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Recent Posts
- Rare Earth updates: recent research on why complex & intelligent life are rare in the Universe
- Book review of “Chip War” and the Fragility of microchips
- The tremendous material and energy toll of the digital economy
- Nuclear attack on U.S. could kill 90% of Americans
- What percent of Americans are rational?
- Book review of Lights Out. A Cyberattack. A Nation Unprepared. Surviving the Aftermath
- Off-Road vehicles & equipment need diesel fuel
- Book review of “Prime Movers of Globalization: the History & Impact of Diesel Engines & Gas Turbines”
- Mental Health. Coping with the future: notes from Jackson & Jensen’s “An Inconvenient Apocalypse”
- Tesla Semi trucks hauling corn chips
- What is the plan for an electric grid outage that lasts for months?
- Where to be? Links to Superfund, hazardous waste and other toxic sites in U.S.
- Why methanol cannot replace petroleum in shipping
- Why is everyone afraid of AI taking over? It makes stuff up!
- Do you want to eat, drink, or fly?
Category Archives: Politics
What is the plan for an electric grid outage that lasts for months?
Preface. This is one of three posts based on Ted Koppel’s book Lights out. There’s also: Want to survive peak everything? Become a Mormon” and a longer book review, which this post has excerpts from regarding what the plan is … Continue reading
The staggering level of corruption & kleptocracy in the world
Preface. This is a book review of Frank Vogl’s 2021 book “The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption – Endangering Our Democracy” (well, mostly kindle notes). They couldn’t get away with it if there weren’t so many places … Continue reading
Posted in Banking, Bond Market, Corporate Welfare, Corruption, Crime, Gangs, Corrupt police, Private security, Debt, No Jail for Bankers & Wall St execs, Politics, Scams
Tagged autocrat, corruption, democracy, kleptocracy, kleptocrat
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Book review: Bring the War Home: The white power movement & paramilitary America
Preface. Whenever collapse from peak oil, peak soil, and peak everything else begins, these racist white groups with military training, in the military or from returned vets, could make many regions of the country unpleasant or even deadly for minorities … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Social Uprising, Terrorism, Violence
Tagged militia, right wing, terrorism, white power
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Predicting who will become a violent terrorist
Preface. This study was clever in predicting the political and religious outlook of people using abstract tests that were not political or emotional, such as memorizing visual shapes. This study of worldviews was able to predict political preferences 4 to … Continue reading
Why some people are conservative and others liberal
Preface. Although I thought Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican Brain” was brilliant, I couldn’t help but thinking that these conservative and liberal viewpoints must be embedded in our psychology from how we evolved over the last 300,000 years. What follows … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Human Nature, Political Books, Politics
Tagged conservative, liberal, politics, Republican
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The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
Preface. Seibert & Rees’ paper is very important. And also well-written, unlike the usual scientific jargon perfect for putting you to sleep at night. It’s short too. In just 13 pages Siebert and Rees cover the most important issues we … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Limits To Growth, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Overpopulation, Overshoot, Peak Critical Elements, Politics
Tagged biocapacity, climate change, ecological limits, energy transition, overshoot, renewable energy, social justice, sustainability
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Can democracy survive peak oil?
Preface. This is a book review of Howard Bucknell’s Energy and the National Defense. University of Kentucky Press. Bucknell was amazingly prescient as you’ll see in this review, especially about why democracy might not survive the energy crisis. Though the … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Energy Books, Military, Politics, Rationing
Tagged authoritarianism, Bucknell, defense, democracy, energy crises, energy transitions, rationing, synthetic fuel
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Book review of “The Death of Expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters”
Preface. Those who attack experts are exactly the people who will not read this book review (well, mainly some Kindle notes) of Nichols “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters”. They scare me, they … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Political Books, Politics
Tagged critical thinking, death of expertise, fallacies, politics
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Why we need more women leaders
Preface. Hector Garcia makes the case that women make better leaders in an excerpt from his book below. His conclusion is that “scientific literature shows that when women are allowed greater political and economic power, which is inseparable from the … Continue reading
Book review: How Democracies Die
Preface. This is a book review with excerpts from the first half of “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. A few main points: We tend to think of democracies dying at the hands of men with guns. … Continue reading