Michelle’s belly button looks more like a doorbell and we’re eight weeks away from parenthood. Naturally, I’ve been thinking a lot about “progress” lately. I’m convinced that spending more time sedentary indoors staring at screens isn’t the key to health and human happiness, no matter how the Silicon Valley salesmen sell it.

With that in mind, here’s this week’s binge-reading:

1. Is Society Really Making Progress?
   Maybe.
2. The World Is On Fire And The Fix Is Embarrassingly Simple
   We can get rid of these heat domes in three easy steps.
3. Why I Do Not Own A Cell Phone
   You don’t need one…

While America strangles its best and brightest with $1.53 trillion in unbankruptable education loans, while Canadian kids shoulder at least $22 billion and rapidly climbing, while British students struggle to pay back $130 billion, students across the rest of Europe are laughing:

• In Germany, higher ed at state institutions is free to all students regardless of nationality. Same in Norway. Same in Iceland.
• University in Poland is free for all EU students. Same in Slovenia.
• Austria gives any EU student two free semesters, then charges a whopping $427 per semester going forward.
• A bachelor’s degree is free in Greece.
• A…

Uber reported a $1.1 billion net loss in Q3 2020.
Pinterest burned $208 million in Q4.
Airbnb lost $696 million for the year.
Snapchat lost $944 million in 2020.

Don’t blame the pandemic.

These companies have been losing money for years:

Airbnb lost $135 million in 2015, $136 million in 2016, $70 million in 2017, $16 million in 2018, and $674 million in 2019, with total cumulative losses since 2008 totaling $2.8 billion.

Take a look at Snapchat’s performance:

Earth has a major problem. While five heat domes kill hundreds of people and billions of aquatic species, while fires rage and old diseases emerge from the Russian tundra, while China and Europe drown and the American west gasps in drought, while food shortages loom and house prices skyrocket, while real inflation soars and corporations extract obscene wealth from people and the planet, while glaciers melt and Earth starts to shut down, we continue to ignore the very thing that caused this problem in the first place.

But we can’t talk about it.

Instead, we endure politicians who shatter any…

If you ever find yourself in Nottingham, England, make your way to a pub called Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem. Built in 1189 as a watering hole for crusaders on their way to slaughter and be slaughtered in the Middle East, the Trip is a magnificent cave-like pub built straight into the rock under Nottingham Castle.

Apparently, it’s where Robin Hood liked to drink. …

Less than one week from today, the federal eviction ban and foreclosure moratorium will expire — and the Biden administration plans to sit back, roll the dice, and see what happens next.

It’s an insane decision when you look at the troubling facts:

• Six million renters face eviction.
• At least one in five households is delinquent.
• 11.4 million renters are behind on payments.
• Unpaid rent might be as high as $52 billion.
• Minorities make up the majority of severely cost-burdened renters.
• The Delta variant is surging.
• 45% of Americans say they won’t get the vaccine. (One institute projects that “80%…

What does real progress look like in the twenty-first century?

It’s not a trick question.

Is it more social media?
More obscene wealth in fewer hands?
More extreme weather and more polluting?
Higher density mega-cities? Wearable smart tech that tracks us 24/7? Hundreds of millions houseless because of hyper-inflated shelter prices?
More oligarch-sponsored politicians promising to fix everything and then immediately ramming through their identity politics agendas?
An economy where we own nothing and battle for the few wage-slave jobs that are left after automation ravages the workplace? …

North America has a lawn fetish. Our lawns cover more than 40 million acres of land. 63,000 square miles. We love our grassy flats. We re-seed them, water them, weed them, pesticide them, mow them, and very occasionally, put a lawn chair on top of them.

We water our lawns with 200 gallons of freshwater per day per person. We apply more pesticide per acre than commercial agriculture, and of the top thirty brands, thirteen are linked to birth defects and twenty-six to liver or kidney damage. Every year, we spill more than 17 million gallons of gas on them…