The Monday Mix (08/08/2022)
Hey friends,
Late again in putting this together so it’s reaching your inbox a day late. I’ll get back to the proper schedule next week before I head off to the Netherlands to see friends and watch a bike race.
How Climate Breakdown is Making Extreme Weather Worse
This is a grim account of how climate change is impacting extreme weather events. Most of the floods, heatwaves and other extreme events we’ve seen in recent years are the result of the planet warming by 1 degree. This is worrying, because if this is what’s happening at just 1 degree, then what are we going to experience when we reach 1.5, and possibly 2 degrees?
Our World In Data
Our World In Data is arguably the best resource on the web bar Wikipedia. The number of articles on various subjects and the detail they go into is incredible. If you want to become more knowledgable about a subject, or separate fact from fiction, then this is a good place to start. A few of my favourite articles include this one on the spread of democratic rights, an interesting piece on nuclear weapons and a great explanation of smallpox and its eradication.
What Is Longtermism?
A fascinating article on thinking long-term and what that entails. If you haven’t read The Good Ancestor, then this is a sort of short version of the idea in that book. Namely, instead of focusing on the short-term, as we tend to do, we should further into the future. This is a great outlook when it comes to climate change, as the effects will last long into the future. While it will also help with many other problems too. Not that we should lose sight of what’s important now, but politics is too often invested with parasitical short-termism that doesn’t benefit society. Taking a longer look at matters would not only benefit us but our descendants and theirs.
Book I’m reading - Citizen Clem by John Bew
Still reading this biography of Attlee, and likely will for the next week or so as it’s a beast of a book. But it’s fascinating to learn more about someone I don’t know an awful lot about.
Quote I’m pondering: “One of my rules for life is: 'When in doubt, assume the best,' because in the end, most people are pretty decent.” – Rutger Bregman
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom
Number of articles, not amount. Count noun.
Amount of articles should be number of articles. It is a count noun.