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. (1,027! - welcome all new arrivals)
Gavin
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Reading list - the best stuff to read
(The best reads I’ve come across, with excerpts, links, authors and how long it will take to read. Climate change, COVID and China are consistently the stories at the top so are semi-permanent)
🌏 Climate change & biodiversity destruction
An interesting op-ed from: “Catherine MacGregor, Managing Director of Engie, Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EDF, Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies call for emergency sobriety in the face of soaring energy prices.”
But – more than ever – the best energy is the one we don't consume. We must, collectively, act on energy demand by reducing our consumption to restore our room for manoeuvre. We will need it to manage future peaks in consumption and to cushion any technical hazards or geopolitical shocks that we may have to face. Acting this summer will enable us to be better prepared to tackle next winter and in particular to preserve our gas reserves.
Another positive fusion development? (4 mins by John Markoff)
Brian Nelson, a retired University of Washington nuclear engineer and Zap Energy’s chief technology officer, said the company had successfully injected plasma into a new and more powerful experimental reactor core. It is now completing a power supply that is designed to provide enough energy to allow the company to prove that producing more energy than it consumes is possible.
If their system proves workable, the Zap researchers say, it will be orders of magnitude less expensive than competing systems based on magnet and laser confinement. It is expected to cost roughly the same as traditional nuclear power.
Researchers attempting the Z-pinch design have found it impossible to stabilize the plasma and abandoned the idea in favor of the magnet approach, known as a Tokamak reactor.
Advances in stabilizing the magnetic field that is generated by the flowing plasma made by physicists at the University of Washington led the group to establish Zap Energy in 2017. The company has raised more than $200 million, including a series of investments from Chevron.
Rare ‘triple’ La Niña climate event looks likely — what does the future hold?
Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University in State College, has also argued2 that climate change will both slow the AMOC and create more La Niña-like conditions. He says the study shows how these two factors can reinforce each other. Getting the models to better reflect what’s going on in the ocean, says Seager, “remains a very active research topic”.
🦠 COVID-19
Cognitive decline after having COVID may be more widespread than originally thought. (3 mins by Geoff Thompson)
Around one quarter of the ADAPT study's participants were experiencing noticeable cognitive decline a year after getting COVID.
And, some sort of cognitive decline was recorded in almost all of the participants, regardless of the severity of the initial infection.
"When we look over time, across the 12 months of the study, we see that even the people who have performance within a normal expectation do also have a mild cognitive decline," says neuropsychologist and associate professor Lucette Cysique.
🇺🇦 Ukraine / Russia
An analysis for recent events in the Donbass. (Also see podcast recs)
🇨🇳 China / Taiwan
“Beijing Is Still Playing the Long Game on Taiwan”by Andrew J. Nathan
Finally, the lesson Xi is likely drawing from Putin’s war in Ukraine is not that territorial aggression would go unpunished militarily by the West but that it would be both difficult and costly. There is no reason to believe that Xi is surrounded, as Putin seems to be, by yes men who will tell him that a war over Taiwan can be easily won. Even if he is, however, the grinding conflict in Ukraine is reminding him that war is unpredictable and rule over a resisting population is costly. The amphibious operation China would need to undertake to seize Taiwan would be far more difficult than the land invasion Russia has carried out in Ukraine. Xi has been reforming the Chinese military’s command structure and ramping up training for such an operation, but Chinese forces remain untested in actual combat operations. Meanwhile, the chances that the United States would intervene to defend Taiwan have increased as anti-Chinese sentiment has risen in the United States and Europe—and after U.S. President Joe Biden remarked last month that defending Taiwan is “the commitment we made.”
China has launched a new carrier - a big change in their capabilities. It will become active in 2025 or so. Binkov takes a look (5 mins)
🏛 Archaeology - Antikythera
To my surprise, they’re still discovering pieces from the shipwrecks around the island of Antikythera. (3 mins by Jen Ouelette)
The 2022 expedition managed to relocate several natural sea-floor boulders (each weighing about 8.5 tons) that had been partially covering the wreck, allowing divers to explore new parts of the ship. The marble head they recovered most likely belongs to a headless statue, dubbed "Herakles of Antikythera," retrieved by the sponge divers back in 1900. The marble plinth is being cleaned and restored; it was covered in various marine deposits. The objects will be analyzed with X-rays, among other techniques, while the teeth will undergo genetic and isotopic analysis.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Antikythera mechanism (a machine that could ‘look’ into the future), watch this doc. (58 mins)
🇺🇸 United States - Roe v Wade
A massive decision. Here the best pieces I’ve seen. Also see podcast recommendations.
An excellent analysis of the longterm consequences of the Dobbs decisions. (6 mins by Adam Serwer)
Shortly after the Court’s decision in the gun-rights case, Neal Katyal, the former Obama-admiration acting solicitor general, wrote, ”Gonna be very weird if Supreme Court ends a constitutional right to obtain an abortion next week, saying it should be left to the States to decide, right after it just imposed a constitutional right to concealed carry of firearms, saying it cannot be left to the States to decide.”
Well, no, that’s only weird if you assume that the right-wing majority’s intention is to consistently apply legal principles rather than to translate right-wing cultural identity into law. This is the purpose of the right-wing justices’ skewed historical analysis: to present discrepancies in their choice of which rights to uphold as inherent to the Constitution rather than as the product of their own undead constitutionalism.
Jim Fallows is as always, excellent. Make sure to read his take here.
We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse (8 mins by Jia Tolentino)
🧠 Gender - identity
This is a 19 minute exploration of the journey of a transgender daughter through the eyes of her mother. It’s worth your time. (19 mins)
Philosophy Corner (a journey through thinking about thinking every week)
(A serialised section that started with Greek Tragedy and moved to philosophy. Something to spark ideas. Feel free to go backwards!).
Now to de Beavuvoir. (48 mins)
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one of the founding texts of modern feminism and one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It covers everything from ancient myth to modern psychoanalysis to ask what the relations between men and women have in common with other kinds of oppression, from slavery to colonialism. It also offers some radical suggestions for how both women and men can be liberated from their condition.
Documentary
(A good thing to watch - also serialised - so feel free to go back through past editions!)
We’re on Episode 4. This time on Heidegger in an interview with William Barrett including on the book Being And Time (45 mins)
Podcast(s)
(The best stuff I’ve listened to, or been recommended by subscribers)
An excellent analysis of the war in Ukraine. (53 mins). “Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Michael Kofman (Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analysis) about the new developments in the war in Ukraine…”
Ezra Klein and Dahlia Lithwick discuss the Dobbs judgment which overturned Roe. (74 mins) (I’ve listened to every Ezra episode since the last newsletter edition, none were particularly noteworthy, bar the Piketty one but even that was not great). (Bonus: also Ella recommends Dahlia’s exploration of the same issue over on the Slate Amicus podcast, and Anne Marie recommends Reveal’s episode too)
Subscriber Anne Marie Quilligan recommended this episode of Vox Conversations which covers the very interesting topic of “accidents”, but really it is about systems design/thinking, safety, cycling and cognitive biases (regular themes of this newsletter). A good listen. (53 mins)
Still in my tabs
(Or stuff I haven’t read yet, but looks promising)
By Exploring Virtual Worlds, AI Learns in New Ways
Microsoft Compares Russian Hacks of Ukraine to Assassination That Started World War I
America Wasted Its Chance to Push the Economy Forward
New study solves long-standing mystery of what may have triggered ice age
A Requiem for the Supreme Court After Roe’s Demise
How China Is Policing the Future
Spain in grip of heatwave with temperatures forecast to hit 44C
How Light and Noise Pollution Confound Animals’ Senses
Iraq’s ‘pearl of the south’ Lake Sawa dry amid water crisis
'Deepest shipwreck': US WWII ship found off Philippines
SM-6 Missile Used To Strike Frigate During Massive Sinking Exercise In Pacific
Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death
The Return of Industrial Warfare
Planet Hunger: Inside the Global Food Crisis