I don't think we should be in the business of moving backward Still Life with Birds and Fruit, Giovanna Garzoni. c. 1650 I had a really cool opportunity this week to co-author an article for the fancy French publication Analyse Opinion Critique (AOC) with political scientist Edouard
This vale where souls get made Cynara humilis, wild thistle, Flora Graeca, sive, Plantarum rariorum historia [1806-1840] As the credits rolled on the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, audiences in theaters were instructed to take a series of actions that appeared one by one on screen, set to the
Far too little and far too much at the same time Untitled (The Moon), Willhelm Sasnal So I ended up reading about and talking about and tweeting about and yes writing about Jeff Bezos a whole bunch this week more than I prefer to be honest but I will do
How Bloomberg hijacks and redirects progressive fights Nocturne Grey and Silver, Whistler, 1873-1875 Well I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about Michael Bloomberg. In the past week or so, he has emerged as a new favorite among Democrats who are basically Republicans but
A wave of history I was recently talking to someone for an article and she mentioned this idea, paraphrased from Oakland-based artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez, that “culture moves faster than policy.” I looked up the original quote, and I believe it’s in this interview where Rodriguez says,
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
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
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