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- Guess what? House Hunters (a reality TV show) is scripted
- An incredible detective story: tracking down a fake Rolex “brand”
- Here’s an interview with me [mp3] on the Future of Agriculture podcast. (I’m not optimistic.)
- I recommend listening to “Hash Power, a three part audio documentary that explores the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies,” which was published in 2017, thus providing some interesting predictions of where crypto was going (and not!)
- Three delusional visions of smart cities
- How Boeing lost its way
- Thomas Sowell explains why “trickle down economics” is a lie
- A new report on water governance in China
- Marriage is more complicated than just a couple making promises
- Oceans are absorbing carbon at a rate likely to cause mass extinction within this century. So, yeah, we’re fucked.
- Exercise is not just about losing weight
- When is a “burger” a burger — and other naming nonsense
- Americans only started working too much (rather, taking too few vacations) in the 1980s
- Here are some excerpts from a new documentary on Elinor and Vincent Ostrom and the study of the commons, which will come out in May 2020
- In an experiment, students lived in the desert on 15 liters of water per day “without difficulty adjusting to a low-resource lifestyle.” Could you?
- Thirty people are sailing from Europe to the COP meeting in Chile. Support their mission?
- The most important wind in the world — the monsoon — is failing.
- China is exporting its digital surveillance model, beginning with BRI countries. Related: Read this 1993 essay on Singapore: “Disneyland with the death penalty“
- “Bluntly stated, we should accept the grim reality that victory in modern major wars was most often achieved by mass slaughter, not by heroics or the genius of generals” Related: I agree with Bernie Sanders on “ending America’s endless war“
- I’m quoted in this essay on over-population, sustainability and the Bay Area.
- The man controlling Russian media (for Putin)
- If you’re interested in “fair” water pricing, then read this paper [pdf] on Nairobi’s system: “we find that high-income residential and nonresidential customers receive a disproportionate share of subsidies and that subsidy targeting is poor even among households with a private metered connection.”
- “Why should migrants respect borders when we didn’t respect theirs?” Good question.
- GMO crops in Spain/Portugal increased profits, and lowered herbicide, insecticide and diesel use. Adopt!
- Google and Amazon allow you to opt out of spying — a little.
- George Orwell’s 1984 is ever more relevant: “The crucial issue was not that Trump might abolish democracy but that Americans had put him in a position to try. Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.”
- A fantastic hitjob on Uber, a company that’s taken $70 billion from gullible investors who bought the “Uber Technologies, Inc. operates as a technology platform for people and things mobility” lie.
- American rivers are too full (climate disruption!) for barges to move. Chaos in the Midwest. Will they vote for “Mr Coal Trump” again? (Don’t let USACE near this problem — they caused it with all the channeling, etc.)
- The mathematics of digital compression
- A Dutch researcher wins the “Borlaug food prize” for suppling better seeds to millions of small farmers.
H/T to DL
- Looking for inspiration regarding specialization? Listen to this
- So what happens after we reach “peak mobile”?
- If you want to geek out on the complexity of the energy transition (from fossil fuels), then check out this energy model. It focuses on the EU, but there’s a LOT of data and complexity to explore!
- What’s Really Driving the Cryptocurrency Phenomenon? Related: Nothing Can Stop The Bitcoin Protocol and the trust among developers of a trustless protocol
- The supporters of populists have a lot in common with the Germans who chose Hitler.
- Indoor pollution is a real problem (even in Amsterdam) — and it’s worse in theatres!
- How many times will your town flood before you call it quits? This Maryland town had three “1 in a 1,000 year” storms in 3 years.
- This is the best analysis of the connection between drought, climate change and the war in Syria
- Whoops! One cotton bag has 7,000x the impact of one plastic bag!
- An excellent podcast on affordable housing policies (fails)