Drill Baby Drill

Oil boom in Argentina. More drilling being proposed for the North Sea. All the big tech corporations walking away from their emission goals. In my novel Oblivions Cross there is a scene where protesters drag a guillotine to the headquarters of the evil fossil fuel inve4stment corporation. Today I saw this headline in the WAPO: Guillotine parked next to the Supreme Court leads to arrest Good on em! There is lots of concern about social media induced "brain rot", especially among youth. An opinion piece in todays Times argues that kids understand perfectly well what is being done to their minds by idiotic content yet prefer it to more covertly manipulative content: "when simulation admits it is simulation, it becomes more trustworthy than content that pretends to be real." This post-post modern affect is what explains Trump's appeal. In a totally corrupt, transactional system, the clown who proudly announces he is a fraud gains trust. Yes it is all Spectacle, and I'm here to entertain. It's all you can expect at this stage of late capitalism. Something like this occurred in the inter-war period in Europe with the art/culture movemnent called Dada. Part nihilism, part burlesque. Interestingly, it was Thoreau who coined the term in his book Walden as he observed the pop culture of his time. The Times article insisted it wasn't that youth were getting stupider but in fact there are some metrics pointing in that direction: " the share of American teenagers who failed to reach even a basic level of proficiency in reading and math, considered the minimum needed to read a utility bill, for example, has risen over the last decade." Asian students, on the other hand, ace these tests. This would be worrying if there wasn't already so much to worry about. For instance, the level of water in Colorado River reservoirs? Super El Nino? Shipping through the Bering Sea? AI bots hacking my bank account?