Kirk LaPointe, publisher and editor-in-chief:
How might we calculate potential future lives as we calculate actual ones? How do we avoid being “moral slaves” to the future? Journalist Jim Holt, one of the best essayists of our time, examines a new book on the catastrophizing and it’s a great take on whether we should worry as we do. (Requires free account registration.) - The New York Review of Books
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/25/power-catastrophic-thinking-toby-ord-precipice/
Arthur Brooks has been writing a lovely weekly column on happiness for some time now. Here he looks at what kind of love make us happiest. It may not be what you think. – The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/02/falling-in-love-wont-make-you-happy/617989/
Seahawks fans, in my experience, are still shaking their heads at this season’s sorrowful end and wondering how the team can regroup. Much is being written, this being a standout among them. – The Ringer
https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/2/11/22277340/russell-wilson-seattle-seahawks-offense-offseason
Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:
The replacement of a climate-change denier in the White House with a leader pledging to take serious action will accelerate the rise of “climate statecraft” around the world. – Foreign Policy
Wired science editor Matt Reynolds tracks the origins of the U.K. variant of COVID-19, and how people with compromised immune systems provide a breeding ground for dangerous mutations of the virus.
But the real problem, Reynolds says, “isn’t chronic infection – it’s a situation where the pandemic is so out of control that the virus has endless opportunities to mutate into new variants.” – Wired
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chronic-infection-uk-coronavirus-variant
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:
Considering that it annually sucks up more electricity than Argentina, according to a Cambridge University research, is Bitcoin's hoggish power consumption being factored into its overall value to the economy and the environment? – Cambridge University; BBC.com
https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952
And while we are on the subject of economics and the environment, here is more good work from Cambridge University making the case, long overdue, for including nature in corporate and government economics and accounting.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/dasguptareview
Inventive metal-head guitarist puts skeleton of dead uncle to sound use. – Heavy Consequence
https://consequenceofsound.net/2021/02/guy-turned-dead-uncle-skeleton-into-guitar/
Hayley Woodin, reporter:
While many of us are keen to return to a sense of normalcy, yesterday is gone. This new report from Ryerson University’s Brookfield Institute explores the future of Canada’s labour market in a post-COVID context, and the trends that will define work and labour in the years to come. – Brookfield Institute
https://brookfieldinstitute.ca/future-of-work-in-post-covid-canada
Glen Korstrom, reporter:
While it may not be surprising that COVID-19 could be with us for a while, this article sets out how the virus could become endemic, or here to stay – manageable, like rabies, the flu or HIV. There is no guarantee that it will become less virulent, but this would at least be the hope. Living with the virus, however, could mean an eternal change to how humans interact. – Wall Street Journal
