I don't have a Kindle, so I won't be downloading the book. Today, at least, you can download this free book from Amazon.

"Optimal" by J.M. Berger is about living in a world of ubiquitous information freedom in a hyper-networked society. The summary says it is "a unique dystopian vision of a total information society built by Silicon Valley, where today’s trends have become tomorrow’s reality." It's topical, at least.

My overdue #ALittleGoodNews tag leads us instead to a lot of good news. :)

Energy: The headlines include lots of encouraging developments. Both in the USA (in 2023) and in the world (by 2025), renewable energy sources are overtaking coal energy generation. And that trend will continue to improve, thanks to forecasts like USA utility-scale new solar capacity outpacing new fossil fuel plant construction.

Environment: We have proof that farmers devoting 10% of their land to wildlife-friendly planning can lead to improved bird population. The Nature Conservancy uses easements this way to make the environmental practice continue even with private ownership of land tracts. Obviously, they're using a good tactic that can provide meaningful results. A startup company named GaeaStar is developing a 3d-printed clay alternative to disposable food containers, preventing a common daily source of plastic waste. Researchers in Japan have found a "cheap" (gold nanoparticle) catalyst that can convert plastic waste to more useful substances.

Legal (Social and Anti-Capital): Gender bias in academics is improving, and now "tenure-track women are at parity with tenure-track men in three domains (grant funding, journal acceptances, and recommendation letters)", but the details get more nuanced the deeper you look into them. Progress, though, is progress. Librarians are celebrating a lot of creative works entering public domain this year. I maintain that we all do better when we all have access to the sum of human creative endeavors. (I suspect that most claims in favor of creative control boil down to some form of capitalist need.) Also, Time magazine is removing their digital paywall. Even a Fox News poll found that "57% think political attacks on families with transgender children is a major problem". Yes, that Fox News, but their viewers continue to vote for politicians who do it anyway. Colorado becomes the first USA state with a right-to-repair law for farmers. This anti-capitalist move is very welcome, and we should celebrate those farmers for their important victory!

We can turn this ship from its doomed course. Accept that we'll have to do it with the usual malcontents kicking and screaming their opposition. Do the hard work of turning this civilizational construct anyway. I'm convinced that it's possible for us to succeed. :)

The retreat from Scott Adams has begun.

"Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, went on a racist rant this week on his Coffee with Scott Adams online video show, and we will no longer carry his comic strip in The Plain Dealer.
This is not a difficult decision."
- https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/02/we-are-dropping-the-dilbert-comic-strip-because-of-creator-scott-adams-racist-rant-letter-from-the-editor.html

The Daily Beast has links to more details. I'm okay with these consequences. Quick reminder: Scott Adams blocked me on Twitter almost a year ago, thanks to this tweet (archive copy).

It seems a lot of people are coming to the same conclusion. J.K. Rowling, Scott Adams. I wonder which famous creative person will be next to prove that they're not a great example of a human being?

The universe is deliciously complex and offers wonders aplenty, from the small to the large.

The biochemical processes in our bodies are immensely intricate and "look" like robotic machinery in operation.  Those atomic-level structures can be captured only in still images of dead tissue by electron microscope imaging.  This weekend, I happened across a great video that shows both the complexity and the sheer speed of these processes.  It offers what we would see if we could use electron scanning on live cells in motion.  Sure, the video is a scripted animation (and the added sound track is annoying), but this visualization of what we know about biology is still amazing.  The 3-minute marker is where we get to see some of the folding and interaction of complex molecules on a dna strand.  This is what happens in every cell of our body in every moment.



It doesn't feel like any great leap of metaphor to see "life" at both the tiniest scale of unliving molecules and a vastly larger scale.  The Gaia theory continues to gain acceptance, as with a new paper by astrobiologists who offer the idea of planetary-scale intelligence.  It reminds me of the technologically-instantiated personality of our planet in David Brin's sci-fi book, "Earth".  I believe that our planet will get there, if humans don't destroy our ecosystems (and ourselves) first.

It's been a long time since I read a book that made me lose sleep. I stayed up late at night or turned on a light early before dawn to continue reading "The Actual Star" by Monica Byrne. To call it simply a Mayan version of "Cloud Atlas" would be a disservice to both stories. In a sense, this story is simpler, involving only 3 time periods: the years 1012, 2012, and 3012 CE. The narrative cycles through past, present, and future in the same forward sequence repeatedly. Each millennium involves a cave in Belize, a holy site where the neighboring land seems to call for human visitors to walk its surface.

The past brings us a story of Mayan royalty, both horrifying and fascinating. The reality of the early American sports ball game (and world's oldest team sport) is... repulsive, even if you already know its deadly historical significance, as I did. Learning it new from this book will be brutal for some readers.  The author doesn't shy from presenting its reality and psychological justifications, but without making us sympathetic (not exactly) to its instigators and audience. They, too, are part of this story of humanity across time.

The present starts here in Minnesota, then quickly shifts to Belize. We join some of the main characters as part of the local tourist industry focusing on that cave I mentioned. No less vicious or bloody than the earlier time period, perhaps, just a lot more familiar. As someone mentions elsewhere in the story, the gods of Xibalba require human blood, but the gods of capitalism require human time. Either way, you sacrifice a portion of your life.  It is in this period, "The Age of Emergency" around 1945-2129, that the future is born. The glossary at the end of the book explains this age resulted in "mass extinction, catastrophic climate change, and human displacement on a global scale".

The future is the part that kept me hooked. Continuing that same glossary entry, the new age of humanity "was founded in reaction to the Age of Emergency: as the undoing of the conditions that led to it, and as a codification of a postcapitalist, extreme-weather, refugee-led world." And it is fascinating.

1. Sex. As a result of population collapse and the required nomadism of the age, humans bioengineered themselves so that each person was capable of reproduction, rather than just half of the population. All humans have all functional organs needed to breed and raise infants... and they do.
    
2. Brain. Recognizing the cost of information overload in humans, they designed an otracortex. It's a directed brain growth that helps interface with the augmented reality provided by global computer networks. It's also used heavily in training sessions for specialized knowledge, like in Matrix. Somebody needs to know a skill? Absorb a torrent of information, then sleep a few days while the slower brain integrates that information.  It also allows access to the history of any other human via the "documented anarchy" of the time, when all human activity is recorded and accessible... as well as the history of you accessing someone's history.  This is very close to the technological telepathy that I've mentioned many times over the years.
    
3. Skin. Human pelts are now a result of refugee technology ("fugitech") that permits photosynthesis, regeneration, temperature regulation, and so much more that's needed for nomads on a planet made hostile to old-style humans by climate change.

I won't get into the linguistic and social changes that seem a natural part of the post-apocalypse tale. They're too important to the plot of the story and its characters.

Language, though, does make it a bit hard to read some parts of the book.  It includes some Spanish.  I remember barely enough Spanish and Latin to understand a general idea of many sentences, and I resorted to Google Translate to nail down a precise meaning for a particularly important phrase when it appeared. There's also some Kriol mixed in. I had little luck understanding the written text, but when "sounding out" those words with an imagined heavy Jamaican accent, I almost always understood quickly. It's close enough to English for me to get it.

The reviews are excellent, and I gladly add my recommendation to this story. Very worthwhile.