This week I finished: The Ultimate Resource 2, by Julian Simon: This book is fascinating. I first came across Julian Simon and his influence in 2022, as I posted in The book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels; freedom, ingenuity, progress, and related books, videos, and resources, which includes many videos and peer resources I dove into then. A libertarian friend wrote in response to words in an email, "When you use the word depletion, though, I cringe a little bit. Have you read Julian Simon's Ultimate Resource or some of the more recent work along the same lines, like Superabundance?" I had read Superabundance in 2024, as I posted in This week’s selected media: January 28, 2024: Superabundance, The Population Bomb, War Is a Racket,…

My favorite phone app that saves battery and connects me with people and community: Airplane mode. Most days I use it about 12 hours. The more I use it the more I save battery, but more importantly, the more I connect with people. I recommend using it as much as you can.

This week I finished: Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp: Parts of this book I loved and parts I found unhelpful. I loved its collection of history and anthropology, which seems more thorough than those of Jared Diamond's Collapse and Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything. It covers more examples more thoroughly than I would have in my book, many of which give evidence to my description of how our culture formed as it did and why we're stuck. By "as it did," I mean dominated by dominance hierarchy, imperialism, and pollution. It describes how we tend to see civilization through its achievements but not how life was for most people. Much of what we call civilization, he calls Goliaths:…

This week I finished: Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow: Last week I watched five documentaries about Washington after watching a movie about him and realizing my gaffe at not learning about this historic leader and influence on my nation and world. I looked up biographies. Chernow's topped many reviewers' lists. The library had a copy. It's long but engaging for many reasons: I found the language simple and engaging, the story meaningful and exciting, and of course the man a role model. Washington was complex, as were his times. While it goes without saying, on a personal level, learning the details revealed aspects of leadership I hadn’t paid attention to before. I’ve worked with leaders in the military, in politics, in social movements, and…

This week I finished: New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson: I met him at a talk at a place in Brooklyn called Pioneerworks, invited him to be a guest on the podcast, and he agreed. I finished Ministry of the Future a couple years ago so am preparing by reading another of his books. He suggested this one both because we were in New York City and because I asked him about the water in that time. I anticipate that many landfills will flood, leading nearly all the waste we thought we were keeping from polluting the rest of the world to empty into the oceans. He said the water in the book was filthy. It was, though not as much as I would…