Are We on the Precipice of Things Just Getting Worse?

“Securities” podcast host Danny Crichton and producer Chris Gates talk about the last two weeks of “Securities” newsletters. The first, from July 9th called “Dissonant Loops”, discussed the chaos and crises plaguing the world today and why our state capacity to respond to them is so limited. The second, from July 16th entitled “Scientific Sublime”, was a palette cleanser of sorts focused on the human achievement of the James Webb Space Telescope and how this accomplishment can be shared by everyone on Earth. We’ve got the lows and the highs, and then we talk about a few of the top Lux Recommends selections from the two issues, including: “Postcards from A World on Fire” from The New York Times last year showing the scale and diversity of climate devastation IEEE’s overview of the daunting data challenges that come from transmitting those gorgeous images to Earth CLIPasso, a Best Paper awardee at SIGGRAPH 2022, which uses machine learning to abstract complex photography into simpler sketches “Building an Open Representation for Biological Protocols” Daniel Oberhaus’s book Extraterrestrial Languages, which asks two provocative questions, “If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand?” Finally, Kit Wilson’s analysis in The New Atlantis on “Reading Ourselves to Death”