Pro-natalism (the idea that people, or rather, women, should have more babies than they choose to do at present) has become an established orthodoxy,[1]. The central claim is that, unless something changes soon, human populations both global and national, are going to decline rapidly, with a lot of negative consequences. This is simply not true, on any plausible assumptions about fertility[2]

There’s no need for me to do any calculations here. For many decades he Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has been producing population projections for the world, and individual countries, under a variety of scenarios. One finding is unambiguous. Short of a drastic decline in fertility, far beyond what we are now seeing there will be more people on Earth at the end of this century than there were at the beginning

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“When diversity, equity and inclusion become ‘threats’ to the order of society,” Judith Butler wrote recently, “progressive politics in general is held responsible for every social ill.” Authoritarians are empowered to oppress vulnerable people in the name of “the nation, the natural order, the family, society or civilization itself”.

The links between sacrificing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and upholding patriarchal white supremacy are clear. This has prompted many to fight harder to preserve DEI.

If only existing DEI wasn’t so crap.

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You may have viewed Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) offering a mock apology for dismissing a constituent’s complaint that the Medicaid cuts she endorses will cause people to die with the flippant remark, “We are all going to die.” She tied her defense of her callousness to Christianity, inviting all who worried about death to convert so they could enjoy eternal life after death. J.D. Vance, too, has defended sharply limited empathy in Christian terms–a theological view for which Pope Francis admonished him. Part of this attack on empathy stems from the resentment of populist voters who feel that empathy is being extended to the wrong people, that they are the ones who deserve empathy, as opposed to various others they despise–immigrants, foreigners, Muslims, blacks, feminists, LGBT people, poor people, etc. Arlie Hochschild, Katherine Cramer, and Justin Gest [link corrected] have written compelling accounts of this. But what does this have to do with Christianity? What happened to “Jesus is love”? 

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A few days ago, I experienced a strange auditive mix-up. My favorite German radio program, Deutschlandfunk, sent a documentary about “platform workers”. Uber, Deliveroo, etc., you might think, but no. This was about workers on oil platforms in Norway: about the oil boom in the North Sea, about the hard work on the oil rigs and as diver, about the many long-term health issues that arouse, and about the long battle for recognition and compensation. The Norwegian parliament has recently set up a compensation scheme for the families of the victims of a particularly egregious neglect of safety standards, which led to the capsizing of a whole platform in 1980, with 123 deaths.

Today, we think of “platform workers” as individuals contracting with online platforms for executing online or offline services, often at lousy pay.

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A generation ago, General Electric’s CEO, Jack Welch (1935 – 2020) was the most admired business manager in the world. And General Electric purportedly the most admired corporation. Among his well-known attributes, Welch “would fire the bottom 10% of his managers, regardless of absolute performance.” And this, alongside his more general fondness for downsizing, was one of the reasons why Welch was known as ‘Neutron Jack.’ (The buildings would remain standing, but empty of workers.)

I had to think of that while reading Vivek Chibber’s (2022) Confronting Capitalism: How the World Works and How to Change it (Verso). I am not the implied audience for it. The book intends to “contribute to the development of the incipient Left.” (p. 2) It understands itself as advancing a “project of renewal” for the “Socialist Left.” (p.4) It does so by using fairly simple language, by being admirably free from jargon, and by keeping scholarly trappings to the bare minimum. There are airport bestsellers aiming to improve leadership that have more endnotes. Chibber is a professor of sociology at NYU, but I bet that the vocabulary of Confronting Capitalism is pitched at high school level. (I mean that as a compliment.)

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Except it’s not happy, of course. The ocean’s ecosystems are going to hell in a hand-cart, while our politicians congratulate themselves for signing up to pledges (like protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030) that they have no realistic plan for achieving. The conclusion that they are simply kicking the can down the road, while basking in a bit of short-term glory, is hard to shake. Meanwhile Trump is trying to jump-start deep sea mining, an industry which companies like BMW and Google have already repudiated, which is wholly unnecessary, and is likely to be immensely destructive to the climate and to marine biodiversity. Meanwhile, in spite of the glaring video evidence provided by Attenborough’s film Ocean, the trawling lobby is still claiming that its activities are not environmentally destructive. So, what should we expect from the UN Ocean conference in Nice this coming week? Anything much, or more hot air?

So a few days ago I posted about newts, and I mentioned that there was an American newt that was ridiculously toxic. But then (I said) there wasn’t space or time to go into why.  And of course I was immediately bombarded by many* comments and e-mails asking why. 

*three

Well, fine.  The world’s most toxic newt is Taricha granulosa, the Rough-Skinned Newt, a modest little amphibian native to the North American Pacific Northwest, west of the Cascades from around Santa Cruz, CA up to the Alaska Panhandle.

It’s so toxic that the poison from a single newt can easily kill several adult humans. You could literally die from licking this newt, just once.

(But note that the newt is toxic, not venomous. It doesn’t bite or sting. You could handle one safely, as long as you washed your hands thoroughly afterwards. Very, very thoroughly.)

Okay, but… why?  Lots of newts are mildly toxic.  Why is this particularly newt so extremely toxic?

Turns out this is a fairly deep rabbit hole!  I’ll try to teal deer it.

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So a few days ago I posted about newts, and I mentioned that there was an American newt that was ridiculously toxic. But then (I said) there wasn’t space or time to go into why.  And of course I was immediately bombarded by many* comments and e-mails asking why. 

*three

Well, fine.  The world’s most toxic newt is Taricha granulosa, the Rough-Skinned Newt, a modest little amphibian native to the North American Pacific Northwest, west of the Cascades from around Santa Cruz, CA up to the Alaska Panhandle.

It’s so toxic that the poison from a single newt can easily kill several adult humans. You could literally die from licking this newt, just once.

(But note that the newt is toxic, not venomous. It doesn’t bite or sting. You could handle one safely, as long as you washed your hands thoroughly afterwards. Very, very thoroughly.)

Okay, but… why?  Lots of newts are mildly toxic.  Why is this particularly newt so extremely toxic?

Turns out this is a fairly deep rabbit hole!  I’ll try to teal deer it.

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But perhaps there was no event, which tended farther to the improvement of the age, than one, which has not been much remarked, the accidental finding of a copy of Justinian’s Pandects, about the year 1130, in the town of Amalfi in Italy.—David Hume History of England, 23.34

The modern university is in a grave crisis in today’s imperial core. During a crisis it is instructive to return to one’s foundation and, thereby, reorient oneself. That foundation is Authentica habita, dating from 1155.[1] It was promulgated by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122 – 1190), also known as Frederick I. This document had legal status throughout the Holy Roman Empire (it is known to us because it was included in new editions of the Justinian Code then recently rediscovered in the West.)

Authentica habita document was elicited by learned lawyers at Bologna. When they did so there was as-of-yet no corporate body organized as a university in Bologna, although we have good reason to believe that the town was already known for “the doctors of law and other masters staying there.” (Koeppler 1939: 593) Universities as corporate bodies with guild-like characteristics developed over a century later from them.[2]

Crucially, the practices made possible by Authentica habita shaped the articles of incorporation of these subsequent institutions. I will, thus, use it anachronistically to help conceptualize the framework for the privileges associated with the university ab initio.

Authentica habita is, in fact, a privilege granted not to a particular institution or even particular individuals, but to scholars as such. In particular, to scholars who have to travel from their homeland to a place of study: “we grant this favor of our piety to all scholars who travel for the sake of their studies, and especially to professors of divine and sacred laws, that both they and their messengers may come to the places where the studies of letters are pursued and dwell there in safety.” [“Omnibus qui causa studiorum peregrinantur scolaribus, et maxime divinarum atque sacrarum legum professoribus hoc nostre pietatis beneficium indulgemus, ut ad loca, in quibus literarum exercentur studia, tam ipsi quam eorum nuntii veniant et habitent in eis securi.”]

Anyone familiar with the contemporary practice of granting and revoking visas for students will immediately recognize the significance of Authentica habita. Not to put too fine a point on it: academic freedom is originally founded on this right for scholars to travel to and from their place of study. While legal scholars are singled out in the document, it secured a kind of cosmopolitan right of hospitality to all would-be-academics (including students).

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Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”. Setting aside the absurdity of “restoring” something that never existed, what does that purport to mean?

Gold Standard Science means science conducted in a manner that is:

(i) reproducible;
(ii) transparent;
(iii) communicative of error and uncertainty;
(iv) collaborative and interdisciplinary;
(v) skeptical of its findings and assumptions;
(vi) structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;
(vii) subject to unbiased peer review;
(viii) accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and
(ix) without conflicts of interest.

It seems like someone in the Trump administration has been following the debate about how the “replication crisis” and reading op-eds in Nature about institutionally mandating the rules of sceince.

Somewhat counterintuitively, however, the “Open Science” reform community that had been publically excoriating science for not doing the things now (provisionally) mandated by the government things is outraged.

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Unemployed, I spent a week in April digging a small pond in our back yard. At the time, it was a distraction. Now it is… actually, a different sort of distraction.

Because although it’s not a very big pond — about 3 meters by 2, maximum depth about 70 cm — it has very quickly and suddenly filled up with life. The first water skater appeared literally on day one. Now there are about a dozen of them. We’ve also picked up water beetles, a couple of aquatic snails, some little swimming shrimp-like things, and several of these guys:



Ichthyosaura alpestris, “fish-lizard of the Alps”, aka the Alpine Newt.

But how did they get there?
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