In the not-too-distant future, there will be only one theme for our art to speak of. The changes brought about by the abrupt transfer of carbon and methane from their subterranean holds into the delicate tissue of the Earth atmosphere, coupled with the mass-scale, terrifying habitat destruction & species reduction…

It’s interesting — and tragic — that the writers of the US Constitution rejected the divine right of kings, but not the opulence, excess, exploitation, extreme greed, dizzying hierarchy & mentality of war and conquest that the European monarchies and landed aristocracies had pursued previous to capitalism. The founders merely…

When Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history of history in 1989, he was wrong in two ways. 1) That authoritarian forms of government were in retreat. They are not. 2) That capitalism was the economic apex and the endpoint of human social organization. Also false. The results of relating…

The gun really is a wretched piece of technology. Does that sound heretical? Allow me to explain. Human beings are quite temperamental creatures — we can go from ecstatic to desperate, from calm to rageful in a matter of seconds. Things as simple as a lack of food or sleep…

Forget about any confusing lip service given to “Christianity,” the founding tenet of American theology is the following: Everything — children, grandparents, trees, animals, insects, rivers, mountains, community, mental health, human souls, entire cultures, EVEN ENTIRE GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS LIKE THE PRESENT HOLOCENE — can & should be sacrificed on the…

It is grimly, tragically comic to observe China, the US & Russia posture and/or act violently as they declare themselves the new (China), the continuing (US) or returning global colossus (Russia), precisely as the catastrophic consequences of unchecked carbon emissions reveal themselves and threaten to extinguish much life on Earth…

Google engineer Blake Lemoine recently published a Medium piece entitled “Is LaMDA Sentient ?— An Interview.” In it, he and a colleague “interview” a Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) on which Lemoine has been working. Google suspended Lemoine recently, partially for his claiming this chatbot, “… had become sentient…

When the Arab Spring blossomed in the early 2010s, the Western Left found itself at a crossroads: We could support — through our writing, art, advocacy, activism, fundraising and, perhaps most importantly, by educating ourselves on the history of the countries in revolt and by establishing connections and seeking to…