on the seafloor.








If We Take Control Of Our Own Production And Consumption...

...Every community will be able to grow much of its own food; one way or another.


LAND OF PLENTY


Indoor farming is a trendy startup space, but many of those ventures have recently failed. Plenty thinks its technology, model, and timing mean it's the place that will finally turn greens into green.






Everything Is Interconnected

Do you seriously think that disappearing ice, rising oceans, more extreme weather, scarcer resources and increasing areas of instability won't create a World In Permanent Crisis Mode? Especially when everything everybody does is in everybody else's face, 24/7?

Doesn't matter whether you do or don't, though. Soon enough you will be a believer.

COLD COMFORT

Scientists are sprinting to understand what is happening in West Antarctica as the planet warms around it.


A WATERY GRAVE

Devastating floods could strike twice as often in certain parts of the globe.




Sunday, May 21, 2017

Which Means Anybody Could Print Their Own Home...

...If they had access to the machines, the print medium, and ancillary wiring, plumbing, appliance modules, as well as the finishing fixtures and surfacing.

The tech currently available is, of course, still in its infancy, but still. It's not the skill as an abstract that we should value (with that value based so much upon output per cost hour) in how we mainly occupy ourselves, rather the willingness to work together to keep everything going at a prosperous rate for all. To then give people the personal freedom to work at their own, individual expressive skills to make what they want, like and feel proud of. It won't be easy to set up, but it can be done.





This Is What Great Creativity, Open Source, And Do It Yourself, Is Capable Of

My hat is off for these folks. Thanks guys for a terrific contribution here, and for what you've already done.



When People Can be Involved With Something, Together...

...Amazing things can happen.

Just imagine if we could see our way to being involved in running our own productive organization, together; doing a variety of tasks across the range of need so that we could understand a better part of what it takes to keep the whole going. Not only would we be working together for a common good, but we would earn the right to represent ourselves as ultimate governors. And in so organizing would we establish the principle that the work of participation is, itself, intrinsically valuable, and worthy of an equitable share of community instrumentality, and output, for personal use.

I have been imagining this for some time now and I tell you it is possible. It is possible, though, only if we're willing to take on a World War Two, mobilizing kind of effort to do it. An effort, I might add, that will likely be required of us in any case as the also likely state of permanent world crisis (formed of the dynamics of scarcer resources, rising oceans, and extreme weather, swirling around increasing populations, economic inequality, and larger areas of instability), may already be here as well.

As always, I am only trying to provide another frame of reference in which to see the possibilities here, as well as to see the need. It is up to you to give it serious thought. To look deeper into the details and then come to your own conclusions. The bottom line, though, is that something has to be done. Something. If not this then you better be demanding something better because your butt is on the line whether you realize it or not.

The Ancient Game That Saved A Village

By Jack Palfrey
18 May 2017