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.
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Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. “As my dear old grandfather Litvak said, just before they swung the trap. He said, ‘You can’t cheat an honest man, never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump.’” -
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Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Great end to an excellent Cup, though not a fan of determining by penalty kicks. The French played consistently best/great in the tournament, but the Argentinians came on strong the last couple games. Messi
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Subscribe now continued from Democracy I On the development of mass and digital media, Mitchell's view is unfortunately conventional: “When it comes to the availability of knowledge of current political issues and challenges, modern society has an advantage over Athenians. The rise of mass media, and especially digital
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To All, I started this a year ago and want to thank you all for reading and greater thanks to all who have contributed monetarily to help move forward. I'm still skeptical of subscriber based models, but a few have made it work. I'm a great
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Subscribe now Thomas Mitchell's Athens: A History of the World’s First Democracy is a great work of classical history. It ranks with the Italian Ferrero's and the German Mommsen's histories of the Roman republic in quality, breadth, and political insight. Mitchell is a
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Subscribe now This here music, reggae music It's got a spell on me This here music, roots music It's got a hold on me. What can be said about the corruption of the money system at this point? One thing for sure, it's a
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Subscribe now History is sculpted by innumerable small events and the acts of multitudes of people. At certain points, certain times, the whole of history's indomitable force is channeled in a certain direction, a direction few previously predicted. At such times and places, a single event, the very
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Subscribe now I am a son of the proletariat. My father’s occupation on my birth certificate is “machine operator.” For over a quarter of a century, James Costello worked in a non-union factory on the South Side of Chicago until being unceremoniously laid-off. The plant was first operated by
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Subscribe now The 2008 white paper introducing bitcoin, authored supposedly by one Satoshi Nakamoto, amusingly and tragically states, "Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions,
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Subscribe now Winter is coming for the natural gas addicted global North. Now some warned for decades not to trade one fossil fuel addiction for another, doing that was no way to make money, but then whoever made money on shale natural gas, until this criminally stupid war in Europe
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Subscribe now US' politics putrefies in an era of two minority political parties, more accurate to contemporarily label them political brands. Today, in regards to control of Washington, both parties have difficulty gaining majorities. With the presidency, the unfortunate touchstone of today’s established politics, the last eight elections
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Subscribe now Keith Levene died a couple days. He's one of those influential figures who few ever heard of, though greatly appreciated by those who did. He was a magnificent guitarist who put out beautiful sounds in the last days of rock and roll. He founded The Clash