image by Layers on Pixabay Last year I wrote about how chronic precarity seems to affect us mentally, and concluded: Now, thanks largely to our own unintended blunders, 8.1 billion of us are seemingly both at the mercy of chance and at the mercy of others with whom we must share limited and diminishing resources….
earthset from the moon, from the Artemis II crew, via NASA There should be a name for the paradox in which a large group of individuals, each biophilic by nature, each doing their best under the circumstances, each quietly knowing the consequences of runaway ecological collapse, the exhaustion of cheap energy, endless wars, and relentlessly…
This is the third of a series of articles — opinionated, fanciful writings, speculations — about The World After Collapse. It draws on what I’ve learned about pre-civilization humans and other large-brained creatures, and speculates on how, after civilization’s fall is complete — probably centuries from now — the remnants of the human species might be…
I’m still thinking this through, but it seems to me that the old left/right 2×2 (social vs economic axes) model is now outdated, and needs to be replaced by something more like this (some early thoughts below*) Like many western “democracies” and their imitators, Canada suffers from the use of the “first past the post”…
image by AI; not my prompt Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. — TS Eliot, Burnt Norton, Four Quartets Science journals often speculate on why art, in all its forms, seems a uniquely…
A not-atypical example of bad management: An incompetent ‘manager’ issuing impossible instructions and then shifting the blame to someone/something else when they go wrong; image by AI, my own prompt Despite more than 40 years in business, working with organizations of all sizes, I still cannot fathom why we seem to absolutely revere people in…
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the fifteenth of a series of articles on some of these signposts. image by AI, my own prompt Tyson Yunkaporta, the Australian professor of Indigenous…
Yes, it’s another post in which I blather about how much fun I’ve had and how much I’ve learned about amateur music creation, one of my favourite hobbies, from playing with AI music tools. Before yelling at me, please see my regular AI caveat at the bottom of this post. image by AI; my prompt,…
This is #52 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk, hike, and explore in my local community. well I’m a stranger here on this place called Earth and I was sent down here to discover the worth of your little blue planet…
one of the pattern cards from the Group Works facilitation deck Last evening I attended a PechaKucha style event in Port Moody, a community a short walking distance from where I live. For those not familiar with PechaKucha-type events, it requires you to make your presentation precisely 20 slides long, with each slide lasting precisely…
