4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment

...there is a chance for a deep reordering of the earth's power systems, in every sense of the word "power," offering a plausible check to not only the climate crisis but to autocracy. Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. The sun and the wind are available everywhere, and they complement each other well; when sunlight diminishes in the northern latitudes at the approach of winter, the winds pick up. This energy is impossible to hoard and difficult to fight wars over. If you're interested in abundance, the sun beams tens of thousands of times more energy at the earth than we currently need. Paradigm shifts like this don't come along often: the Industrial Revolution, the computer revolution. But, when they do, they change the world in profound and unpredictable ways.

Bill McKibben

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment

The Techno-Futuristic Philosophy Behind Elon Musk’s Mania

"…The balance of evidence is such that it would appear unreasonable not to assign a substantial probability to the hypothesis that an existential disaster will do us in," Bostrom wrote, adding later in the paper, "With technology, we have some chance, although the greatest risks now turn out to be those generated by technology itself."

Whether or not Musk read the paper, he has echoed Bostrom and other proponents of longtermism, including the philosopher William MacAskill. MacAskill became something of a celebrity intellectual among technologists and financiers, to whom he preached an "earning-to-give" approach to philanthropy. Sam Bankman-Fried, the now disgraced crypto magnate, was one of his biggest acolytes. Musk touted MacAskill's 2022 book, "What We Owe the Future," saying on X — the social media network that he owns — that the explication of longtermist thinking is "a close match to my philosophy."

…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/business/elon-musk-longtermism-effective-altruism-doge.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Mr. W, long misunderstood but useful at last

https://www.threads.com/@st.catharinesguy/post/DJ0JWRcs1Lk?xmt=AQF0g4sgL6LWgzCEJJohhXz2yWokwmlvvPqbdLTL8DwEuw

Go to Mars, Never Die and Other Big Tech Pipe Dreams

… One prominent paper concluded that $100 spent on A.I. safety saves one trillion future lives — making it "far more" valuable "than the near-future benefits" of distributing anti-malarial bed nets. "For a strong longtermist," Becker writes, "investing in a Silicon Valley A.I. safety company is a more worthwhile humanitarian endeavor than saving lives in the tropics." 

Tech billionaires' pet projects can sound deliriously futuristic, but lurking underneath them all is an obsession that is very old. It's the primal fear of death, encased in a shiny new rocket ship. Becker quotes other writers who have noticed how Silicon Valley, with its omnivorous appetite, has turned existential angst into yet another input. "Space has become the ultimate imperial ambition," the scholar Kate Crawford writes in "Atlas of A.I.," "symbolizing an escape from the limits of Earth, bodies and regulation." In "God, Human, Animal, Machine" (2021), Meghan O'Gieblyn describes how technology took over the domain of religion and philosophy: "All the eternal questions have become engineering problems."

The "ideology of technological salvation" that Becker identifies can therefore be understood, too, as a desperate attempt to deal with despair. Amid his sharp criticisms of the tech figures he writes about is a resolute call for compassion. He encourages us not to get hung up on galaxies far, far away but to pay more attention to our own fragile planet and the frail humans around us.

"We are here now, in a world filled with more than we could ever reasonably ask for," Becker writes. "We can take joy in that, and find satisfaction and meaning in making this world just a little bit better for everyone and everything on it, regardless of the ultimate fate of the cosmos."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/books/review/more-everything-forever-adam-becker.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

There’s No ‘Undo’ Button for Extinct Species

…Extinction is not a phenomenon of the mythic past. It's an active and ongoing crisis, one that's making our world less resilient and more impoverished. The potential victims, as the scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature noted, include many canids, the real-life extended family of dire wolves, now facing a raft of threats: "habitat loss and degradation, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, disease and the overall disruption of natural processes." By providing the appearance of an escape clause, so-called de-extinction could undermine not just the few protections that endangered species have but also the idea that we need to make any changes at all...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/magazine/extinct-species-dire-wolf.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Sir David Attenborough Ocean film 'greatest message he's told'

"…the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0wjxg0ex1o

Anguish at bay

It's full-on springtime now. My blackberries are sending out new canes, and the passion vines have broken ground. The nestlings in the bluebird box are old enough for their cries to be heard across the yard. The front-stoop skinks are awake, the first lightning bugs are blinking in the trees, and the first ruby-throated hummingbird has migrated safely back to Tennessee from his wintering grounds in South America. As they do every year, these signs of spring work to keep my anguish for the world at bay...

Margaret Renkl

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/opinion/spring-wildlife-safety.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

BBC Radio 4 - Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane, Episode 1: Anima

Hello — Is A River Alive? has been adapted as Radio 4's Book of the Week next week.
Five episodes, read by me — & we've folded in field recordings & some beautiful Max Richter music.
First episode, Anima, broadcasts tomorrow at 11.45am.
You can listen back here if you would like:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bsz8
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bsz8