Kickoff For July 25, 2022
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Environment
Clean energy is buried at the bottom of abandoned oil wells, wherein we learn about efforts to repurpose old oil and gas wells as cleaner sources of geothermal energy.
Why the Age of Fire Is Over—We Know How to Live Without It, wherein Lloyd Alter explains why we no longer need to burn things like wood or fossil fuels to provide us with power and warmth.
The air conditioning paradox, wherein we explore the problem with cooling ourselves as the world gets warmer, and whether those efforts are making climate change worse.
Technology
Agile and the Long Crisis of Software, wherein we learn how and why the titular software development method came about, and why it might not be the solution that its creators intended (or thought) it to be.
The Internet Is Not as New as You Think, wherein Justin E. H. Smith argues that what we call the internet is just the latest permutation of a complex of behaviours that is part of the core of living things.
Japan once led global tech innovation. How did it fall so behind?, wherein Roland Kelts explores why Japan’s digital ecosystem seems to be a strange hodgepodge of (incomplete) modern tech and systems from the early 2000s.
Business and Economics
The Smash-and-Grab Economy, wherein we learn how private equity firms have, and continue to, harm the economy and with that the lives of ordinary people.
How Much Is the Ocean Worth?, wherein we learn how an economist and a psychologist are trying to translate the value of living whales and entire ecosystems into dollars and cents as a way to incentivize their protection.
Castles & Capitalists, wherein we learn how the creators of Dungeons & and Dragons not only had to deal with backlash from the religious right but also had to fight each other for a share in the profits that their creation generated.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.