How should you feel about the future? Bangkok, present day In the last newsletter of 2019 I started to talk about the dizzying scale of climate change and the algorithms that scatter the information we exchange and how they’ve broken the way we experience time. A good corollary to
The history is gruesome, but delivered so delicately, and feels like receiving a gift Naga, the seven-headed snake protector of Buddha, being carried around by like a million dudes. Angkor Wat. So I recently got back from this trip to Cambodia and Laos, and briefly Bangkok, and it was an
To strip something of its power or rights, or to rid yourself of something that you no longer want Angkor Wat at sunrise photo credit: ME That’s a picture of Angkor Wat this massive complex of Hindu temples in Cambodia, a truly breathtaking place where people from all over
A bunch of things I loved in 2019 Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri: Fred Lehman (South Florida Dark Sky Observers) This is the time of year when we are all getting a little list fatigued or at least I am. This year, with the end of the decade in
The moral argument alone was not sufficient to carry the decision Winter, Zebegeny, Amrita Sher-Gil, 1939 I’ve been working on this lengthy article for the past few months off and on and pretty intensely during the past month and it is finally published, partially at least. It got so
An interview on what in the hell happened at COP25 Tiger in a Tropical Storm, Henri Rousseau, 1891 So last week I was talking about how climate change is this collective problem with collective solutions and how we have to make personal changes while also pushing for systemic changes. But
A different sort of guide to end of year giving Dante running from the three beasts, William Blake, 1824-27 So we have an international trip coming up fast which is going to vastly expand the household’s carbon footprint and I’m doing that thing right now where I tug
It must have been Thanksgiving Sanjay P. K., Cave painting at Petta-kere, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Above is a photo of some of the oldest cave art ever found, maybe over 40,000 years old, from an island in Indonesia. When some research about it was published in 2014, I posted
It's the men that serve both god and devil that you have to fear Detail of an illustration from a prose adaptation of Pèlerinage de la vie humaine by Guillaume de Deguileville, late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Via Rabih Alameddine. There is a lot of debate in
Things could go either way Rainy Day, Boston, 1885, Frederick Childe Hassam In 2017, a three-year campaign by housing justice advocates to curb Boston’s eviction crisis culminated with a tenant rights bill called the Jim Brooks Act being quietly shuffled into a corner of the legislature to die. It
Prepare to jump not knowing if there is any place to land This week I was talking to some people for an article about the Living Building Challenge, specifically a new building in Atlanta that is seeking to qualify under this super-rigorous sustainability standard. It’s kind of hard to
[Wind howling] This is the last Crisis Palace before Halloween so it will be a very special frightening edition a holiday spooktacular you might say. If you are faint of heart consider yourself warned. — In May of 1845, the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus set out for the Arctic on