Gradual Disempowerment

Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from...

This paper examines the systemic risks posed by incremental advancements in artificial intelligence, developing the concept of `gradual disempowerment', in contrast to the abrupt takeover...

Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from...

This paper examines the systemic risks posed by incremental advancements in artificial intelligence, developing the concept of `gradual disempowerment', in contrast to the abrupt takeover...

The Laws of Simplicity / John Maeda

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

« La transition alimentaire est indispensable à la survie de l’espèce humaine »

TRIBUNE. Les pouvoirs publics seuls sont en mesure de favoriser un changement profond et généralisé dans les habitudes des citoyens par la promotion de solutions de remplacement à l’alimentation carnée, relèvent, dans une tribune au « Monde », les philosophes Florence Burgat et Jean-Claude Monod.

« La transition alimentaire est indispensable à la survie de l’espèce humaine »

TRIBUNE. Les pouvoirs publics seuls sont en mesure de favoriser un changement profond et généralisé dans les habitudes des citoyens par la promotion de solutions de remplacement à l’alimentation carnée, relèvent, dans une tribune au « Monde », les philosophes Florence Burgat et Jean-Claude Monod.

Import AI 453: Breaking AI agents; MirrorCode; and ten views on gradual disempowerment

Was fire equivalent to a singularity for people at the time?

Grow like Trees: An Organic Approach to Societal Regrowth

2026 is the year that system breakdown became impossible to deny.  Democratic norms, societal norms, rule of law, the fabric of the social contract tearing as we watch. Or hide, unwilling or unable to face the unravelling. The hopeful among us see opportunity through the dark.  Tentatively or boldly we

Denizen

What are the narratives and paradigms that need to shift to facilitate a transition to a just, regenerative future? How do various mediums such as music, art, and film enable such changes to occur?

Might Unmakes Right

The catastrophic collapse of norms against the use of force.

Democracy, Sovereignty, and the Throne Speech That Wasn’t

We have to go back to go forward. Our power to do that is shrinking.

More and More and More

It has become habitual to think of our relationship with energy as one of transition: with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear and then at some future point all replaced by green sources. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s devastating but unnervingly entertaining book shows what an extraordinary delusion this is. Far from the industrial era passing through a series of transformations, each new phase has in practice remained almost wholly entangled with the previous one. Indeed the very idea of transition turns out to be untrue. The author shares the same acute anxiety about the need for a green transition as the rest of us, but shows how, disastrously, our industrial history has in fact been based on symbiosis, with each major energy source feeding off the others. Using a fascinating array of examples, Fressoz describes how we have gorged on all forms of energy – with whole forests needed to prop up coal mines, coal remaining central to the creation of innumerable new products and oil still central to our lives. The world now burns more wood and coal than ever before. This book reveals an uncomfortable truth: ‘transition’ was originally itself promoted by energy companies, not as a genuine plan, but as a means to put off any meaningful change. More and More and More forces its readers to understand the modern world in all its voracious reality, and the true nature of the challenges heading our way.

A Tale of Two Theories (of Coordination)

Leveraging and Deleveraging Toward Thick Sovereignty

We Do This 'Til We Free Us

New York Times Bestseller “Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.” What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”

A History of Turning Away

What does it mean, truly, to turn away from something?