...Abrupt climate change may be normal in the planet's history, or, to state it differently, that the earth's [sic] climate is inherently very unstab… - James Howard Kunstler

I had one of those steel thermal mugs you carried everywhere with you as a kind of signifier of how busy, and therefore how important you were.

Whole ideologies had to be constructed to account for being modern and to explain it.

We can conclude that the Earth is a fickle place for all life, not least the human project of civilization. We maintain a most uncertain toehold in our narrow niche of comfort here, with a vast community of other living things on a planet that might have a self-regulating life of its own. I’m not altogether convinced by the Gaia theory, but there’s plenty of reason to believe in a form of cosmic equilibrium that amounts to rough justice. There are consequences for our doings, and when we cross the frontier into the realm of too much magic cosmic judgment may come thundering through our little lives like what our distant ancestors thought of as the wrath of God.