Monthly Archives: December 2021

Random Walk

So I go out for a walk, in the moonlight. There’s still some snow on the lawns of the houses I pass. I make my way to the river path, and wander along the river, heading north. The full moon … Continue reading

Posted in Creative Works, How the World Really Works, Month-End Reflections | 3 Comments

Dave’s Preposterous Predictions 2022-2025

In late 2019, the Swiss gnomes in Davos were asked to rank 25 global risks in order of their assessment of the probability of them occurring over the following ten years. As shown above, they rated the risk of a … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 5 Comments

Species Shame

photo of an Irish newspaper headline, by Underway in Ireland on flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Tell the people they are safe now Hunger stopped him, he lies still in his cell. Death has gagged his accusations. We are free now, … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 1 Comment

Links of the Month: December 2021

artwork from the Cave of Hands, Argentina ~7500 BCE, image from wikipedia, in the public domain In reality, the crisis [of CoVid-19 is] waking from a dream, a confrontation with the actual reality of human life, which is that we … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments

The Books That Have Influenced Me Most

the quote is attributed to “Jo Godwin” In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn says: People will listen when they’re ready to listen and not before. Probably, once upon a time, you weren’t ready to listen to an idea than now seems … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 3 Comments

Why Are We Drawn to Stories That Serve Us Badly?

The cognitive bias codex from wikipedia; if you want to print it out so it’s legible and useful, print the original over four letter-sized pages and paste them together (my printout is taped, tellingly perhaps, over my rarely-used TV). The … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments

Progressives’ Vaccine Mandate Meltdown

Three people have sent me links to Paul Kingsnorth‘s recent two-part diatribe opposing vaccines and vaccine mandates. Two of them said they were persuaded by his argument. Here’s what I replied to them: “The Vaccine Moment” is a warmed-over op-ed, … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 13 Comments

How the New Fascists Finally Won the Propaganda War

Dmitry Muratov, Russian journalist and co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, has expressed concerns about the world’s slide into fascism. Image by Elena Anosova for The New Yorker. We humans are pretty easy to manipulate. We want to believe … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 6 Comments

Has Canada Reached “Net Zero” on CoVid-19?

Actual vs “normal” weekly deaths from all causes, 2020 and 2021-to-date, from Statistics Canada data via Alberta Business Council Since I first reported on the World Mortality Database (WMD), and its argument that IHME’s excess deaths data, and hence their … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 4 Comments

The End of the Common Good

image by Gopal Vijayaraghavan on flickr, CC-BY-2.0 Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal, a doctor and a journalist, have been researching vaccine hesitancy for decades. In a recent NYT article they offered this remarkable perspective on it: Over the past four … Continue reading

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 8 Comments