Operating theaters, bowling alleys and home cinemas: Not happy with safe rooms, the super-rich are building luxury fortresses

by Simon Usborne on CNN.com…At the richer end of the spectrum, billionaires are increasingly paranoid about threats to their health, whether from bioterror attacks, viral pandemics or old-fashioned heart failures and accidents. Covid gave a big boost to this part of SAFE’s business, which Corbi’s wife Naomi, a registered nurse, now heads up.

Chartbook 307 To live or not to live with polycrisis: The USA, Mexico and the need for a regional policy in Central America and the Caribbean.

by Adam Tooze in Chartbook…What is needed is not more border controls and militarized policing, but a pooling of governmental resources amongst the stronger players in the region including USA, Mexico the richer Caribbean states and Colombia, not to oppose, but to facilitate, support and invest in the extraordinary human energy, grit and determination that is the counterpart to those remittance flows.

‘Polycrisis’ threatens planetary health; UN calls for innovative solutions

by Sean Mowbray in Mongabay…Environmental, technological and social challenges are colliding to create a global polycrisis. This confluence of issues is in turn placing increased pressure on the already existing environmental challenges of rapid climate change, rampant pollution and biodiversity loss — ultimately threatening planetary health and human well-being.

The wide boundary impacts of AI with Daniel Schmachtenberger

by Nate Hagens in The Great Simplification…Artificial intelligence has been advancing at a break-neck pace. Accompanying this is an almost frenzied optimism that AI will fix our most pressing global problems, particularly when it comes to the hype surrounding climate solutions.

The harms of promoting the lab leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 origins without evidence

by James Alwine, et al in The Journal of Virology…Many questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain unanswered and may never be fully resolved. We cannot currently disprove the lab leak hypothesis. Nevertheless, the lines of evidence needed to validate one hypothesis over another are not epistemically comparable (16). Validating the zoonotic origin is a scientific question that relies on history, epidemiology, and genomic analysis, that when taken together, support a natural spillover as the probable origin.

More in this tag

Jul 06 2023

Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement

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...
Apr 18 2025

Systemic risk and the polycrisis

by Florian U. Jehn in Existential Crunch…We now know that global systemic risk is the potential for disruption on a global scale, which is then realized because a...
Apr 15 2025

It’s time for a new approach to the current context

by Phil Buchanan in CEP…Just in the past weeks I’ve heard leaders at philanthropic funders say things like ‘we’re trying to be small right now,’ ‘the lawyers are...
Apr 14 2025

Building trust for resilient societies: The global listening project amplifies local voices

by Heidi Larson in Myriad USA…Larson would like the GLP to play a role in a new approach to preparedness and resilience. “I hope that policymakers and programs...
Apr 11 2025

The future is in our roots 

from blog by Nnimmo Bassey…When one part of an ecosystem is destroyed, it impacts or destroys all the other parts. This means, nothing exists in isolation of...
Apr 10 2025

The verbs of resilience

by Andrew Zolli…I’ll be referring to resilience in the “property of systems and people” context noted above, to describe the (mostly) beneficial ability to...
Apr 09 2025

Google confirms Gmail upgrade—3 billion users must now decide

by Zak Doffman in Forbes…In the last year we have seen one Gmail/Workspace AI upgrade after another. This won’t stop. And so it will become ever more important...
Apr 09 2025

The last drops of Mexico City

by Rodrigo Cervantes and Jérôme Sessini on longlead.com…Every day, for most of her life, Norma, a 68-year-old woman from the outskirts of Mexico City, has...
Apr 08 2025

A Logic For The Future

from the Long Now Foundation…Stephen Heintz and Kim Stanley Robinson will discuss our polycrisis, and the swift and holistic reform of global governance...
Apr 07 2025

We’ve failed to stop climate change — this is what we need to do next

by Ben Spencer in The Sunday Times…While we can still limit warming by cutting emissions, we now face having to adapt to more extreme weather

Apr 04 2025

For many of us, it doesn’t cost much to improve someone’s life, and we can do much more of it

by Hannah Ritchie in Our World in Data…Most countries spend less than 1% of their national income on foreign aid; even small increases could make a big...