Contemplations – 15
I'm incurably curious about many aspects of this journey of ours. Here are a few noteworthy items I've stumbled across that I'm making a note of so I can revisit them from time to time.
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Appetizers:
"Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order."
– Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism, published by George Allen & Urwin, London, 1918.
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
– President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, January 20th, 1937.
2026
The kids are alright
Knights of Molino. Photo by Beth LaBerge/KQED.
May 26, 2026: While browsing Mastodon this afternoon, I came across these kids who have formed a punk bank, Knights of Molino, and have released a song about AI titled "Take Back Control". I am impressed! They can really play, and their song is a passionate exploration of the humanity of music.
In fact, the music and lyrics are so good that I was a bit skeptical. I've never before heard kids that young play so well. So I started poking around to see if this was indeed legit. I found them on Bandcamp: Take Back Control by Knights of Molino⩘ .
The Knights of Molino are a San Francisco Bay Area middle school punk band – members are brothers Erik and Tommy Birmingham, and Rowan Campbell.
Then I found their website: Knights of Molino⩘ . Here's the beginning of the lyrics of "Take Back Control""
I won't be a slave to AI
It's time for us all to step out of line
Free your mind and look to the sky
End the code and blind the cyber eyeThere's a crisis in the nation
Gotta break free from the simulation
The truth is music comes from the soul
Unplug, join in, take back controlArtificial Intelligence
Can't know the human experience
Finally, I found an excellent article about them and this song by Jody Amable, KQED. Here's a couple excerpts:
Knights of Molino are a new punk band composed of middle schoolers Erik and Tommy Birmingham, 11 and 13, and Rowan Campbell, 12. They recently reached moderate viral fame for another track in which they didn't shy away from speaking their minds. In October, their scathing takedown of generative AI, "Take Back Control," went spinning across Bay Area and punk-rock TikTok. It's currently at 240,000 views and 2,500 comments: definitely not Mr. Beast numbers, but pretty impressive when you consider none of them even are allowed on TikTok yet.
But those interactions aren't from their peers (at Mill Valley Middle School, rock is out and pop and rap are in, they say). They're mostly from adults inspired to see young people picking up the Bay Area punk torch and rejecting the creep of technology. "AI is taking over the arts and it is vile," agrees one comment. Another: "We need more of this human creativity and true punk." More still are various versions of "the kids are alright."…
For the record, they're not totally anti-AI ("It has [some] good uses," admits Erik), but they're increasingly horrified by its infiltration of music and the inability of many to discern it from the real thing. "The problem is not many people can recognize AI as fake," Erik continues. "And I feel like that's one of the reasons we made the song, [to] help people realize that AI's stealing human thoughts and emotions, and, like, human hard work and time."
"We put emotion and feeling, heart, experiences and all that into writing these songs. But when AI does it, it has nothing to go off of," Tommy adds. "'Cause it's not human. Robot on a screen. How is it supposed to connect with humans?"
A Preteen Punk Band From Mill Valley Takes on AI⩘ by Jody Amable, KQED, Nov 24, 2025.
On superpower suicide and the recovery of justice
Photo by Alexandru Taradaciuc⩘ from Pexels
An excellent essay by Timothy Snyder.
Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.
Snyder explores this suicide in thirteen areas:
- Statehood
- National interest
- Succession
- Elites
- Education
- Science
- Energy
- Technology
- Diplomacy
- Alliances
- The international system
- The idea of victory
- Finances
Almost every day when I read the news about the current administration is doing, I think to myself and sometimes exclaim out loud, "This is fucking insane!" Every week, when I protest what is happening, I hold up a sign. The current one: "Restore Sanity!"
Snyder captures a crystal clear snapshot of this current insanity through the thirteen areas he discusses, as well as what it would take to restore or achieve sanity. Finally, he provides a clear and powerful conclusion.
The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.
On superpower suicide and the recovery of justice⩘ by Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, May 9, 2026.
See also: 'My ambition is to change the country,' AOC says when asked about seeking higher office in 2028⩘ by Edward Helmore, The Guardian, May 9, 2026.
"My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go. But single-payer healthcare is forever," she added, in reference to the kind of national healthcare platform she has long supported over the private system entrenched in the US.
Ocasio-Cortez then ran through a litany of her other signature policy positions, saying: "A living wage is forever, workers' rights are forever, women's rights, all of that, and so anyways … to a finer point to your question is that when you aren't attached, when you haven't been like fantasizing about being this or that since the time you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating."
Later in the exchange, Ocasio-Cortez said she wanted to "make decisions from a place of how are we going to change the country".…
She added: "I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window and observing the conditions of this country. And saying what move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, better than yesterday."
A glimmer of climate action hope
Photo by Markus Spiske⩘ , Pexels.
Frustrated by the UN COP Climate Change Conferences that have been hijacked by fossil fuel lobbyists leaving them mostly meaningless, nearly 60 countries came together in Santa Marta, Colombia for an independent meeting and agreed to "back voluntary roadmaps to wean world off coal, oil and gas".
The approach marks a departure from the annual UN climate negotiations, which have run for more than three decades even as greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise.…
Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia's environment minister and chair of the talks, said: "We decided not to resign ourselves to an economy built on the destruction of life. We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete, political and collective endeavour"
'Historic breakthrough': Colombia climate talks end with hopes raised for fossil fuel phaseout⩘ by Fiona Harvey and Jonathan Watts in Santa Marta, The Guardian, Apr 28, 2026.
What a gift this life is
I've seen so many versions of the recent photos of the Earth setting behind the moon taken recently by the astronauts as they were circling the moon. They were cropped in various ways, but all of the ones I saw shared one thing: they were cropped so that the Earth was the most significant element of the photo.
Then I came across a version that I think shares a more realistic perspective: A New View of the Moon⩘ .
The events of our world can feel so overwhelming, a head spinning cacophony of chaotic drama: political upheaval, hatred expressed in so many different ways, wars, the disruption of AI, climate change….
Then I look at a photo like this and I get a glimpse of a totally different perspective. Here we are on this little planet floating in the vastness of our solar system, which is rotating within our enormous galaxy with its billions of stars, which is just a tiny dot within the almost inconceivable vastness of our universe with its trillions of galaxies.
What a gift this life is. How I wish we treated it with gratitude and reverence, and with the humbleness that our position in our vast universe warrants.
A New View of the Moon⩘ , image credit: NASA, art002e009287, April 6, 2026.
See also: Perspective: Our home in this wondrous universe⩘ .
The Spanish Dancer Galaxy
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble⩘ & NASA⩘ , D. Calzetti⩘ & the LEGUS⩘ Team⩘ , R. Chandar⩘
Time to take a deep, calming breath and for a few moments look upwards away from our tiny home on this planet besieged by so many human-caused calamities, and to behold the near infinite grace of our immense home. If only we could learn to dance more in harmony with our universe.
NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Galaxy⩘ , Astronomy Picture of the Day, Mar 16, 2026.
Sacred bridge
Woodblock print of Sacred bridge by Yoshida Hiroshi, 1937
As our world gets crazier and crazier, I sometimes find moments of solace contemplating serene works of Japanese art like this woodblock print, Sacred bridge by Yoshida Hiroshi, 1937.
Meeting the climate challenge with collective action
Photo by Pixabay via Pexels⩘
A bit of hopeful news in our challenging current environment.
A Nobel laureate's environmentally friendly invention that provides clean water if central supplies are knocked out by a hurricane or drought, could be a life saver for vulnerable islands, its founder says.
The invention, by the chemist Prof Omar Yaghi, uses a type of science called reticular chemistry to create molecularly engineered materials, which can extract moisture from the air and harvest water even in arid and desert conditions.
Professor Yaghi was inspired by his own challenging childhood:
Yaghi, who grew up in a refugee community in Jordan, said he was inspired by the hardships he endured in a home with no running water or electricity. Giving his Nobel prize banquet speech, he recalled water arriving to his desert community from the government once every week or two.
"I remember the whisper through our neighbourhood, 'the water is coming', and the urgency as I rushed to fill every container I could find before the flow stopped."
Professor Yaghi challenges us to meet the moment with collective action:
Describing the invention as "a science capable of reimagining matter" he urged leaders to "remove barriers, protect academic freedom" and "welcome global talent".
"On climate, the hour for collective action has already arrived. The science is here. What we need now is courage – courage scaled to the enormity of the task – so we may gift the next generation not only carbon capture, but a planet worthy of their hopes," he said.
'Reimagining matter': Nobel laureate invents machine that harvests water from dry air⩘ by Natricia Duncan, Caribbean correspondent, The Guardian.
Enduring the climate of tomorrow
Photo by Blake Sharp-Wiggins, The Guardian.
Environment and climate correspondent Graham Readfearn visited the Heat and Health Research Centre at the University of Sydney and shares his experience of walking in an environment that simulates extreme heat in shade and direct sun, as well as at high levels of humidity. It's frightening, it's already happening in our world, and it's going to get worse in our future, and far worse in the future of our children.
Around the world, global heating is already giving us more frequent heatwaves, and when we get them they are lasting longer and bringing more heat.
As burning fossil fuels adds more and more heat to the planet, climate scientists know these trends will get ever more deadly.
According to the medical journal the Lancet, heat extremes caused an estimated 546,000 deaths every year between 2012 and 2021 – a 63% rise on rates seen in the 1990s.
We are sleep walking our way into a devastating future. Wake up!
Extreme heat lab: Enduring the climate of tomorrow⩘ by Graham Readfearn, The Guardian, Feb 20, 2026.
Related video: The unbearable experience of walking in a heatwave of the future⩘ .
A winter moment of calm
Yuki no Kinkakuji (Kinkakuji in Snow) by Hasui Kawase, 1922
My experience of life these days is often overwhelmed by the chaos of politics, the suffering of civilians subjected to brutal wars, the pain of immigrants being rounded up and deported in a heartlessly cruel fashion, and the deterioration of our climate that so often now results in horrible storms and destruction (last night I barely slept as fierce wind gusts slammed into our home again and again).
In moments like this, I'm so grateful when I come across something like this woodblock print, Yuki no Kinkakuji (Kinkakuji in Snow) by Hasui Kawase, 1922. I can sit quietly, take slow breaths, allow myself to be drawn deeply into the calm the image exudes, and at least partially recharge my energy.
Swearing an oath to our constitution
United States Constitution with its preamble "We the People"
Government of the United States of America
Photo⩘ by Joseph Sohm⩘ ; licensed via Shutterstock
I admire the leadership of retired Maj Gen Paul Eaton who is speaking up in defense of our constitution and against the ongoing effort to politicize our armed forces.
Maj Gen Paul Eaton has sounded the alarm, saying in an interview with the Guardian that the effort to bend the higher echelons of the military to the US president's will was unparalleled in recent history and could have long-term dire consequences. He warned that both the reputation and efficiency of the world's most powerful fighting force was in the balance.
"There is an active effort to politicise the armed forces," Eaton said. "Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream."
I'm hoping that many people, both military and civilians, listen to his message.
Trump push to politicize US military 'reminiscent of Stalin', top general warns⩘ by Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, Jan 5, 2025.
