I think of how Project 2025 wants to slash the weather predicition services of NOAA, despite the fact that millions of people and billions of dollars depend on being able to predict the weather.
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Seeking a Solarpunk Future
Sci Fi | Cozy Fic | Sustainable Living | Classics | Green Energy | He/Him/His.
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Derek Caelin's books
2025 Reading Goal
8% complete! Derek Caelin has read 4 of 50 books.
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Derek Caelin finished reading Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith
Derek Caelin quoted How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra
The group that controls the social norms around building infrastructural systems is very likely to be the to be the group with the power to make the decision about what systems get built and where, about who benefits from them, and who bears the costs. Dinorwig is striking for the care that was taken to mitigate its negative impact. It's a sharp contrast to the impact of the New York Power Authority plant at Niagara Falls, where the construction had already been approved and begun before the Supreme Court decided the case. Robert Moses expected to win the legal challenges over Tuscarora Nation land. He had good reason to: across the U.S. and Canada, dams and reservoirs for hydroelectricity had displaced Indigenous communities before and would continue to do so after Niagara. The cultural history and norms of those peoples were considered secondary because norms are set and decisions are made by those who hold the power to do so. In this light, intra- structural systems can be seen, above all, as physical manifestations of the same kinds of cooperation that led to the Great Enrichment. They are networks that enable an exponential growth of wealth, power, and agency, made possible by energy use and resource extraction. Seeing them this way leads to obvious questions: Wealth, power, and agency for whom? Energy and resources from where?
— How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra (Page 126)
Derek Caelin quoted How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra
Economic growth cannot sensibly be treated as an end in itself. Development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. Expanding the freedoms that we have reason to value not only makes our lives richer and more unfettered, but also allows us to be fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with-and influencing-the world in which we live.
— How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra (Page 116)
Derek Caelin quoted How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra
It costs the U.S. government about a billion dollars a year to maintain GPS satellites and systems. In 2016, Greg Milner estimated the direct value of the global GPS market to be around $30 billion, having tripled from five years earlier. But when Milner asked for an estimate of the dollar value of the entire GPS market-the chips that are in receivers, the products and services built on top of it-an industry expert declined to answer, saying only that it was in the trillions, "meaningless for anyone but a scholar." As a scholar, I can say it does carry meaning for me, not as data but as a signal, a flashing yellow lightif the dollar estimates seem laughably, incomprehensibly high, it means that using money as a metric is, if not precisely wrong, at least desperately incomplete. Weather forecasting or satellite mapping, as services that cost a lot to provide but which then have very low incremental costs to access and use, are close to being true public goods even in the pure economic sense, since they're nearly nonrivalrous. The more they're used, the more valuable they are, in ways that go far beyond the where we are or what transportation are an even economic value of the industries built on this data. Like the industry expert, true value of these systems is literally incalculable, but it's because they enable systems and behaviors that wouldn't be possible without them, and they help us to protect the irreplaceable. Collective infra- structural systems, especially public utilities, are giant masses of positive externalities.
— How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra (Page 112)
Derek Caelin started reading Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith
Derek Caelin finished reading The Book by Alan Watts
Derek Caelin reviewed Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Mysterious and beautiful
5 stars
I loved the world in which this story is set. An infinite labyrinth of statues and sea, occupied by characters that I wanted deeply to know more about.
You follow the story through the journal of the point of view character. The best parts of the story are, to me, when the writer's and the reader's understanding of events diverge. It felt like a Hitchcock movie, where I, with full access to the main character's thoughts, started coming to different interpretations of information they've received - and what I knew compelled me to keep reading in hopes that the main character would catch up. I also appreciated the themes of the story: kindness, interaction with place, memory, ambition.
Derek Caelin finished reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Derek Caelin rated Piranesi: 5 stars

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set …
Derek Caelin finished reading Attack on Titan, Vol. 1 (Attack on Titan, #1) by Hajime Isayama
Derek Caelin started reading Beautiful Solutions by Eli Feghali
Derek Caelin finished reading The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
Derek Caelin finished reading Ents, Elves, and Eriador by Tom Shippey
I read this as prep for a book I'm writing on environmentalist themes in Tolkien. The others really went deep, covering each aspect with academic rigor. At first this was frustrating - what do I have to contribute, now? - but it helped me to realize that I no longer had to go academically deep. I could flesh out the themes enough to tie them modern events, and focus on why they matter now. I'm grateful to the authors.
Derek Caelin started reading The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
I'm a few hundred pages in, and of two minds so far. The world of the story is fascinating - a blend of the modern era and mysticism. I care about the main character. But I couldn't tell you what their motivation is, or really, the motivation of any character.