Spare Capacity
Life is made of extraordinarily complex arrangements that exceed our design capacity by such a tremendous gulf as to be ridiculous—triggering many to engage in dubious “god-of-the-gaps” style speculation to paper-over the scary gulf.
Tom Murphy
How America’s prairie was nearly destroyed — and why it should be restored
In Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, longtime Minnesota journalists Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty trace this staggering transformation. “The Europeans who colonized North America in the 19th century transformed the continent’s hydrology as thoroughly as the glaciers,” they write. “But, remarkably, they did it in less than 100 years instead of tens of thousands.”
How Academics Are Pushing Back on the For-Profit Academic Publishing Industry
These scholars are fighting the rampant exploitation and high article processing charges in traditional academic publishing.
The UK’s warm homes plan has been saved – here’s how Labour can learn from a decade of failed insulation schemes
The UK government confirmed in its June 2025 spending review that it will honour its manifesto pledge and not cut the £13.2 billion warm homes plan, as had been speculated. The money will be spent over the next four years, marking a significant increase on funding for energy-related home upgrades compared to that offered by the previous government.
The 10 Core Myths Still Taught in Business Schools
In this week’s Frankly, Nate identifies 10 myths being taught in business schools today, and the massive implications these misconceptions hold for society.
Feed Us with Trees: Excerpt
As Reed and I talked about acorns, eventually I realized that what we were really discussing was something entirely different. We were trading cultural stories about what it means to be human.
A clown and two romances
In ways I won’t rehash again here, I think our society puts too much weight on the term ‘farmer’, and still more on ‘real farmer’. One reason I’ve embraced the identity of ‘farmer’ is to push back against this, but I’ve sometimes felt uncomfortable when others represent me as an example of that revered and semi-mythical being, the real farmer.
Is This Planning Ahead?
Any Government seriously planning ahead would put adaptation to climate change at the centre of their plans, because without that, planning for anything else just isn’t going to work.
The Summer Solstice 2025
Most of us are not very good gardeners. We think we are making all that life happen when life happens of itself — and these days, often despite us.
How the commons, unlike other movements for change, can reach working-class communities
All civilisations fall in the end. The Roman Empire is long gone, along with the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Sumerians. Will the global civilisation of corporate capitalism buck the trend? Of course not, but how long does it have left?
Commoning, diversity and small-scale manufacturing
A healthy ecosystem is diverse and small-scale manufacturing systems have the potential to contain much more diversity than industrial levels of production. I use bread and linen – basic daily items of food and textiles to illustrate this position.
The Great Power Shift: Decentralization, Reparations, and the Fight for Energy Justice
True resilience isn’t about making the grid bigger. It’s about making systems smarter, accessible, and locally adaptable.
