apple juice

This article leaves out the “debate” about net neutrality, but the core thesis applies. Republicans are not making policy for the good of the country, (not to mention the world at large). They are governing for the rich and lying to everyone else.

Quite simply, Republican politicians need campaign donations from oil companies and other big corporations to win elections. To maintain their power they must keep the cash flowing. That means keeping rich donors happy by cutting corporate taxes and obstructing climate policies. To achieve that, Republican politicians reject scientific evidence and expert opinion, lie to their voters, and rely on right-wing media echo chamber propaganda and tribalism to keep their supporters voting against their own best interests.

Source: The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party

We do not face a simple choice of digital or analog. That is the false logic of the binary code that computers are programmed with, which ignores the complexity of life in the real world. Instead, we are faced with a decision of how to strike the right balance between the two. If we keep that in mind, we are taking the first step toward a healthy relationship with all technology, and, most important, one another.

From Our Love Affair With Digital Is Over

WIKIPEDIA, ONE OF the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis.

Source: How Social Media Endangers Knowledge | WIRED

Great piece. Hard not to look back at the past 20 years of the internet and wonder…

Hey folks,

Long time no post.

Must Read

I’ve told a lot of people this in person, and in emails, but the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a must read. One of the benefits of working in a school is getting amazing book recommendations from my colleagues. I also had the great opportunity to see Mr. Stevenson speak at the NAIS conference a couple of years ago. He is the director of the Equal Justice Initiative which defends people who are on death row. It will challenge you and ask you to take notice of the broken system of criminal justice in this country.

Must See

In the same vein, as part of our Administrative SEED group at school, we watched the documentary 13th, available on Netflix. It refers to the clause in 13th amendment banning slavery except in the case of criminals. The movie dissects the prison-industrial complex with precision. Highly recommended.

Great post here on the topic of changes you can make in your own lives.

A lot of people ask me how they can live more sustainably, and help combat global environmental issues like climate change in their own lives. Here’s my advice.

Knowing that people are very busy, and most don’t really want long, complicated lists of things to do, here are my suggestions…

Source: So, What Can I Do?

(No hard frost yet.)

We watched Before the Flood on friday night. Leonardo Di Caprio’s new movie on climate change. It contains some powerful imagery of the effects of climate change that are happening right now. To see the tar sands in alberta or a mountaintop removal in west virgina is staggering.

How can I take action? I think I’ve taken many of the easy (lightbulbs) and privileged (efficient cars) routes. I offset all of our airplane travel through Nature Conservancy. So what’s next?

Beef.

Beef clearly has a bigger impact on the environment than other forms of protein, and the movie presents a number of compelling examples such as the equivalency of eating a 1/2lb. burger vs. driving your prius 50 miles.

Here is one news article from a couple of years ago: Giving up beef will reduce carbon footprint more than cars

Beef’s environmental impact dwarfs that of other meat including chicken and pork, new research reveals, with one expert saying that eating less red meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars.

So, here we go…

Reducing humanity’s carbon pollution will certainly be logistically difficult, but its roots are essentially blameless – by the time climate change was a problem, nations had built their economies on cheap fossil fuel – and conceptually simple: pollute less. It’s comforting to think that, if humanity can fix Earth’s climate, nature’s problems will be also be solved.

But that’s not the case.

Source: Why we need to stop thinking so much about climate c…

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was currently digging through Countdown by Alan Weisman. It should be abundantly clear that there is so much more to protecting the earth and environment than climate change alone.

The author nails it in this final quote, we have trouble debating even the most conceptually simple problems, let alone beginning to tackle the reduction of our footprint on complex ecosystems.