Assorted Links

“For at least one scientist advising the project, Neil Davies, executive director of a field station of the University of California, Berkeley, on the neighbouring island of Moorea, the island’s appeal is as a base for research that would “fill the gap between oceanographic-research vessels and coastal marine labs”. Ships are on the water, but they are “phenomenally expensive”, he says, and they don’t stay put. Coastal labs can gather long time-series of data in one place, but don’t provide access to deeper water. Davies dreams about floating “sea stations” that would allow low-cost, long-term access to the ocean for research, especially for students in tropical countries “where natural systems are among the most sensitive to human activities”, he says.”

“We have a history of being taken for fools,” says Pauline Sillinger, a sustainable-development specialist at Te Ora Naho, a federation of environmental groups in French Polynesia, who took a job with Blue Frontiers this year, and also teaches Tahitian dance. “Nuclear testing, big hotels, nice, smiling, white, intelligent people telling us it’ll be good for us.”

…

Time will tell whether the Seasteaders’ island becomes a refuge for Polynesians facing rising seas and an incubator for Polynesian science and business, or merely a playground for wealthy foreigners who want to dodge bothersome regulations. That is, if it materializes at all.

2. America Wasn’t Built for Humans, by Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine

Andrew Sullivan says that the Founders were so focused on individualism that they didn’t account for our tribal nature. Now we see a breakdown into two main tribes (i.e., the bad break up scenario):

I mean two tribes whose mutual incomprehension and loathing can drown out their love of country, each of whom scans current events almost entirely to see if they advance not so much their country’s interests but their own. I mean two tribes where one contains most racial minorities and the other is disproportionately white; where one tribe lives on the coasts and in the cities and the other is scattered across a rural and exurban expanse; where one tribe holds on to traditional faith and the other is increasingly contemptuous of religion altogether; where one is viscerally nationalist and the other’s outlook is increasingly global; where each dominates a major political party; and, most dangerously, where both are growing in intensity as they move further apart. …

The project of American democracy — to live beyond such tribal identities, to construct a society based on the individual, to see ourselves as citizens of a people’s republic, to place religion off-limits, and even in recent years to embrace a multiracial and post-religious society — was always an extremely precarious endeavor. …

There are hip-hop and country-music tribes; bros; nerds; Wasps; Dead Heads and Packers fans; Facebook groups. (Yes, technology upends some tribes and enables new ones.) …

One of the great attractions of tribalism is that you don’t actually have to think very much. …

Who can unify the diverse tribes of America? Apparently, it’s Trump. But not in the way you’d think:

[T]he minute Trump came to power, [Republicans] couldn’t be more enthusiastic about a tax package that could add trillions of dollars to it. No tribe was more federalist when it came to marijuana laws than liberals; and no tribe was less federalist when it came to abortion. Reverse that for conservatives. For the right-tribe, everything is genetic except homosexuality; for the left-tribe, nothing is genetic except homosexuality.

3. Building a Better Anti-Capitalism

Ever the contrarian, Jacob Lyles offers 10 better ways to protest capitalism than the uncreative destruction of the low-quality anti-capitalists, including:

• Learn how to make something that you would normally buy. Knit a sweater, grow some vegetables
• Host an adult sleep-over. Talk, play games, and read stories
• If it’s your thing, become part of a church

Antifa should take note.