Month: January 2026

Art, In Portuguese, PhotographyLeave a comment

Neblina

Fernando Kaskais

FERNANDO KASKAIS Não se veem mas estão ali, por trás daquela cortina cinza está um céu azul e um mar a pender para o esverdeado. A neblina cria um ambiente fantasmagórico porque elimina as sombras e todos sabemos que os fantasmas não têm sombra. Pensando bem, não posso provar que o céu e o mar estejam ali. Ninguém os vê, talvez tenham sido eliminados e agora sejam apenas mais dois fantasmas que habitam um mundo imaginário onde tudo pode acontecer. O suspeito do costume é o Sol, “desaparecido em parte incerta”. https://kaskaisphotos.wordpress.com/2026/01/10/neblina/ F. Kaskais Web Guru Continue reading Neblina

AI, Brain, Future, Living, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

How AI is making us think short-term

Fernando Kaskais

Fellipe Ditadi / Unsplash / Big Think Key Takeaways By Eric Markowitz In his sweeping 2025 year-in-review, the author Dan Wang makes an unsettling argument: The real danger of AI isn’t psychotic robots taking over the world, but how it’s compressing our sense of time to think in ever-shorter durations. As Dan writes, in Silicon Valley today, conversations are increasingly collapsing into apocalyptic timelines. Leaders fixate on what to do over the next year, while often neglecting the harder work of extending timelines. Dan’s concern isn’t only that leaders think short-term, but that thinking around AI has become either utopian or … Continue reading How AI is making us think short-term

Brain, Hypocrisy, Living, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Our Obsession with Hypocrisy Is Making Things Worse

Fernando Kaskais

In an era of callouts and gotchas, endlessly hunting out contradictions distorts the problems we’re trying to solve. By: Michael Hallsworth You hypocrite. These words hit people hard. They sting. Your pulse may quicken upon seeing them. This aversion has deep roots. For many people, disgust of hypocrisy is part of the cultural fabric that weaves together their beliefs, judgments, and decisions. Religion provides an obvious starting point. In the Bible, Jesus rails repeatedly against the hypocritical Pharisees. Dante’s “Inferno” shows vividly what their fate could be: Hypocrites are banished to the second-lowest circle of Hell, together with “everything that fits … Continue reading Our Obsession with Hypocrisy Is Making Things Worse

Europe, Manipulation, Military, Politics, WarLeave a comment

How Europe Became a Battlefield for Someone Else’s War

Fernando Kaskais

by Thomas Karat Modern wars have a peculiar discipline: they are carefully organized to happen far from the capitals that authorize them. Decision-making remains insulated, prosperity remains intact, and political life continues uninterrupted—while destruction, instability, and escalation are exported to allied territory. The war in Ukraine follows this pattern with brutal clarity. Europe is not watching this war from a safe distance. It is hosting it. Economically, politically, strategically, Europe is the space where risk accumulates and consequences materialize. Critical energy infrastructure “rupture” here. Industries relocate from here. Social cohesion strains here. Meanwhile, the strategic center of gravity that frames … Continue reading How Europe Became a Battlefield for Someone Else’s War

Freak U.S.A, Future, Military, Politics, WarLeave a comment

A Test Of Great Power Spheres Of Influence

Fernando Kaskais

A 1900 illustration in which Uncle Sam straddles the Americas while wielding a stick that reads “Monroe Doctrine 1824-1905.” (Louis Dalrymple/Wikimedia) The outcome in Venezuela, Ukraine and Taiwan will determine the next world order. By Nathan Gardels Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. He is also the co-founder of and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute. The most dangerous moment in geopolitics is when the old order no longer prevails, but the new one is still unsettled. In this circumstance, there is not so much a vacuum as a cloud of uncertainty. Everything is up in the air. Expectations, … Continue reading A Test Of Great Power Spheres Of Influence

Big Oil, Freak U.S.A, Military, Money, Politics, WarLeave a comment

When Trump’s big Venezuela oil grab runs smack into reality

Fernando Kaskais

The White House is proudly embracing an era of fossil-fuel imperialism when global markets are vastly different By Karthik Sankaran Within hours of U.S. military strikes on Venezuela and the capture of its leader, Nicolas Maduro, President Trump proclaimed that “very large United States oil companies would go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” Indeed, at no point during this exercise has there been any attempt to deny that control of Venezuela’s oil (or “our oil” as Trump once described it) is a major force motivating administration actions. One irony here is … Continue reading When Trump’s big Venezuela oil grab runs smack into reality

Activism, Animals, Health, RightsLeave a comment

Excerpt: When the Ethics of Animal Research Hit Home

Fernando Kaskais

Top: A beagle who was rescued from a lab in 2022 is placed in a calming room after being spayed, in preparation for eventual adoption. Visual: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The owner of a rescued lab dog considers if insights gleaned through animal research are enough to justify the practice. By Melanie D.G. Kaplan In 2013, I adopted a beagle who had spent nearly four years in a lab. I didn’t know any details about his past, but when he came to live with me, he was scared of just about everything, and his sense of smell — the beagle superpower! — was … Continue reading Excerpt: When the Ethics of Animal Research Hit Home

Art, In Portuguese, PhotographyLeave a comment

Crazy Horse

Fernando Kaskais

FERNANDO KASKAIS Num tempo em que a loucura anda à solta lá para os lados dos States, imagino que esta seta gravada no chão, não é uma indicação de trânsito, mas uma homenagem ao grande chefe índio Crazy Horse, recordado como um herói que lutou para preservar as terras nativas e a cultura do seu povo contra a limpeza étnica e o avanço das tropas norte-americanas. Depois de se ter rendido, foi cobardemente assassinado por um soldado. Os Sioux enterraram-lhe o coração na curva de um rio, em contrapartida, os corações dos americanos, ficaram sepultados sob o alcatrão. https://kaskaisphotos.wordpress.com/2026/01/03/crazy-horse/ F. … Continue reading Crazy Horse

Health, History, Politics, PsychologyLeave a comment

The Body as Revolution: Che Guevara on Social Medicine and Personal Health as a Political Act

Fernando Kaskais

By Maria Popova “If the body is not the soul, what is the soul?” wrote Walt Whitman in his heroic revolt against the lasting tyranny of Descartes, whose dismissal of the body and disdain for the soul may be the single most damaging ideological misstep of modernity. Long before we had evidence that the body is where we heal the traumas of being, that it is our mightiest instrument of sanity and joy, that “the mind narrates what the nervous system knows,” Whitman ministered to disfigured soldiers as a volunteer Civil War nurse, knowing what we still, in our age of disembodied intellects, deny — … Continue reading The Body as Revolution: Che Guevara on Social Medicine and Personal Health as a Political Act

Big Oil, Corruption, Freak U.S.A, Manipulation, Money, PoliticsLeave a comment

Power Brokers

Fernando Kaskais

Illustrations by Bryce Wymer  What’s really behind your soaring utility bills by Nick Bowlin January 20, 2025, the first day of President Trump’s second term, marked a major milestone for the U.S. utility sector: a record high for natural-­gas consumption. A few weeks after, key players in American utilities gathered blocks away from the White House for the Winter Policy Summit, a conference organized by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (­NARUC). Trump’s policies were much discussed—­but the country’s energy demand, which had started to climb for the first time in two decades, was even higher on the agenda. For most Americans, this trend is bad news. It means higher electric … Continue reading Power Brokers