Page 7«..6789..»

Category Archives: Seasteading

New nature books ready for spring | Sports Columns | register … – Beckley Register-Herald

Posted: May 7, 2017 at 11:46 pm

Over the last few months, a stack of new books has accumulated on my desk. Here are a few of the titles I recommend.

Lets begin with a childrens book. Fire Bird: The Kirtlands Warbler Story by Amy Hansen (2017, $18.95, Arbutus Press) explains how fire is essential to the life cycle of this endangered species that nests in young jack pine forests in north central Michigan and winters in the Bahamas.

I read Fire Bird to my five-year old grandson just a few days ago. He sat quietly engrossed for the entire 32 pages, so it passed the kid test. And he loved the colorful artwork by Janet Oliver that illustrates the story.

The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World by Abigail Tucker (2016, $26.00, Simon & Schuster) is an easy to read natural history of domestic house cats. It covers everything from the threat domestic cats pose to birds, small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians to misguided efforts to control feral cat populations with trap, neuter, and release (TNR) programs. It also points out that while populations of most cat species around the world are plummeting rapidly, domestic cat numbers have exploded. I enjoyed Lion immensely, and I recommend it to cat lovers, cat haters, and ecologists everywhere. And by the way, the cover art featuring an oversized kitten perched on an undersized living room sofa says it all.

Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird by Katie Fallon (2017, $27.95, University Press of New England) is a love letter from an ardent admirer to an ugly bird with some disgusting habits. Vulture follows a year in the life of a turkey vulture, from its food habits which cleanse the landscape of dead stuff to its breeding, parenting, and migratory habits. Fallon truly loves these skillful gliders, and she hopes that readers will see the light. Every time Ive seen a vulture this year, this book has come to mind, so I guess Im hooked.

If you love diurnal raptors, Birds of Prey: Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, and Vultures of North America by Pete Dunne (2016, $26.00, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was written for you. Dunne is a master birder and lifelong raptor enthusiast. He loves all diurnal raptures as much as Katie Fallon loves vultures.

From American kestrels to zone-tailed hawks, each species including the endangered California condor gets a complete species account. Birds of Prey is destined to become the go-to reference any time anyone needs natural history facts about any of these 34 species.

Kevin Karlson is one of 20-plus photographers whose work illustrates the book. Karlson is credited with photo research and production. I dont know exactly what this means, but I do know that the visual imagery throughout the book is stunning. Raptor fans will want to own this book just for the color photos.

Good Birders Still Dont Wear White: Passionate Birders Share the Joys of Watching Birds, Lisa White and Jeffrey Gordon, editors (2017, $13.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is a lighthearted collection of short essays about birding by some of the best known names in the business. Pete Dunne, for example, writes about where and when to bird; Marie Reed writes about photographing birds; Richard Crossley explains how failure can lead to discovery; and Carlos Bethancourt tells why being a bird guide in Panama is the best job ever. (Ive birded with Carlos, and I can tell you that he is one of the best bird guides ever.)

If this title sounds familiar, its a follow-up to Good Birders Dont Wear White (2007). Books like these make great bedtime reading. Each essay is independent and just a few pages long.

Finally, Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians by Joe Quirk with Patri Friedman (2017, $27.00, Simon & Schuster) is a wakeup call for all who doubt the reality of climate change. The title is self-explanatory.

Dr. Shalaway can be heard on Birds & Nature from 3 to 4 p.m. Sunday afternoons on 620 KHB Radio, Pittsburgh or live online anywhere at http://www.khbradio.com. Visit Scotts website http://www.drshalaway.com or contact him directly at sshalaway@aol.com or 2222 Fish Ridge Road, Cameron, WV 26033.

Read the original here:

New nature books ready for spring | Sports Columns | register ... - Beckley Register-Herald

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on New nature books ready for spring | Sports Columns | register … – Beckley Register-Herald

Real Utopia: The World’s First Floating City May Be Built in the Pacific – Sputnik International

Posted: April 7, 2017 at 8:52 pm

Life

19:15 06.04.2017(updated 21:38 06.04.2017) Get short URL

People have always dreamt ofmoving toa better place forlife. Some prefer an easy way toescape noisy dusty cities and live inthe countryside, while others dream big and work onUtopia-like projects, such asthe resurrection ofthe Russian Empire inKiribati and the creation ofseasteading communities floating cities which will allow the next generation ofpioneers topeacefully test new ideas forhow tolive together. The term "seasteading" is a combination ofthe words "sea" and "homesteading."

In the spring of2013, TSI launched The Floating City Project, which proposed tocreate a floating city withinthe territorial waters ofan existing nation, rather thanthe open ocean. According tothe institute, this proposal had several advantages: it would be easier toengineer a seastead inshallow waters, easier forresidents totravel toand fromthe "mainland" and easier toacquire goods and services fromexisting supply chains.

Later year, TSI raised $27,082 throughthe IndieGoGo crowdfunding platform and hired the Dutch marine engineering firm DeltaSync, a leading specialist inthe field offloating urbanization.

Artisanopolis - Floating City Project Animation

Things got more serious in2016, when The Seasteading Institute representatives met withFrench Polynesian officials and discussed building a prototype seastead ina sheltered lagoon. Just recently, onJanuary 13, 2017, the government officially signed an agreement withTSI tocooperate oncreating a legal framework toallow forthe development ofThe Floating Island Project. The legislation will give the Floating Island Project its own "special governing framework" creating an "innovative special economic zone."

The creation ofa "special economic seazone" would give floating islands considerable autonomy, according tothe company's official website. In return, TSI is required toproduce an environmental and economic analysis beforeit can get started.

The institute's Australian ambassador Ashley Blake, who spoke atthe Myriad startup festival held betweenMarch 29-31 inBrisbane, described the project asa startup and a place totest new technologies and ways ofliving. However, this "social enterprise" is not foreveryone. "It's not a solution fora complete full stack ofsociety," he said. "Maybe the model that ends upworking is a floating aged care home, we don't know. Or maybe it's a place where young entrepreneurs can go."

More here:

Real Utopia: The World's First Floating City May Be Built in the Pacific - Sputnik International

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on Real Utopia: The World’s First Floating City May Be Built in the Pacific – Sputnik International

A floating techno-libertarian city might be coming to the Pacific – Mashable

Posted: at 8:52 pm


Mashable
A floating techno-libertarian city might be coming to the Pacific
Mashable
In May, a group will gather in Tahiti to discuss building floating cities off the French Polynesian coast. That's right. The men of the Seasteading Institute (and something suggests, it will be mostly men) dream of building extra-national platforms in ...

and more »

See the rest here:

A floating techno-libertarian city might be coming to the Pacific - Mashable

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on A floating techno-libertarian city might be coming to the Pacific – Mashable

6 Examples Of Billionaires Acting Like Supervillains – Benzinga

Posted: April 3, 2017 at 8:16 pm

As flying taxis transform Dubai into the Jetsons actual Orbit City and revelations abound of Obama-era CIA hacks, a common theme is emerging in contemporary society. The augury of artists is justified.

Now, as the worlds ultra-wealthy emulate supervillains with futuristic ventures and oft-unchecked ambition, the literary prophets are three for three in foresight.

Here are six occasions of elite billionaires presently flexing their super muscles.

The world is a giant Risk board for the former Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) CEO. Ellison bought out the Hawaiian island of Lanai in 2012 and controls vast real estate in Malibu, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco and Kyoto, Japan.

People of affluence are generally people of influence. But President Donald Trump, whose Big Brother policies have many dusting off copies of 1984, has taken the correlation to new heights. The man now boasts a deadly trio of money, prestige and power; not much more is required for world domination.

Whats more, Sportsnets Andrew Berkshire recently pointed to a striking resemblance between Trumps business practices and Lex Luthers.

On his quest to dominate the world with good-intention ventures promoting access to vaccinations, clean water and the like, the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) co-founder has used his influence to get people to do a number of crazy things, including consume toilet water.

The philanthropist may not have the character of a supervillain, but he sure has the house of one. His $125 million property is straight out of Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS)s Beauty and the Beast or Smart House.

The home features a high-tech sensor system to alter temperature and lighting, an in-wall sound system following listeners from room to room, underwater pool speakers, a trampoline room, a 200-guest reception hall, a 20-guest home theater, 24 bathrooms, six kitchens, a 2,100-square-foot library, a 900-square-foot activities building, a 1,900-square-foot guest house and several garages accommodating 23 cars.

In another Beast parallel, Gates even protects a favorite tree under 24-hour computer monitoring.

Nine years ago, the Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) co-founder invested $1.7 million in the Seasteading Institute to develop a libertarian utopia in the middle of the ocean. Thiel recently told the New York Times Co (NYSE: NYT) that the ideas no longer an immediate priority.

Thats still very far in the future, he said.

Hes also been known to push the limits of youth and immortality with interest in experimental parabiosis (youth blood transfusion), cryogenics (body freezing) and growth-hormone enhancements.

At the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) MARS conference earlier this month, the companys CEO channeled Iron Man as he piloted a massive, mechanical robot suit designed by South Koreas Hankook Mirae Technology.

In a side venture, Bezos is also poised to snatch up space real estate with Blue Origins luxurious tourism capsules.

The Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and SpaceX CEO launched Neuralink, an enterprise aiming to implant a neural lace in the human brain. Whats described as a digital layer above the cortex could, at its worst, serve as a welcome mat for brain hackers and, at its best, further distinguish the ultra-wealthy from everyone else.

Related Links:

25 Interesting Facts About Forbes' 25 Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers

GOP Tax Plan Would Sacrifice Long-Term Debt For Quick Gains, Penn Wharton Analysis Shows _________ Image Credit: By J.J. at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Posted-In: Bill GatesEducation Movers & Shakers Politics Psychology Top Stories Movers General Best of Benzinga

2017 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Continued here:

6 Examples Of Billionaires Acting Like Supervillains - Benzinga

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on 6 Examples Of Billionaires Acting Like Supervillains – Benzinga

Editor’s Insight: Money-losing ethics, seasteading, Mansfield and more – The National Business Review

Posted: April 2, 2017 at 7:56 am

Email *

Create password *

First Name *

Last Name *

Cellphone number *

Credit card details are required to authenticate your account. You won't be charged until your trial has ended. Cancel anytime.

I understand that my unlimited free access to NBR paid content is only available for 30 days. *

*Terms and Conditions As part of this registration, we validate your credit/debit card with a test transaction of 1 cent. This is a pre-authorisation hold on your card by your bank, designed to protect people from credit card fraud, and will be automatically re-adjusted within 10 days.

By submitting your details to the NBR, you agree to receive communications and notifications from the NBR.

It is your responsibility to know when your free trial offer subscription ends, but we will send you a courtesy email four days before expiry.

At the end of your free trial, you will be billed your first subscription fee at the current one-month online subscription rate ($35). If you do not wish to become a paying Member Subscriber, you must cancel your trial before it ends. You will be able to stop your free trial yourself via your MyNBR dashboard.

Read more here:

Editor's Insight: Money-losing ethics, seasteading, Mansfield and more - The National Business Review

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on Editor’s Insight: Money-losing ethics, seasteading, Mansfield and more – The National Business Review

Faced with rising seas, French Polynesia ponders floating islands – The Guam Daily Post (press release) (registration)

Posted: March 21, 2017 at 11:44 am

NEW YORK When former Google software engineer Patri Friedman came up with the idea of building floating islands, he had in mind an unusual buyer: Libertarians, seeking freedom to live beyond the reach of governments.

But his futuristic plan has now found a new, motivated and very different audience small islands halfway around the world that are slowly being submerged by sea level rise.

The Pacific nation of French Polynesia, looking for a potential lifeline as global warming takes hold, in January became the first country to sign an agreement to deploy the floating islands off its coast.

"Dreams belong to those who want to move forward and make them happen," said Jean-Christophe Bouissou, the country's housing minister, at a San Francisco ceremony where he inked a memorandum of understanding with The Seasteading Institute.

The institute the name combines combines "sea" and "homesteading" is the brainchild of Friedman and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, who helped found it and initially pumped more than $1 million into the floating islands project.

He is now no longer involved in the institute, but Friedman is taking forward the project.

With its possibility of creating new floating nation states, it has won converts among libertarians, whose ideology argues that greater freedom makes people thrive, said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington D.C.-based libertarian thinktank.

But the possibility of keeping a sinking nation afloat clearly presents another opportunity for the technology, he said.

"If (island nations) feel threatened by the rising sea ... they might view this as being the best option for their people," Bandow said.

"Obviously, living on a seastead is very different from even living on an island. Nevertheless, if you figure there's going to be relocation, maybe this is a better option to stay in the region as opposed to having to literally move en masse to another country," he said.

Rising risk

Low-lying, small islands of the Pacific are disproportionately at risk of losing land as sea level climbs by an expected 10 inches to 32 inches by the late 21st century, according to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In a 2013 study of more than 1,200 French-controlled islands, researchers at the Paris-Sud University found that French Polynesia and the territory of New Caledonia, also in the South Pacific, were most at risk of seeing their islands entirely submerged.

Bouissou, of French Polynesia, says he sees in floating cities the kind of outside-the-box thinking that could solve such a problem.

"There are very few people that have this kind of ability to be forward looking," said Bouissou in a telephone interview.

Many among his country's 270,000 residents have in the last two decades already begun seeing their houses more frequently flooded, he said.

A look at the islands

Under the terms of the deal with French Polynesia, The Seasteading Institute will first study the project's economic and environmental impact, at the institute's own cost, said Joe Quirk, a project's spokesman.

If the study looks positive, the institute will try to raise investment to put in place three solar-powered pilot platforms, each roughly 165 by 165 feet, Quirk said.

Under the plan, the islands likely to be located inside a lagoon near French Polynesia's Tahiti would be made a "special economic zone," in the hope of attracting tech companies, he said.

"I expect French Polynesian and foreign people to live there and commute there for work, and schoolchildren to take class trips there," Quirk said.

One rendering shows a floating island dotted with palm trees and supporting a multi-story building designed to resemble French Polynesia's national flower, the Tahitian gardenia, said Quirk.

Sailing ships are docked in calm waters, just footsteps from an inviting beach, the drawings by Dutch engineering firm Blue21 show.

The islands' engineering details remain to be developed, Quirk said. But in a 2013 study commissioned by the institute, Dutch design firm DeltaSync concluded that the artificial islands could best withstand the ocean's elements as modular platforms that can be connected and arranged in branch-like structures.

Construction of the islands, which the institute hopes to fund with investor cash, could cost between $10 and $50 million and begin as early as 2018, Quirk said. The institute is in the process of recruiting investors, he said.

"We're not going ask for any money (from French Polynesia). We're just going to ask for permission, legislation. And if it fails, we absorb the risks. We'll disassemble and move on," Quirk said.

See the rest here:

Faced with rising seas, French Polynesia ponders floating islands - The Guam Daily Post (press release) (registration)

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on Faced with rising seas, French Polynesia ponders floating islands – The Guam Daily Post (press release) (registration)

Floating countries of the future – this could be your new home – ABC Online

Posted: March 17, 2017 at 7:09 am

By Brigid Andersen and Margot O'Neill

Updated March 14, 2017 13:48:32

Do you love the ocean? Are you an innovator? Are you sick and tired of old models of government that are stuck in the last century?

If you answered yes to the above, consider seasteading; it's like Waterworld but without the mutants.

The idea is to build politically independent countries that float on the ocean, and the concept might not be as far-out as you think.

The Seasteading Institute has already signed an agreement with the French Polynesian government to develop a legal framework for the first floating island and the Institute is currently calling for public submissions to attend its upcoming forum in the region.

As part of its Ignite series featuring radical and provocative ideas for the future, Lateline spoke to Seasteading Institute spokesman Joe Quirk, about how these floating nations could work.

Seasteads are floating islands of self-governing communities which hope to facilitate innovative business ideas in a low-regulation environment.

Mr Quirk said the world is run by old-style governments and seasteads would move the world into the 21st Century.

"Seasteaders bring a Silicon Valley sensibility to the problem of governments not innovating sufficiently," Mr Quirk said.

"Innovators are held back and stymied by existing regulations, and we want to give them 21st century regulations on start-up governments," he said.

"Once you provide people with a platform to start their own country, every conceivable type of innovator reaches out to you with their own idea."

According to Joe Quirk, no.

"A seastead can't help you avoid taxes if you're an American citizen. If you make six figures you can't avoid taxes, whether you move to a seastead or to Switzerland," he said.

Still, won't they just be full of rich people?

"Seasteads cost money, and if you want to succeed as a Seastead you have to find ways to attract people to move there. If I was a billionaire I wouldn't want to move to a seastead, but if I was a member of the bottom billion, most of whom want to leave their dysfunctional governments, I might want to move to a seastead."

Mr Quirk said the Seasteading Institute takes no position on what kind of societies should be formed.

"We're providing a technology for other people to try their version of societies," he said.

"As long as people can join them voluntarily and leave them voluntarily, and all the seasteads have to compete amongst each other to attract citizens voluntarily, we think the best solutions for governance will emerge."

Like most start-up businesses, most breakaway societies fail, but Mr Quirk said there's always a certain percentage that succeed.

"That's the marvellous thing about seasteads; if a government fails, there's nothing much the people who live there can do about it. But if seasteads fail, they simply disassemble and go away," he said.

The question remains, what would happen to those who lose their jobs?

Think oil platforms crossed with cruise ships.

"Oil platforms are a technology for floating permanently on the high seas, and cruise ships are a technology for self-governance on the high seas, and if you combine these two technologies, imagine cruise ships that never dock but float permanently," Mr Quirk said.

"Imagine if they were 10 times as big. Imagine if they were modular and could move about and you could choose the neighbours you wanted to live with."

How would seasteads protect against piracy and should they have their own armies? What about supplying food, drinking water and electricity?

There are currently dozens of seasteaders discussing these and many more topics on the Seasteading Institute's online forum.

Ideas range from arming seasteads with 3D printed guns to building breakwaters to protect from rough seas.

"We would petition the United Nations to recognise the sovereignty of these permanent, floating islands, and we think the United Nations is inclined to recognise floating nations," Mr Quirk said.

"I think our children will be living on floating cities, and they will look back on the 20th Century, when people lived in primitive governments founded in previous centuries, and they will be living on modular, sustainable, floating cities that we can't imagine now, that are based on the voluntary choice of citizens.

"I think we will have a marvellous world in the 21st Century."

The Seasteading Institute hopes to build its first pilot in the waters off French Polynesia. It's estimated it could cost up to $66 million.

"French Polynesia is as big as Western Europe. So we have lots of space to experiment with special economic zones," Mr Quirk said.

"We're going to draw a new map of the world, with French Polynesia as the centre of the Aquatic Age.

"A lot of Pacific island nations are sinking below sea level; they could easily transition slowly into becoming floating nations."

Topics: world-politics, science-and-technology, human-interest, community-and-society, french-polynesia, pacific

First posted March 14, 2017 05:46:55

Read the original here:

Floating countries of the future - this could be your new home - ABC Online

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on Floating countries of the future – this could be your new home – ABC Online

Imagine a Silicon Valley of the Sea – Bloomberg

Posted: at 7:09 am

In 2008, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel gave half a million dollars to a Google engineer named Patri Friedman, the grandson of economist Milton Friedman. The money was to establish the Seasteading Institute, which aims to spearhead the development of politically autonomous, floating seasteads in unregulated international waters. This was to be the beginning of a long experiment in civilization building. It also turned out to be the origin of many, many puns.

Nearly a decade in, this experiment has yielded more theory than practice. Nevertheless, the institute has published a wildly optimistic book called Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians. Written by staff aquapreneur Joe Quirk, with an assist from Friedman, Seasteadings principal argument is that the world needs a Silicon Valley of the sea, where those who wish to experiment with building new societies can go to demonstrate their ideas in practice.

The dream of oceanic colonization is at least as old as science fiction, but the institute is both contemporary and sincere. The book begins by heralding 2050 as a deadly deadline: an approaching pinch point in the supply of several key commodities that humanity needs to survive. By then, Quirk and Friedman warn, more than half the worlds population will lack fresh water, and well have reached peak phosphorous, when we no longer have enough of the mineral, which is key to agricultural production, to feed ourselves.

For every problem the book raises, seasteading is the solution. Imaginelots of sentences begin with that wordif we didnt have to wait for the caprice of political history to create Hong Kongs and Singapores. (Hong Kong counts as a pre-stead.) While critics envision seasteads as glorified tax havens for the rich, proponents contend that mobile, modular colonies represent humanitys last best hopebe it for testing new modes of governance or combating the rising tide of climate change.

Seasteading goes to great lengths to convince us that free-floating cities arent as far-fetched as they sound, and in some respects, it succeeds. What are cruise ships, Quirk and Friedman ask, if not prototypical seasteads? They tout the brawniness of a liquefied natural gas platform built by Shell to withstand a Category 5 typhoon. They salivate over the idea of a carbon-neutral skyscraper made of magnesium harvested from seawater (aka seament or seacrete). But if youre expecting Seasteading to pay more than scant attention to, say, the cruise industrys checkered record on workers rights, it will disappoint you. Quirk and Friedmans techno-libertarian self-certainty runs deep.

Along the way, the writers regale us with bluetopian proposals from marine biologists, nautical engineers, a feminist shesteader, and Titanic co-discoverer Robert Ballard, who recounts the time he went mano a mano with Buzz Aldrin over space vs. sea colonization during a National Geographic TV special. (I really took off the gloves and told the astronauts that populating Mars was a crock of shit.)

The most important business stories of the day.

Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter.

Every summer, the institute hosts a BYOB (Bring Your Own Boat) floating festival on the Sacramento Delta called Ephemerisle, during which several hundred seatizens self-organize and self-govern, much like an aquatic version of Burning Man. In January the institute received permission from the government of French Polynesia to pilot an autonomous Floating Island Project off its shorebuilding in deep international waters has thus far proved too logistically complicatedthe first step toward creating a permanent colony.

Meanwhile, this years Ephemerisle is set for July. A reality-TV production company once expressed interest in doing a series on the gathering, but Quirk and Friedman proudly report there just wasnt enough conflict to make it work. This, of course, proves their point. If you want people to fight, they write, condemn them to a crowded space where they cant take their land and go elsewhere.

See more here:

Imagine a Silicon Valley of the Sea - Bloomberg

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on Imagine a Silicon Valley of the Sea – Bloomberg

This Shipping Route Map Shows Why Floating Cities May Make Sense – Inverse

Posted: March 10, 2017 at 3:05 am

Floating cities are an idea that receive a lot of suspicion, and with good reason. Who wants to live on an isolated platform in the middle of the sea, never seeing an outsider and rarely getting supplies from the outside world? As it turns out, the notion that the ocean is some barren wasteland is a misconception. A large amount of global commerce is conducted on the high seas, making floating cities a less ridiculous idea than they first seem.

A map created by data visualization firm Kiln uses information from the UCL Energy Institute, showing movements of the global merchant fleet over the course of 2012. It reveals the hidden routes that criss-cross the world, forming a complex network of global cargo movements. Although it moves across empty seascapes, cargo liner shipping accounts for about two-thirds of all global trade. Check out the map below, or visit the ShipMap website for an awesome interactive version.

Floating cities have received attention from a number of places. Libertarian billionaires like Peter Thiel are often associated with the concept, which would let people live outside the realms of government interference, living only by the laws on international waters. Thiel pledged $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute in 2011 to explore the idea.

Youll notice that even in seemingly empty waters, theres a number of points with high amounts of through traffic. Hawaii to San Francisco, for example, has a thick line going between as the quickest route between the two points. Similarly, the southern tip of Africa sees a large number of ships moving through to get to either side. Much like the Panama canal and other through points, floating cities have a chance to become key stop-off points for ships passing through, serving as economic hubs of the high seas. In this version of the map, you can even see individual ships moving around the waters:

Its easy to picture floating cities on this map, as tiny balls of light where many ships congregate in the middle of the ocean. But unfortunately, its unlikely that well be living in Waterworld-like sea stations anytime soon. The Seasteading Institute announced in October that it was nearing a deal for a special economic zone in French Polynesia, allowing residents to visit the nearby mainland for supplies. But Thiel told the New York Times in January that these islands are not quite feasible right now. It may be a while before the dream comes to life, but make no mistake: Thiel et al probably wont be building their island in completely empty waters.

Photos via ShipMap, ShipMap.org

View post:

This Shipping Route Map Shows Why Floating Cities May Make Sense - Inverse

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on This Shipping Route Map Shows Why Floating Cities May Make Sense – Inverse

‘Logan’ proves Wolverine is the most libertarian superhero ever – Red Alert Politics

Posted: March 6, 2017 at 3:06 pm

(Screenshot)

From its inception,X-Menrelied heavily on political undertones and took on sensitive subjects including racism, segregation, AIDS, and war. The latest (and best)film in the franchise isLogan no exception and while being more character-driven than previous films, it shows why Wolverine is the most libertarian superhero of all time.

The film takes place in the year 2029 and the character of Wolverine has aged significantly, is living off the grid with Professor X, and is making a living bydrivinga limo using a car sharing app whats more libertarian than Uber?His superhero days are long behind him and the only time he acts violently is when hes provoked.

Throughout the film, Wolverine constantly fantasizes about living on a boat with Professor X and being free of dealing with anyone a poor mans version of Peter Thiels dream of seasteading.

His fantasies are interrupted when a new character named Laura emerges, she has the same super powers and has suffered at the hands of military scientists who conducted experimentations on Logan and gave both of them adamantium claws.

(**SPOILER ALERT **)

Logan wasnever been a believer in mutant brotherhood and the identity politics that surrounds the X-Men comics. Hes a loner, a recluse, and a libertarian, he doesnt want to be part of any institutions and questions other mutants for their needing to belong.When Professor X demands they protect Laura he at first rejects the idea insisting its not my problem but has a change of heart when he learns shes his cloned-daughter who raised in a military lab.

His decision to protect Laura and Professor dont come out of any identity-based philosophy, but only for the fact that he choose to treat them like family.

The last X-Men decides he has to get his daughter to safety in a community 0f mutants, away from the long reach of the military-industrial complex that destroyed his life.

Over the course of the 9 X-Men movies featuring Wolverine, the character is a constant struggle to live independently of the government intrusion, the police state that tries to document and imprison mutants, and the identity politics that forces mutants to live their entire life based upon the features they were born with.

Its inLoganthat Wolverine finally is able to achieve those libertarian dreams for his daughter.

See original here:

'Logan' proves Wolverine is the most libertarian superhero ever - Red Alert Politics

Posted in Seasteading | Comments Off on ‘Logan’ proves Wolverine is the most libertarian superhero ever – Red Alert Politics

Page 7«..6789..»