My Most Dangerous Year: “In my view, whacking corporate CEOs isn’t an acceptable method of solving grievances. But perhaps the Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque idolization of someone seen as striking a blow to the system is a symptom of capitalism run amok.” — Marlon Weems for Oldster.
Bauhaus Manifesto: Walter Gropius' manifesto from 1919.
How the Federal Government Fell: “What is happening across the federal government right now is unprecedented. But this is not Germany in the 1930s; it’s not the fall of the Soviet Union. We grasp at analogies to help contextualize current events that escape understanding. There are similarities, but what’s happening is new, very American, and very 21st century. In 50 years it will be talked about in the vein of ‘What happened to the United States in the mid-2020s.’”—Garrison Davis
Chinpokomon Diplomacy: “On the surface, the conversation went smoothly — at least for the American President, who announced Japanese concession after concession without ceding much in return. And Ishiba pointedly refused to engage with questions about tarrifs. It might make one wonder what Japan stands to gain. The short answer is everything.” —Matt Alt
Radar
Comics Sans Frontiers @ Rice University in Houston, March 20-23: Featuring keynote presentation by Art Spiegelman, original art by Jack Katz, and full program jampacked with participants from around the world. Sadly, I'll be out if the U.S. well before then.
BRIDGE by Matt Madden: Narrated by the artist.
You can't post your way out of Fascism: By Janus Rose at 404 Media.
War for Eternity: Warren Ellis on the book by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum.
General thoughts by Warren Ellis on navigating the current platform-scape: “My thing was, does anyone really want to fracture common culture and a shared marketplace any more than it already is? And an hour later, I thought, common culture is a delusion of my age. Common platforms, perhaps, but platforms are contingent and temporary. We are all 'creators' now.”
The Future Is Too Easy: David Roth's takedown of this year's consumer electronics convention in Las Vegas.
The Colors of Motion: Prints that stack the average colour of each frame from popular films into a timeline.
Doing nothing with your favorite people is really, really good for you: The fact that this needed to be an essay at all and is in fact being shared around without even an inkling of a “no-duh” attitude is evidence of one of the deepest maladies of Western civilization.
How communal living makes cooking easier, cheaper, and better: Echoing my very same sentiments as the above link does.
Ugur Galenkus uses photography to juxtapose war and peace.
- Public Work: Search public domain imagery from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources.
“It would take the redistribution of a mere 0.2 percent of the world's wealth to end the hardship of the 1.4 billion people currently living beneath the world's poverty line of US $1.25 a day.”
More from Kohei Saito's SLOW DOWN.
“Economic equality if realized via the redistribution of subsidies currently spent on the fossil fuel industry ($5.9 trillion or 6.8 percent of the GDP of 2020), would produce no additional environmental burden. In fact, it would likely improve the environment!”
$5.9 trillion redistributed to 1.4 billion people would come out to about $11.5 a day per person, not a whole lot, but still 9 times more than what you've got if you're living on $1.25 a day.
One thing to keep in mind, the necessity of wealth redistribution does not only apply to the Global South vis-a-vis the Global North, but also applies within the populations of some nations of the Global North.
“The per capita GDP of most northern European nations like France and Germany is lower than that of the United States. But their standards of social welfare are much higher, and many of these nations provide healthcare and higher education free to their citizens. In the US, by contrast, some people lack health insurance and therefore have difficulties accessing healthcare, and many people struggle with student loans they will never be able to pay back Japan's GDP is also much lower than America's, but the average Japanese lifespan is almost six years longer.
“In other words, the extent to which societies thrive changes greatly depending on how production and distribution are organized and how social resources are shared. No matter how much an economy might grow, if the resulting wealth is monopolized by one part of the population and never redistributed, large numbers of people will live in comparative misery, unable to realize their potential.
“This can be seen the other way as well: even if its economy doesn't grow, if existing resources are distributed well, a society may thrive more than ever.”
SLOW DOWN: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito
When this pops up as you unsubscribe from a service, you can't help but wonder: Well, why didn't y'all just price it that way in the first place?!?!
On a completely different note, I was today years old when I discovered the term “emotional age”. Based on this excellent interview with Jane Pratt on the Oldster substack, I think my emotional age may have capped at 32.
Molly Crabapple on the Jewish Heretics podcast speaking about her research on the Jewish Labor Bund, “the brass-knuckle socialists of Eastern Europe who rejected Zionism from the start, foreseeing the tidal wave of blood it would entail, and instead insisted on their right to stay in their European homes.”
Skull Whistles: “In digging up ancient Aztec graves dating from the years 1250 to 1521 AD, archaeologists have found many examples of small whistles made of clay and formed into the shape of a skull. These whistles still work today as they did when they were buried next to a person in a grave. They produce sounds most often described as a scream of sorts.”
Inbox zero, now for the RSS.
The Great American Nuclear Weapons Upgrade – Undark: “In the plains of western South Dakota, about 25 miles northeast of Mount Rushmore, the Ellsworth Air Force Base is preparing to receive the first fleet of B-21 nuclear bombers, replacing Cold War-era planes. Two other bases, Dyess in Texas and Whiteman in Missouri, will soon follow. By the 2030s, a total of five bases throughout the United States will host nuke-carrying bombers for the first time since the 1990s.”
The Outer Limits of Optimism – Heather Parry: “In 2009, an 81-year-old man named Orville Richardson died, having been a member of Alcor with a view to preserving his head after his death; he had paid a lump sum lifetime membership fee. His brother and sister, who were his co-conservators, evidently did not agree with his plan for cryopreservation... they had him buried. Two months after his death, the relatives demanded a refund of the lifetime membership fee, which seems to have annoyed the company; Alcor subsequently sued to be allowed to exhume Richardson’s body, and though they lost initially they won on appeal. The Iowa Court of Appeals then ordered the Richardson family to dig up their late sibling, cut off his head and give it to Alcor, so they could freeze it.”
Bluesky raises $15M series A – Tech Crunch: “The Series A round is led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Darkmode’s Amir Shevat, and Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda. The presence of a crypto-focused firm might alarm skeptics, especially since CEO Jay Graber used to be a software engineer for a crypto company, Zcash...”
Now that the newsletter is out of the way, finally catching up on email (inbox: 165) and RSS (653). I loathe that it has gotten so out of hand.
Very good Ted talk by Eric X. Li, A Tale of Two Political Systems, which may at first come off as propaganda for China's one party system and an indictment of democracy, but he makes it a point to point out that it isn't about coming to the conclusion of what the best political system for the entire world ought to be, in as much as he makes the point that perhaps a plurality of political systems, whether they be old, current, or new may be more apt.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” said the Earth followed by a sinister laugh.
She was bruised and visibly ill, but still stood tall. She wasn't proud of this, not really. She'd held back doing anything like it for a long time, but she was at her wit's end and found no other way.
She shook her head and retreated into the embrace of the universe, muttering no more than two words: “Puny humans.”
(Uncredited photo from Valencia following unprecedented floods.)