telharmonium

I'm reminded of the novel "Venomous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman, a deeply weird satire about the perverse incentives and behaviors engendered by the union of industrial consumption, market-based conservation, and the abstract calculus of ethics at scale.

In particular, one portion features an autonomous bioreactor which produces enormous clouds of "yayflies"; mayflies whose nervous systems have been engineered to experience constant, maximal pleasure. The system's designer asserts that, given the sheer volume of yayflies produced, they have done more than anyone in history to increase the absolute quantity of happiness in the universe.

There's a hilarious scene in Ned Beauman's "The Teleportation Accident" which revolves around Serge Voronoff’s monkey gland-grafting procedure. It's a wonderfully strange novel, set in the 1930's and richly marbled with the era's frenetic sexual, artistic, and scientific experimentation.

I also wondered if the recent success of sea otter conservation efforts would be in conflict with abalone restoration. However, there seems to be evidence that, at least in the case of black abalone, abalone thrive in habitats where sea otters have been re-introduced[1]. One proposed mechanism for this is that sea otters prefer to eat sea urchins over abalone[2], and keeping the sea urchin population in check improves the overall health of the kelp forests which abalone need to survive.

[1] https://futureoftheocean.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/sea-otters...

[2] https://www.montereycountyweekly.com/blogs/animal_blog/of-ot...

Unfortunately habitats are not fungible. A square mile of dry land is unlikely to be suitable for the species which live in the wetlands of a tidal estuary.

Funnily enough, an essay cited by the article contains this quote in its opening paragraph:

"...defining a heterogeneous orthodoxy for the coming Information Age..." [1]

Presumably Victor's research group is working in opposition to this conventional thinking, making them... unheterorthodox?

1. 'THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY' - http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-i...

Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga involves interstellar travel on trains[1] which pass through artificial wormholes. I wouldn't recommend the books; he creates a world with so much potential, but the characters and story are disappointing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Technologica...