Tupaia

I came across this article a few months ago citing evidence of Polynesian contact with South America about a thousand years ago. I began reading about the South Pacific islands and the people who populate them. The settlement of the Polynesian triangle is an accomplishment enormously underrated in human history. It is truly one of the greatest feats our species has performed. 

Sea People by Christina Thompson is an informative read on the subject. It basically chronicles the European interaction with Polynesia. For centuries Europeans could not understand how or accept that people reached these islands in wooden canoes without a writing system or metal tools. No maps, no compasses, no Western navigation techniques. The main conclusion of the story is that the timeline and process of the exploration is pretty much exactly what the Polynesian people had been saying it was all along. 

A Tahitian man named Tupaia embodies the brilliance of Polynesian knowledge. He guided Captain Cook around the region after they met in Tahiti. Tupaia was exceptional, a tahu'a,  meaning "a master, expert, or authority." He was proficient in "cosmology, politics, history, medicine, geography, astronomy, meteorology, and navigation," even picking up painting and cartography despite never touching a pen or paper before meeting Cook. All his expertise was saved and transmitted orally except a few documents he created on the Endeavour, Cook's ship. The man was adventurous and confident enough to join an expedition of recently-met foreigners heading to unknown lands for an unspecified period of time. He's the type of historical figure you wish to share a meal and conversation with. 

Neom

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is building a "city of the future". Dubbed Neom, this $500 billion+ project is central to the Vision 2030 plan to shift the Saudi economy away from fossil fuels, transforming the country into a tech and tourism hub. The national sovereign wealth fund, which recently made headlines for investing in the electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors, is financing the diversification.

The official releases on Neom are epic propaganda. Its youtube page posts inspiring, sensual videos that, at least for a moment, make you want to believe the dream. Among the wonders promised for the new city, planned to be 33x larger than NYC, are an artificial moon, flying cars, and phosphorescent beaches. The sleek public interface of the whole project intends to fill the viewer with awe. The entire concept tries to associate the Kingdom with a clean and exciting future, not with what it actually is, a horrendously oppressive religious autocracy led by a family of oil-rich spoiled brats. 

No elucidation is needed to describe the various repugnances characterizing the Saudi government and its present head, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS). From war crimes to extrajudicial murder to totalitarianism, the House of Saud, backed by American weapons and consultants, continues to be an utter disgrace to humanity. 

Analogous to other Saudi endeavors, Neom is founded on human rights violations. The Neom brochure claims the city is "conceived on a blank slate," an impudent overlooking of the al-Huwaitat tribe that has lived in the desert region for generations. 20,000 people are slated for eviction. Indigenous activists have been threatened, imprisoned, even killed. 

Beyond this despicable land-grab, the details on how Neom will achieve its goals, to revolutionize 16 economic sectors, are exceedingly vague. Rhetorical platitudes like "embracing innovation," "advanced systems," "unprecedented commitment," and "enhancing quality," litter the processions. Success depends on attracting the world's best and brightest, an assumption far from given. The inherent exclusivity goes without saying; Neom is basically a glitzy research park catering to a tiny, elite segment of the global population. Can it really be called a city?

The same logic, build and they shall come, was used for the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh. It is a delayed, expensive failure. This similarity is unsurprising given the involvement of the same consultancies for both developments. I think it's fair to say that Neom, projected to open in 2025, has a high chance of being another colossal letdown for the Kingdom. 

The Saudi royalty is trying to create a future where they retain their feudal grip. Western mercenary consultants sell them gaudy plans as the answer. One can only hope MBS mismanages the public investment money until a breaking point, when this stain of a family recedes from the fore. 

Automating agriculture

The cover story for the September 2020 issue of National Geographic is about robots. The author shows robots already working alongside humans in multiple different sectors. Agriculture is one of those. 

Farming may seem old-fashioned, entrenched, an industry resistant to change, but it has long been a driver of human innovation. The earliest farmers in Mesopotamia, more than 10,000 years ago, began a relentless tradition of progress. Take a look at the sophisticated farm machinery used today. These tech developments are responsible for dropping the percentage of the American labor force engaged in farming from over 70% in 1820 to less than 2% in 2020. Robots are the next step in this heritage. 

On farms right now, robots pick apples and milk cows. The Nat Geo article mentioned that growers are modifying lettuce to make harvesting easier for robots. Drones and data collecting rovers gather statistics to streamline operations. The presence of these machines is increasing at a breakneck pace. 

Regarding the typical concern of job displacement, there is actually a pronounced labor shortage in the U.S. and elsewhere that's forcing farmers to automize faster than in a normal labor scenario. Also, repetitive labor is easily programmable but the common sense adaptability of humans cannot be replaced in the near future. I think robots can help people focus on higher level tasks instead of grunt work. Plus it seems unreasonable to expect tech to slow down for the purpose of saving jobs; it never has before, why would it now. 

High-tech, sustainable agriculture is a promising flagship of our 21st century fight to keep this planet livable. Autonomous farm robots must be a large part of this movement. We imagine robots roaming the shops and streets of Tokyo, driving us to work, serving our meals. We'll see them combing our fields too, interacting not only with us but with the Earth itself. 

The Morality of Economics

I read an article for an EdX class I'm taking called Theo-Humanism. A former theology professor shared the course with me (he's teaching it).

The Secular Religions of Progress describes how economics was initially philosophical. Scholars contemplated how best to organize the marketplace to achieve the highest level of welfare. Through an understanding of humanity, societies, and our relationship with nature, economists believed the most fruitful theory could be enacted. The subject's foundation came from such theological inquires, not mathematical truths. How can we reach an ideal condition on Earth through economic means?

Now, though, economics has a set of assumptions that seem misaligned with essential realities. The basic goal is presumed to be maximum growth in perpetuity in every possible way. Economists aren't moral philosophers who study what is ideal for prosperity, but instead technocrats directing policy and resources towards this one goal, growth. Is this really what we should aim for anymore, especially in industrialized countries? Are the ways we define welfare still accurate?

I think there are rumblings of change in public discourse. Andrew Yang has spoken on this topic, and the Happiness Index has gained traction as a better metric for success than classic economic metrics. Given the problems we face today that have not and probably will not be solved by growth (climate change & environmental degradation, rising rates of Deaths of Despair, racial inequality, populist authoritarian governments, international migration, proxy wars), the need to re-evaluate how we organize the economy appears prudent. Maybe that means returning to the roots of economics itself. 

Holden Caulfield & The Underground Man

While reading The Catcher in the Rye, I realized Holden Caulfield reminds me of the narrator in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, a short novel delving into the psyche of an egomaniacal civil servant in 19th century Russia. 

The two characters have different backgrounds. Their surrounding environments are similarly distinct. Yet they express analogous mental and material qualities; swings from smug narcissism to self-loathing in disturbingly short amounts of time, social alienation, professional/academic failure, vanity, loneliness. They carry overwhelming spite for a society they can neither succeed in nor live without. 

I asked one of my philosophy professors about this relation. For his class I read Notes from Underground. He sent me this paper by Lilian Furst on the topic. It's a really good analysis. She points out the parallels in form as well as content between the two works. Both are first person narratives with a conversational, rambling tone set by an untrustworthy and contradictory speaker. The reader quickly becomes aware that she is being lied to. The perspective she sees is clearly through deluded eyes.  

In Furst's words:

"The Underground Man and Holden Caulfield alike oscillate between solipsism and irony, hope and indifference, the grotesque humour of detachment and the bitterness of lost illusions. The underlying conflict is between the self-esteem that devolves from their proud sense of their own pre-eminence over the average man in intellect and sensitivity on the one hand, and on the other the self-denigration that drives them masochistically to magnify their physical defects and almost gloat over their failures."

Pantanal (fire pt 2)

Wildfires are not limited to the western U.S. At the moment, the Pantanal is burning at a record rate as well. The Pantanal is a massive tropical wetland, the largest in the world. It lies in Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, and is the size of Washington state. Apparently its biodiversity rivals the Amazon rainforest; it has megafauna like jaguars, capybaras, caimans and anacondas, along with the many insects and birds and fish that one would expect in marshes. The flora must be spectacular. 

Seasonal rains flood the area, transforming the ground into swampy grassland. Such a dramatic annual sequence reminds me of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, where a similar flooding event vitalizes the local ecosystem. I wondered how this terrain could catch fire. 

The culprit, from what I understand, is the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). This phenomenon involves the movement of warm and cool water in the Atlantic Ocean, similar to El Nino in the Pacific Ocean. Heated equatorial waters move north, then chilled temperate waters move south. This changes sea surface temperature, which influences rainfall and climate. These cycles are long-term; I've seen estimates ranging from 30 to 80 year cycles, much longer than El Nino or La Nina cycles. We are currently in a warm phase, which is fueling drought in South America by pulling moisture north of the equator (more hurricanes north, more fires south). How climate change impacts this natural variation remains to be seen. 

Another interesting ocean system related to AMO is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Info on that can be found here. These grand complexes, influenced by volcanoes and planetary motion and greenhouse gases and sea ice and salinity and time and many others things we don't even know are connected, invisibly shape the world around us. They are omnipresent, and in some ways omnipotent. 

Prescribed burns (fire pt 1)

Open fire emanates an intense, unexpected warmth. This weekend I ate around a fire twice. Both times, like each time before, my gaze locked on the fluttering light as shimmering heat waves rolled over my body. It's all a chemical reaction, the sensory form of oxygen and carbon and hydrogen atoms interacting, the pure release of energy in physical reality, not really a state of matter or a trappable phase. 

Media outlets are saturated with news of wildfires in the West. While reading this NYT piece, I learned that the southeastern states ("the South") use prescribed burns more than western states even though the wildfire risk is far higher in the West. These controlled fires limit fuel accumulation that, unchecked, help natural fires rage out of control. Research published in 2019 found that 70% of the land burned in the U.S. for this purpose in the last twenty years has been in the South, and this portion is probably underestimated. The author says this practice could be a reason wildfire disasters are fewer in the South compared to the West. 

I was surprised by this. The respective reputation of each region suggests the West would have more effective, scientifically-accurate forest management principles. In the study, the author cites topographical, cultural, climatic, and historic conditions to explain the shortage of prescribed fires in the West. 

The only federal agency to increasingly use prescribed burns is the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a result of greater tribal self-governance. Native Americans used fire to maintain healthy forests across this continent for thousands of years. Scientists have known about fire's importance to ecosystems for at least a decade (I learned about it in 8th grade). Myopic attitudes can be costly. 

Detroit, Michigan

Over labor day weekend I visited Detroit. My friend Gustav implored me to check it out with him for a few hours. I'm glad he did. 

We had lunch at a shawarma place near downtown. It is across from the largest post office I've ever seen, a multistory behemoth. A facade of faded yellow brick and 1950s-style font reading "UNITED STATES POST OFFICE" overlooks the Detroit River. Only a plastered notice on the front door listing revised hours of operation indicated that it was open. I wonder how much mail this location processes compared to when it was built.

The downtown skyscrapers rise from wide empty boulevards. It was a Sunday during COVID, which may explain the lack of human presence, but when compared to Chicago (visited later that evening), I figure this emptiness has deeper roots. The central business hub is clean and shiny and imposing and lush in a manmade way, features encapsulated in the General Motors HQ, a black (or blue?) complex of towers with digital colored bands ringing the top, changing color every few minutes, dwarfing anything across the river in Windsor, Canada. Yet everything is eerily quiet. As if the grand structures live solitary, high in the sky like the tallest of the redwoods. 

Outside the central hub lies the infamous Detroit. Down Woodward Avenue, a broad artery lined with new apartments and old museums touting the industrial progress of civilization, we turned off into a neighborhood. There are blocks of this city that are now grassy field and dense thicket. Many houses are barely upright, roofs caved in and windows boarded up. There is no demand for this land. In the distance loom abandoned factories, the connection between here and there unmissable. I wonder how the city provides services to still-inhabited addresses. Is anyone keeping track? 

Despite intense depopulation and deindustrialization, Detroit is not dead. I saw cool local businesses serving diverse people. Michigan Central Station, ornate and decrepit, is under renovation. The city is just overbuilt. It once housed many more people, and now that underutilized infrastructure exudes a ghostly vibe. Investment has been concentrated downtown to make a statement instead of focusing on solutions to unused space and economic blight. The mismanagement is grimly apparent. 

I left Detroit with hope. I don't think it can ever become what it once was, but there is no need to aim for that. There is a great history and a resilient population still there. Revitalization is happening. I think over time the city can adjust to its reality instead of persistently reaching for the past. That process is one people should see if the chance presents itself. 

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

I don't read much poetry. The genre as a whole intimidates me in a way. Its stylistic distinctiveness almost necessitates guidance and familiarity, which further requires effort and intent. Which is taxing. 
Deaf Republic, however, defies convention. It is a collection of poems with an overarching storyline organized in the form of a play. It has acts and characters and American Sign Language. I'm not really sure what to call it, honestly. But it is powerful. 

Kaminsky, the author, is deaf. He is originally from Ukraine. These two parts of his identity provide foundational context for this work. Deaf Republic is violent, intimate, crushing, inspiring. It chronicles a town's opposition to an unidentified occupying military force. The residents use deafness as a tool of resistance, turning the conventional disability narrative on its head. Puppeteers are the ringleaders of this movement. This likewise is unexpected as puppets and their masters are more often associated with fear and immorality than esteem. 

The townspeople act deaf and use sign to hinder the occupation. But silence is simultaneously shameful because nobody speaks up to protect others from arrest and public execution. Silence is a double-edged sword. I think Kaminsky is showing that how a tool is used can define the tool itself.  

The writing style is poetically objective. This makes it difficult to derive moral lessons from the story because Kaminsky seemingly takes no side. Things happen, horrible and beautiful, and then more things happen. The question arises, was resistance worth it? Did the people make the right decision? Soldiers continually punish innocents without facing many ramifications. They escalate any affront to a deadly level. It's unclear whether the tactic of resistance is actually "successful". But I think this confusion is part of the point. Fighting back requires a complex cost-benefit analysis that varies by person. Many make the calculated decision to not step in, not raise their voice, over and over. Others choose the opposite. There is no winner or right answer, only the struggle to survive. 

Fireflies

 https://ncase.me/fireflies/

My friend Rex sent me this link. The site aptly shows how mathematical nature is. The social behavior of insects, which fundamentally incorporates math (see "Waggle Dance"), is fascinating. I find it difficult to quantify individuality in their societies and even more difficult to categorically compare their organizational models with other types. Such structures are exceedingly complex.

I've seen fireflies only a handful of times. Most recently was in central Kentucky. A grassy field, humid with the Southern summer, sparkled in the dark. We overlooked the scene from a Domino's parking lot while waiting for pizza. The manager there was warmly hospitable in the way you rarely find outside small towns. The only places I've seen fireflies in the U.S. are South Carolina and Kentucky, I believe. I witnessed their shine in the Cocora Valley of Colombia as well, where they live with fluorescent scorpions and nocturnal tree frogs.