Ian Hoopingarner

   I always get excited by  new Bluetooth mesh network technology  because it is extremely useful for pro-democracy movements. Wherever the Internet could be censored, monitored, surveilled, or shut down due to security reactions to social movements, protests, rallies, and marches, a Bluetooth mesh network like FireChat, which was used throughout the 2010s in Hong Kong during the protests against Chinese authoritarianism that came to be known as the Umbrella Movement, can keep communications flowing to a large group of organizers in the field, avoiding confusion, the fog of war, and other roadblocks.    Mesh networks are equally useful for underserved areas in rural or urban communities.    There have been some successful examples. One in particular comes to mind of an urban community that installed local Internet through a Wi-Fi network that was based on mesh networks.    Now, of course, the ideal mesh network would simply involve every...

Geoengineering rests on shaky foundations and poor social planning.  I think there’s evidence of the government trying to obfuscate information by changing the names of programs and initiatives, to try to render information exposed to the public in previous reporting facially out of date.   First off, this is reminding me of Naomi Klein’s chapter on geoengineering, which is very skeptical of the whole idea, as we should all be. Some highlights from that chapter: Alan Robock wrote a paper published in 2008 in Geophysical Research that geoengineering would “disrupt the Asian and African Monsoon and Pacific Monsoons, reducing precipitation to the food supply for billions of people.” Computer models show that geoengineering would crash crop productivity in the Sahel, leading to desertification. Further computer models show a 20% reduction in rainfall in the Amazon from geoengineering.   Historical evidence connects volcano eruptions with droughts, meaning we would be risk...

  I hope to name a juncture that occurs every so often in organizing, and from this point advances a narrative that I think we can retrieve from a wayward path and put to use for good purpose.   It is shown by such things as how recently a teachers’ movement in Chicago presented both of these facets of the core issue of our time, a pairing of issues that is often seen, but presents an opportunity that I think slips away in most cases. However, I hope we can seize the moment with this moment.   First, let me say that what I describe is best understood to be covered within the social paradigm of one group’s energy and motivation being matched by another’s out of sympathy, excitement, or solidarity.   So for instance, when the Chicago Teachers Union president called for raising more revenue for schools with a tax on the rich, while at the same time student groups organized around the principle that green schools are a budget solution, that is an example of that type of ...

In the month of July, —  The Honeybee from Religious Symbolism to Enlightenment Why was Deity associated with the honeybee? There’s a sort of speculative fiction book that explores the origin of religion in ancient Mesopotamia through a sort of meta-narrative of science fiction, and on the surface level, I’m drawing from that novel.  ( Fall , Neal Stephenson.) But storyline aside, there’s an interesting take there on the origin of the connection between Deity and the honeybee, showing how practices of worship situated around agricultural rites eventually foregrounded the importance of the honeybee, and that insect and its hive became a symbol of deity, perhaps brought about through the actions of devotees to a specific Canaanite religious sect, but also through a generalized familiarity among the population of the ancient Near East with the honeybee’s pollination abilities and the honey it produced, which could have strengthened its position as a symbol, even among those who...