The Petrostate Proxy War
This is the paradox both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now navigating. The grey war they are waging — economically, culturally, through regional proxies — is a race to secure the post-oil future before the other does.
Ben Shread-Hewitt
New tools for growing the commons, and how I discovered them
After the financial crash of 2008-9, I started to discover tools and ideas that I thought were promising, but discrete and disconnected. But they’re not: they can be (and are being) used together to form networks that have the potential to grow exponentially to challenge the status quo – to build a commons economy, a commons society, a commons world.
An arc of future earth
I don’t think anything is more important than challenging the notion that ‘they’ will solve the current poly-crisis and keep people safe and fed via existing and new technologies, economic policies and political negotiation. They won’t. It’s time for ordinary people to try to do it for themselves.
Ecological Deviation Application
All we can do now is stop being dumb enough to think our brains are capable of outsmarting ecology, and aim for lifestyles that are less obviously catastrophic—relying heavily on proven examples from the distant past.
Chokepoint
The 24-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which roughly 20 percent of world oil shipments pass, is an obvious pinch point for a vital industrial resource. But it also serves as an apt metaphor for the brittle global supply chains upon which the entire economy depends.
Wide Boundary News: The Iranian War, Rising Gas Prices, and the Single Point Failure
In this installment, Nate addresses the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran and traces the reverberating effects that extend far beyond the conflict itself, starting with what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for a civilization that routes a massive share of its physical economy through a single maritime corridor.
Inspirational Collapses? Learning from the civilisations that tried to break down well
We believe that more historians and archaeologists can step into a public, reflective role, helping societies explore narratives beyond either progress and growth fetishism on the one hand, or nostalgic and fortress mentalities on the other.
Crazy Town: Episode 120. You Ain’t Gonna Live Forever: The Dos and Don’ts of Legacy Building
In this episode, we run a special fantasy-football style draft to take a look at immortality projects, some horrendous, but some with positive effects.
When Experts Go Silent: Climate Misinformation Threatens Rights
The lesson shown by the LA wildfires is clear. When misinformation turns experts into targets of distrust and attack and weakens their public speech, the public is ultimately pushed further away from life-saving information at the moment they are most vulnerable.
Federico Savini on Degrowth and Its Future
But to the extent that economic growth and carbon-fuel usage are tightly linked – and not capable of being “decoupled” – some degrowth agenda is ultimately inescapable. The only question may be whether it will arrive via catastrophe or choice.
Infrastructure, finance, and the sale of the future
Mitchell’s new book reinforces this essential point. We must see through the alibi of capital, we must reclaim society from the grip of the economy, and we must change the rules of the game to save our collective future.
A Guide to Staying Human (Part 1): Desperately Seeking Agency
In this week’s Frankly, Nate begins a new series called “Staying Human,” which focuses on what he sees as a precondition for everything else: recovering a sense of personal agency.
