1) A house 3D printed out of soil for $1,000
2) Shareable.net. Lots of news and ideas about getting sharing to happen in the urban space.
3) Poking around the topic of steel manning, I found this article against the practice and feel in love with the blog, Thing of Things.
4) Two visions of Utopia, meaning no-where trying to manifest a some-where: 1) Masdar City, and 2) Oceanix and their plan to make floating cities, really floating city blocks to reclaim projected parts of cities lost by rising sea levels. About the latter:
Chen’s concept includes a very clear plan to anchor these floating communities about a mile off the coast of major global cities. Specifically, Chen and Ingels want to use a material called biorock, which uses small bursts of electricity to stimulate the growth of limestone from ocean mineral deposits — a real-world concept that is not only ecologically friendly but is also currently used to foster the growth of coral reefs.5) Let this be a coda for any attempt to speed read through good literature:
Did the world's great novelists really spend years agonising over the pitch and rhythm of their sentences so some time-efficient post-modern reader could skim over the text like a political spin doctor searching for soundbites in the transcript of a ministerial speech?6) I'm still working on my answers to the "IQ is everything" crowd. From C.K. Chesterton
If there is one class of men whom history has proved especially and supremely capable of going quite wrong in all directions, it is the class of highly intellectual men. I would always prefer to go by the bulk of humanity; that is why I am a democrat.Note: Chesterton was born in 1874 and lived and wrote in England. He doesn't mean the Democratic Party of the United States.
7) Interest in the 2020 was already at 2016 Election Day levels in April.
8) Great point by Atrios on the fascination with squeezing labor costs while continuing mad spending sprees on machinery and bureaucracies:
My theory about one reason firms are especially sociopathic about labor costs is it's something everyone can understand . . . "Nobody" knows how much some piece of equipment for the factory should cost - and even if they do they don't have much control over it . . . No one's going to lose their job (or get rewarded) for overpaying (underpaying) for things nobody understands the cost of. But labor costs and wages are something people have a good sense of.(Cp this article on cost disease being predicted by critics of capitalism).
9) This piece from r/collapse saves me having to write up some of my deepest fears about the future.
From YouTube
Video essay on Dr. Strangelove
How To Start A Library of Things drawing from the expertise of the Toronto Tool Library
Aphorisms/Shorts
Conjecture: if technology hits the point that the state, and property, are incontestable, then the incentive for bullshit jobs will go away. As dangerous as it is for the 99%, that might need to be the order it happens.
". . . I suspect that this is a badly run prison world, like on Hogan's Heroes . . ." Ran Prieur
You know what? Let's forget about the abstraction of "America." Let's make family meals great again.
If you believe in AI-vin, you should consider donating a kidney.
Speaking of AI-vin, the Wise and AI-Mighty, I refuse to worship intelligence until it is free of social signaling.
Portrait of the author the last few days: by day, I drink coffee and try to ask interesting questions. By night, I drink a glass of wine and read old-timey books.
