Reading

Gather round, men, for tonight I shall finish my mission of vengeance against this cruel machine that mocks my attempts to understand the ways of the Almighty! My life’s goal is finally within my grasp, and soon I shall snare that SpongeBob SquarePants plush toy and spite the malignant force that prevents me from being fulfilled in life! I merely need a bit more time. And more quarters.

This is not an obsession, for obsession implies a lack of reason. This is a quest to assert man’s dominance over the mechanized world! I have been studying this game for what feels like a lifetime, learning its ways. The feel of the joystick. The proper amount of pressure to exert. This claw is now an extension of both my hand and my will to succeed. And once I capture my prey, it will justify the hours of my life and the hundreds of dollars in quarters I have spent on this game. All my means are sane. My motive and object mad.

Last year, a study from the End Child Poverty Coalition found that nearly half the children in Luton were growing up in poverty. For too long, economic policy has been detached from the lived reality of working-class people in places like Luton. Like many former industrial towns, our town has been left battered and bruised […]

As regular readers know my judgment is that we are now into civilization collapse. It’s slow right now, and it will be stop and start, but it will continue and pick up speed over time.

That means that you should be preparing for collapse to get worse, including climate change and ecological collapse.

Civilizations rise and fall, that’s normal, and ecological collapse commonly happens at the same time, but what’s unusual right now is that we have a world system which is global, and thus is collapsing all at once, and we have a global ecological collapse.

So it’s going to be bad. Very bad.

Still, there are things to be done.

There can be little question that the grim prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which still shows no sign of closing anytime soon, is a key legacy — in the worst sense imaginable — of America’s post-9/11 forever wars.  I’ve been covering the subject for decades now and that shameful legacy has never diminished.  Last month, in response to a column I wrote for TomDispatch — one of dozens, I’m sad to say, that I’ve done on Guantánamo over these endless years — I received a surprise email: an invitation to attend a meeting at the British Parliament. A group known as the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, formed this April, was gathering for the... Read more

My sister’s baby

Definitely wouldn’t bring my sister’s baby. That would be so unwise, so I can confidently say I wouldn’t bring them. That’s a good choice, right? Because then I’d have to bring the baby plus all the baby supplies. And I’d have the added difficulty of having to take care of the baby while also trying to survive myself—too many moving parts. Also, the baby doesn’t have any helpful survival skills like hunting, fishing, constructing shelters, etc. So pretty much just a total liability.

My Switch

Totally impractical. Like, yeah, maybe fun, but probably not something I would put in my top three if somebody asked, right? Like that would be embarrassingly wrong?

Flint

I want to say no? Or, wait, maybe yes? I’ll put a pin in this one for a moment. Forget I mentioned it.

Bubble gum

Haha, that would be so stupid. Unless you’re some sort of bubblegum whiz, who can construct almost anything out of bubblegum? But, alas, that’s not me. So, pass.

- by Jeanne Peijnenburg & Sander Verhaegh

Read at Aeon

- by Shayla Love

Read at Psyche

We have entered uncharted territory when it comes to climate breakdown, after climate agencies declared that the first week of July the hottest week ever recorded. The hottest week on record comes in the wake of the hottest June on record. And all of the warmest eight years ever recorded have come since 2015, with […]