Category Archives: Month in Review

July 2020 in Review

Coronavirus certainly continues to be the main thing going on in current events globally. I just don’t have a lot of new or insightful things to say about it. Here’s some other stuff I read and thought about in July. WITH THE STUPID WORDPRESS BLOCK EDITOR, I CAN’T SEEM TO PUT A SPACE BETWEEN THESE PARAGRAPHS NO MATTER WHAT I DO. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Here’s the elevator pitch for why even the most hardened skeptic should care about climate change. We are on a path to (1) lose both polar ice caps, (2) lose the Amazon rain forest, (3) lose our productive farmland, and (4) lose our coastal population centers. If all this comes to pass it will lead to mass starvation, mass refugee flows, and possibly warfare. Unlike even major crises like wars and pandemics, by the time it is obvious to everyone that something needs to be done, there will be very little that can be done.
Most hopeful story:
  • In the U.S. every week since schools and businesses shut down in March, about 85 children lived who would otherwise have died. Most of these would have died in and around motor vehicles.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • The world seems to be experiencing a major drop in the fertility rate. This will lead to a decrease in the rate of population growth, changes to the size of the work force relative to the population, and eventually a decrease in the population itself.

June 2020 in Review

In current events, the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. is spinning out of control as I write this in early July. I made a list of trackers and simulation tools that I have looked at. Asian countries, even developing countries, pretty much have it under control, Europe is getting it under control, and the U.S. and a few other countries are melting down. Some voices are very pessimistic on the U.S. economy’s chances to come back. So of course I’m thinking about that, but I don’t have all that many novel or brilliant ideas on it so I’m choosing to write about other things below. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • The UN just seems to be declining into irrelevancy. I have a few ideas: (1) Add Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, and Indonesia to the Security Council, (2) transform part of the UN into something like a corporate risk management board, but focused on the issues that cause the most suffering and existential risk globally, and (3) have the General Assembly focus on writing model legislation that can be debated and adopted by national legislatures around the world.
Most hopeful story:
  • Like many people, I was terrified that the massive street demonstrations that broke out in June would repeat the tragedy of the 1918 Philadelphia war bond parade, which accelerated the spread of the flu pandemic that year. Not only does it appear that was not the case, it is now a source of great hope that Covid-19 just does not spread that easily outdoors. I hope the protests lead to some meaningful progress for our country. Meaningful progress to me would mean an end to the “war on drugs”, which I believe is the immediate root cause of much of the violence at issue in these protests, and working on the “long-term project of providing cradle-to-grave (at least cradle-to-retirement) childcare, education, and job training to people so they have the ability to earn a living, and providing generous unemployment and disability benefits to all citizens if they can’t earn a living through no fault of their own.”
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • Here’s a recipe for planting soil using reclaimed urban construction waste: 20% “excavated deep horizons” (in layman’s terms, I think this is just dirt from construction sites), 70% crushed concrete, and 10% compost

May 2020 in Review

You can’t say that 2020 has not been interesting so far. The Covid-19 saga continued throughout May. I certainly continued to think about it, including a fun quote from The Stand, but my mind began turning to other topics.

 

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Potential for long-term drought in some important food-producing regions around the globe should be ringing alarm bells. It’s a good thing that our political leaders’ crisis management skills have been tested by shorter-term, more obvious crises and they have passed with flying colors…doh!

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • There are unidentified flying objects out there. They may or may not be aliens, that has not been identified. But they are objects, they are flying, and they are unidentified.

April 2020 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • The coronavirus thing just continued to grind on and on, and I say that with all due respect to anyone reading this who has suffered serious health or financial consequences, or even lost someone they care about. After saying I was done posting coronavirus tracking and simulation tools, I continued to post them throughout the month – for example here, here, here, here, and here. After reflecting on all this, what I find most frightening and depressing is that if the U.S. government wasn’t ready for this crisis, and isn’t able to competently manage this crisis, it is not ready for the next crisis or series of crises, which could be worse. It could be any number of things, including another plague, but what I find myself fixating on is a serious food crisis. I find myself thinking back to past crises – We got through two world wars, then managed to avoid getting into a nuclear war to end all wars, then worked hard to secure the loose nuclear weapons floating around. We got past acid rain and closed the ozone hole (at least for awhile). Then I find myself thinking back to Hurricane Katrina – a major regional crisis we knew was coming for decades, and it turned out no government at any level was prepared or able to competently manage the crisis. The unthinkable became thinkable. Then the titans of American finance broke the global financial system. Now we have a much bigger crisis in terms of geography and number of people affected all over the world. The crises may keep escalating, and our competence has clearly suffered a decline. Are we going to learn anything?

Most hopeful story:

  • Well, my posts were 100% doom and gloom this month, possibly for the first time ever! Just to find something positive to be thankful for, it’s been kind of nice being home and watching my garden grow this spring.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • There’s a comet that might be bright enough to see with the naked eye from North America this month.

March 2020 in Review

To state the obvious, March 2020 was all about the coronavirus. At the beginning of the month, we here in the U.S. watched with horror as it spread through Europe. We were hearing about a few cases in Seattle and California, and stories about people flying back from Italy and entering the greater New York area and other U.S. cities without medical screening. It was horrible, but still something happening mostly to other people far away on TV. In the middle of the month, schools and offices started to close. By the end of the month, it was a full blown crisis overwhelming hospitals in New York and New Jersey and starting to ramp up in other U.S. cities. It’s a little hard to follow my usual format this month but I’ll try. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Hmm…could it be…THE CORONAVIRUS??? The way the CDC dropped the ball on testing and tracking, after preparing for this for years, might be the single most maddening thing of all. There are big mistakes, there are enormously unfathomable mistakes, and then there are mistakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people (at least) and cost tens of trillions of dollars. I got over-excited about Coronavirus dashboards and simulations towards the beginning of month, and kind of tired of looking at them by the end of the month.
Most hopeful story:
  • Some diabetics are hacking their own insulin pumps. Okay, I don’t know if this is a good thing. But if medical device companies are not meeting their patient/customers’ needs, and some of those customers are savvy enough to write software that meets their needs, maybe the medical device companies could learn something.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • I studied up a little on the emergency powers available to local, state, and the U.S. federal government in a health crisis. Local jurisdictions are generally subordinate to the state, and that is more or less the way it has played out in Pennsylvania. For the most part, the state governor made the policy decisions and Philadelphia added a few details and implemented them. The article I read said that states could choose to put their personnel under CDC direction, but that hasn’t happened. In fact, the CDC seems somewhat absent in all this other than as a provider of public service announcements. The federal government officials we see on TV are from the “Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases”, which most people never heard of, and to a certain extent the surgeon general. I suppose my expectations on this were created mostly by Hollywood, and if this were a movie the CDC would be swooping in with white suits and saving us, or possibly incinerating the few to save the many. If this were a movie, the coronavirus would also be mutating into a fog that would seep into my living room and turn me inside out, so at least there’s that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4chSOb3bY6Y

February 2020 in Review

Ah, the innocent days of February 2020! (I’m writing this on March 14.) Just two weeks ago, the coronovirus shit hadn’t yet hit the fan in the U.S. (the Pennsylvania governor just ordered schools closed statewide, I have been strongly encouraged, though not coerced, to work from home, the governor has implemented not-strictly-enforced movement restrictions in several neighboring counties and mine could be next, and the closure of all businesses except grocery stores, drug stores and gas stations appears to be next – and yes, this appears to include bars and liquor stores. Luckily, Pennsylvania just recently lifted Prohibition and started allowing some grocery stores to sell beer and wine.) Anyway, coronavirus is about the only thing on anyone’s mind at the moment, even considering we are in an election year (Bernie Sanders looked like a front-runner two weeks ago!) But let’s rewind the clock two weeks and see what was on my mind in more normal times.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Corporate jargon really is funny. I still don’t know what “dropping a pin” in something means, but I think it might be like sticking a fork in it.



January 2020 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Open cyberwarfare became a thing in the 2010s. We read the individual headlines but didn’t connect the dots. When you do connect the dots, it’s a little shocking what’s going on.
Most hopeful story:
  • Democratic socialism actually does produce a high quality of life for citizens in many parts of the world. Meanwhile, the hard evidence shows that the United States is slipping behind its peer group in many measures of economic vibrancy and quality of life. The response of our leaders is to tell us we are great again because that is what we want to hear, but not do anything that would help us to actually be great again or even keep up with the middle of the pack. This is in the hopeful category because solutions exist and we can choose to pursue them.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

December 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

Most hopeful story:

  • Deep inside me is a little boy who still likes bugs, and I spotted some cool bugs in my 2019 garden, including endangered Monarch butterflies. So at least I made that small difference for biodiversity in a small urban garden, and others can do the same.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Estonia is supposedly the most digitally advanced country in the world. Finland has posted a free AI literacy course.

November 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • The Darling, a major river system in Australia, has essentially dried up.
Most hopeful story: Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

October 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • A third of all of North America’s birds may have disappeared since the 1970s. (Truth be told, it was hard to pick a single most depressing story line in a month when I covered propaganda, pandemic, new class divisions created by genetic engineering, and nuclear war. But while those are scary risks for the near future, it appears the world is right in the middle of an ongoing and obvious ecological collapse, and not talking much about it.)

Most hopeful story:

  • I’ll go with hard shell tacos. They are one of the good things in this life, whether they are authentic Mexican food or “trailer park cuisine” as I tagged the story!  

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • A list of “jobs of the future” includes algorithms, automation, and AI; customer experience; environmental; fitness and wellness; health care; legal and financial services; transportation; and work culture. I’ll oversimplify this list as computer scientist, engineer, doctor, lawyer, banker, which don’t sound all that different than the jobs of the past. But it occurs to me that these are jobs where the actual tools people are using and day-to-day work tasks evolve with the times, even if the intended outcomes are basically the same. What might be new is that even in these jobs, you need to make an effort to keep learning every day throughout your career and life if you want to keep up.

There will still be openings for evil HR cats.