Category Archives: How the World Really Works

Links of the Month: January 2022

Posted on January 17, 2022 by Dave Pollard

view out my window, of Lafarge Lake with holiday lights all around it, photo taken the other day I’m like a wolf, brought up in the city, out of its element And now uncomfortable, anxious, wherever I go. I hide … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 2 Comments

Trophic Cascades, Double Binds, and the Dawn of Everything

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Dave Pollard

council of clan mothers in post-civ culture; diorama from Afterculture It’s not often that a book comes along that so undermines my beliefs that it brings about a seismic shift in my worldview. Sixteen years ago John Gray’s Straw Dogs did … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 8 Comments

CoVid-19 vs Humans: A Game of Chess

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Dave Pollard

Drawing by Derek Evernden at New Year’s, a year ago. Oops! The outcome of this match was hard to predict at the outset. Humans have fared pretty well over the last century at dealing with viruses. But the problem is, … Continue reading →

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Several Short Sentences About… Seeds

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Dave Pollard

image by Virvoreanu-Laurentiu on pixabay, CC0 I‘ve been reading Washington biologist Thor Hanson’s fascinating book The Triumph of Seeds. The book contains so many amazing facts about these little-studied (except for agricultural propagation purposes) evolutionary innovations, that they’ve prompted me … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works | 3 Comments

Random Walk

Posted on December 31, 2021 by Dave Pollard

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 | 3 Comments

Dave’s Preposterous Predictions 2022-2025

Posted on December 30, 2021 by Dave Pollard

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 How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 5 Comments

Species Shame

Posted on December 22, 2021 by Dave Pollard

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 How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 1 Comment

Links of the Month: December 2021

Posted on December 19, 2021 by Dave Pollard

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 How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 2 Comments

The Books That Have Influenced Me Most

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Dave Pollard

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 How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Preparing for Civilization's End | 3 Comments

Why Are We Drawn to Stories That Serve Us Badly?

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Dave Pollard

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