AesopFan:

It would be an honor!

The ‘tard blogger you mention is Thomas Fuller. I wasn’t a regular at his place. We were unlikely comrades-at-arms at Keith Kloor’s Collide-a-scope blog, where we fought off the truly vicious climate change fanatics.

Kloor had one of the few blogs in the 2000s where climate got debated from both sides. Kloor was a liberal, climate change proponent but he did have an odd acceptance for free speech debate.

Fuller was a standard issue, old-school Democrat and journalist. He didn’t see through much of that, but he wasn’t a new-school Red Guard either. A decent chap.

I believe Stewart Brand comes from a certain amount of money and class. He attended Philips Exeter and later Stanford. He bought into the sixties ethos, he was part of the Kesey acid scene, and he helped create the counterculture, while preserving an ornery contrarianism.

Money is not that big a deal with him. He’s lived on a tugboat in Sausalito for decades, which is fancy enough. He’s devoted himself to Big Think visionary projects, though with age he has slowed.

He’s one of the sixties guys whom I still respect. He remains an environmentalist, but he’s changed his mind about nuclear power and cities. He’s avoided stupid bad character stuff.

Disclaimer: I worked at Whole Earth for several months and I’ve been a stone fan of Whole Earth from the first time I saw the Catalog.

It’s worth picking up an old Catalog if you get the chance or back issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review.

Oddly enough, AesopSpouse said this very thing a couple of days ago!
Maybe you are joint first-prize winners.

Interesting… bet Brand later kicked himself for merely going commercial with a publishing venture and not co-opting the entire system of Western governance and finance to enrich himself Algorewise.

Did reading and commenting at that blog you just linked ever give you any kind of embolism? I know I’d soon blow a fuse. I just took a quick look and the blog owner @#$%tard was suggesting that if USA adopted a Green New Deal it would end up looking like Norway. Does this moron even *know* where Norway gets all its rivers of gold from?

Brand spun off a magazine titled “CoEvolution Quarterly” which had a regular feature titled “Apocalypse Juggernaut Hello,” which almost scarred me for life. However, said Juggernaut kept being postponed until further notice and Brand dropped the feature in favor of voluntary simplicity, mild cultural observations and living the good post-hippie life, while beginning the ascent into the PC Revolution.

Mentions of “Apocalypse Juggernaut Hello” have almost vanished from internet. One of the few is mine from 2015.

https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/climate-commenter-of-the-year-2014/#comment-6447

So, some of my resistance to conservative doomsaying is from being burned by the eco-apocalypticism of my youth and my subsequent discovery that humans are very resilient.

Copped a compulsory enema of Ehrlich and Friends at university.. They were trying to turn us budding Engineers into Unabombers I guess. I never did take to Ehrlich. Also remember thinking with gung ho youthful disdain what a wanker Jacques Ellul was. Today I’m still for burning Ehrlich at the stake but find myself more and more sympathetic to Ellul’s thoughts on Technology.

I’ve got a giant stockpile of not-quite-expired Brazilian Corned Beef dating from 2019 Hong Kong Interesting Times and Early Days Covid prepping, if you’re interested. No guarantees implied or offered as to whether or not the ‘beef’ is CJD-free… Although I seem OK so far… My ataxia is more of the Strangelovian sort.

I did say “unevenly and imperfectly.” That was my Inner Whig speaking.

In the seventies I was an Ehrlichite. I figured if I made it to when the year turned over into the 2000s, I would be looting expired canned goods out of abandoned supermarkets.

So Every Day is a Blessing!

“bits-pruning talk”

Relax… this Lempel-Ziv won’t hurt a bit.

And all the Paul Ehrlich Club of Rome Types have mutated into GloboHomo Climate Changers who are hell-bent on pruning humans to a degree not envisaged even by me.

A Pollack or Ruthenian born in a Steel Town in 1970 America could realistically look forward to a better future. Did he and his offspring get it? Mostly nope. What they got was Fentanyl and Oxy.Contin. It’s sunny uplands for some.. I’ve done OK, so have you and most of those present here. But I wouldn’t call Progress and present trajectory an unqualified success. Not by far. We’ve unconsciously ridden the wave of a bumper crop of sown seed corn.

Cultivate Garden yes. Pangloss no.