During the current (or impending) lockdown, many jobs will, and have already, vanished overnight. Stock market losses reflect a concern for just how big a change in consumption this could bring.
Hong Kong already approved a kind of emergency UBI, giving each citizen 10,000 Hong Kong dollar...

The internet was built to be resilient in times of crisis. Over time, however, a small number of companies have come to own a large number of the servers directing traffic. This undercuts the internet’s celebrated design feature of decentralization.
The Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is...

Doing less has its perks, for the climate and the environment as a whole, as well as for our stress levels and peace of mind.
Hitting the pause button will give us from now an opportunity to take stock of what really deserves the glory in our glorification of being “busy.”

Blackouts and snow-ins result in baby bumps: this has been commonly observed.
Maybe you might look forward to some lustful pleasures during the quarantine. Or maybe in times of despair, the prospect of bringing a new life into the world is a bulwark against the sense of impending doom.

In the 2020 pandemic we’ve found a common enemy, attacking people regardless of their appearance or passport.
We can use this shared event as the founding moment of a unifying global narrative - underneath our badges of belonging we are all vulnerable bodies, very much dependent on each other ...

The current pandemic will make many of us see the benefits of relying on locally sourced food and goods—instead of products demanding long and distant supply chains.
Self-sufficiency is power - instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping government leaders will do a good enough job prote...

We now have a strong example of how arbitrary the choices that leaders make can be.
People have already died because a certain leader took the wrong approach at the wrong time. So we should demand that more than success at the polls or holding an office be treated as sufficient authority in qu...

Social distancing is luckily happening in a time when we already love to be social far, far away from one another. The meetings that could have been emails have quickly turned into emails. For the rest, there’s telepresence, video conferencing, and even digital avatars and virtual stages.
The ...

Intergenerational solidarity could become more of a thing as we come to fully realize that an able-bodied condition is ever so temporary. Healthspan—and lifespan—extension is a problem we might more seriously use our collective talent to combat, as we give more weight to the argument often put fo...

• People homeschooling their children are expressing new appreciation for teachers’ day-to-day.
• Garbage collectors and delivery people are receiving proper thank-yous for usually thankless services.
• Health care providers risking their own health for the sake of others are n...

A lot of time in your house means a lot of time to learn and organize for change with people who share your beliefs and could amplify them. Whether in relation to debt, or something else.

The current pandemic is bad, but it could be worse, and we can get far better at preparing and de-risking our lives.
The words “hope for the best, plan for the worst” are beginning to more widely resonate.

Accuracy matters. We want to know the facts. Not guess, but know.
And even though doubt in science has grown ever greater in recent years, you don’t see hordes of people turning down the thought of a vaccine now.

The current pandemic hasn't had as consequence a power outage yet, but there is this risk, in certain places.
Solar panels mark the move away from a more or less centralized system supplying electricity. The benefit of decentralized systems is, simply put, that they don’t have central points o...