Longer Step: Ideas for Justice and Sustainability

  A suburb in The Netherlands requires that every homeowner grow food on at least half of their property! There are so many reasons why this is brilliant: 1. While a lawn has good uses--cut grass is the best plant for resisting heavy foot traffic, and it's pleasant to sit on. But lawn is a monoculture. Not very good for the environment, especially when we pour gallons of synthetic chemicals into it, which kill beneficial soil organisms. Therefore, anything that replaces some lawn with other plants is good. 2. You save money when you grow your own food. Yes, there are $40 tomatoes, but those gardeners are doing it wrong ;) That $20 semi-dwarf apple tree that you planted with $7 of chicken manure and $5 worth of mulch will turn into $100s of dollars of good fruit. That $3 6-pack of kale will feed you greens, which would cost maybe $50 in the store, for an entire year. 3. You get fresher, riper produce if you grow it yourself. 4. Your food supply is more sustainable if there is a mas...

  My fellow writers in the Speculative Fiction Writers Group are so thoughtful. Right now, many of us are upset, thinking about the news that Harper Collins will start giving its human authors' work product to AI, in order to develop the ability of AI to write its own fiction. There are so many ways to think about this: On the 'pro' side, Th ere are so many examples of tech replacing humans : In farming we have tractors and huge combines now , not rows of serfs . In weaving we have automated looms , not teams of weavers . In the kitchen we have food processors , not six sous chefs . Y et this 'let 's replace writers ' push is so worrying . Is that because we writers want to write and don't want to be replaced ? Should the rule be "use AI only where humans want the AI ? ' In which case , who gets to decide ? I think the main arguments against using AI to write creative fiction is this: A I should be a tool that assists humans , not a replacement fo...

  Several thoughts about 3000 North Korean soldiers headed to Ukraine: a. Countries in a war always seek allied soldiers to help them. The US does it all the time. There is nothing immoral about it (except war itself is immoral of course). b. A retired US general said these are inexperienced N.Korean kids who may know how to goosestep but they will get mowed down in short order by the Ukrainians, the most-experienced, hardest-edged soldiers in the world right now. c. North Korea's entry is spurring S.Korea to give much more aid to Ukraine, and S.Korea's high-tech military arsenal has the best electronics in the world. So it's likely N.Korea's entry will turn out embarrassing for both Russia and N.Korea. Meanwhile, as the war drags on, it will become, in hindsight, a monumental diplomatic and military tragedy for the Biden administration, which gave just enough aid to prevent Ukraine from losing, but not enough for winning, and at some point the steady dying of Ukrainian...