Arthur Van Siclen
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arthurvansiclen.com
Arthur Van Siclen
@arthurvansiclen.com
Rock climbing, nature, meditation 🌲
“A growing ecological movement sees the solution in bioregionalism: the idea of reorganizing social and economic life around the natural boundaries of the ecosystems that host and sustain us.”

By @dougbierend.bsky.social for @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/inside-the-p...
Inside Bioregionalism’s Tech-Driven Revival | NOEMA
As the climate crisis deepens, an old green dream is returning — with new tools and technologies.
www.noemamag.com
December 6, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Autumn 2025. Village-to-village walks, lake views, risotto, vino, boulders.
December 4, 2025 at 10:41 AM
We are always at square zero.
November 18, 2025 at 5:40 PM
“But letting go and—crucially—reengaging with new goals, was found to restore purpose and well-being.”

Hugh Riddell, in a story by Molly Glick for @nautil.us

nautil.us/the-surprisi...
The Surprising Benefits of Giving Up
The Surprising Benefits of Giving Up: Ditching or adjusting goals in the face of adversity might often be the best thing for us.
nautil.us
November 18, 2025 at 5:39 PM
"The sun delivers more energy to Earth every five days than all known fossil fuel reserves combined. As we shift from using fossilised sunlight to real-time solar power, the challenge is no longer energy capture, but energy storage."

ember-energy.org/latest-insig...
Silos for Sunshine: we've mastered harvesting the sun, but storage is the gamechanger | Ember
The shift to renewables represents an agricultural revolution for energy, moving from searching and extracting scarce fuels to harvesting abundant sunlight in place.
ember-energy.org
November 17, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Pragmatic essay by drug historian David Herzberg for @nytimes.com (gift link below)

“Prohibition has actively made drugs more dangerous. This was not a grand drama of good and evil, but a predictable result of bad policy.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/o...
Opinion | I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way.
www.nytimes.com
November 15, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
Minimal's upcoming release prominently features Apple Intelligence's Writing Tools. Preview the powerful new feature on our TestFlight and watch for Minimal 1.22 on the Mac App Store and iOS App Store 🖤

blog.minimal.app/ai-writing-t...
Writing Tools + Apple Intelligence
At Minimal we deliberately took our time to decide how we would integrate with Generative AI. There is a lot of hype, and we wanted to let the dust settle before building Large Language Models (LLMs) ...
blog.minimal.app
November 15, 2025 at 2:59 PM
“The social function of criticism is too valuable to lose… the three-way relationship between artists, critics, and audiences must be carefully restored, if we want the 21st century to produce meaningful artistic innovations.”

Celine Nguyen, @asteriskmag.bsky.social

asteriskmag.com/issues/12-bo...
Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?—Asterisk
The decline of criticism might explain the sense that our culture is stagnating. How can we bring it back?
asteriskmag.com
November 14, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Are any economists stepping up and implementing the new analytical method for our changing world? I’d love to tune in.

This essay is a great first step, and as the author notes, “A new approach is needed.”

By @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social for @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/the-critical...
The Urgent Need For Revolutionizing Economic Statistics | NOEMA
Donald Trump’s abandonment of honest economic statistics highlights what’s been true for a while: The way we measure economic activity has long been inadequate for modern political challenges.
www.noemamag.com
November 13, 2025 at 4:53 PM
“We have reached the apotheosis of the colonial age, a time when extractive institutions and administrative reach have been so perfected that they now span the globe.“

Impeccable read by @henrywismayer.bsky.social featuring @lukekemp.bsky.social for @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/humanitys-en...
Humanity’s Endgame | NOEMA
A new history of societal collapse by an expert in existential risk argues that our globalized society is edging toward the precipice.
www.noemamag.com
November 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
“The same principles that allow us to hunt for alien Earths also allow us to comprehend the biosphere as a planetary phenomenon.”

An essay of epic proportions by @miquai.bsky.social for @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/what-searchi...
What Searching For Aliens Reveals About Ourselves | NOEMA
Looking for life beyond Earth changes the way we perceive life right here at home.
www.noemamag.com
October 31, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
60 – 30 – 10 – A technique for focusing and optimally allocating effort.

Read now on the blog (2-min).

blog.minimal.app/60-30-10/
60 – 30 – 10
A technique for focusing and optimally allocating effort. The 60 Choose the single-most important goal in life and dedicate 60% of effort to accomplishing that goal. Once it is completed, re-examin...
blog.minimal.app
October 30, 2025 at 12:54 PM
"The challenge is no longer to prove that solid-state batteries are feasible. That has long since been done in any number of labs around the world. The big challenge now is figuring out how to manufacture these devices at scale..."

@knowablemag.bsky.social

knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...
Will your next EV have a solid-state battery — and improved performance?
Superionic materials have spawned hope for a new generation of power packs for electric cars, with a promise of greater range, faster charges and more safety. But scaling up won’t be easy.
knowablemagazine.org
October 26, 2025 at 5:19 PM
“As nature transforms from a backdrop for human affairs into an active force shaping them, greater economic value can be produced from its cultivation than from its exploitation”

and

“Much of nature lies outside the narrow frame of GDP”

Tong Wu for @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/investing-in...
Investing In The Ecosystems That Sustain Us | NOEMA
Making the economic case for nature is an essential task for securing development in our planetary age.
www.noemamag.com
October 24, 2025 at 9:52 AM
“The most effective means of responding to climate change also enhances our physical and economic resilience”

and

“Technology centralizes power; human-scaled design disperses it“

Brian Stone for @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/the-abundanc...
The Abundance Movement’s Blind Spot | NOEMA
What if Americans care more about the cost of climate disasters than carbon-free energy?
www.noemamag.com
October 23, 2025 at 4:55 PM
“Despite covering just 0.2 percent of the sea floor, seagrasses account for an estimated 10 percent of all the carbon stored by the world’s oceans.”

@reasonstobecheerful.world

reasonstobecheerful.world/seagrass-res...
A 'Secret Weapon' for Fighting Climate Change Comes Surging Back
Capturing carbon 35 times faster than the Amazon, seagrasses have faced centuries of decline. Now restoration projects across North America are seeing their meadows quadruple in size.
reasonstobecheerful.world
October 20, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Arthur Van Siclen
“Liberal democracy’s original genius was not merely the ballot box; it was the creation of multiple forums — town meetings, juries, local councils, civic associations — where citizens encountered each other as equals capable of persuasion and compromise...

Cont’d…
October 13, 2025 at 5:08 PM
“In most large cities cafes need a permit to install an outside terrace, but Sora and others just do what the hell they want. Madness.”

(Patrick Tanguay)

@inevernu.bsky.social

sentiers.media/the-great-er...
The great erosion ⊗ Future of thinking about the future ⊗ On Sora
No.374 — Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble ⊗ Invest in your expeditionary teams ⊗ Young people in China are embracing AI therapy ⊗ The Evolving Doughnut
sentiers.media
October 12, 2025 at 5:17 PM
"Convincing people that AI is both about to destroy their culture and is also fake does not result in more agency, more universal mediation of collective intelligence, but less."

By Benjamin Bratton in @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/is-european-...
Is European AI A Lost Cause? Not Necessarily. | NOEMA
If Europe wants to build a new AI Stack it should stop listening to critics who claim to lead the way but only offer resistance.
www.noemamag.com
October 2, 2025 at 5:15 PM
“A common refrain among Wikipedians is that the site works in practice but not in theory. It seems to flout everything we’ve learned about human behavior online: anonymous strangers discussing divisive topics and somehow… working together to build something of value”
www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
Wikipedia is under attack — and how it can survive
The site’s volunteers face threats from Trump, billionaires, and AI.
www.theverge.com
September 27, 2025 at 7:58 AM
To Overcome Zero-Sum Thinking [in our political crisis].

"A prerequisite to doing good political work is seeing problems as interactive elements."

"Objects themselves are practically irrelevant; relationships between objects are everything."

minimal.app/pmojaZJJ
To Overcome Zero-Sum Thinking
We should direct our attention less to the political Right and more to the political Left. Our leaders have failed us, and we need to understand why. Then we may be able to formulate a path to better
minimal.app
September 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
“These are not ordinary times: the events that mark them are not easily accommodated in the deliberately prosaic world of serious prose fiction.”

@amitav.bsky.social in The Great Derangement, a must read.

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
Climate Change and the Unthinkable
bookshop.org
August 31, 2025 at 3:40 PM
“Granting the complications and difficulties, the task at hand is to imagine ways forward to that better place.”

(Kim Stanley Robinson)

communemag.com/dystopias-now/
Dystopias Now | Commune
The end of the world is over. Now the real work begins.
communemag.com
August 31, 2025 at 3:34 PM