Category Archives: Freedom
I used to waste three or four hours a day browsing social media sites, generally Reddit at the time, but others too, in particular after telling myself not to spend that much time on sites. I found some useful guidelines to reduce wasting time on screens. Not all time on screens is wasted, so I wanted to reduce wasted time but maintain productive time. Existing rules that have served me[…] Keep reading →
I’m not proud but I’m not going to hide it either. I’m like everyone else: I live in a culture that relies on slavery. I try to minimize my contribution to it. I see publicizing the situation as helping change it. Each time you bought a cell phone, laptop, or electric vehicle, you bought goods almost certainly produced using slavery, possibly without realizing it. I’d like to help change our[…] Keep reading →
The final tally for running on empty: Days in a row of rain to mostly cloudy: 12 days (January 22 to February 2) Extended streak of days at least mostly cloudy: 23 days / 25 days (January 9 – February 2) Nearly every day it didn’t outright rain, I climbed to the roof twice to catch what power I could. Many days I got zero. Some days I got enough[…] Keep reading →
What do you know, more clouds today. There was enough sun to get one battery to 12%, which let me use the computer enough to catch up on some emails and post. My computer shut down while in sleep mode, it hadn’t been charged in so long. I hope my posts haven’t come out too repetitive lately, but in over a year and a half I haven’t hit this little[…] Keep reading →
The more history and anthropology I learn, the more I learn the alternative to continuing our cultural path is not the Stone Age or a Mad Max apocalypse. For a good 250,000 years of human existence, our ancestors enjoyed more freedom and equality than we do. That’s why indigenous cultures still exist. When they look at ours, they see our airplanes and medicine but also our lack of freedom and[…] Keep reading →
I’ve written about Robert Carter III a bunch here. He figures in my book a lot, as someone who could have remained corrupted by slavery, as everyone around him did in Virginia after the American Revolution, but he freed his slaves. Thomas Jefferson didn’t, despite his brilliant words on freedom. Sustainability today is overloaded with Jeffersons: people who talk big on sustainability but act the opposite, undermining their credibility and[…] Keep reading →
Keep in mind that nine million people have died per year from breathing polluted air since 2015, a number it took the Atlantic Slave Trade centuries to reach, and we can expect it to increase dramatically. Keep in mind the United States has regions called Cancer Alley and Sacrifice Zones. There are big differences between enslaving someone and polluting their air, but what of the underlying systems, which are more[…] Keep reading →