You can only use a gallon of gasoline once.

This fundamental difference between renewable and nonrenewable energy sources is why you should be excited for the energy revolution that’s already under way.

In this video, Alec explains the benefits of using technology that you don’t need to burn and addresses the land-use and minerals concerns head-on in this must-watch video for anyone who uses electricity.

This article addresses an issue of growing political importance: the global rise of civilizational populism. From Western Europe to India and Pakistan, and from Indonesia to the Americas, populists are increasingly linking social belonging with civilizational identity—and at times to the belief that the world is divided into religion-based civilizations, some of which are doomed to clash with one another.

All of us exist within a world of deep forces that we navigate at a level that is not what we term rational. All of us exist within a context, a late capitalist world, that is by no means rational. And in such a world, are untapped, unharnessed, undirected energies and longings going to be funneled and directed by those who figure out how to do so? Absolutely. And we’re not above that.

‘Reason’ isn’t just ‘trust scientists’ and ‘check your sources’; it is a deep re-evaluation of what life is for…

A total of 536 Hong Kong university students completed questionnaires measuring their experiences of compassion from others, self-compassion, resilience, psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life. Serial mediation analyses showed that compassion from others was associated positively with self-compassion, which was, in turn, linked to greater resilience and consequently lower levels of psychological distress and higher levels of flourishing and meaning in life.

a multicriteria assessment of 24 meat and milk alternatives that integrates nutritional, health, environmental, and cost analyses with a focus on high-income countries.

Our findings suggest that a range of food products exist that when replacing meat and dairy in current diets would have multiple benefits, including reductions in nutritional imbalances, dietary risks and mortality, environmental resource use and pollution, and when choosing unprocessed foods over processed ones also diet costs.

when you use the law and science to change the mind, it can change tomorrow. But when you change the heart, it is forever. In the midst of the ongoing climate and COVID-19 crises, I believe that we can change the story of the world if we change the storyline. “The seeds of goodness live in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”

the sanitation department is the most important workforce in the city of New York

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,
In your eyes I have read
That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,
And to be understood is to be leveled down

Relative to controls, participants restricting digital media reported a variety of benefits, including higher life satisfaction, mindfulness, autonomy, competence, and self-esteem, and reduced loneliness and stress.

Succumbing to algorithmic complacency means you’re surrendering your own agency in ways you may not realize.

super rich people people are going to support this because they realize that hatred of foreigners is the main thing standing between them and high levels of taxation. And they don’t want to pay taxes

The above is talking about the wealthy in general. For a discussion of Silicon Valley ideology specifically, see this talk by Bhante Sujato and for a discussion of Elon Musk’s specific flavor of psychopathy, listen to this conversation with Elon’s friend, Kara Swisher.

The lack of the capacity to understand and act on [legal] justice problems plays a key role in creating [social] inequalities.

around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house…

For more about this famous poem, you can also hear Pádraig Ó Tuama’s take on it in Poetry Unbound. (I particularly appreciate the way he reads the final lines of the poem).

This document has inspired human rights movements around the globe and gave the world something tangible to strive for.

A short discussion on the history and importance of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Recycled over and over
people born look like parents…

The above-linked guide is the 2018, Canadian edition which is quite thorough.

The Red Cross in other countries have their own guides. For example, here is the 2020 guidebook for Singapore and India’s 2024 Manual.

The U.S. American Red Cross also has First Aid iPhone and Android apps.

“It’ll Be Alright on the Night” was an outtakes show. It compiled mistakes, technical errors, and flubs from television and film…

An homage to a moment of British television history and to those who put in the effort to do things well.

Ten things hinder the ten likable, desirable, and agreeable things that are rare in the world.

This is the story of the deadliest infectious disease of all time…

It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world…

… Mistaken for a child running to tell of a bomb
That did not knock before it entered
In Gaza with its glad tidings of abundant joy…

most waking hours are spent on activities intended to achieve direct outcomes for human minds and bodies (9.4 hours per day), while 3.4 h/d are spent modifying our inhabited environments and the world beyond. 2.1 h/d are devoted to organizing social processes and transportation.

We distinguish activities that vary strongly with GDP per capita, including the time allocated to food provision and infrastructure, vs those that do not vary consistently, such as meals and transportation time.

If you know Python/Jupyter, you can even play around directly with their data by downloading it here.

People are more likely to engage in mood-increasing activities (e.g., sports) when they felt bad, and to engage in useful but mood-decreasing activities (e.g., housework) when they felt good. These findings clarify how hedonic considerations shape human behavior. They may explain how humans overcome the allure of short-term gains in happiness to maximize long-term welfare.

Without the pressure of a life cut short, Keith Haring’s art might never have been as deep as it was. Yet that would have been a good trade.

On recognizing that “the nobility of suffering has always been a coping mechanism.”

… and now the geneticists say I may have 2% Neanderthal DNA, which presumably changes the status of Neanderthals, or the [definition] of species, or [possibly] both.

The units of paleontology, and of biology more generally, are different from the units of paleoanthropology, in that the latter are units in a story of our ancestors, and the ancestors are invariably sacred.

On why the species of historic hominids are so numerous and contested.

Although sucking feels uncomfortable, we shouldn’t shy away from activities we enjoy simply because we aren’t great at them.

Informal verbal interaction is the core matrix for human social life. A mechanism for coordinating this basic mode of interaction is a system of turn-taking that regulates who is to speak and when.

Using a worldwide sample of 10 languages drawn from traditional indigenous communities to major world languages, we show that all of the languages tested provide clear evidence for a general avoidance of overlapping talk and a minimization of silence between conversational turns.

… because Cura first fashioned the being, let her possess it as long as it lives.

This existential insecurity is the kind that comes from being dependent on others for survival; from being vulnerable to physical and psychological illness or wounding; and, of course, from being mortal. It’s the insecurity of randomness and risk, of a future that is impossible to control or to know. It is a kind of insecurity we can never wholly escape or armour ourselves against, try as we might to mitigate potential harms.

Yet however unknowable the future may be, there is no doubt our fortunes will remain interlinked. Risks proliferate, time passes, and things fall apart. But even amid the rubble, we can always reimagine, repair, and rebuild. Accepting our fundamental insecurity—the gift we all share—is the first step toward escaping our fear-filled burrows and ensuring our collective freedom, safety, and well-being.

The precise ways in which human cognition differs from that of other species remains a topic of intense debate, but many data currently support the hypothesis that it is an early emerging set of social skills for reasoning about conspecifics as intentional agents, coupled with a distinctly cooperative and prosocial motivation, that fuels many of our most remarkable cognitive achievements.

We asked a total of 1,368 people from five [European] countries to reveal, using an Internet-based topographical self-reporting tool, those parts of their body that they would allow relatives, friends, and strangers to touch.

Mendicants, there are these three searches. What three? The search for sensual pleasures, the search for continued existence, and the search for a holy life.

In 1911, a Native American man, the only member of his community to survive a genocide, encountered the new Anthropology department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Where are we?

We do have something that is very unique about us as animals. And that’s that we can build alliances with any other species […] to build loving, supportive, safe relationships to save us from the difficulties of life

On how advances in science are undermining the dualities we have long assumed separate us from the “lower” animals, and a proposed alternative narrative for what makes humans so special.

… stories of humans encountering non-human intelligences

… the most up-to-date, evidence-based information on science and health questions that affect the decisions we make each day

America’s top scientists give concise answers to the public’s most commonly asked questions, such as:

• Can earthquakes liquefy soil?
• Is there a link between infections and cancer?
• Is it possible to achieve net-zero emissions?
• Does using sunscreen cause a Vitamin D deficiency?

Everything is always at once a subject and object

A close reading of the medieval story of a boy raised by wolves and a wider meditation on man’s place in the world.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

For a short discussion on The Declaration’s history and significance, see the Writ Large interview with Mathias Risse.

Ka awobi owero (ber)
If the young men sing (it is well)

A traditional Lango prayer for rain in a time of drought arranged by a Cantonese-American composer and performed in grand style by Jimmer Bolden, Allie McNay and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London.

You should not cultivate the kind of person who causes unskillful qualities to grow while skillful qualities decline. And you should cultivate the kind of person who causes unskillful qualities to decline while skillful qualities grow.

The Buddha sets up a framework on things to be cultivated or avoided and Venerable Sāriputta elaborates.

Loves  How I  love  you…

Changing the work and how we work is the unpleasant task of dealing with what we’ve been denying. It is probably the biggest test in the creative process demanding not only an admission that you’ve made a mistake, but that you know how to fix it.

The story of Twyla Tharp’s Billy Joel musical and the unlikely bicycle-powered airplane.

Staying in your comfort zone isn’t always the best option.

The incredible stories of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies and Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert and why diversity is better than it feels.

For the exciting part two, see Frankenstein versus the Volcano.

Sometimes the verbs
Aren’t important

i was made out of clay    out of time

The whole idea that all of this can be locked up in a little box and say ‘Oh, nothing much happened before the invention of farming,’ is just beginning to look kind of silly.

An archeologist responds to Sapiens and points out that history is always more variegated and contingent than our neat stories let us believe.

… how culture reflects and shapes the mind and behavior of its members

In truth, it’s the cynic who’s out of touch. In truth, we’re living on Planet A, where people are deeply inclined to be good to one another. So be realistic. Be courageous. Be true to your nature.

Embossed tattoos like small notes on sheet music.
Dots and lines, strands and strings

sometimes i want to ask the earth,
was it beautiful      here
without us…

Onions are fallible, only
pretending to be infinite…

Cindy: not her real name. I met her
in prison, and people in prison I give
the fake names. I taught her Shakespeare…

Staying alive in the woods is a matter of calming down…

A poem of practical advice.

I wanted to take it home, but in order to do so I’d have to carry the globe.

Who—and what—are we?

[we] are watching a documentary about home
birth when [you] first feel [neni] kick

my first try I made a hit…

… they voted unanimously, every person there, that they would not provide labor to allow any drilling or mining to go ahead. These were men who would’ve made money, it might have been years of work for them if oil drilling and mining had gone ahead, but they didn’t want to spoil what many of them—having been to The Great Barrier Reef—knew was at risk

A brief history of the United Nations’ efforts to promote cultural tolerance in the aftermath of World War II.

They want to make clear that other ways of thinking about humanity that are based on conceptions of biological difference and hierarchy are wrong.

On the study of “human nature” after World War II.

My tastebuds had been longing for something, and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

A short celebration of the humble clove.

What kind of creatures are we? And how should we relate to each-other?

Matt joins his friend Sam to talk about an article he wrote on depression and politics.

You never begin by saying, “I’m going to be a tyrannist dictator, and I’m going to ruin your life.” You don’t start out that way. You start out by saying, “I’m going to make things so much better. And you want that, don’t you, Ezra?”

Anthropological methods and insights can be transformative, making possible the kinds of empathy and dialogue necessary to solve our global problems. The goal of this textbook is to guide you in this process of transformation as you learn about the cultural lives of the various peoples with whom you share this planet.

Museum of Nonhumanity calls for the deconstruction of the categories of animality and humanity in order to enter a new, more inclusive era.

You have to live your way into a new way of thinking.

An earnest introduction to humanity.

Primarily intended for young Americans, The Art of Being Human has enough perennial wisdom and charming sincerity to make it an enjoyable read for most.

Didn’t you know beforehand how the world of men is? Sometimes we have to let go of the things we like.

An orphaned boy is raised by an old hermit on a small barge in the middle of a scenic, mountain lake where he learns about the cycle of life and death.

For an overview of critical interpretations of the film’s symbolism, see Green and Mun’s 2019 article, “Representing Buddhism through Mise-en-scène, Diegesis, and Mimesis” (IJBTC 29.1).

Without all of those stories—without the physicist’s story, without the philosopher’s story, without the artist’s story—you’re telling an incomplete narrative.

A renowned physicist on his current view of the cosmos and our place within it.

We have been through such hardship and danger together. Now we must love one another.

With its tropical climate, lower costs and culture of respect for the elderly, Thailand is attracting families dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s from as far away as Europe.

Sherpa men die in disproportionate numbers, leaving behind widows who struggle to survive. Forced to become breadwinners, some women are defying tradition by breaking into the male-dominated world of Himalayan climbing.

Ben and Andrew trace how the song “Time to Pretend” was made, from its dorm room origins, to its first recording, to re-envisioning it with Grammy-winning producer Dave Fridmann.

Millions of years of evolution has led to an incredibly complex communication system.

What it’s like to be a linguistic animal.

Visitors would pay ten cents to enter a spacious room full of glass boxes that were incubators with tiny premature babies on display.

… he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found Heyoon.

… the belief that we humans occupy a realm of being separate from the rest of nature encourages what he all-too-politely refers to as “environmentally irresponsible behavior.”

A history of modern conceptualizations of “nature” and an early defense of the so-called “first/second nature” split—a concept we now call “the anthropocene.”

All-knowing lords, buddhas of past, present and future
Bless this practitioner with thoughts of roaming abroad,

For information on how the ICF is intended to be used, see the ICF practical manual.

People are so difficult to be with —
The good ones won’t lead the way, and the bad ones never stop.

Svā Kṣitigarbha, Essence of the Earth, you who nurture all beings

異なる声の元が
喉元までとどく
そこまで見えたものが
消されてしまう前に

We must have a system of spiritual culture which is appropriate to the modern world and which can accord with the principles of every religion

A collection of talks, interviews, and booklets by Ajahn Buddhadāsa giving his view of the world and outline for the future.

The world is not a logic puzzle.

Love of hate acts as an axis uh huh
First it wanes and then it waxes
(Hmm so, procreate and pay your taxes)

Traditional Indian geography was always a strange amalgam of a few facts and a lot of fiction. But facts there are.

A companion book for anyone traveling to Mount Kailash, or just curious about the intersection of sacred and scientific geography in the Himalayas.

Manipulation only works if its target isn’t aware that they’re being manipulated

An earnest plea for global clarity.

This YouTube Video is in Vietnamese but has English language captions which you can turn on via the “CC” button.

… a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems

A few case studies of humanity setting out to fix the environment.

By zooming in on tiny fish and out to the entire stratosphere, it beautifully captures the staggering scope of climate change and its challenges. In highlighting the scientists and engineers working on it, the book offers a somewhat more hopeful picture of our possible future: less apocalyptic but still incredibly strange. See 99pi’s “Model Organism” for a taste.

The book also makes a strong case for being skeptical that we even can engineer our way out of climate change. While it nods to the “but what other choice do we have” counterargument, I hope that readers come away from this tension in the book more confident than ever in our need for decarbonization and I hope that readers won’t leap to even worse ideas than those highlighted in the book, such as fatalism or population control. As one character in the book memorably put it:

Pissing your pants will only keep you warm for so long.

On mountaintops, in secluded forests and on islands and the like,
Places which are agreeable to the mind and well suited to the season

We’re already geo-engineering the planet, we’re just doing it accidentally and badly

Ezra Klein has a wide-ranging conversation with novelist Kim Stanley Robinson (of Mars Trilogy fame) about his “cli-fi” book, Ministry of the Future, and how strange our society is.

… there will be resistance to giving the thing rights until it can be seen and valued for itself; yet, it is hard to see it and value it for itself until we can bring ourselves to give it rights — which is almost inevitably going to sound inconceivable

On the history, and future, of how we define property and rights.

I swear, you will wake–
& mistake these walls
for skin.

A song on the cycle of life and death.

… poets do not [normally] get this kind of attention

The story of an unusual fence in New York City and its bold rejection of cynicism.

I give you back 1948.

A poem about what time can do to a person.

It regards our planet and the life upon it. It stands outside of historical time. To another race, it would communicate: This is what you would see if you came here.

~ From Roger Ebert’s review

In 94 B.C., the Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote, “In the area south of the Yangtze the land is low and the climate humid; adult males die young.”

In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of previously unknown and unchronicled folk … and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth

A riveting account of what it takes to make the internet work.

Shrines in parks and woodland shrines,
Well-constructed lotus ponds:
These are not worth a sixteenth part
Of a delightful human being.

Whether in a village or forest,
In a valley or on the plain–
Wherever the arahants dwell
Is truly a delightful place.

Sakka asks what place is truly delightful and the Buddha replies.

…and maybe because of the boiling April sun, he thought about water and ice. Water and ice were made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too. He himself was probably a little different from the corrupt people around him. Ice was distinct from—and in his view, better than—what it was made of. He wanted to be better than what he was made of. In Mumbai’s dirty water, he wanted to be ice.

A haunting and beautiful portrait of humanity, Behind the Beautiful Forevers reads more like a novel than nonfiction. But journalism it is. Of the highest order.

Written after three years of observations and interviews in a small slum of Mumbai, the book follows a few locals as they build their lives amidst the devastating poverty just behind the Beautiful Forevers.

One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end.

Frase imagines a two-by-two matrix of possible post-capital economies and leaves us to imagine which future we want to work toward.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

A much-beloved, short, poetic story (nominally for children) which captures poignantly the existential crisis of growing up in the modern world, and encourages us all to not lose touch with that simple, direct wisdom of our inner child.

Note that the original, illustrated translation by Richard Howard is still under copyright, so the link above will instead take you to a more recent, scholarly translation by M. H. Bowker published by punctum in 2021.

… the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.

A refreshing and unromantic take on the history of our species heavily influenced by the author’s vipassana practice.

Insofar as it disintegrates, it is called the ‘world.’

… animals are not passive objects for humans to ignore or argue over–or collect–but “individuals with their own perspectives on life,” and members of communities with which our species coexists. That animals are in this sense political actors is an underrecognized and, to my mind, potentially powerful point

What can we learn, and what kind of world would we build, if we learned how to listen to animals?

We call that “Progress”
But it’s just movement

An upbeat song about spiritual perspective.

I say it’s not possible to know, see or reach the end of the world by traveling. But I also say there’s no making an end of suffering without reaching the end of the world.

The mendicants ask Ānanda to explain this enigmatic statement derived from the famous story of Rohitassa.

Gain and loss, disrepute and fame,
blame and praise, pleasure and pain:
these conditions that people meet
are impermanent, transient, and subject to change.

The eight worldly conditions in brief.

An eye is a dangerous thing. Left unguarded and misunderstood it unleashes a world “out there” that we become infatuated with, to our detriment. When we understand fully that the eye, the world and the interface between them are fabricated, the world ends, the infatuation ends, saṃsāra ends.

An instructed noble disciple also meets gain and loss, disrepute and fame, blame and praise, and pleasure and pain.

The eight worldly conditions in detail.

Mendicants, there are these five drawbacks to a charnel ground…

How a person may have the same defects as a cemetery.

Our body is not life, but just a house. Life is energy. The coming together of mental, kammic and cosmic forces — that is life.