Posts Tagged ‘music’
“Adaptation and mitigation are two sides of the same coin. If mitigation is about preventing the unmanageable, adaptation is about managing the unavoidable.”*…
Adapting to climate change is quickly becoming part of everyday life. Nabig Chaudhry outlines seven trends we’re seeing for 2026 and beyond…
Within the climate and scientific communities, there’s growing concern about how quickly the world is approaching (and may exceed) 2°C of warming. 2024 was the first calendar year in which global average temperature exceeded 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The impacts of rapid warming are becoming harder to miss: The climate is changing quickly almost everywhere, local and global climate risks are growing, progress on mitigation has become more politically constrained and uncertain, and many of our systems and policies aren’t prepared for the conditions ahead.
Growing climate risk is increasing the demand for new technologies, tools, strategies, and ways of thinking about climate adaptation. Since publishing our Insights on Climate Adaptation in 2025 report, the practice of climate adaptation has continued to develop, as more people, communities, organizations, and institutions work to understand and respond to climate risks.
People use different language to describe climate adaptation (including climate resilience), but the work centers on helping people, communities, and organizations manage the risks of a changing climate. Those activities are expanding, and we can already see signs. For example, new funding and investment vehicles are emerging, such as Tailwind Futures, and adaptation is receiving more dedicated space at major climate convenings, including The Adaptation Forum, a co-hosted gathering of thought leaders in the adaptation space during Climate Week NYC 2025.
In my role as Director of Climate Adaptation Research at Probable Futures and through my PhD program at the University of California, Berkeley, I speak with experts, read emerging research, and study adaptation developments every day. Through these conversations and insights, I’ve reflected on which adaptation trends are likely to emerge and strengthen…
Chaudhry npacks seven different trends; here, let me highlight two. The first is one that (Roughly) Daily has visited before, insurance…
Elevating insurance as a force in adaptation planning, policy, and behavior
Insurance is a valuable adaptation tool, as it can transfer risk, support recovery after climate shocks, and help signal where danger is increasing through premiums, deductibles, coverage limits, or insurer retreat. It can also shape incentives, because the way risk is priced can influence whether and how people and institutions reduce exposure, strengthen buildings, or avoid certain kinds of development.
As climate risks grow, damage to property and homes becomes more frequent and severe. Property owners are experiencing those shocks both physically (flooding, fire, wind damage, etc.) and financially as insurance markets adjust and recalibrate in response to changing probabilities and severities. Insurance markets have begun reflecting climate risk, and those changes are starting to influence where and how people build homes and infrastructure, where they invest in property, and where they choose to live.
A useful example of how insurance is beginning to influence adaptation efforts in the public sphere is Strengthen Alabama Homes, a program of the Alabama Department of Insurance. The program provides grants to help homeowners retrofit their homes and roofs to reduce wind damage from extreme winds and storms. Homeowners who participate can receive discounts on the wind portion of their homeowner’s insurance premium, which makes insurance not only a tool for recovery but also a tool for encouraging adaptation before exposure occurs.
Insurance pricing is one way climate risk is made visible, priced, and acted on through adaptation. I expect that insurance will increasingly influence adaptation planning, policy, and behavior, not only by helping people recover after climate shocks, but by shaping the choices people make before those shocks occur. The development of the insurance industry will therefore be an important factor in adaptation. If insurers become a source not only of risk pricing but also of risk information, adaptation guidance, and incentives to reduce risk, they could help more people act before losses occur. But that would require a meaningful shift in the role of insurance companies, from mainly pricing and transferring risk to also helping people reduce it…
The second goes to the contentious topic of geoengineering…
Expanding debate around the role of climate intervention
As warming continues, risks keep growing. We have more, clearer, worrisome signals that irreversible change, tipping points, and local climate changes so severe that adaptation is impractical if not impossible, are not far off. In response, people and institutions are starting new conversations about global-scale responses. One of those responses is climate intervention, sometimes called geoengineering.
Climate intervention generally refers to intentional efforts to alter Earth’s systems in order to counteract some of the effects of climate change. It can include approaches that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as approaches that reflect a portion of sunlight back into space, such as stratospheric aerosol injection.
Its relationship to adaptation is uneasy, but important. If climate intervention is, at its core, an effort to manage the otherwise unmanageable risks of global climate change, then is it another tool for adapting to climate change, or is it something fundamentally different? There is no consensus, and there may never be, not least because global action will cause uneven responses locally. We don’t know much about the potential impacts of some climate interventions, how they could affect different regions unequally, or what long-term consequences they may have for Earth’s climate and natural systems.
There are good reasons to have informed conversations and do fundamental research on intervention. People with adaptation expertise can help explore, illuminate, and explain what climate intervention could mean for society and nature. There are also likely to be benefits for adaptation professionals to participate in these conversations and research projects. Even if climate intervention is never widely deployed, the debate itself may shape adaptation thinking, climate policy, research funding, public trust, and international governance.
Climate change requires people to consider risks and options, whether for mitigation, adaptation, or intervention. Treating strategies for managing the rate, pace, and impacts of climate change as distinct and separate is unlikely to lead to good outcomes. I am hopeful that there will be more collaboration across these new fields as society faces new challenges that have a common root cause. This may include more discussion about how these technologies should be governed, whether they should receive more investment, and whether climate intervention is a possible third leg alongside mitigation and adaptation…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The near-term future of climate adaptation: emerging trends.”
* U. N. Environmental Program
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As we prepare, we might recall (wistfully) that it was on this date in 1942 that Bing Crosby, with the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers, recorded Irving Berlin’s song, “White Christmas.” According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this version is the best-selling single of all time with an excess of 50 million copies sold worldwide. (In fact, the version most often heard today is not the original. After frequent use, the master had become damaged, so on March 18, 1947, Crosby re-recorded the holiday hit.)
“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”*…
A housekeeping note: (R)D will be off tomorrow– Sunday the 12th– returning on Monday…
Wikipedia has over 300 language editions. Each one picks different images to illustrate the same topic.
From Riley Walz, a marvelous way to explore the the images that different concepts conjure in different cultures: “In Every Language.”
(Image above: “Mother” in English, Portuguese, and others on the left; Italian, Esperanto, and others on the right)
* E. M. Forster
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As we visualize, we might recall that it was on this date in 1966 that Frank Sinatra recorded “Strangers in the Night.” According to Sinatra: The Life (Summers, Swan, 2006), Sinatra despised the song and called it “a piece of sh*t” and, per Frank Sinatra by Jean-Pierre Hombach, “worst f*cking song that I have ever heard.” Nevertheless, it became his first No. 1 hit since 1955’s “Learning the Blues” and remained on the Billboard charts for 15 weeks. His album of the same name became his most successful. The song also won him Grammy Awards for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Record of the Year, and Best Arrangement.
“It is impossible to win gracefully at chess. No man has yet said “Mate!” in a voice which failed to sound to his opponent bitter, boastful and malicious.”*…
… but perhaps the offense is muted if the call is remote.
Electronic gaming is huge– and growing, As Rolling Stone reports…
The gaming industry, fueled by platforms like Twitch and YouTube, has surged into a multi-billion-dollar powerhouse, projected to exceed $207 billion in 2026. These platforms do more than showcase gameplay—they cultivate vibrant, interactive communities where fans engage in real time, from live chats to virtual watch parties. Games like League of Legends, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike and Fortnite have become a cultural phenomenon, drawing in over 2.6 billion gamers globally, a number that continues to climb each year. Mobile gaming, accounting for over 60% of global gaming revenue, plays a significant role in this growth, making gaming accessible to a broader audience than ever before…
But as Danny Robb explains, using tecnology to play games remotely has a long history…
In 1897, the United States House of Representatives held a series of chess matches to find their most skilled players. The five winners were pitted against counterparts in the British House of Commons. But while the Americans sat down to play in Washington, D.C., their opponents sat in London. The players received moves by telegraph, and sent responses back over wires that crossed the Atlantic.
By this point, “cable chess” had been slowly evolving for decades. Historian Simone Müller-Pohl argues that this form of long-distance chess play offers insight into the cultural and political currents of the industrial era.
By the mid-nineteenth century, she explains, there was a growing sports culture in Europe and the US. Industrial technologies enabled more people to attend games and follow along from a distance. A growing middle class fostered this sporting culture, which came to include chess.
“Weekly,” Müller-Pohl explains, “the liberal and intellectual elites of the time assembled around chess boards in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Moscow, Rome, and London.” Interest in the game spread, and chess clubs emerged. As clubs arranged tournaments and standardized chess rules, Müller-Pohl argues that chess “was gradually turned into a sport.”
Correspondence chess grew along with the game, in part thanks to cheap and efficient postal services. When the telegraph emerged on the scene, the application to chess was almost immediate.
“It was telegraphy’s fathers who pulled the strings behind the first schemes for cable chess,” Müller-Pohl explains. In 1844, inventor Samuel Morse arranged chess matches on a new telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. “All of the 686 moves necessary for the seven games played were transmitted without mistake or interruption,” Müller-Pohl writes.
Not long after, in 1845, inventor Charles Wheatstone attended a demonstration in London. Chess legend Howard Staunton played against his rival George Walker over the South Western Railway line between Portsmouth and London. Müller-Pohl describes how witnesses found the match “rather tedious,” but it received a lot of press. This was partly the point—the matches demonstrated and advertised the capabilities and accuracy of the invention.
The Staunton match had another interesting aspect. Müller-Pohl points out that “the lines were still used for ordinary traffic during the games, allowing a group of chess players from Southampton to have every move telegraphed to them.” A bit like modern e-sports, spectators could observe the virtual match…
The early history of e-gaming– when telegraph cables let chess clubs stage matches across continents, linking players and spectators in a new kind of long-distance competition: “The First E-Sports? Chess by Telegraph,” from @inverting-vision.bsky.social in @jstordaily.bsky.social.
* A. A. Milne
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As we note that what’s old is new again, we might recall that it was on this date in 1958 that Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” was released. It peaked at number two on the Hot R&B Sides chart and number eight on its pre-Billboard Hot 100 chart. Considered “the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom”, it has been covered by many, many other artists and has received many, many honors and accolades, among them being ranked 33rd and 7th, respectively, on Rolling Stone’s 2021 and 2004 lists of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was also included as one of the 27 songs on the Voyager Golden Record (a collection of music, images, and sounds designed to serve as an introduction and record of global humanity’s achievements, innovations and culture, to alien/otherworldly inhabitants).
Apropos the piece above, it was released by Chess Records.
“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”*…
… and to the extent that we care about our democracy, that’s an issue.
In an article based on his recent Sakurada-Kai Foundation Oxbridge Lecture at Keio University, Tokyo, John Dunn argues that our democracies depend on our picking up the pace of learning. The abstract:
There cannot be a coherent democratic theory because democracy is not a determinate topic. Representative democracy is a relatively modern regime form. It now needs rehabilitation because so many instances have performed poorly for so long. Representative democracy is now also an aging regime. As a type of state, it is subject to the territorial contentiousness and contested legitimacy of any state. It claims its legitimacy from iterative popular choice, but the plausibility of that claim is increasingly strained by the drastic disparities in life chances reproduced through the property systems it protects. The inherent difficulty for citizens to judge how to advance their collective interests is aggravated by the recent transformation of the information economy. In the cumulative damage inflicted by climate change it faces a deadlier peril than any previous regime and one which only a citizenry that can enlighten itself in time can reasonably hope to nerve itself to meet…
There follows a fascinating– and provocative– elaboration of this thesis in which Dunn considers the history of democracy and the alternatives with which it has, since its inception, vied. He concludes in a bracing fashion…
… The varieties of autocracy which will be on offer wherever the rest of the world has the opportunity to take them up will be without exception the reverse of enlightened – instrumentally and compulsively bound to the extremes of obscurantism, Darkness as a full-on fideist commitment, deliberate self-blinding as a navigational strategy. Move fast, break lots, and never pause to inspect the wreckage.
Representative democracy has recently proved itself a poor structure for collective enlightenment, but the case for it depends on its at least not precluding that, its being still open to making the attempt, and responding to what it can contrive to learn. The most optimistic vision of democracy in action has always seen it as an opportunity for collective self-education on the content of shared goods and the means to achieve them. If that is scarcely a realist picture of what it has ever been, at least it is an image of the right shape. It is too late to ask who will educate the educators. At this point we must educate ourselves together and heed the lessons of that education or we must and will die – not just each of us one by one, as we were always fated to do, but soon enough all of us and for ever…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Can Democracy be Rehabilitated?“
Apposite: “How American Democracy Fell So Far Behind,” from Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (gift article– and source of the image above)
* Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
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As we devote ourselves to democracy, we might spare a thought for Ludwig van Beethoven; he died on this date in 1827. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also composed other chamber music, choral works (including the celebrated Missa Solemnis), a single opera (Fidelio), and numerous songs.
Relevantly to the piece above…
Beethoven admired the ideals of the French Revolution, so he dedicated his third symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte… until Napoleon declared himself emperor. Beethoven then sprung into a rage, ripped the front page from his manuscript and scrubbed out Napoleon’s name…
Beethoven’s temper and Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’
“Scuse me while I kiss the sky”*…
In 1967, Jimi Hendrix’s manager, Chas Chandler arranged for Jimi to meet Cream…
There was a particular night when Cream allowed Jimi to join them for a jam at the Regent Street Polytechnic in central London. Meeting Clapton had been among the enticements Chandler had used to lure Hendrix to Britain: “Hendrix blew into a version of [Howlin’ Wolf’s] ‘Killing Floor’,” recalls [Tony] Garland, “and plays it at breakneck tempo, just like that – it stopped you in your tracks.” [Keith] Altham recalls Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song “which he had yet to master himself”; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: “You never told me he was that fucking good.” – source
Hendrix’s extraodinary virtuosity has, altogether justly, gotten a great deal of attention; less well noted, his incredible mastery of the technology of music making, recording, and performance. Rohan Puranik explains…
3 February 1967 is a day that belongs in the annals of music history. It’s the day that Jimi Hendrix entered London’s Olympic Studios to record a song using a new component. The song was “Purple Haze,” and the component was the Octavia guitar pedal, created for Hendrix by sound engineer Roger Mayer. The pedal was a key element of a complex chain of analog elements responsible for the final sound, including the acoustics of the studio room itself. When they sent the tapes for remastering in the United States, the sounds on it were so novel that they included an accompanying note explaining that the distortion at the end was not malfunction but intention. A few months later, Hendrix would deliver his legendary electric guitar performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival.
“Purple Haze” firmly established that an electric guitar can be used not just as a stringed instrument with built-in pickups for convenient sound amplification, but also as a full-blown wave synthesizer whose output can be manipulated at will. Modern guitarists can reproduce Hendrix’s chain using separate plug-ins in digital audio workstation software, but the magic often disappears when everything is buffered and quantized. I wanted to find out if a more systematic approach could do a better job and provide insights into how Hendrix created his groundbreaking sound.
My fascination with Hendrix’s Olympic Studios’ performance arose because there is a “Hendrix was an alien” narrative surrounding his musical innovation—that his music appeared more or less out of nowhere. I wanted to replace that narrative with an engineering-driven account that’s inspectable and reproducible—plots, models, and a signal chain from the guitar through the pedals that you can probe stage by stage…
[And probe it Puranik does– fascinatingly, stage by stage…]
… Hendrix didn’t speak in decibels and ohm values, but he collaborated with engineers who did—Mayer and Kramer—and iterated fast as a systems engineer. Reframing Hendrix as an engineer doesn’t diminish the art. It explains how one person, in under four years as a bandleader, could pull the electric guitar toward its full potential by systematically augmenting the instrument’s shortcomings for maximum expression.
“Jimi Hendrix Was a Systems Engineer,” from @spectrum.ieee.org.
See also: “The Technology of Jimi Hendrix.”
* Jimi Hendrix, “Purple Haze”
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As we plug in, we might send well-connected birthday greetings to another wizard with wires, Geoff Tootill; he was born on this date in 1922. An electronic engineer and computer scientist, he worked (with Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn) to design a computer memory. To that end they built the first electronic stored-program computer— the Manchester Baby— at the University of Manchester in 1948.
The Baby was not intended to be a practical computing engine, but was instead designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first truly random-access memory. Nonethless, Baby worked: Alan Turing moved to Manchester to use it, and the following year, it inspired the Ferranti Mark 1, the world’s first commercially available electronic general-purpose stored-program digital computer.
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