Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Led by anthropologist and research fellow Amber Huff, Future Natures explores “ecologies of crisis, commons, and enclosures,” but its chief output isn’t monographs and books. It’s an exuberant array of creative works in popular genres like comic books, zines, social media, videos, and podcasts.
Peter Kalmus, climate scientist and returning friend of Crazy Town, used to live in Altadena, California, where one of the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires struck on January 7th. Get Peter’s take on this historic wildfire, what nature is trying to teach us, and how to think about unnatural disasters now and in the future.
The dramatic drop in the cost of AI demonstrated by Chinese upstart DeepSeek is great for buyers of AI tools, but very bad for the incumbent developers of those tools.
In the intricate tapestry of backyard ecosystems, an often underestimated yet crucial factor is water retention. From arid deserts to lush rainforests, understanding and enhancing water retention can profoundly influence ecosystem restoration efforts, and it need not be complex.
To lay a hedge, you cut each tree or shrub part way through its stem, then bend it over and lay it down horizontally to make a barrier from which strong new growth extends upwards. But of course it’s not as simple as that. Hedge-laying is hard, time-consuming, skilled work.
As anticipated 50 years ago by the Club of Rome, tensions between our ever-expanding modes of exploitation and the finiteness of the planet’s resources have now become a critical factor in the evolution of human societies.
In this Frankly, Nate outlines nine aspirational categories for empowering more individuals towards mature and resilient development in service of life.
What will farmers grow in the salty fields of the future? Melino thinks it might be salicornia.
But getting back to the matter of simplicity and complexity… the simpler, the more localized and embedded your life, the deeper and more extensive your relationships are.
We need a new economics focused on learning incentives, love and awareness. That will open up planning horizons and teach us a far better way to live with each other.
A critical component strategy for creating a viable future energy system and addressing climate change, must surely be energy demand reduction (minimisation), e.g. through relocalisation, retrofitting buildings, local food growing, and reducing waste, to curb the size of resource [very much plural] demands, get us below overshoot and avoid collapse (if we can).
Thus, I seek stories that teach humility, and how to live ecologically. The best avenue seems to be stories that come from the tried-and-true more-than-human world, not the self-flattering drivel we fabricate.
