Category Archives: Collapse Watch

What Does It Mean to “Hospice Earth”?

“Hospice”; an AI painting by Midjourney, based on my own prompt In his new book I Want a Better Catastrophe, Andrew Boyd describes “12 characters in search of an apocalypse“, and provides a flowchart explaining how each of these 12 … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch | 6 Comments

Links of the Month: March 2023

cartoon by Michael Leunig Letting go of the idea of free will is both liberating and terrifying. As I watch the world devolve into fascism and nuclear brinksmanship, I long to believe this is just a temporary aberration in human … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves | 7 Comments

Our Incapacity to Admit Failure

Afghan children, from pxhere, CC0 Recently, the rather dim-witted right-wing leader of Canada’s Conservative party, Pierre Poilievre, whose elected representatives have been hobnobbing with the German neo-Fascist AfD party, announced a bid to overturn Canada’s new, tepid, right-to-die law. Sufferers … Continue reading

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

Shameful Pleasures

Chart from Wikipedia by Derek Snider, CC-BY-SA 3.0 There is a lot of controversy about current experiments to decriminalize ‘hard’ drugs. Critics, and long-time supporters of the horrific “war on drugs”, argue that it’s a road to perdition, and that … Continue reading

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

What Government Is For

Yes, this is a bit of a rant. The Underhoused: Tent cities in (upper left) Vancouver BC, (upper right) Portland OR, and (lower right) new tents on a street in Nanaimo BC. The Vancouver site was bulldozed and converted to … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works | 6 Comments

The Preteriat

(Another post on political theory) The late David Graeber talks with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, image from London Real (2015) The adjective ‘preterite’ (rhymes with the adjective ‘confederate’) is an ancient word referring to ‘that which has been passed over’. … Continue reading

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

Why Humans Struggle With Democracy: A Theory of Governance and Power

This is a bit of a theoretical exploration. I had to write it out to make sense for myself of the two complex articles it attempts to summarize, so I thought others interested in the theory of politics and power … Continue reading

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

1.5ºC: Will El Niño put us over the top in 2024?

Pacific Ocean temperature anomaly data from NOAA, based on the INO measurement, one of several used to measure the intensity of El Niño and La Niña cycles; projections are mine, but are consistent with several of the latest climate models … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works | 7 Comments

Links of the Month: February 2023

cartoon by Michael Leunig Every once in a while I take a quick peek at the publications that I once lauded for their insight, their investigative reporting, and their courage to speak truth to power. Basically I wanted to read … Continue reading

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

Better Than Real

The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. Our only health is the disease If we obey … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Illusion of the Separate Self and Free Will | 2 Comments