Nucular strategery in particular

The more I investigate the ongoing Gulf War, the more it appears to be a polyconflict, and to echo Tolstoy’s opening line in Anna Karennina: > Every commodity shock is shocking in its own way.

When the metabolic rift leads to a metabolic clash - brief thoughts on an essay by @nilsgilman.bsky.social in FP.

As I keep saying, while we are waiting to be turned into paperclips, pay some attention to the everyday dystopias being unleashed by AI.

I’m not so sanguine about a green global deal emerging from this chaos - EV adoption will definitely increase, but so will coal, especially in India and China, who have a lot of it, even if of low quality.

Republishing an earlier post - 'AI meets war' is a raging topic these days for obvious reasons

Wars are bad for people, but they are bad for everyone else too. As today's link says: "War contaminates the conditions for life itself"

@leaflet.pub posting not working for me right now. Tried multiple browsers. An attempted post from yesterday is still stuck.

There’s an uber-dystopian version of AI where it annihilates us or sucks out our souls while we believe we are in a matrix of plenty. Maybe one of those dystopias will come to pass, but a far more likely dystopia is one that’s coming into being as we speak. Observations on an essay in @noemamag.com

Having come this far, none of the parties to this war wants it to end with what’s been achieved so far, except, perhaps, Trump. I just don’t see ‘Mission Accomplished’ anytime soon and I dread where we could be going willy-nilly.

The Planet is a hyperobject, and we only have access to a minuscule subset of it through our senses. How can art help us grasp the unseen?

Michael Levin is an interesting thinker; a rare Platonist in Biology. This quote from a recent post of his makes me think of biological engineering, but not the kind where we force organisms to do our willing, but rather work with their agential capacity to produce forms that we need

Deep time is a political and civilizational event. A society’s sense of time is inseparable from its sense of order, and what it believes it owes to the future. Our sense of self will be different if we imagine ourselves against the backdrop of deep time.

It's very hard to imagine oneself dead, and its even harder to imagine the absence of everyone like me. But that too shall come to pass...

A quote from Bjornerud's lovely book on Timefulness for today's #DailyPlanet

Much historical analysis is either about 'recorded time,' i.e., history as evidenced in texts and other inscriptions, or about 'end time,' e.g., Edenic beginnings or apocalyptic endings. Neither makes room for Deep Time, the time of biological and geological processes that shape human societies.

@margin.at trying to create an account and cloudflare is repeatedly blocking me :(

We barely remember what happened yesterday, so to expect us to take geological eras into consideration is a bit much. However, our lives are built on deep time (hello fossil fuels!) - how can we extract those fossilized memories and bring them into consciousness?

Interesting!

I've been MIA, but the Daily Planet is back for the year. In 2026, I will focus on "contradictions" - how the human domination of the Earth creates the conditions for its own demise. I will be exploring issues like habitability & development. Looking forward to taking @leaflet.pub out for a spin!

It's been a while since I wrote here, but I have been doing a lot of reading re: Planetarity and having planet shaped thoughts. Here's the first #DailyPlanet post for 2026 - it's a long essay on Planetary Stewarship. I will switch to regular programming next week.

Social media for AIs might (will?) radicalize them at hyperspeed. It took fifteen years from Facebook to Groypergate; AIs will get there in fifteen minutes and keep going....

1/2 Carney's speech is much needed, but very very very far from being original. The Non-Aligned Movement was created by Nehru, Tito, Sukarno, Nkrumah and Nasser for this very reason. Read the Bandung Declaration!

1/n There's a camp of analysts - Cosma Shalizi, Henry Farrell and Alison Gopnik are the most prominent members - who say that AI is a cultural technology. Let's say they're correct. The obvious follow-up question is: > What's the culture of which AI is a cultural technology?

Well, well, well….

Is 2026 the year Embodied Intelligence goes viral? I don't know, but I will be tracking it for sure. Also: this is the last #WeeklyPlanet of the year, and likely the last one for a while since I need to recover from all this daily/weekly posting.

And now for some official propaganda from the Chinese govt - not that we are averse to manufacturing consent ourselves - about how their rise will be good for everyone.

2025 was supposed to be the year of AI agents. I don’t think that prediction came true. Nevertheless, the article linked in today's Daily Planet gives us some insight into how China is thinking about the former.

Humanoid robotics is much more popular in Japan and China than it is here in the US. That plays into the AI rivalry between China and the US. #DailyPlanet

On embodied intelligence and the Chinese approach to AI. #DailyPlanet

While the U.S. chases AGI primarily through Large Language Models, China is diversifying. Instead of betting solely on LLMs, Beijing is investing in multiple, parallel pathways to achieve superhuman intelligence. It's a broad strategy vs. America's focused sprint.#DailyPlanet

@leaflet.pub posting is not working for me, either to Bluesky or quietly. Hasn’t worked all day.

I have known the author since childhood

I wish I had thought of these simple hacks to make America great again

In this last series of #DailyPlanets for the year, I want to talk about China's approach to AI, which concentrates on embodied AI such as robotics, and leans in on China's advantages in manufacturing.

Today’s #WeeklyPlanet is on the Second China Shock - China’s increasing dominance of renewable energy, batteries, EVs etc.

How many ways do I love this thread? Let me count the ways: 1. Scorching take-down of an annoying talking head 🔥 2. Calls out fossil fuel boosterism 🌇 3. By a sitting member of Congress! 🗳️ I wish there were more elected representatives like @seancasten.bsky.social

And to finish off this week, one more article about an industry that is a a) high tech b) in demand (and aspirational) across the world c) China dominates already and will likely do so even more in the future. #DailyPlanet

“I know few things about myself, but I know with absolute certainty that I do not want to be on the side of those who use weapons, money and culture to oppress farmers and shepherds.” - extraordinary essay by Natalia Ginzburg in @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/our...

It's clear that renewables will not lead to a common human goal of addressing climate change; in fact, renewables might be a better hedge against foreign sources of energy than for climate action. China is both a supplier of energy technologies and an adversary worth hedging against. #DailyPlanet

Continuing our #DailyPlanet exploration of China's energy futures, let's acknowledge that coal isn't going way anytime soon. China is the world's largest consumer of coal, burning nearly half of the global total in 2024.

I read some great books and essays in 2025. Here are some of my highlights. I love that Semble makes it so easy to share these reading lists! @cosmik.network semble.so/profile/rang...

I am far from the first person to report on this, but in today's #DailyPlanet I cover China’s dominance in the electric vehicle sector. Which is due to its ability to produce advanced technology at lower prices and its control over critical mineral supply chains essential for battery production.

Still feels like a critically missed opportunity for @leaflet.pub to not interop with Bluesky for comments. For someone who discovered this article via leaflet itself or any medium other than *sky, there’s absolutely no sign of the generative discussion that ensued on-feed, nor its likes/shares. 🧵

Wow. Quite the honor! Thanks!

A rogue United States might lead to greater cooperation between Europe and China on climate change, renewables etc. More in today's #DailyPlanet

This week's China Shock themed Daily Planets will all be on China's centrality to our planetary future, whether it comes in a climate action form or a renewable energy form. #DailyPlanet

China's rise-or more precisely, China's arrival, represents not merely the emergence of another great power, but a fundamental challenge to assumptions long embedded in Western thought about development, governance, and civilizational achievement itself. #WeeklyPlanet

To round out this week's #DailyPlanets on the China Shock, a primer on the man who has the mandate of heaven, Xi Jinping.

Today's #DailyPlanet is a primer on China's AI trajectory. I will cover this theme in greater detail the week after next.