Jordi Cat

Why insurers worry the world could soon become uninsurable Günther Thallinger, a board member at Allianz, one of the world's biggest insurers, says the climate crisis could make adaptation economically unviable.

"“If this volume just grows even more, we simply have a societal situation that is not bearable anymore because it is just too much risk that is no longer covered,” Thallinger told CNBC..."

whatever politicians pretend to believe about climate, this is what they know

www.cnbc.com/2025/08/08/c...

Where are all these shakedown collections going eventually? Someone should try following that money.

Nuclear Experts Say Mixing AI and Nuclear Weapons Is Inevitable Human judgement remains central to the launch of nuclear weapons. But experts say it’s a matter of when, not if, artificial intelligence will get baked into the world’s most dangerous systems.

www.wired.com/story/nuclea...

Have you read Emmanuel Todd's The Defeat of the West (with an anthropological analysis of so-called American nihilism)?

The EU is a colossus. So why is it cowering before Trump like a mouse? | Alexander Hurst With its woeful trade deal, Europe prostrated itself before the president. We need a leader who will tell him where to shove it, says Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

What Is Truth For? What Is Truth For?; This optimist’s guide to truth contends that truth is the best device we have for coordinating collective decisions and actions, and the concept of truth is a target ideal to striv...

Andy Clark
Hanna DeJaegher
Catarina Dutilh Novaes
N.J. Enfield

Enfield's latest book is What Is Truth For bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/what-i...

What Life Has Taught Me About Uncertainty This focus on the present is one of uncertainty’s unexpected gifts. But it’s not the only benefit that uncertainty can offer.

“Certainty can be dangerous when it blinds us to possibility.” What I’ve learned in the four years since that terrible event. www.templeton.org/news/what-li...

Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality, Nature survey shows First major attempt to chart researchers’ views finds interpretations in conflict.

I spend quite a bit of time on this in #EdgeOfSpaceTime

Even though we know a lot, we actually are unsure about how to explain the nature of reality, which is a marvelous problem to have. ⚛️

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Music listings have all but disappeared over the past decade, leaving many artists—and their fans—in the dark. "We have no idea what we’re missing," Gabriel Kahane writes.
https://theatln.tc/WUfpWTY9

He stood gleefully for the performance, display and power of it.

Not even a filing tax.

Circling the wagons is easier: more new Middle Ages.

Russell's paradox territory?

Your epistemic heroism. We're learning of new risks associated with old trust defaults and automatisms, those easy compromises. Then it becomes a matter of caring enough.

I wish it was true in practice... (and obvs no criticism intended)

Thinking is the easier part.

Such an emblematic epistemic rollercoaster. Whether or not his affiliation matters to the deserved outrage, solidarity and support (levels of "community" pragmatics? We can't support everyone).

How US Universities Became So Vulnerable to Government Threats Military and medical science brought federal funding to American college campuses, but student tuition helped keep it there.

This is why I predict that the post-WW2 model of federally-funded science is dead: even if a future government wants to revive it, universities and other institutions will never again want to put themselves in the position of being vulnerable to Trumpian extortion. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Aiming for regime change in Iran also reframes comparisons, distracting from similarities and normalizing differences of degree.

The old invisibility-visiblity asymmetry of power relations.

More broadly, the control culture relies on an effective, not legal, de facto asymmetry between liability and impunity.

The expanded surveillance framework relies on enforcing masked-unmasked asymmetry.

Same for human health, the economy, etc.

‘If environmental action is supposed to be based on facts and truths about nature, how to communicate and share these in a post-truth context?’
Bram Büscher, The Truth About Nature (2021), p. 3.

And it’s open!

« Beauvoir, Sartre, Giacometti. Vertiges de l’absolu »

An exhibition centered on the intellectual and artistic friendship between Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Alberto Giacometti.

Institut Giacometti, Paris
19 June–12 October 2025

The Hollowness of This Juneteenth The holiday was always an implicit warning that what had been done could be done again.

The purpose of Juneteenth was always a celebration of emancipation. But it was also an implicit warning that what had been done could be done again, Vann R. Newkirk II writes.

New from @lewan.bsky.social et al."Anti-Autocracy Handbook is a call to action, resilience, & collective defence of democracy, truth, & academic freedom in face of mounting authoritarianism. It provides guidance to scholars navigating growing global trend of democratic backsliding & autocratization

new yorker

Always a model of tactical agnotology