• Delusions of sanity — Deconstructing madness in an insane world. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
• Subscriber City. What happens when you need an app to access anything. “How long before different customers are charged different prices for the same goods in physical grocery stores?”
• The death of the festival. “The overarching crisis of our time – more serious than ecological collapse, more serious than economic collapse, more serious than the pandemic – is the polarization and fragmentation of civil society. With coherency, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is.”

• On the efficiency of my scythe.
• Hearts of oak: towards a deep recipe for acorn bread.
• The lost art of traditional bow hunting.
• Female hunters of the early Americas.
• Virgin Hyperloop has invented the world’s crappiest High-Speed Rail.
• Driving the 2021 Cadillac Escalade was one of the most stressful experiences of my life.
• The case against American truck bloat.
• Can we call it a velomobile? 
• The Himalayan invention powered by pine needles.
• Trailbridges may have a far broader impact than once thought.
• Elena Kolesnkova: Voskhod Cooperative. [image above]
• Off-the-grid.

• The art of threading; a conversation with Wrath of Gnon. “Mankind has simply lost the ability to build a decent plaza.”
• How to do nothing. “In a public space, ideally, you are a citizen with agency; in a faux public space, you are either a consumer or a threat to the design of the place.”
• Talkin’ ’bout my (5th) Generation. “The imperative to ensure everyone has the right to communicate and access information, which is laudable, is being supplanted by this new drive to connect the already connected even further through a whole host of new and upgraded technologies.”
• It’s not enough to break up Big Tech. We need to imagine a better alternative“. 99% of technological disruption is there to merely ensure that nothing of substance gets disrupted at all.”

Links via Ran Pieur, Aaron Vansintjan, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Hackernews.

• • How the news took over reality. [The Guardian]
  • How Big Tech Threatens Economic Liberty. [The American Conservative]
  • Apple Cracks Down on Apps That Fight iPhone Addiction. [The New York Times]
  • Technology may be making us unhealthy and miserable – governments must act now. [The Conversation]
  • The Ruin of the Digital Town Square. [The New Atlantis]
  • Smart cities aim to make urban life more efficient – but for citizens’ sake they need to slow down. [The Conversation]
  • City OF Things or City FOR People? [REAL CORP 2019]
  • Drones to deliver incessant buzzing noise, and packages. [The Conversation]
  • Is 5G worth the risks? [Open Futures]
  • Online abuse: teenagers might not report it because they often don’t see it as a problem. [The Conversation]
  • Technology cuts children off from adults, warns expert. [The Guardian]
  • What Will You Say to Your Grandchildren? [Patterns of Meaning]
  • Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal. [briarpatch magazine]
  • Degrowth is utopian, and that’s a good thing. [Uneven Earth]
  • Protect our right to light. [nature] Via Wrath of Gnon.
  • The urban farming ‘revolution’ has a fatal flaw. [Quartz] Via Cynthia Hathaway.

• Venezuela blackout devastates country’s second city as world focuses on Caracas
• As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling
• Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions
• Escaping the Iron Cage of Consumerism [via Aaron Vansintjan]
• How Tech Utopia Fostered Tyranny
• If Stalin Had a Smartphone
• Alone together: how mobile devices have changed family time
• The Urban Home as Fortress [Via Wrath of Gnon]
• Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain
• The racism of technology – and why driverless cars could be the most dangerous example yet

• Why exercise alone won’t save us. “As long as physical activity is divorced from the real work of our lives, we will find reasons for not doing it.”
• The future’s so bright, I gotta wear blinders. “By perpetually refreshing the illusion that progress is just getting under way, gadget worshippers are able to wave away the problems that progress is causing.”
• Machine Politics: The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism.”One of the deepest ironies of our current situation is that the modes of communication that enable today’s authoritarians were first dreamed up to defeat them.”