The Long View
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by Dr. Michael Lawrence at The Cascade Institute….. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or more fast-moving trigger events combines with slow-moving stresses to push a global system out of its established equilibrium and into a volatile and harmful state of disequilibrium. We then identify three causal pathways—common stresses, domino effects, and inter-systemic feedbacks—that can connect multiple global systems to produce synchronized crises.
by Susan Erikson in MIT Press…World Bank pandemic bonds paid out only after death tolls passed a threshold. They’re part of a booming market where investors turn calamity into capital.
by Megan K. Stack in The New York Times…It’s not that our government is using the surveillance infrastructure in the same manner as China. It’s that, as far as the technology goes, it could.
by Orla Dwyer in Carbon Brief…Climate science has “done a remarkable job of anticipating global impacts on the main grains and we should continue to rely on this science to guide policy decisions”, Lobell, the lead study author, says in a press release.
He adds that there may be “blind spots” on specialised crops, such as coffee, cocoa, oranges and olives, which “don’t have as much modelling” as key commodity crops, noting:
“All these have been seeing supply challenges and price increases. These matter less for food security, but may be more eye-catching for consumers who might not otherwise care about climate change.”
by Kyle Dickman in Los Alamos National Laboratory…For a variety of reasons, government support for big science has been eroding since then. Now, AI is starting to feel like the next great foundation for scientific progress. Big companies are spending billions on large machines, but the buy-in costs of working at the frontiers of AI are so high that no university has the exascale-class machines needed to run the latest AI models. We’re at a place now where we, meaning the government, can revitalize that pact by investing in the infrastructure to study AI for the public good.
by Nils Gilman in Small Precautions…MAGA, in its rawest form, embodies the fury of those who feel that the burden of these risks has been disproportionately offloaded onto them, while the beneficiaries of the modern system — the “elites” — remain largely untouched. Consider the climate change debate: for many in the MAGA base, the imposition of green policies is perceived as a direct attack on their livelihoods, a demand by scientific and intellectual elites that they make personal sacrifices for a problem they feel they did not create (and which may not even exist, according to many of them) and which are not a burden for those advocating for the changes.
by Shady Grove Oliver in AfroLAnews.org…Through her writing, Butler models the concept of having a found family – people one chooses to surround themself with for security and companionship. She demonstrates how small acts of kindness and acceptance can have a ripple effect.
by Dark Matter Labs on Medium…Many-to-Many is designed for groups who want to collaborate to solve complex challenges but require new ideas about value, ownership, and power.
by Ruth Richardson in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science…As grand challenges intensify and intersect across the globe, policymakers and decision makers at all levels continue to face mounting pressures. Increasing fiscal and financial constraints, cognitive overload, and a persistent lock-in to crisis response modes prevent—or, indeed, derail—the development of long-term policies and actions needed to move toward a safer, more just, and sustainable future.
by Andrea Coveri, et al, in Intereconomics…The link between Big Tech and the military apparatus brings back traditions of economic thought too often forgotten or intentionally removed, such as the twentieth century theories of imperialism and monopoly capital (Hobson, 1902; Baran & Sweezy, 1966). The debate on the military-industrial complex, a concept associated with President Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961, also regains relevance. However, it seems to have been transformed into a digital-military-industrial complex where the key actor, Big Tech, share the peculiarity of being, at the same time, big market players, controllers of technologies essential to citizens’ lives and indispensable partners of the military apparatus. This makes the integration of state and private capital even closer and more complex than in the past.
by Aaron Gell in The Guardian…Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods.
