I like Iain M. Banks and I’m currently re-reading Look to Windward because in Red Plenty it was described it as an example of a 20th century Marxian idyll.

It’s good and all but I’m reading the Culture now as kind of all premised on Prometheanism / fully automated luxury communism.

I’m gonna reread A Wizard of Earthsea (last read as a young teen!) by Ursula K. Le Guin next as in Half-Earth Socialism they describe that as Jennerite, anti-humanisation of nature and that is more my bag lately.

This is a very interesting discussion. The book critiques the UN’s traditional approach of ‘state-building’, i.e. treating what it deems ‘failed states’ as simple machines where you can simply remove the bad part and replace it with a good part and all will be well. The author proposes treating them as complex systems, and ultimately as sites of self-governance, not world-building exercises from the outside.

"There is no such thing as an ungoverned space"

https://newbooksnetwork.com/states-of-disorder-ecosystems-of-governance

Equally fascinating is OSM Landuse Landcover.

Dead interesting to compare urban areas, agriculture and wilderness.

No surprise that near me there is a ton of pasture grazing and crop farming, a bit of urban sprawl, and a depressingly small amount of woodland and forest.

https://osmlanduse.org/

Meat, money and messaging.

first peer-reviewed and systematic analysis of how the meat industry frames the issue.

"The meat industry fosters uncertainty about scientific consensus and casts doubt over the reliability of both researchers and the evidence, a technique that has been employed by the tobacco, fossil fuel and alcohol industries"

"cherry-picking and misrepresentation of evidence was seen"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306919222000173?dgcid=author

I put up a suction-cup birdbox on my window, and after a short period of it going unnoticed I’m now getting a blue tit come visit it constantly. Just this one bird, so the little tinker is getting a hell of a lot of food.
I’m reading Half-Earth Socialism at the moment. An eco-socialist take that goes hard in on rewilding, veganism, renewables, and, intriguingly, global central planning. ("GosplanT" :D)

It’s good stuff.

Plus I think all Verso books should come bundled with a playable online simulation game like this one does…

https://play.half.earth/