Dr

Calamity Theory

What are the implications of how we talk about apocalypse? A new philosophical field has emerged. “Existential risk” studies any real or hypothetical hum...

Making Sense of Chaos

From a pioneer in the field of complexity science and chaos theory, a plan for solving the world’s most pressing problems  “Farmer convincingly argues t...

Substack Data | Chaotic Era

A newsletter about politics, media, and online influence in Democracy’s chaotic era. Written by Kyle Tharp.

Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come

Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come

Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI

From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies--the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the produces foisted upon us

New Nature

Contours of can’t-be-evil futures

The Arc That Rarely Bends

On Revolutionary Optimism and Its Victims

Trust — Utopian conspiracy

A network of utopian conspirators, a sandbox for their creative, technical and critical projects, and a site of experimentation for new ways of learning together.

The Intelligence Curse

This series examines the incoming crisis of human irrelevance and provides a map towards a future where people remain the masters of their destiny.

« Une canicule n’est pas une catastrophe naturelle, mais un événement politique »

Les vagues de chaleur tuent de manière sélective. Elles ne sont pas des catastrophes naturelles mais des événements sociaux et politiques, explique le sociologue américain Eric Klinenberg.

Political Scenarios for Climate Disaster - Dissent Magazine

In the Global North we often act as if our future will be a warmer version of today: liberal capitalism, plus flood insurance, minus coral reefs. That future is a fantasy.

CRISES AVERTED. How A Few Past Societies Found Adaptive Reforms in the Face of Structural-Demographic Crises

Historians and social scientists have long been preoccupied with understanding and documenting periods of crisis. Such emphasis is only growing, and becoming more pressing, as the world continues to face a number of interrelated stressors in the form of irreversible climate change, major ecological shocks and disease outbreaks, eruptions of military violence, economic disruptions and deepening inequalities, political polarization and unrest, the rise of authoritarian and nationalist regimes. Crises in these domains are not new, but have been recurrent features of past societies. Although these periods have typically led to massive loss of life, the failure of critical institutions, and even complete societal collapse, there are instances in the historical record of societies managing to turn the tide of crisis even as violence and social turmoil grow. Here, we focus on four such cases of crises mitigated with structural reforms revealed from our previous historical analyses: early Republican Rome, mid-19th century England and Russia, USA during the the late 20th to early 21st centuries. Utilizing structural demographic theory as a lens to explore these cases, we seek to expose the pressures that built up leading to crisis and the early signs of violent confrontation revealed by these societies, as well as to examine the conditions and key decisions made in the midst of this unrest that allowed these societies to turn the tide and enact significant structural adaptations. Our findings have clear relevance to understanding and navigating similar crises in contemporary societies.

Ayn Rand and the Hippies

Original essays, each of which pulls an artifact from the Whole Earth Index and plumbs its deeper histories, arguing for why it helps us understand our present, and add nuance to the Whole Earth legacy.

Anthropic’s Economist in the Anthropocene

Sometimes Models Collapse

Radical Liberalism, Pragmatism, and Me - Aricie's thoughts