Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb Small investors, emboldened by an online Reddit group called WallStreetBets, have so far inflicted nearly $20 billion in losses on their arch short-selling foes as the stock price of GameStop has rocketed from about $17 a share on January 4 to $325 a share on Friday. Will WallStreetBets show itself to be a liberating force? Will it spawn a worldwide movement that demands a rethinking and restructuring of our financial system?
PFAS, a toxic group of industrial chemicals, are now pervasive in the environment including in the bodies of nearly every human tested.
We are having worldwide fight not over our view of “the facts”, but over what constitutes “the facts.” It has ever been thus, philosopher Paul Feyeraband tells us. It’s just that now that fight is breaking out into the open and disrupting our lives and our institutions without a clear way to resolve it.
It’s not just to hide clutter anymore – add “saving the planet” to the reasons you leave the camera off during your next virtual meeting.
Those of us who understand the systemic crises we face have a special responsibility to build our own emotional resilience and to be open-minded so that we can help others in our communities, who don’t have that same clarity, to navigate the craziness to come. It’s a crazy world out there, and it’s getting crazier. Don’t add to the insanity.
I am a Linux ambassador of sorts. I’ve been using the Linux computer operating system since 2013. I can still remember the light feeling I had the day I broke free of the Microsoft Windows operating system.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based consortium of 30 countries, has told us in its flagship World Energy Outlook 2020 that solar-produced electricity is now the “cheapest electricity in history.” That seems like very good news, that is, until the actual expected impact of that fact is examined more closely.
I was exchanging economist jokes over the holiday and heard this one that seemed apropos both to our resource predicament and the seeming abundance of the holiday season.
Even if the pandemic is brought under control soon, mass transit will be crippled for years to come and may remain in a doom loop even as the rest of society recovers.
Three days without electricity would be a disaster. Three weeks worldwide would be a catastrophe. Three months would probably spell the end of modern civilization.
Low prices which seem felicitous now could foreshadow instability and trouble ahead. The world still depends on oil for about one-third of its energy needs.
What we may not realize is that nature is always on the ballot everywhere. But our awareness of that fact is only now bubbling to the surface of political consciousness.
