A genie is out of the bottle

See update for October 22, 2021, at end of post.


I suppose it shouldn’t be the least bit surprising that social media networks seem collectively to be losing their minds.


To be honest, I’d had difficulty discerning whether, in fact, @DPRK_News was a parody account. Sometimes, I swore it had to be. Other times, it was just plausible enough. Which is to say it was pretty damn good parody and this is a loss. Read more

The supply chain shortage starts at the top

See update for February 8, 2022, at end of post.


This is a false analogy:

American consumers might have been spoiled, but generations of them have also dealt with shortages of some kind — gasoline in the 1970s, food rationing in the 1940s, housing in the 1920s when cities such as Detroit were booming. Now it’s our turn to make adjustments.[1]

Read more

  1. [1]Micheline Maynard, “Don’t rant about short-staffed stores and supply chain woes. Try to lower expectations,” Washington Post, October 18, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/18/dont-rant-about-short-staffed-stores-supply-chain-woes-try-lower-expectations/

War is over

So, my new apartment is the sort of place where delivery people need to follow fucking directions. But of course, with Amazon’s labor practices, they’re too rushed to do so. Most stuff I can get delivered to my private mailbox, but with groceries from Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, I simply have to go in and pick up these orders myself.

It was on my way back from such a pickup that I noticed a large pickup truck, but a bit diminutive by Donald Trump supporter standards,[1] with stickers referring to U.S. Highway 395; to Lone Pine, a community along U.S. 395 in a valley on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains; and to the vehicle owner’s profession of belief in sasquatch (“big foot”). Read more

  1. [1]Angie Schmitt, “What Happened to Pickup Trucks?” CityLab, March 11, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/the-dangerous-rise-of-the-supersized-pickup-truck

The tragic argument over California forest management

I can only address the California forest management argument detailed at length in the Sacramento Bee[1] from a systems theory perspective. The result elucidates but does not resolve the question. Read more

  1. [1]Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler, “‘Self-serving garbage.’ Wildfire experts escalate fight over saving California forests,” Sacramento Bee, October 14, 2021, https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article254957722.html

Economics, empire, and the environment

See update for October 24, 2021, at end of post.


In his latest, George Monbiot really reprises a theme[1] I first saw in John Bodley’s Victims of Progress. The critique specifically is that our system of social organization, being dependent upon resource extraction is environmentally unsustainable, and must expand—colonizing, building empires— to survive.[2] Monbiot attributes this, however, to capitalism, rather than the entire political and economic system.[3] Read more

  1. [1]George Monbiot, “Fire Front,” October 11, 2021, https://www.monbiot.com/2021/10/11/fire-front/
  2. [2]John H. Bodley, Victims of Progress, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: Altamira, 2008).
  3. [3]George Monbiot, “Fire Front,” October 11, 2021, https://www.monbiot.com/2021/10/11/fire-front/