Joe Costello has decades experience in politics, energy, environment, and communications. Traveled and worked across the planet. Long a student of democracy, its demise, possible revitalization.
Newsletter
“The war in Ukraine was avoidable,” the excellent director Werner Herzog correctly states in a recent interview. But then looking back at 75 years of the American National Security State, how many military misadventures they've largely, or in part, been responsible for were necessary? Borrowing the words of
Newsletter
Hey man you shouldn’t do that Don’t you know you’ll stain the carpet The FT has an amusing piece titled “Democrats are too scared of a contested convention.” As a former Democrat, I'm all for an open convention. At this point, it’s the only
Newsletter
Thomas Halliday’s Otherlands is a valuable history book. It's a history of earth stretching back 550 million years composed of chapters of a variety of geologic periods and the life forms existing in each time. It's a book that would be more invaluable as series
Newsletter
It’s sort of amusing. Various segments of the American oligarchy have been all about democracy over the last couple years. Not that any of them could explain what it is, or if they gave any real thought about it, wouldn’t much care for it. Case in point is
Newsletter
Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. Please become a paid subscriber. Here's three similar and important thoughts on democratic organization from three disparate figures across the 19th century. “Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the
Newsletter
It’s interesting how information has now become an industry. I don’t mean in the sense of the various compute technology and communication, but the actual physical storage of information. This physical storage now demands its own massive energy consumption. The FT has a piece on the growing energy
Newsletter
Have you been to the English Deer Park? It’s a large type minstrel ranch This is where C. Wilson wrote Ritual in the Dark Have you been to the English Deer Park? Hey tourist it wasn’t quite like what you thought Not quite like what you thought Subscribe
Newsletter
In Tocqueville's Ancien Regime there’s an excellent chapter titled, “How around the middle of the eighteenth century men of letters became the leading political figures in the country and the consequences of this.” It's a wonderful explanation of the unequaled importance books and their authors
Newsletter
Where there is no vision, the people perish - Proverbs 29:18 Reuters: United States exporters of thermal coal earned more than $5 billion in 2023 as they shipped out more than 32.5 million metric tons of the high-polluting power fuel, data from ship-tracking firm Kpler shows. The thermal
Newsletter
De heathen back dey pon de wall It’s essential to think about AI not as a new technology, but the latest generation of compute technology, more or less beginning with the invention of the transistor 75 years ago. We don’t well understand the impact this technology has had
Newsletter
There’s an excellent piece in The New Yorker on Ukraine - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/ukraines-democracy-in-darkness - remember Ukraine? It should be read by all the people who have supported the war, most especially the Boomers, who after a quarter century had that long ago
Newsletter
Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. Please become a paid subscriber. There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense these days, especially any talk about how the economy works, better to start asking what is the economy. I suppose there’s someone, somewhere, who