Endtimes #3
Hello fellow travelers,
2020 started ferociously and managed to stick together possible WWIII scenarios, earthquakes, wildfires and a possible pandemic. We don’t have any sensational reads on these topics but more on the social impact of what’s happening. Some great long reads on inequality, lab grown food and activism. Hope you enjoy these. Please share the subscription link to our newsletter to your friends.
Inequality
The Decade in Which Everything Was Great But Felt Terrible
A decade without a single month of recession, when the United States grew to its wealthiest point ever—and when the middle class shrank, longevity fell, and it became clear that a whole generation was falling behind. The central economic dynamic of the 2010s was that no matter how well the market was doing, no matter how long the expansion lasted, no matter how much the economy grew, families still struggled. It was a decade that strained America’s idea of what economic growth could do, and should do, because it did so little for so many.
Are the 2020s Going to be the Beginning of the End of (an Era of) Human Civilization?
On the one hand, a perpetually declining labour share of income is precisely what Marx predicted long, long ago. But his next prediction didn’t come true — that because of that, the proles would revolt, and seize the economies for themselves. If anything, the opposite has happened. The more that labour’s income share declines, the harder to the right — not to the left — the average prole swings. He votes for his own self-destruction.
Online Cesspool Got You Down? You Can Clean It Up, For a Price - The New York Times
A new “luxury internet” is poised to make the online experience even more unequal than it already is.
Billionaires Want Us to Be Nihilists. Let's Fight Back in the 2020s - VICE
You can see the hideously gorgeous web of commodity production stretching out across the whole surface of Earth and feel yourself caught up in its rituals. The world is cluttered with the monuments to dead and dying Gods.
The long spring and summer inaugurated by the Industrial Age will give way to fall and winter.
Lab grown meat
Meatable, the Dutch startup developing cruelty-free technologies for manufacturing cultured meat, is pivoting to pork production as a swine flu epidemic ravages one quarter of the world’s pork supply — and has raised $10 million in financing to support its new direction.
Memphis Meats Raises $161 Million To Bring Cell-Based Meat To Consumers : The Salt : NPR
Memphis Meats, a Berkeley, Calif.-based startup, says it’s one step closer to bringing cell-based meat to consumers’ mouths.
Quit Your Shit Job and Become.... a Climate Activist! - VICE
Do something good for the planet – like Andrew Medhurst, who quit his lucrative gig in pensions to volunteer for Extinction Rebellion.
Nakate was cropped from a photo with white activists. Now she’s battling for diversity in environmental activism
Amazon Employees Just Staged the Biggest Act of Tech Defiance So Far - VICE
In a video released Monday, dozens of Amazon employees violate company policy by publicly criticizing a new communication policy that clamps down on employee activism.