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

Earth Day-follow the science

…"Earth Day," held on April 22, 1970, brought more than 20 million Americans—10% of the total population of the country at the time—to call for the nation to address the damage caused by 150 years of unregulated industrial development. The movement included members of all political parties, rich Americans and their poorer neighbors, people who lived in the city and those in the country, labor leaders and their employers. Fifty-five years later, it is still one of the largest protests in American history.

Today the White House under President Donald J. Trump celebrated Earth Day by announcing that "we finally have a president who follows science,"
…

HCR https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/april-22-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Earth Day ‘25

The Earth that we're meant to honor on Earth Day is in far worse trouble than anyone could have predicted 55 years ago. In today's daily newsletter, Bill McKibben writes about the failure—and hope—of Earth Day.

https://www.threads.net/@newyorkermag/post/DIxPEWpzLnq?xmt=AQGz1O5HjQfbkT_eZ2jfCWa-aCbJCYBMXztTGHDieS_9Bw

Sylvia Earle, EarthDay

"You should treat the ocean as if your life depends on it, because it does," marine biologist Sylvia A. Earle explained in 2019. EarthDay #BriefButSpectacular

https://www.threads.net/@newshour/post/DIwoLc_qdlj?xmt=AQGzqKODAeqbJWF5dzhnaxaP9n18aNGaQTxOHYPj1o2aiw

The stuff of life

"The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

- COSMOS
#CarlSagan #AnnDruyan #EarthDay

SunQueenPBS

When a family of three moved into a curious new solar powered house in Dover, Massachusetts in 1948, it was more than a home: it was an experiment. No one had ever tried to survive a frigid New England winter in a house heated by nothing but the sun.

☀️ THE SUN QUEEN is now streaming online and in the PBS app.

https://www.threads.net/@americanexperiencepbs/post/DIUVCnrgE-f?xmt=AQGziOqCvCJpSsKS1wN4ALYEPTA_9Jjwum_FHUG1oryR9g

Rachel Carson | Full Documentary | AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | PBS

https://youtu.be/mFDh9c34XX4?si=l5aBF6gTBI7hFlbO

Trees can teach us something.

I planted an oak, a magnolia, and a locust this weekend. Symbols of hope, commitment, connection. But not merely symbolic. Read Richard Powers' Overstory…

https://www.threads.net/@brianmsabourin/post/DH1HPLDJzSo?xmt=AQGz-cXhWbB5uNcgjyPnkd8lFUDHtCMyHfaPXEqW8Nf1Vg

Anything?

Parent: I would do anything for my child

Scientist: here's a list of actions, behavioural changes, and policy changes to fight for to prevent climate catastrophe so that your child has a future

Parent: oh nah I meant like pick them of up from football practice

https://www.threads.net/@earthlyeducation/post/DHeyqagT0zl?xmt=AQGzCj_4v-ahUg6EP0uySe3nHH3QrBarYUyKBssDxNnAGw

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Fox-ocrisy

A Fox News host consistently platformed climate deniers but installed solar at his house. Murdoch's media empire has done more damage to this planet, democracy and people's brains than nearly anything else in history.

https://www.threads.net/@earthlyeducation/post/DHieTzaRQZ8?xmt=AQGznF-uyZQkwiWIw9f6eXAB9w8aKpN05cdIdYINMukFSg

The Blood Worm Moon and the Mustard Seed

… Encouraged by the wildflower show at Elmington Park, I set off last week to see as many patches of Nashville mustard as I could find. At a time when losses in the natural world are in hyperdrive for no reason but the shortsighted stupidity of the people who now make this country's environmental policy, a flower that survives humanity by virtue of the stewardship of others can be a kind of guiding spirit.

The way those yellow flowers lifted my heart may also explain why I set my alarm, despite the cloud cover, to wake in time to see the blood worm moon. That's the thing about cloud cover: You never know when a break in the clouds will allow a glimpse of something amazing, something that predates us and is yet unruined by human hands. In very dark times, just the barest chance to witness something beautiful is enough to give a person hope...

Margaret Renkl 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/opinion/total-eclipse-tennessee-flowers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Connect

"We need to be connected to the thing that we are fighting for." Ed Yong, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, thinks it's more important than ever to be out and experiencing the natural world. Read or listen to what gives him hope on The Interview. https://nyti.ms/4k8sHrT

Edward Abbey on how to live and how to die, 19-year-old Simone de Beauvoir's resolutions for a life worth living, Oliver Sacks in love

…Long after he composed his passionate prospectus for how (not) to die and not long before he returned his borrowed atoms to the earth, Abbey offered his best advice on how to live in a speech he delivered before a gathering of environmental activists:

It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here.

So… ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

Couple with Anna Belle Kaufman's spare and stunning poem about how to live and how to die, then revisit the poetic science of what actually happens when we die.

Maria Popova 

https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/edward-abbey-simone-de-beauvoir-oliver-sacks

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Hyper-individualism, the FAA, and the blame game

"…Trump's impulse to blame other people for the [DC air collision tragedy even before anything was known about its causes reflects his rejection of the concept of the American government in favor of the idea that the world is simply a collection of individuals. Since the early twentieth century, the U.S. government has performed an extensive and remarkably successful role in public safety. But Trump talks about the U.S. government—what he calls the "Deep State"—as if it is the enemy and must be destroyed, while elevating those operating outside of it as society's true leaders.

This rejection of the U.S. government began as soon as he took office as he purged officials and civil servants with the accusation that they had been poisoned by "Marxism," or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Transportation safety officials were among those purged, and the loss of the person at the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during former president Joe Biden's term, Mike Whitaker, after he clashed with Elon Musk captures Trump's antigovernment worldview. After Whitaker called for Musk's SpaceX company to be fined $633,009 over safety and environmental violations, Musk endorsed an employee's complaint that Whitaker required SpaceX "to consult on minor paperwork updates relating to previously approved non-safety issues that have already been determined to have zero environmental impact." Musk wrote: "He needs to resign."

Musk appears to believe that humans must colonize Mars in order to become a multiplanetary species as insurance against the end of life on Earth. As Jeffrey Kluger reported for Time magazine today, Musk has complained that the FAA's environmental and safety requirements were "unreasonable and exasperating" and that they "undercut American industry's ability to innovate." Musk publicly complained: "The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!"

Whitaker resigned the day Trump took office. That same day, the administration froze the hiring of all federal employees, including air traffic controllers, although the U.S. Department of Transportation warned in June 2023 that 77% of air traffic control facilities critical to daily operations of the airline industry were short staffed. The next day, January 21, Trump fired Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Pekoske, and administration officials removed all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which Congress created after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. The Trump administration vacated the positions with an eye to "eliminating the misuse of resources."

Other vacant positions at the FAA, according to CNN's Alexandra Skores, are "the deputy administrator, an associate administrator of airports, an associate administrator for security and hazardous materials safety, chief counsel, assistant administrator of communications, assistant administrator of government and industry affairs, and assistant administrator for policy, international affairs, and environment."

…

HCR 

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-30-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Stoic ecology

One of the crucial Stoic concepts is that of oikeiôsis, which is often translated as "familiarization with" or "appropriation of" other people's concerns as if they were our own.

The root term is oikos, meaning "house, dwelling place, habitation," from which we get the modern words "ecology" (the study of the environment, that is, our house at large) and "economics" (initially, household management).

https://substack.com/@thephilosophygarden/note/c-89854349?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude