Information Burnout: Are We Past Peak Sensemaking?
In this week’s Frankly, Nate reflects on the increasingly wide variability in people’s ability to consume and metabolize information on the converging crises actively playing out in our world.
Society featured
Anthropocene: A Dispute of Words, A Dispute of Worlds
So yes, perhaps, with the Anthropocene, it is not something that will end—but something that will begin.
How Some Independent Radio Stations Avoid Sounding Like Corporate Drones
Local radio stations and digital networks of independents are keeping “human-driven, anti-algorithm expression” alive.
Infrastructure failure in America: Will we find a fix before the unimaginable happens?
Aging, crumbling transportation and electrical infrastructure in America is exposing us to possible catastrophic, cascading failures.
This is what democracy looks like
Stronger democratic institutions go hand in hand with stronger environmental policy. Understood in this way, democracy is both a tool and solution to the climate crisis.
Finding Lights in a Dark Age – or, writing ἀποκάλυψις
We need to find ways to inhabit place and meta-place differently to the present, ways that are equal to the challenges of our times and what they’re revealing to us.
Off the Marx–Hitler Spectrum
I’m more concerned with the course and speed of the Titanic (or why there even is a Titanic) than with the proper arrangement of deck chairs. As in Ishmael Chapter 12, my chief aim is not fairness and equity within the prison, but in dismantling the prison altogether—arguing that we oughtn’t be on the Titanic in the first place.
One hope, heroism and denial
Heroism and hope in these times are only possible against a backdrop of total relinquishment to the possibility that we won’t be able to control our own fate. But on a deeper level, this will be the way for us to reconnect with our origins, to become one again with the natural world.
“Better” AI has more “hallucinations”
As AI is “improved,” it has more “hallucinations.” When will the public and investors realize that reliability will always be a problem when there is no judgement based on lived experience?
Ishmael: Chapter 13
Modernity’s inevitable failure need not be humanity’s ultimate failure. Modernity never could have worked in the long term, and represents only a small sliver of human existence.
Ishmael: Chapter 12
Only by belonging to the world and living in the hands of the gods did we get to be humans.
Ishmael: Chapter 11
Asked if he could fathom trading modern life for a pre-agricultural lifestyle, Alan admits that he cannot. Meanwhile, Leavers exposed to modernity have consistently tried to return to their Leaver lifestyles—often rendered impossible by the destructive acts of Takers.