The greater the climate crisis becomes, so too the support for populist policies. How 17th century history helps understand what’s happening today in Russia and beyond. As today’s social networks decline and perish what will come next? When less can be more, the art of compression.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Understanding how climate change may indirectly influence politics is crucial to finding a politics appropriate to the challenges we face.” (Joel Millward-Hopkins in the article of the week).
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Joel Millward-Hopkins, Why the impacts of climate change may make us less likely to reduce emissions
(The Conversation, 30 June 2023)
A seminal article – very counter-intuitive, and if correct, very worrying. As climate change worsens, we might expect that more people will be persuaded to act with the conviction necessary to mitigate the climate emergency risk. However, as the researcher argues in this academic paper, the hope underlying this assumption could be misplaced. As the effects of warming are felt more substantially, he thinks that we may instead vote into power people committed to making the problem worse (free access – reads in 5-7 min).
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Niall Ferguson, Russia’s Farcical Mutiny Is Deadly Serious for China and Iran
(Bloomberg, 1 July 2023)
In the historian’s opinion, today’s geopolitics and economics have more in common with the 17th century than the 20th. Why? The 17th century was a time of troubles and great anarchy (provoked by the climate, the plague, inflation, famines, and technological change) which ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. As for Russia it is heading rapidly towards a new Time of Troubles, the period of anarchy between 1598 and 1613 that followed the death of Ivan the Terrible. Ferguson predicts that when Putin falls, “there will be more than one claimant to the throne, just as there were multiple “false Dmitrys” in the early 1600s, all pretending to be Ivan’s youngest son” (gifted article – reads in about 10 min).
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David Pierce, So where are we all supposed to go now?
(The Verge, 3 July 2023)
This is about the downfall of social networks and what comes next. The social era on the web is ending by changing in three crucial ways: (1) going from public to private; (2) shifting from growth and engagement to increasing revenue no matter the tradeoff; and (3) turning into an entertainment business. Since there is no money to be made in connecting people to each other, the “social media” era is giving way to the “media with a comments section” era, with everything becoming an entertainment platform (metered paywall – reads in 6-8 min).
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George Musser, The Biologist Blowing Our Minds
(Nautilus, 28 June 2023)
A fascinating conversation between an award-winning science writer and a development biologist. Michael Levin’s research is mind blowing! He’s uncovering the incredible, ‘latent abilities’ of living things, “taking an unassuming organism and showing it’s capable of the darnedest things.” The concept of latent abilities was a real discovery for us: it’s about living things, which having evolved to do one thing, that under the right circumstances might do something completely different (paywall – 15 min+ but so enjoyable!)
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Richard Hughes Gibson, The Art of Compression, Conjuring a fiction out of almost nothing
(The Hedgehog Review, 31 May 2023)
As the Monthly Barometer and its accompanying weekly selection trade in succinctness and simplicity, we have a keen interest in compressing (thoughts, ideas, arguments, theories, articles, treaties, etc.). This short article (as it should be!) does a great job at explaining what separates a short story from a novel. For the short story writer “more than anyone else, the half is more than the whole” (free access – reads in about 5 min).
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