Category Archives: Month in Review

April 2025 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Maybe an irreversible methane tipping point is happening. This could be the scariest thing out there short of nuclear war.

Most hopeful story: 3-30-300 is a nice, simple idea. “you can see 3 trees from your window, your neighborhood has 30% tree canopy cover, and you are within 300 m of a half-hectare park.” Sure, you have to figure out some details and make some sustained effort over time to implement simple ideas. Still, not rocket science. Combined with the “15 minute city”, this is a pretty good urban planning philosophy that should be communicable.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I made what I would consider a “common sense” trade policy proposal. “I generally support…free trade. But if we are going to trade freely, we need a safety net for people who are hurt. We could do this with generous unemployment benefits and retraining programs. We could help people relocate to places with jobs. We could provide much better communication and transportation infrastructure allowing them to commute regionally to places with jobs. We could educate their children so they are prepared for the jobs of tomorrow. We could institute a value added tax on our productive, growing economy and use it to provide services or cash to workers. We could invest even more in research and development to make our economy even more productive and growing. We could invest in neighboring countries to help them be more productive and growing, import cheap stuff from them, and reduce some of the migration pressure on our borders.”

https://homertree.com/blog/the-3-30-300-rule/

March 2025 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The U.S. might be headed for recession. Recessions happen, but this would be the first one where the U.S. government obviously and counter to all competent advice throws a monkey wrench in a perfectly healthy economy, that I know of anyway. Lest we think GDP growth is only a statistic that does not affect real people, the U.S. poverty rate among children was 5% in 2021 and rose to over 13% in 2023, when the economy was doing relatively well as measured by GDP growth and employment, but Congress forced the end of Biden’s tax credits for parents. So pop quiz: force a completely unnecessary recession by choice and will more or less children suffer? Shame shame shame on the Trump administration and Congress you stupid assholes.

Most hopeful story: Trump seems to have some anti-nuclear (weapons) instincts. We will see if his actions bear any relation to his words.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Prospera is a weird quasi-autonomous city-state nominally inside Honduras run by crypto-currency weirdos.

February 2025 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Donald Shoup died in February. He was a pioneer in parking economics, which doesn’t sound all that sexy, but his clear explanations really helped me see the light of what walkable, livable, healthy and low environmental impact cities can potentially be. What they can’t be is low-density and automobile-oriented. I put this in the depressing category both because I am sad at his passing, and because I do not see these trends going in the right direction.

Most hopeful story: The fool in the White House and the devils whispering in his ear can weaken enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, but they can’t actually make laws go away. They can try to ignore them, and then we will see how effective our court system and third party legal action can be at activating the checks and balances we are supposed to have. The other potential players are congress and widespread public action, and these do not seem to be active at the moment.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I continued to follow the emergence of AI agents in February. Outside the bananas state of U.S. and global geopolitics, this is one of the biggest things going on, or at least a big change playing out quickly. Even a “singularity watch” item – I’m going to give a 5% chance this is the start of the singularity. Hopefully not the Terminator version. But has anyone noticed we now have Starlink and Stargate – these even sound like Skynet. We already had Operation Warp Speed of course. What puzzles me is that conservatives usually don’t like science fiction because they lack imagination. So either somebody is a science fiction fan, or more likely they have these words in the backs of their minds from indirect exposure to science fiction, and now they think they thought of them.

January 2025 in Review

Well, January was a doozy. Here goes:

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Longreads #1 stories of 2024 – this is a lookback but I posted it in January and it has a ton of interesting stuff. Interesting, frightening, and depressing. The story on Israel’s dispatching of air strikes based on statistical analysis is the single most disturbing article I read last year. Everyone should read this article and decide for yourselves where you stand. Another one is called “When the Arctic Melts”. Even as the shadow of fossil fuel propaganda once again overspreads the land, I am afraid the globe could be approaching an irreversible tipping point into runaway warming and sea level rise. Let’s hope the world can afford another four-year round of U.S. backsliding and then pick up the pieces, but I am not sure.

Most hopeful story: I noted that congestion pricing in New York City could provide a glimmer of hope that transportation in the United States could begin to implement 21st century international best practices. (Yes, I am aware the century is a quarter over already – one more indicator of the U.S. slipping towards the bottom of the world’s more advanced nations.) Unfortunately, as I write this on February 13 we see the President himself actively interfering in this state and local matter. “States’ rights” for thee, not for me (i.e. only when it’s convenient to some disingenuous argument).

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: AI agents – coming soon to a computer near you.

December 2024 in Review

In December I reviewed a number of “best of” posts by others, so this is really a roundup of roundups.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The annual “horizon scan” from the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution lists three key issues having to do with tipping points: “melting sea ice, melting glaciers, and release of seabed carbon stores”.

Most hopeful story: I’m really drawing a blank on this one folks. Since I reviewed a number of book lists posted by others, I just pick one book title that sounds somewhat hopeful: Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from Movements That Won.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Bill Gates recommended The Coming Wave as the best recent book to understand the unfolding and intertwined AI and biotechnology revolution. I also listed the 2024 Nobel prizes, which largely had to do with AI and biotechnology.

November 2024 in Review

November was a bit of a lean month for me folks, but here it is.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Ugh, the U.S. election. I don’t really want to talk or think too much more about it. What’s really frightening to me is the celebration of irrationality. With incompetent, irrational clowns and fools now in charge of everything, any crises or emergencies that arise are not going to be dealt with rationally, competently, or at all. And this is how an emergency can turn into a system failure. Let’s hope we can muddle through four years without a major acute crisis of some kind, but that is hard to do.

Most hopeful story: In a nation of 350 million odd people, there have to be some talented potential leaders for us to choose between in future elections, right? Or is it clowns and fools all the way down? Sorry folks, this is how I feel.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: You can charge moving electric vehicles using charging coils embedded in roads.

October 2024 in Review

Only half way through November – here is an “October in Review” post.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: When it comes to the #1 climate change impact on ordinary people, it’s the food stupid. (Dear reader, I’m not calling you stupid, and I don’t consider myself stupid, but somehow we individually intelligent humans are all managing to be stupid together.) This is the shit that is probably going to hit the fan first while we are shouting stupid slogans like “drill baby drill” (okay, if you are cheering when you hear a politician shout that you might not be stupid, but you are at least uninformed.)

Most hopeful story: AI, at least in theory, should be able to help us manage physical assets like buildings and infrastructure more efficiently. Humans still need to have some up-front vision of what we would like our infrastructure systems to look like in the long term, but then AI should be able to help us make optimal repair-replace-upgrade-abandon decisions that nudge the system toward the vision over time as individual components wear out.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Some explanations proposed for the very high cost of building infrastructure in the U.S. are (1) lack of competition in the construction industry and (2) political fragmentation leading to many relatively small agencies doing many relatively small projects. Some logical solutions then are to encourage the formation of more firms in the U.S., allow foreign firms and foreign workers to compete (hardly consistent with the current political climate!), and consolidate projects into a smaller number of much larger ones where economies of scale can be realized. There is some tension though between scale and competition, because the larger and more complex a project gets, the fewer bidders it will tend to attract who are willing to take the risk.

September 2024 in Review

I was sitting down to do my “October in Review” post and realized I never got around to September. So better late than never. I’m writing this on November 9, 2024 after the U.S. election but I’ll try to give U.S. politics a rest in this post (update: I almost succeeded although I couldn’t resist an interesting point about the U.S. Constitution).

Most frightening and/or depressing story: There is nothing on Earth more frightening than nuclear weapons. China has scrapped its “minimal deterrent” nuclear doctrine in favor of massively scaling up their arsenal to compete with the also ramping up U.S. and Russian arsenals. They do still have an official “no first strike” policy. The U.S. by contrast has an arrogant foreign policy.

Most hopeful story: AI should be able to improve traffic management in cities, although early ideas on this front are not very creative.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Countries around the world update their constitutions about every 20 years on average. They have organized, legal processes for doing this spelled out in the constitutions themselves. The U.S. constitution is considered the world’s most difficult constitution to update and modernize.

August 2024

Obviously, there were plenty of goings-on in the U.S. presidential election campaign in August. I’ve talked about that elsewhere, and everybody else is talking about it, so I’ll give it a rest here.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Human extinction, and our dysfunctional political system’s seeming lack of concern and even active ramping up the risk. We have forgotten how horrible it was last time (and the only time) nuclear weapons were used on cities. Is there any story that could be more frightening and/or depressing to a human?

Most hopeful story: Drugs targeting “GLP-1 receptors” (one brand name is Ozempic) were developed to treat diabetes and obesity, but they may be effective against stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, and drug addiction. They may even be miracle anti-aging drugs. But really, it seems like the simple story is that most of us in the modern world are just eating too much and moving our bodies too little, and these drugs might let us get some of the benefits of healthier lifestyles without actually making the effort. Making the effort, or making the effort while turbo-charging the benefits with drugs, might be the better option. Nonetheless, saving lives is saving lives.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I did some musing about electric vehicles in August. The hype bubble seems to have burst a bit, as they did not explode onto the international commercial scene as some were hoping/predicting. This is partly because public infrastructure has not kept pace with the private sector due to sheer inertia, but I always detect a whiff of the evil oil/car industry propaganda and political capture behind the scenes. Nonetheless, just as I see happening with computer-driven vehicles, the technology and market will continue to develop after the hype bubble bursts. In a way, this almost starts the clock (5-10-20 years?) for when we can expect the actual commercial transition to occur. It will happen gradually, and one day we will just shrug, accept it, assume we knew it was coming all along, and eventually forget it was any other way. And since I seem to have transportation on the brain, here is a bonus link to my article on high speed trains.

July 2024 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Joe Biden’s depressing decline in the international spotlight, and our failed political system that could let such a thing happen. Not much more I can say about it that has not been said. The “election trifecta” – non-partisan, single ballot primaries; ranked-choice general elections; and non-partisan redistricting – is one promising proposal for improving this system.

Most hopeful story: A universal flu vaccine may be close, the same technology might work for other diseases like Covid, HIV, and tuberculosis.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Maybe we could replace congress with AI agents working tirelessly on behalf of us voters. Or maybe we could just have AI agents tirelessly paying attention to what the humans we have elected are doing, and communicating in both directions.