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On bistability.
When small changes lead to bigger change, it’s tricky to predict what will happen… that’s why climate change is scary.
alcoholism, animal emissions, bistability, Bloomington, carbon emisions, climate change, climate simulation, contribution of animal agriculture to global climate change, eat more vegetables!, expansion of empty space, feedback loops, global warming, how much warming can our planet safely tolerate?, it takes money to make money, lightswitch rave, positive feedback, switch-like behavior, the rich get richer, underwater currents, United Nations conference on climate change, weather
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On Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex.
Turns out it’s still a good idea to talk to your kids.
Amy Schalet, Charis Denison, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, dinosaur princess, Dutch vs. American parents, Girls & Sex, good lovers are good listeners, Haruki Murakami, Meatloaf, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, Peggy Orenstein, performative sexuality, pop porn, pornification, pornography, problems with pop porn, sex ed, sexual education, Sputnik Sweetheart, Zara Whites -
On wasteful medical spending.
Something feels icky about *participating* in the sort of waste that might doom our country…
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On Mark Leyner’s “Gone with the Mind.”
Leyner: “Can a series of completely unrelated, violent, hypersexualized, scatological lines of prose be a kind of writing?” Yes, it seems. His is brilliant, incandescent.
Et Tu Babe, Frank Ocean, Fugitive from a Centrifuge, Gone with the Mind, Jack Handey, Mahabharata, Mark Leyner, measuring artists by their best, My Cousin My Gastroenterologist, Nostalgia Ultra, precise versus clear language, Richard Feynman, Stench of Honolulu, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, where writers work, why Gods expend so much energy seducing humans
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On the shifting sands of family, specifically: whose counts?
*These* heroin users have families? How is that any different from the addicts who came before?
addiction, children, developmental biology, drug trade, drug users have families too, family, Francis Slay, Gangster Warlords, graduate school, heroin, incarceration crisis, Ioan Grillo, Lean In, life without law enforcement, mass incarceration, mouse lemur, opiates, painkillers, racism, rehab instead of prison, treatment instead of prison, unethical hiring practices, violence in St. Louis, War on Drugs, working mothers
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On CRISPR and the future of humanity.
Human embryos were edited to confer HIV resistance: a simple experiment that presages scary things.
assisted reproduction, CRISPR, DNA editing, ethics, Gattaca, genetic control of intelligence, genetic manipulation, genetically-modified organisms, genome, impact factor, in-vitro fertilization, neurodiversity, research ethics, research journal rankings, scientific publishing, tilting the scales of the genetic lottery, Xiangjin Kang
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On Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy.
Just Mercy: an achingly-beautiful account of the arduous pursuit of justice for all.
abuses of power, brain plasticity, Bryan Stevenson, children sentenced to death in prison, civil rights march, death penalty, EJI, Equal Justice Initiative, execution, false conviction, Ferretcraft, heroic human rights worker trading card game, innocents condemned to death, Just Mercy, Lydia Cacho, Midwest Pages to Prisoners, New Life New Leaf, police abuses, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, racial injustice, Slavery Inc, solitary confinement, state-sponsored murder in the United States, the human potential for growth and change, Walter McMillian trial, with liberty and justice for all, wrongful imprisonment
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On Ioan Grillo’s ‘Gangster Warlords.’
At great personal risk, Ioan Grillo documents the horrific violence fueled by U.S. & European drug policy.
cartels, cocaine, courageous journalism, cycles of violence, drug dollars killing fields and the new politics of Latin America, drug use in Silicon Valley, drugs, Gangster Warlords, harms caused by U.S. drug policy, heroin addiction, heroin crisis, horrific violence, incarceration crisis, Ioan Grillo, Knights Templar cartel, legalization, living cheaply, marijuana, mass incarceration, microclimes, murders in Mexico, narcoterrorism, Silicon Valley, vigilante uprising, violence in Latin America, War on Drugs
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On silenced voices.
Today’s mystery is, when is a mystery novel not marketed to readers of mystery novels?
black history, Candravati Ramayana, Dravida Kazhagam, Dravida Kazhagam interpretation of the Ramayana, erasure, free will, history is written by the victors, James Meredith, my own fragmentary education, mystery novel, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Nat Turner, Parul Sehgal, Percival Everett, prejudice, racial protests at elite universities, Ravana worship, Rudolph Fisher, Satan worship, shelving all black authors under African American Studies, silenced texts, silenced voices, The Conjure-Man Dies, The Iliad, the invention of race, University of Mississippi, yale protests
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On bitcoins and privacy.
Bitcoins: either I or other people were suffering from some fundamental misunderstandings.
antibiotic resistance, antibiotics, Bitcoins, black markets, blockchain, Canadian pharmaceuticals, civil liberties, cost of medicine, cost of prescription drugs in the U.S., drugs, economics, freedom of speech, GHB, gun control, healthcare spending in the U.S., how anonymous are bitcoins?, how could the government protect your property rights if they don’t know what you own, how much computer power would it take for someone to steal your bitcoins?, imported pharmaceuticals, John Bohannon, law enforcement, legalized drugs, legalizing drugs, monetary policy, money supply, opiate abuse, ownership, ownership by majority vote, policing, prescription drugs, privacy, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, senseless regulation, Shadow, ShadowCash, speculation, The Silk Road, transaction log, War on Drugs, wealth, what makes a law just
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Frank Brown Cloud 