A more-or-less weekly collection of the provocative, intriguing, or curious, in a world where the house is falling down. A mix of the contextual, the cultural, and other things that catch my eye.
- Meat is disappearing from our diets. A detailed AT Kearney report reckons that by 2040 only 40% of the ‘meat’ in our diets will come from animals. Meanwhile: The Financial Times reports on what this means for meat producers (should be free, registration might be required).
The end of the world could come with a bang or a whimper. The selected horsemen and -women are disease, nuclear war, natural disaster and asteroid impact.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is serious about mending the world wide web. This long post by Ethan Zuckerman, on a Berners-Lee seminar at Harvard Law School, is a intriguing discussion of how we ended up with the web we have today–and what we could do about improving it. Slightly technical.
* Blockchain is more talked about than understood. This handy post on the Bank of England’s discussion blog disaggregates the technologies involved to understand when blockchain might be useful.
- These days, male rage even has its own brandname, at least in the United States. The ‘incels’, or ‘involuntary celibates’, have constructed “a violent political ideology around the injustice of young, beautiful women refusing to have sex with them.” A long worthwhile piece by Jia Tolentina in the New Yorker.
Radiohead are so on trend my ears are bleeding. The band responded to an apparent blackmail attempt by releasing 18 hours of music from the OK Computer sessions, available for 18 days, priced at £18, all in aid of Extinction Rebellion. “It’s not a phone download,” quipped Thom Yorke.
How to repair the climate. Sir David King, former UK chief scientific adviser and climate change representative, does a rich and lucid interview on Talking Politics with David Runciman. Compelling. (48 minutes)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
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“The whole world’s at sixes and sevens, and why the house hasn’t fallen down about our ears long ago is a miracle to me.” (Thornton Wilder)
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