Making a Better World

There has been a lot going on in the world. Today, I made a statement about it on Bluesky. I'm going to copy the thread below as a series of paragraphs. 

Much of what's going on is based on selling people a huge lie: that they can only do better if other people do worse. This is not true. We do better when others do better as well. We have strong scientific evidence of this, moral evidence, and trivial evidence, every time someone shares a cat photo.

Zero sum is a lie. Yes, the second law of thermodynamics states that energy can never be created or destroyed, but we live on a planet where the sun pours energy onto us and we will do so for another 3 billion years. That's plenty of time to play positive sum games.

The sum total of human knowledge has gone up, and there is no proportional cost to this.

More people are more prosperous now than there have ever been before. More people live longer than they ever have before.

We have amazing inventions. Not too long ago, I saw Hank Green saying that the meaning of life was to become more complex. It took me a while to understand, but this is truth: life is becoming more advanced and more interesting. That's two more places where zero sum is a lie.

In economics, the more people produce, the more there is to go around. When someone tries to tell you that other people's work is stealing yours, they are very likely aiming your attention away from themselves so they can grab more than their fair share while you look in a different direction.

We have distribution problems, not production problems. There is enough to go around, and we still need to create systems that assure that everyone has what they need. Capitalism and Democracy have been the best systems we have found so far. Like life, systems can evolve to something better.

I'm feeling spicy today, and the best thing we can do is keep making things better. We can include people of other colors and sexualities. We can include animals, the atmosphere, and the ecosystem. Don't insult us by claiming we can only have wealth at the cost of people and planet.

We are more capable and magnificent than that. Our enemies are those who push divisiveness and hatred, who distract and steal, and who sell the lie that this is a zero sum world. We can make a better world, and it will be inclusive.

Cookbooks

I have 154 cookbooks in my Kindle. I have fully read 41 of them. 

What's the appeal? Why do I keep buying them and why do I finish relatively few of them? 

A quick calculation suggests there are enough recipes in 154 cookbooks that if I ate one per meal, it would take me fourteen years to try them all. So I'm not reading the cookbooks planning to eat everything within them. Sometimes I'd like to! The interesting flavors I could try, the sensations—even if bad!—of smelling the dishes, seeing them, tasting them, all sound like a wonderful adventure. I'd learn so much about food, the ways different people prepare it, and the ways ingredients combine. Sometimes the variations between recipes are small. Could I taste that? Which one would be best? 

To some degree, I can imagine the finished offerings, in a pale, uncertain, weak form through the semi-immersive virtual reality that is my mind. I do experience the recipes to some degree by reading them. That is one of the appeals of reading a cookbook. 

Sometimes, the authors write engagingly, about how they came to create the recipe, or the time they first encountered it, or even jokes about the ingredients. Then, I enjoy cookbooks for the story or the writing. Isa Chandra Moskovitz comes to mind. I like her voice. I've finished all her cookbooks, too. 

When I first had my Kindle, I could only put one bookmark per book. When I placed a second one, the first one would disappear. It took me all too long to notice that multiple bookmarks had begun working. Some of the earlier cookbooks are paused because I read a recipe I really wanted to try and didn't want to turn the page and lose track of it. 

Mostly, I have more appetite than time. I want to eat many things and read many things. I still feel the zing from whoever said, "Sometimes I believe when I buy a book I am also buying the time to read it." How lovely that would be! 

154 cookbooks seems like a lot—and I have more that are on my shelves. I'm glad the number surprised me into taking stock of my collecting ways, and thinking about what I'm doing with them.

Honestly, though, the next time I see one that looks fresh, interesting, tasty, and a good match to what I like to eat—especially if it's a Kindle bargain—I'll buy it. 

So, the action item here is to bookmark those pages with recipes I want to try and finish the books. A cookbook that looks like it covers territory I already know doesn't interest me as much. Read the ones I have, and I might not look as much like I have a cookbook buying problem. 

Sorted!