Our review of my earliest and least accurate set of predictions about the future of industrial society, published twenty years ago in the first months of my old blog The Archdruid Report, has covered quite a bit of territory at this point, and touched on most of the themes that turned out to be central…
Category: Not the Monthly Post
Economics: The Y2K Fallacy Revisited
Let’s continue looking back at my earliest and least accurate set of predictions about the future, published twenty years ago in the first months of my original blog The Archdruid Report. The ongoing depletion of fossil fuel energy, the shared theme of the last two posts we examined, was the main driver of the changes…
Energy: Predicaments and Prospects Revisited
A few weeks ago, as regular readers will remember, I glanced back twenty years to my earliest and least accurate overview of the future of industrial civilization. My intention was to use that backward look as a way to talk about where we were, where we are, and where we’re headed as our society moves…
Peak Oil: Specter and Substance
It’s been a long time now since peak oil dropped off the radar screens of public consciousness. Mention it these days and the reaction you’ll get from the few people who remember it at all amounts to “Yeah, that’s right, weren’t people scared back in the day that we were going to run out of…
Sex, Politics, and Operation Dildo Blitz
I planned on posting an essay on a different subject today. In fact, I had another essay all written and revised, waiting for whatever fame and fortune a weekly blog post by a writer well out on the cultural fringes can expect these days. That essay is going to be cooling its heels for another…
Companions on the Road: A Retrospective
“This year’s Earth Day in Ashland, Oregon, where I live, featured an interfaith service at the local Unitarian church, and I wasn’t too surprised to get a call inviting me to be one of the presenters.” That was the first sentence in the first blog post I ever posted, and it crept tentatively onto the…
Minutes of the Grand Council of Five of the Bavarian Illuminati, 18th day of Discord, 5975 AM
(see note 1) GRAND MASTER CORNELIUS SCHRECK, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Well, I think we can begin at this point. Brother Sentinel, are we secure? GRAND GUARDIAN HENRY JAMES BALOR, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Grand Master, the doors are sealed, the guards are at their stations, and the interdimensional horrors from the Slime Pits of Blagoonah are sniffing around…
The End of the Bureaucratic Era
For several years now I’ve had readers ask me from time to time about my opinion of the current media and investment frenzy surrounding so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). The first thing I’ve had to explain in each of those cases is that the label is a misnomer; generative large language models, to give these bloated…
On the Education of Desire
As I mentioned a little over a month ago, the competition over which theme would get the fifth Wednesday post in December was almost unparalleled in the enthusiasm it generated and the number of votes the top three themes generated. All three of the themes are worth a post, and I decided well before cognitive…
Evil Makes You Stupid: A Case Study
Yes, as most of my readers are probably aware by now, I’ve relocated. It’s been a little less than two years now since my wife Sara died; it’s been a rough road since then but I’ve dealt with it about as well as I’m ever likely to, and over the holidays just past it became…