Hi, I’m Gavin. This is my experimental newsletter that explores thinking - how we might think better and learn together as we do so.
I explore several key topics through the lens of several core themes: systems thinking, scenario planning, trends, and cross-disciplinary innovation. These often relate to key issues: climate change, pandemics, astronomy, physics, health, history, philosophy, culture, rocketry, conflict, the impact of technology on society and more (lol!). With a larger question behind it all: how do we progress and how do we progress better?
I hope you like where we go. (817- nope - 830 of us now! - welcome all new arrivals!) I would love to get to 1,000+ subscribers by the 52nd edition so if you like the newsletter please do tweet about it!)
Gavin
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Reading list - the best stuff to read
🌏 Climate change & biodiversity
I’ve updated the title of this section to reflect the biodiversity losses we are facing into. Biodiversity is often the poorer cousin of greenhouse gas emissions, but we cannot solve one problem without the other.
This section will remain the lead section for the foreseeable future.
The Guardian takes another look at re-wilding - through the lens of buying up land (or rather lending money to charities to buy land) and returning it to nature. We will need lots more of this. (4 mins by Robin McKie)
However, the wildlife trust team stress they have no fixed species in mind in rewilding Court Farm. “This is not a typical conservation scheme where you take a precious small remnant of habitat – such as a chalk stream bank or a bit of heathland – and work hard to keep it as it is today in order to preserve a specific endangered animal that still lives there,” said Farrington. “We are simply taking out the high-maintenance aspect of modern farming and waiting to be surprised by what takes over the landscape. In that sense, this is an experiment not just in financing but in conservation.”
Intriguingly, one of the first tasks involved in preparing these new habitats will be handed to pigs. “They are perfect for grubbing up the ground, breaking open the surface – and that will allow wild plants to take over the fields that have been closely cultivated over the past decades,” said Farrington. “So we are going to borrow a few pigs from a local farm to start off the whole business.”
Jeff Goodell recently moved to Texas and is realising that few people there seem to give a shit about climate change. (5 mins by Jeff Goodell)
Now, as the world floods and burns, the price of our willful ignorance and denial is becoming clearer. Are a few devastated towns along the Gulf Coast and waterfalls in the New York City subway system going to be what wakes us up from that? I hope so. But I fear that just as there is no “us,” there is also no “waking up.” If the pandemic has proved anything, it’s that the reservoirs of stupidity and self-destructiveness in the American mind are deeper than even the most cynical among us could have imagined. So maybe the best thing we can do right now is not pretend we will “wake up” to the monstrous reality of our time like some character in a fairy tale. Maintaining a habitable planet is going to be a long hard fight, and if this summer from hell has shown us anything, it’s that this fight has only just begun.
This long thread on existing and future food security issues should concern you and everyone you know. (h/t subscriber Ella)
Ad hoc approaches like this will in the future be common place and systemised - utilising drones and modular components. We will need it because extreme weather events will grow in number and intensity. (4 mins by Tim McDonnell)
In the meantime, some New Orleans residents and first responders will have access to trailers to power their phones, computers, medical devices, refrigerators, and other essentials—with solar energy. The Footprint Project, a fledgling nonprofit, manages a small but growing fleet of solar panel-equipped trailers, and deploys them to disaster zones where the grid has gone out. 2021 has been a busy year: The group has responded to winter storm blackouts in Texas and wildfires in California, among other events.
🦠 COVID-19
Always, always read Ed Yong. This week he looks at long COVID. (7 mins by Ed Yong)
“My hope is that what we’re seeing with long COVID is an immune system’s overreaction to a novel virus,” Putrino told me. As immune systems become familiar with that virus, through vaccinations, boosters, or natural encounters, the likelihood of developing long COVID should hopefully fall, he added. But even in that scenario, long COVID will still exist, just as ME/CFS and other related illnesses still do. Long COVID has a special name, attention, and funding because a lot of people happened to get sick with the same brand-new pathogen in a matter of months. By contrast, people who develop related chronic illnesses rarely know what the infectious trigger was (or if there even was one). What proportion of ME/CFS is long flu, or long Epstein-Barr, or long cold? No one knows, because few people have cared to look or been funded to do so.
Does immunity wane? Katherine Wu argues that booster shots now are not likely to be very effective, and the science says we won’t see waning immunity for some time, if at all. We should focus on vaccinating the unvaccinated. (5 mins by Katherine J Wu)
Right now, some forms of vaccine effectiveness are slipping, but the most important ones aren’t. Unless that changes, widespread boosters in already vaccinated countries are likely to provide diminishing returns, like topping off a drink that’s already on the verge of spilling over. In the meantime, billions around the globe have yet to take a sip at all.
👴 Society - living forever
Following on from the long podcast episode last week on longevity comes this story on billionaires hoping to extend their lifespans. (10 mins by Antonio Regalado)
People familiar with the formation of Altos say that initially Milner’s interest in reprogramming was philanthropic. After the meeting at his home, a non-profit called the Milky Way Research Foundation sponsored by Milner awarded three-year grants, of $1 million a year, to several longevity researchers. The proposals were considered by an advisory board including Yamanaka and Jennifer Doudna, who shared a Breakthrough Prize in 2015 and later a Nobel in 2020 for her co-discovery of CRISPR genome editing.
Sometime during 2021, however, a new plan emerged to make the research move even faster by turning the idea into a well-funded company that is now Altos. That effort took shape under the direction of Richard Klausner, the one-time chief of the National Cancer Institute and now an entrepreneur. Klausner, who previously helped start companies like Juno Therapeutics and cancer-test company Grail, is known for organizing large, and lucrative, financial bets on new biotechnologies.
🏛 Society - hacking
China state hackers were incredibly successful - using a US-made backdoor. Great read on a huge hack. (15 mins by Jordan Robertson)
Juniper’s case is “a perfect example of the danger of government backdoors,” said Jennifer Stisa Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "There is no such thing as a backdoor that only the U.S. government can exploit.”
👽 Quantum computing - dark energy
Well this is a very interesting thought experiment. What If Aliens’ Quantum Computers Explain Dark Energy? (13 mins by Stephon Alexander)
In our idea, aliens use the vacuum state as a “reservoir” of qbits. As they do computation, they tie more and more complicated knots in the gravitational, or space-time, quantum state of the universe, which we can think of as all those knotted, superimposed abacuses. This has the effect of “using up” the curvature due to the vacuum energy.
Thus, instead of seeing the enormous value we would predict naively from thinking about a vacuum state that hadn’t been tampered with, we instead see the tiny cosmological constant that Saul Perlmutter measured. If this is correct, then that would mean that the aliens have almost, but not quite, maxed out the computational potential of the universe!
🚀 Rockets - launches
Unfortunately Firefly’s first launch experienced an anomaly. But in fairness, several parts of the launch were successful - and it’s their first attempt. Report here. There are so many launch providers coming on stream in the coming years across the world - space is getting very busy. Watch the launch here:
Next up we had the launch of Astra, which also had an anomaly right at the launch site, but they did later manage to reach MaxQ. (4 mins)
Netflix also released the trailer for the Inspiration4 mission documentary - the four civilians heading to orbit for three days aboard a Falcon 9/Dragon. Their launch (the first all civilian space mission in history) is scheduled for September 15th. (3 mins)
☀️ Energy - beaming solar energy from space
This is a fascinating long read on SSP - beaming solar power from orbit to Earth. As the launch costs to orbit are plummeting (thanks to SpaceX), projects like this potentially become increasingly viable. (40 mins by Daniel Oberhaus)
Many of the enabling technologies for SSP, including in-space assembly robotics and wireless power transmission systems, still require substantial R&D before they can be deployed in an operational system.58 Most of the core technological competencies for a SSP platform — in space solar arrays, wireless power transmission, and microwave receivers — have only been demonstrated on a small scale. Still, SSP is an attractive solution for flexible baseload power that avoids many of the challenges faced by these alternatives and also is uniquely equipped to increase the resiliency of the American grid.
☄️ Physics - interference
This is a great watch because it explains so many different concepts quite well. If you ever wondered how solar activity can interfere with electronics… (h/t to subscriber Jakob for this one) (23 mins)
Philosophy Corner (a journey through thinking about thinking every week)
The hiatus continues as I’ve not had a chance to find good content this week!
Documentary
We’re into part 2 of the excellent Century of the Self (58 mins)
Podcast(s)
I listened to a bunch of podcasts this week but no particular stand out ones.
The Daily did a good job of outlining the procedural move around Roe v Wade being overturned. (22 mins)
Still in my tabs
How the Economy Has to Radically Transform to End Fossil Fuels in 20 Years
What is antimatter, and why is it missing from the Universe today?
To Learn More Quickly, Brain Cells Break Their DNA
A Good Psilocybin Guide is Hard to Find
The miracle molecule that could treat brain injuries and boost your fading memory
Conceiving the Future - The argument that reducing human populations will help curb climate change has obvious appeal, but it overlooks several inconvenient facts.
Eight ways scientists are unwrapping the mysteries of the human brain