Fire has always been a part of California’s ecology. For millennia indigenous Californians managed ecosystems through controlled burns, but centuries of European & American fire suppression have turned the state’s forests into tinderboxes. Can we recover? . . . .   Read More

With thousands of members from all around the world, from artists and writers to engineers and farmers, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experience to offer. On October 20, 02020, we heard 12 of them in a curated set of short Ignite talks given by Long Now Members. . . .   Read More

Even now, even in shallow waters, the sea continues to surprise us with new wonders . . .   Read More

Once again on the theme of how the technological/cultural pace layer’s accelerating decoupling from the ecological pace layer in which we evolved poses serious risks to the integrity of both the human body and biosphere: When daycare workers in Finland rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth such as dwarf heather . . .   Read More

As someone who spent my childhood moving from epidemic to epidemic with my virologist father and epidemiologist mother, I am surprised at the degree of certainty expressed by both optimists and pessimists regarding their predictions of the COVID-19 epidemic. . .   Read More

Six date-palm trees in Israel have sprouted two millennia after their seeds came into existence. As Sarah Zhang writes for The Atlantic, the collection of seeds recently planted all germinated in ancient archaeological sites and have been radiocarbon dated back to around A.D. 00047. The plants, named Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith, . . .   Read More

Complexity Explained is a new project that distills key aspects of complexity science, also known as complex science systems, into an easy-to-digest, interactive visual explainer. The explainer is also available as a free booklet, downloadable at this link. . .   Read More

In a piece for The New York Times, Dennis Overbye describes the remarkable images of the sun captured by the new Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii. Our closest star, never before seen in such detail, now resembles a “boiling pot of popcorn” thanks to the 158 inches . . .   Read More

In a Long Now talk on dark matter and dark energy, theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan said that “we simultaneously know quite a lot, and not a lot” about the key ingredients of our universe. What we do know is that dark energy makes up about&. . .   Read More

Peter Brannen, writing in The Atlantic, details why a popular claim being made on social media isn’t true—not to downplay the impact of the fires, but to educate audiences on how the various systems of our planet interact   Read More