Current random mix of interests: (low/appropriate) technology, science (open, electrochemistry, mech/chem eng), libertarian socialist/municipalist type stuff , social ecology, degrowth, cooperatives, manufacturing, academia, federation, open source (hardware mostly).
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What's the relationship between combating the far right and working for systemic change? What does it mean when fascists intensify …
The Dispossessed (in later printings titled The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) is a 1974 utopian …
First fiction I've read in a while, and first time reading Le Guin, really liked the book! Lefty science folks are sure to enjoy. Themes of collectivism, anarchism, feminism run throughout. Kind of a world like if Elon Musk wanted to take over Earth instead and deported the nonconformists to Mars. Relevant to our current times...
Joan Westenberg: Permissionless (EBook)
Innovation doesn’t come from asking nicely. It comes from doing the work, breaking the rules, and solving the problems everyone …
Si je m’adresse aux ingénieurs, c’est parce que je les connais bien. Je suis – ou j’étais ? – l’un …
Steven Stoll offers a fresh, provocative account of Appalachia, from the earliest European settlers, through crucial episodes such as the …
The author shows that before there was money, there was debt. For 5,000 years humans have lived in societies divided …
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. …
Peter Kropotkin's "The Conquest of Bread", along with his "Fields Factories and Workshops" was the result of his extensive research …
A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining. …
About what I anticipated - essentially a manifesto for traditional green-growth, technocratic climate solutionism. I do admire what Saul has done with Otherlab, building practical solutions outside academia and trying to implement them. Their lab is a model of how to do public-facing applied research outside of a university. But he seems stuck in a Bay Area mindset.
The book's clearest sentence: "It means that instead of changing our energy supply or demand, we need to transform our infrastructure - both individually and collectively - rather than our habits."
I couldn't agree less.
He has read Graeber on debt though!
Assorted notes: book is entirely US-focused. Written for a general audience. Half of residential energy use is space heating. Highway transport uses 10x energy vs. air travel sector. Advocates ditching 70's-style "efficiency/sacrifice" rhetoric for one of clean energy abundance (I also embrace a rhetoric of abundance, but under degrowth). Electrification …
About what I anticipated - essentially a manifesto for traditional green-growth, technocratic climate solutionism. I do admire what Saul has done with Otherlab, building practical solutions outside academia and trying to implement them. Their lab is a model of how to do public-facing applied research outside of a university. But he seems stuck in a Bay Area mindset.
The book's clearest sentence: "It means that instead of changing our energy supply or demand, we need to transform our infrastructure - both individually and collectively - rather than our habits."
I couldn't agree less.
He has read Graeber on debt though!
Assorted notes: book is entirely US-focused. Written for a general audience. Half of residential energy use is space heating. Highway transport uses 10x energy vs. air travel sector. Advocates ditching 70's-style "efficiency/sacrifice" rhetoric for one of clean energy abundance (I also embrace a rhetoric of abundance, but under degrowth). Electrification > efficiency. Very soft/lacking on discussion of mineral requirements (cobalt, neodymium), very car-centric, yet realizes the urgency of climate and related issues. Promotes 100% electrification of US economy without any degrowth, which leads to a staggering estimate of material requirements, like tripling electricity generation. He and his lab have done much work on these estimates and energy/carbon accounting though, which is valuable work. He is doubtful on thermodynamics of carbon capture, which is realistic IMO. Very big on heat pumps. Suggests ramping production of goods in line with availability of clean energy, and increasing physical goods storage capacity appropriately. Acknowledges wood can be good for heating in depths of winter for those with the right local sustainabile supplies. Against geoengineering. Pessimistic on hydrogen as energy carrier because of low round-trip efficiency (I agree). Pushing for gov't-backed lower interest rates on climate-related domestic tech. Lots of invoking WWII production/New Deal-era industrial /gov't mobilization. Admits going vegetarian is pretty impactful. Acknowledges smaller houses are helpful to reach targets. Not anti-nuclear, thinks nuclear should stay in mix and adopt SMR's/etc but acknowledges nuclear is way more expensive than new wind/solar. Advocates planting trees! Lots of cool data-rich diagrams. Under his electric US, each person requires 4kW on average at all times, and therefore a 20 kW, 2,000 lb solar array! (across the economy, presumably).
