May 2026
Mutually Sustaining, Not Fixed
Langmuir and Broecker's one-sentence case against the checklist.
Habitability · The reading this argument stands on
Earlier this year, a four-month syllabus — Governance, Time, Space, Habitability — was the wandering that led here. Sixteen books, four questions, and the running notes below are marginalia against them: an excerpt, and a comment on what it does or doesn't survive once habitability displaces sovereignty as the thing being asked about.
| Book | Author | Month |
|---|---|---|
| The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty | Benjamin H. Bratton | Governance |
| Children of a Modest Star | Jonathan S. Blake & Nils Gilman | Governance |
| The Planetary (ed.) — not on Google Books; Berggruen library instead | Nils Gilman, ed. | Governance |
| The Climate of History in a Planetary Age | Dipesh Chakrabarty | Time |
| Timefulness | Marcia Bjornerud | Time |
| A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History | Manuel DeLanda | Time |
| Death of a Discipline | Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak | Space |
| Facing Gaia | Bruno Latour | Space |
| Hyperobjects | Timothy Morton | Space |
| Worlds Without End | Chris Impey | Space |
| The Little Book of Exoplanets | Joshua N. Winn | Space |
| How to Build a Habitable Planet | Charles H. Langmuir & Wally Broecker | Habitability |
| A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans | Jakob von Uexküll | Habitability |
| A Pattern Language | Christopher Alexander | Habitability |
| A City on Mars | Kelly & Zach Weinersmith | Habitability |
| The Goldilocks Enigma | Paul Davies | Habitability |