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The Post-Holocene Geology
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1234
Now this is an idea that intrigues me.
Geology, we think of it as "static", the earth is the earth and that's it, rocks, minerals, gems, they're all there, we (almost) know everything, it's just a matter of finding it.
But, imagine, after the Anthropocene, the post-holocene, how in hundreds of millions of years the geology will changed. We've combined minerals and elements in thousands of new and unexpected ways, and as the continents subduct and boil beneath the oceans those combinations will give rise to hundreds, if not thousands of new and unimagined minerals. Skyscrapers of concrete and steel and filled with glass will form pegmatites lined with giant shards of quartz, included with golden and silver phantoms and rutile needles, percolating toxic hydrocarbons and fluids melted from landfills will fill them with new minerals and gems, to be recognized, excavated and mined by creatures as far from our thinking as ours is from the dinosaurs.
Which kind of excites me, as an exercise of the imagination, but for the moment I'll have to content myself with finding those gems already here, which is proving troublesome enough. Only 4 or 5 months until Summer...
Purdue Pharmaceuticals
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1217
Know people that have died as a result of the Opioid Epidemic? Chances are it wasn't Heroin. In fact, chances are the blame could be directly laid at the door of the Purdue Family of Pharmaceuticals.
Addiction is only legal if it's monopolized by Big Pharma:
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/08/the-making-of-an-opioid-epidemic
and: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain
and, with patents about to expire, you extend your lease by creating the competition: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/after-illegally-pushing-oxycontin-super-rich-family-set-up-2nd-opioid-company/
What do you do when tens of thousands of people die yearly to support your Billionaire lifestyle? You patent a cure: https://www.ft.com/content/a3a53ae8-b1e3-11e8-8d14-6f049d06439c
While their being sued, this is the endgame of Capitalism, and money doesn't bring anyone back from the grave.
The Red Hand Files
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1202
"If we love we grieve..."
Nick Cave offers poignant advice to a grieving fan.
Link: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/communication-dream-feeling/
Otherwise, the blog is full of interesting thoughts: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
Forgotten
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1604
And I'm trying to find old music, links, information that I dimly remember from a decade or so before.
An old music video, popular in Prague, Fall of '93. Searching, searching, I can find nothing.
Another, an old piece of music from Paris, bookmarked on a computer that died a long time ago. And a long list of favorite links that died with it.
To watch a home movie, recorded on an old webcam, format not longer supported, or the blistering foil on the CD making it unplayable.
Trying to find these lost souvenirs of my life, lost to time and place and increasingly the failings and shortcomings of the digital age. Lost, lost, the digital afterworld proving to be a an unreliable shifting memory...photos, however bleached, can still be held, records can still be played and film can be restored, but these early years of internet and innovation, they're somehow both dimly remembered and lost forever...
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