[Plura-list] The WELL State of the World; Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air; Mass court: "I agree" means something; Congress bans "little green men"

[Cory Doctorow]

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Sorry for yesterday's glitchy double email - hit send too soon and
thought I'd dealt with it. Out of practice after my holiday, I guess!

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Today's links

* The WELL State of the World: With special guest Malka Older.

* Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air: How to sustainably eat
the planet.

* Mass court: "I agree" means something: Finally, we find the bottom.

* Congress bans "little green men": No more anonymous federal snatch-squads.

* This day in history: 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🎒 The WELL State of the World

For 20 years, members of The WELL (the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link," an
early, influential online community that I've been on since the late
1980s) ring in the new year with the STATE OF THE WORLD discussion,
hosted by Jon Lebkowsky and Bruce Sterling, with a rotating cast of
guest-hosts.

SOTW runs on the INKWELL forum, which is readable by the general public
- not just those with a well.com login. 2021's has been going since Jan
2 with this year's guest, Malka Older, an sf writer, sociologist and aid
worker.

https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/510/State-of-the-World-2021-page01.html

(Non-WELLbeings who want to post to the forum should email
inkwell at well.com with the subject SOTW)

As ever, it's a rollicking, smart, eclectic discussion of a world in
flux - and given the craziness of 2020, it's needed more than ever.

Sterling's opening salvo, is (as always), bracing: "The State of the
World is best described as 'diseased.'"

https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/510/State-of-the-World-2021-page01.html#post9

"It interests me that the major change-drivers are illness and political
upheaval.  I've read a lot about earlier eras in which that was so, but
the reflex of my contemporaries is that such matters should be subsumed
by technological advance."

https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/510/State-of-the-World-2021-page01.html#post12

"Thinking about a list of terms that tell you the speaker is almost
certainly bullshitting."

AI
5G
Smart city
IoT
Surveillance capitalism

Singularity
Big Data
Exponential
Orthogonal
VR AR XR MR
Digital Transformation

the Spotify of ...the Netflix of ...
Content is King
Neoliberalism ruined  ...
Synergy
Disrupting the industry
Mobility As a Service
4th Industrial Revolution
Sustainable, Equitable, Inclusive
Machine Learning
Customer first Customer centric Customer experience
Omnichannel

agile lean
Paradigm
Future-proof
Seamlessly
Cloud as an Innovation Platform
Responsible AI
Edge Computing
Nanotechnology
Machine Learning
Quantum anything
Uberization

https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/510/State-of-the-World-2021-page01.html#post14

I've just bookmarked the Inkwell link as part of my morning tab-group,
as I do every year.

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🎒 Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air

Back in 2009, I found the best technical book about climate change I've
ever read: David McKay's SUSTAINABLE ENERGY WITHOUT THE HOT AIR:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/04/08/sustainable-energy-without-the-hot-air-the-freakonomics-of-conservation-climate-and-energy/

McKay's book was a first for me: not a popular *science* book, but a
popular *engineering* book, one that simply parameterized the way that
we create and use energy, inviting the reader to draw their own
conclusions about the tradeoffs we'd need to make to save our world.

McKay's figures included things like the total number of solar photons
that strike the Earth, the total tide-stresses exerted by the moon, the
maximum possible efficiency of a plane-shape cylinder through air, etc.

All of these represent the absolute best-case scenarios for various
energy usage, production and storage problems, and anyone proposing a
climate measure that exceeds these maximums is either ill-informed or
actively lying.

That volume, with its lucid prose and superb data-visualizations, begat
a whole series. In 2011, there was SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS WITH BOTH EYES
OPEN by Julian Allwood and Jonathan Cullen.

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/11/17/sustainable-materials-indispensable-impartial-popular-engineering-book-on-the-future-of-our-built-and-made-world/

SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS adopted McKay's axiom of focusing on making small
changes to large causes, rather than large changes to small causes.

Thus it zeroed in on the role that concrete and aluminium production
play in emissions, after showing that all other material production
amounts to a rounding error when compared to these two factors.

2015 saw the publication of URBAN TRANSPORT WITHOUT THE HOT AIR, which
adopts the same "small changes to big causes" approach by focusing on
private automobiles (and the urban layouts they demand) as the major
driver of emissions.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/12/03/urban-transport-without-the-hot-air-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts/

Author Steven Melia explores the potential - and limits - of buses,
bikes, walking, rail, etc, and the role that planning plays in changing
private automobile usage, and makes an excellent case that urban design
is more important than transit links for reducing car usage.

It's been half a decade since that last HOT AIR book, and now,
fantastically, we have a new volume in the series: Sarah Bridle's FOOD
AND CLIMATE CHANGE WITHOUT THE HOT AIR.

http://www.uit.co.uk/food-and-climate-change-without-the-hot-air

Bridle's volume is an important addition to the series, and uses a
subtler knife - rather than opening with the small change in a big
thing, she instead sketches out the emissions associated with a variety
of prepared meals, organized by breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner.

All of this is framed around the idea that each human on Earth must
rapidly draw down their food emissions to no more than 3kg/day if we're
to meet the 1.5'C global warming target.

Bridle tots up a cup of tea, an apple, bacon, a sandwich, a steak, fish
and chips, etc, and shows how they fit into this picture. As the reader
is drawn through this narrative, the inescapable logic of energy narrows
down to an inexorable conclusion: we eat too many animals.

Even leaving aside all questions of animal cruelty and human health,
there's no escaping the fact that cow and sheep products, including
milk, cannot be central to our diets if our species is to survive.

Other meats - poultry, fish, and pork - are vastly more sustainable, but
still must be drawn down in our daily eating in favor of plant-based
diets (Bridle's very good on explaining how different methods of animal
rearing have different emissions profiles).

Moreover, a huge fraction of our food emissions are the result of the
inefficiencies of home cooking: heating up your whole oven to cook a
potato or a ready-meal massively increases the emissions relative to the
same food at a restaurant where many items are cooked at once.

Finally, waste is a huge contributor to emissions, and household
kitchens are the worst culprits by far: while industrial food prep
offcuts are sold off as animal feed, household waste (including massive
volumes of spoiled food) might end up as compost, or worse, landfill.

Like the other HOT AIR authors, Bridle's clear, nonthreatening,
technical language, brilliant data visualizations, and example grounded
in our daily experience make this a powerful read.

For all its gentle, moderate language, it comes to a devastating
conclusion: our species' survival depends on eating more plants, with
more centrally (and efficiently) prepared meals.

As with the other HOT AIR books, we're reminded that climate adaptation
means significant changes to our lives - changes as profound as the
industrial revolution. Bridle devotes significant language to discussing
the social factors involved in such a shift.

It's hard to imagine a better addition to the HOT AIR cannon: a volume
that boils a complex, urgent issue into a clear, undeniable set of
parameters with equally clear conclusions.

If you want to experiment with Bridle's findings and methods, she's got
an excellent "climate stack calculator" that lets you quickly assess the
emissions associated with different food.

https://www.takeabitecc.org/calculator.html

There's also a free ebook edition of this book; go to whatever ebook
store you use and you'll find a copy for $0.00 that you can "buy" and
download.

(One more note before I close out: there's another HOT AIR volume, David
Nutt's spectacular DRUGS POLICY WITHOUT THE HOT AIR, which had a new
edition last year)

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/02/be-the-helper/#davidnutt

(I didn't include it above because while it is an unmissable, essential
volume, it doesn't deal with climate change)

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🎒 Mass court: "I agree" means something

Arbitration was created to allow giant companies with equal bargaining
power to settle disputes without incurring  expensive court battles. So,
when IBM and AT&T; struck a deal, they'd agree that instead of going to
court, they'd hire a neutral person to decide who was right.

But in the 21st Century, a string of Supreme Court rulings have paved
the way for "forced arbitration" - when a company tells its customers or
workers that as a condition of doing business, they must give up all the
legal protections that come with the right to sue.

Once you've been bound over to arbitration, a company can maim, cheat or
murder you and your only recourse is to ask a corporate judge, on the
company's payroll, to decide whether you are entitled to compensation.

You will not be surprised to learn that arbitrators overwhelmingly find
in favor of the companies that pay their invoices.

We've experienced a quiet epidemic of binding arbitration. Your dentist
or physiotherapist probably expects you to sign one. So does your kid's
piano teacher. Your ISP. And, of course, your boss.

Corporate America have been plumbing the depths of this
accountability-ducking get-out-of-court-free card for years, sneaking
arbitration into terms of service and other documents no one ever, ever
(ever) reads.

But, at last, we've found the bottom of this pit of despair.
Massachusetts's highest court has ruled that a small-print notice that
says, "By signing up you agree to the terms and conditions" does not
constitute an agreement to arbitrate disputes.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/court-says-uber-cant-hold-users-to-terms-they-probably-didnt-read/

The case concerns Christopher Kauders, who is blind and  was illegally
denied rides by Uber drivers. Uber's arbitration waiver forces riders to
concede to the fiction that drivers are independent contractors, so Uber
said Kauders needed to sue the drivers, not Uber.

The court rejected this theory because Uber didn't force Kauders to go
to the page with the Terms and Conditions (that no one ever, ever, ever
reads) before clicking "I agree."

And yes, that is a *very* small win, but seriously, at least we've found
the bottom.

One of Lenny Bruce's most famous bits is "Eat, Sleep and Crap," which
identifies the origin of civilization in the creation of agreements:

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=24181

 "Let's see. I tell you what we'll do. We'll have a vote. We'll sleep in
Area A. Is that cool?"

"OK, good."

"We'll eat in Area B. Good?"

"Good."

"We'll throw a crap in area C. Good?"

The idea that we negotiate the rules by which we conduct our affairs -
rather than having them crammed down our throats - is the cornerstone of
what it means to be in a free society.

Democratically elected legislators create the rules by which we live:
you can't sell poison as food, or maim people through negligence or malice.

Binding arbitration yanks those rules out from under us: "By being
stupid enough to click this link, you agree that I'm allowed to come
over to your house, punch your grandmother, wear your underwear, make
long distance calls and eat all the food in your fridge."

The normalization of binding arbitration - the normalization of
surrendering your legal rights in favor of a corporate judge who always
sides with the house - is a grotesque, slow-motion train wreck for the
very idea of a free and just society.

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🎒 Congress bans "little green men"

A terrifying aspect of last summer's uprising in Portland and elsewhere
was the spectacle of anonymous federal police, bearing neither insignia
nor identification, snatching people off the street and disappearing them.

These were "little green men" - a term from the Russian annexation of
Crimea, when Russian soldiers adopted the pretence of being local
militias of Ukrainians who wanted to secede and dressed in generic
uniforms while seizing Ukrainian territory.

America's little green men come from the zoo of specialized federal
police agencies created by dick-measuring bureaucrats and petty official
who each created their own federal force to act as a kind of honor guard.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/06/realilty-has-a-leftist-bias/#move-along

Barely trained, growing at the rate of 2500 cops/year, these microforces
now outnumber the ATF, mostly trained at the Federal Law Enforcement
Training Center. They are cursorily overseen and largely unaccountable.
They are mired in continuous scandal.

Almost none of them have permanent chiefs, because that requires senate
approval, and NRA lobbyists scuttle every single nominee as being soft
on guns, including Chuck Canterbury, former head of the notorious
gun-grabbers the Fraternal Order of Police.

Last week, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, an
epic shitshow in which the US military was again handed an effectively
bottomless budget. Moreover, Democratic congressional leadership
squandered an opportunity to tie $2000 relief payments to its passage.

But there is one tiny light of positivity in the NDAA trashfire: thanks
to a bipartisan amendment, the NDAA requires the badly trained, badly
overseen, unaccountable federal cops who snatch people off the streets
to identify themselves.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/532676-unnamed-law-enforcement-banned-under-the-new-ndaa

This is the most minuscule of victories, obviously, and the fact that we
needed a law that requires heavily armed government goons to tell you
who they are and which agency they work for before they disappear you
like a Pinochet death-squad is disgusting.

But you know what's worse than needing to pass this kind of legislation?
Needing to pass it...and *not* passing it.

It's not much, but it's a win, and we should take it.

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🎒 This day in history

#5yrsago NZ police broke the law when they raided investigative
journalist’s home
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160105/12365733249/new-zealands-raid-investigatory-journalist-was-illegal.shtml

#5yrsago Someone at the Chaos Communications Congress inserted a poem
into at least 30 million servers’ logfiles
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpnxe/chaos-communication-congress-hackers-invaded-millions-of-servers-with-a-poem

#5yrsago Bernie Sanders on small money donations vs sucking up to
billionaires
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34452-this-is-not-democracy-this-is-oligarchy

#5yrsago Weapons of Math Destruction: how Big Data threatens democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdCJYsKlX_Y

#5yrsago Charter schools are turning into the next subprime mortgages
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2704305

#5yrsago New York Public Library does the public domain right
https://www.nypl.org/research/collections/digital-collections/public-domain

#5yrsago The annual WELL State of the World, with Bruce Sterling and Jon
Lebkowsky
https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html

#1yrago Permitting the growth of monopolies is a form of government
censorship
https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

#1yrago The estranged anarchist daughter of the Republican
gerrymandering mastermind inherited and dumped all his files
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pked4v/the-anarchist-daughter-of-the-gops-gerrymandering-mastermind-just-dumped-all-his-maps-and-files-on-google-drive

#1yrago Republican New York State Assembly leader publishes anti-drunk
driving PSA shortly before drunkenly crashing a state-owned car
https://www.mpnnow.com/news/20200101/video-assemblyman-kolb-charged-with-dwi-after-victor-crash

#1yrago Massive Cambridge Analytica leak reveals global election
manipulation: Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/04/cambridge-analytica-data-leak-global-election-manipulation

#1yrago Everything you wanted to know about money-laundering but were
afraid to ask https://twitter.com/CZEdwards/status/1213597148274511872

#1yrago Machine learning is innately conservative and wants you to
either act like everyone else, or never change
http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/

#1yrago Podcast: Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the
2020s, let’s imagine better things
https://ia802806.us.archive.org/35/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_322/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_322_-_Science_fiction_and_the_unforeseeable_future.mp3

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🎒 Colophon

Today's top sources: Boing Boing (https://boingboing.net), Naked
Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 502 words (95720
total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 26)
https://craphound.com/news/2020/12/14/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-26/

Upcoming appearances:

* What if the future of our public lives online looked like _____?
(panel at New_ Public), Jan 13,
https://newpublic.org/festival/event/783/all-star-world-cafe-what-if-the-future-of-our-public-lives-online-looked-like

* Keynote for linux.conf.au, Jan 22 (US) 23 (Australia)
https://linux.conf.au/schedule/

* Evening with William Gibson, Jan 25,
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/william-gibson-cory-doctorow-agency-tickets-132831910821

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Hedging Bets on the Future (Motherboard Cyber):
https://play.acast.com/s/cyber/hedgingbetsonthefuturewithauthorcorydoctorow

* Applying the Pandemic Mindset to Climate Change:
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/12/applying-the-pandemic-mindset-to-climate-change-with-cory-doctorow

* 2020 Beaverbrook Lectures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66r57bGG5w

* Bibliotherapy/Shelf Healing:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1509671/6580831

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the
basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla


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