Under-Employment, or disguised UnEmployment, refers to a job that is insufficient in some important way for a worker, relative to a standard,[2] which results in the under-utilization of the worker. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the requirements of the job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underemployment See U6 reference at UnEmployment.

Stuart Kauffman concept. I can begin to imagine making models of how the universe gets more complex, but at the same time I'm hamstrung... How do we get started on something where we could talk about the future of a biosphere? There is a chance that there are general laws. I've thought about four of them. One of them says that autonomous agents have to live the most complex game (complex system) that they can. The second has to do with the construction of EcoSystems. The third has to do with Per Bak's Self Organized criticality in ecosystems. And the fourth concerns the idea of the Adjacent Possible. It just may be the case that biospheres on average keep expanding into the adjacent possible. By doing so they increase the Diversity of what can happen next. It may be that biospheres, as a secular trend, maximize the rate of exploration of the adjacent possible. If they did it too fast, they would destroy their own internal organization, so there may be internal gating mechanisms. This is why I call this an average secular trend, since they explore the Adjacent Possible as fast as they can get away with it. There's a lot of neat science to be done to unpack that, and I'm thinking about it. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman03/kauffman_index.html (more)

aka Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator : Using concentrated Solar Power to reverse combustion, a research team from Sandia National Laboratories is building a prototype device intended to chemically “reenergize” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using concentrated solar power. The carbon monoxide could then be used to make hydrogen or serve as a building block to synthesize a liquid combustible fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/sunshine.html (more)

Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by animals of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving en masse or migrating in some direction. As a term, swarming is applied particularly to insects, but can also be applied to any other animal that exhibits swarm behaviour. The term Flocking is usually used to refer specifically to swarm behaviour in birds, Herd Ing to refer to swarm behaviour in quadrupeds, shoaling or Schooling to refer to swarm behaviour in fish. Phytoplankton also gather in huge swarms called blooms, although these organisms are algae and are not self-propelled the way animals are. By extension, the term swarm is applied also to inanimate entities which exhibit parallel behaviours, as in a robot swarm, an earthquake swarm, or a swarm of stars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_behaviour (more)

a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic plants, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. The US Algal Collection is represented by almost 300,000 accessioned and inventoried herbarium specimens.[3] The largest and most complex marine forms are called Sea Weed-s. They are photosynthetic, like other plants, and "simple" because they lack the many distinct organs found in land plants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae (more)

Reforestation (occasionally, Reafforestation) is the natural or intentional restocking of existing forests and woodlands (forestation) that have been depleted, usually through deforestation.[1] Reforestation can be used to rectify the effects of deforestation or improve the quality of human life by soaking up pollution and dust from the air, rebuilding natural habitats and ecosystems, mitigating global warming since forests facilitate biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide,[2] and harvesting for resources, particularly timber, but also non-timber forest products. In the beginning of the 21st century more attention is given to the ability of reforestation to mitigate climate change as one of the best methods to do it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation

Venkatesh Rao's Optimistic Near Future Vision: A world that’s 100% electrified, with airship/sea ships for long-distance travel, high-quality VR/telepresence, rent-over-own society, high mobility, hyperloops, rewilded (rewilding)/reforested (reforestation) countrysides, fake meat without factory farmed farting cows... as exciting a vision as colonizing Mars. (more)

Regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems. It focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity,[1] improving the water cycle,[2] enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. Practices include recycling as much farm waste as possible and adding composted material from sources outside the farm.[3][4][5][6] Regenerative agriculture on small farms and gardens is often based on philosophies like permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, keyline design, and holistic management. Large farms tend to be less philosophy driven and often use "no-till" and/or "reduced till" practices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture

see BioFuel

Agile Product Development writer. https://medium.com/@johnpcutler (more)

The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (originally titled Article the First) is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution (Constitutional Amendment) that addresses the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, but was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment A path contra the Electoral College?

Ben Hunt: Facebook Delenda Est. So … I’m pretty close to being a free speech absolutist. Or at least I have an old-school small-l liberal John Stuart Mill-esque belief in free speech, with an extremely high bar for the “harm” that speech must directly inflict on other citizens before a rightfully constituted government, based on the consent of its citizens, has a legitimate duty to regulate that speech. Facebook is not a content-delivery platform. Its business is not to “give people voice and bring people together”, as Zuckerberg says in his best cartoon voice. Facebook is an advertising-delivery platform. (more)

sci-fi author

concept of blockchain-based digicash tied to a Carbon Market (more)

Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy whereby a central bank buys government bonds or other financial assets in order to inject money into the economy to expand economic activity.[1] An unconventional form of monetary policy,[2] it is usually used when inflation is very low or negative, and standard expansionary monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other financial institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the money supply. This differs from the more usual policy of buying or selling short-term government bonds to keep interbank interest rates at a specified target value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

Venkatesh Rao on "the Rise of Developernomics". This almost seems like 2 pieces mashed together (more)

The 2000-watt society is an environmental vision, first introduced in 1998 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zurich), which pictures the average First World citizen reducing their overall average primary energy usage to no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living. The concept addresses not only personal or household energy use, but the total for the whole society, including embodied energy, divided by the population. Two thousand watts is approximately the current world average rate of total primary energy use. This compares to averages of around 6,000 watts in western Europe, 12,000 watts in the United States,[1] 1,500 watts in China, 1,000 watts in India, 500 watts in South Africa and only 300 watts in Bangladesh.[2] Switzerland itself, currently using an average of around 5,000 watts, was last a 2000-watt society in the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society (more)

A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a state or formal monetary union,[1] and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base in a financial crisis. Most central banks also have supervisory and regulatory powers to ensure the stability of member institutions, to prevent bank runs, and to discourage reckless or fraudulent behavior by member banks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank (more)

central bank of the USA

A Greek withdrawal from the eurozone was a hypothetical scenario under which Greece would withdraw from the Eurozone to deal with the now expired Greek government-debt crisis. This conjecture has been referred to as "Grexit", a portmanteau combining the English words "Greek" and "exit",[1][2][3][4][5][6] and which has been expressed in Greek as ελλέξοδος,[7] (from Ελλάς + έξοδος). The term "Graccident" (accidental Grexit) was coined for the case that Greece exited the EU and the euro unintentionally. These terms first came into use in 2012 and have been revitalised at each of the bailouts made available to Greece since then... On 27 January 2015, two days after an early election of the Greek parliament, Alexis Tsipras, leader of the new Syriza ("Coalition of the Radical Left") party, formed a new government. He appointed Yanis Varoufakis as Minister of Finance, a particularly important post in view of the government debt crisis. During 2015 and 2016, the chance of a Grexit or even a 'Graccident' (accidental Grexit) in the near future was widely discussed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_withdrawal_from_the_eurozone