reading: termination shock termination shock author: neal stephenson ISBN: 0063028050 personal rating: 4/5 misc. notes i burned through this about as quickly as a grown-ass man with other responsibilities is able to. it’s a pretty solid and fun stephenson ride. as far as fiction goes, i enjoyed it immensely. there’s quite a bit to dig into. but frustratingly, for me, it falls a bit short on the range of impacts and options out there....

we are bellingcat author: eliot higgins ISBN: 978-1526615756 overview higgins provides a nice and reasonably chronological account of what led to the creation of bellingcat. from his days lurking on the guardian and various message boards while working a standard office job to the creation of his brown moses blog and eventually the creation of the bellingcat project. notable escapades/investigations include: detailing the acquisition of expertise in identifying war crimes during the civil war in syria as well as chemical attacks on the part of the assad regime....

given the density of the news surrounding the IPCC report and the dire implications of a report that leaves little/nothing to question as to the state of things this nugget from NNT, et al was a wry bit of commentary. We have only one planet. This fact radically constrains the kinds of risks that are appropriate to take at a large scale. Even a risk with a very low probability becomes unacceptable when it affects all of us – there is no reversing mistakes of that magnitude....

some personally interesting elements from this NY review of books essay by jelani cobb. “In 2019 Minneapolis ranked, according to US News & World Report, among the best places in the US to live, but it was also among the cities with the worst socioeconomic disparities between black and white residents, with a $47,000 gap separating the median household income of the two groups—shocking even for the United States. Seventy-six percent of whites in the area owned their homes; only a quarter of blacks did....