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.)
“One could make a case that some of the very earliest Enlightenment salons were held not in Europe but in Montreal, during the 1690s. It was there that an indigenous statesman called Kandiaronk, acting as liaison between the Wendat ('Huron') confederation and the regime of Louis XIV, sat down regularly with the French governor-general, the comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, and his deputies—including a certain Baron de Lahontan—to debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion. Kandiaronk was widely hailed by French observers as the most brilliant logician and wittiest debater anyone had ever met (one slightly irritated Jesuit wrote, 'No one has perhaps ever exceeded him in mental capacity'), and a book based on notes from these debates later became a best seller across Europe.”
From HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: Democracy's indigenous origins in the Americas – By David Graeber and David Wengrow
“If you are ready to be ashamed of your own country, this is the first step towards freedom today.”
— Slavoj Zizek, How to become Free
On Charles Dickens' Unfinished Murder Mystery – “Since shortly after Dickens’s death in 1870, writers (and musical theater playwrights) have attempted to pick up where he left off, trying to solve the novel’s central murder themselves and write an acceptable second half and ending. The strangest, though, was published in 1873, by an American printer named Thomas Power James. He claimed that the spirit of Charles Dickens had appeared to him and dictated the rest of the novel through him, and published a full version of the novel. Arthur Conan Doyle, noted spiritualist, found credence in this, and endorsed this “ghostwritten” continuation, saying that Dickens’s style remained consistent throughout the story. This edition endured in America far longer than it should have.”
Lily Allen says she earns more money from selling feet pictures than Spotify streams – “Imagine being an artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet. don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
Inbox 192, RSS 310. Had intended on firing up the newsletter this weekend, but a migraine got the better of me yesterday.
Uh, no shit?
In other news, capitalism is already dead, according to Yanis Varoufakis. We are now in the age of techno-feudalism.
Woke up to 16°C. This is probably not too cold for many people, but it was all the way up in the 30s just a day ago. Such a sudden drop is too much of a shock to my system and I am thus visibly grumpy. I like my seasonal changes to be a little more gradual, please.
Thoughts on geopolitical developments in the back of my mind are keeping me from being able to focus on much anything, but I am trying.
Most of the latest UNGA speeches likened the current moment to the interwar period, signaling that we may indeed be on the brink of another world war lest something is done about it. America's Council on Foreign Relations cites 28 ongoing conflicts worldwide right now. Russia-Ukraine, now in its third year, is of course of extreme significance, as is the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon-Iran mess. The Houthi situation in Yemen along with recent developments in the Horn of Africa posits that this will likely be an arena of major conflict just by virtue of the area's vitality to global trade routes. The situation surrounding Taiwan is likely to explode soon; China insists that Taiwan is part of its territory (and they aren't entirely wrong given that the state of Taiwan was only established in 1948 after maps were redrawn in the wake of WWII), and the US wants to make sure that does not happen primarily because of America's reliance on Taiwan for semiconductor and smart-chip manufacturing (the basis of all the technology we use today). The Biden administration has kickstarted the process of bringing those industries back into the US, but it will take quite a bit of time, money, expertise, and a whole lot of resources, and the US economy (or Western civilization as we know it even) cannot afford to let those industries be overtaken by China in the interim. Arguments surrounding historical national borderlines and sovereignty aside, the need for China's push to annex Taiwan is now even more acute after the US passed a ban against the sale of chips to China in 2022 (which goes against American free market ideology, but was seen as a necessary measure when it became evident that China, with the help of these imported chips, was overtaking the US in other areas, namely rocket technology). Reverse engineering these chips isn't so easy apparently, it requires a degree of brain-surgeon sophistication applied on an industrial scale. Tawian, South Korea, and the Netherlands seem to be the only nations on the planet that are any good at it.
It's a big hot mess out there.
Managed to get out to see Megalopolis. Surprisingly good turnout. Visually stunning film. Was on board and engaged for most of it. It only lost me in the third act which wrapped things up a little too nicely, the only part that was a little too “traditional Hollywood” for my taste. But otherwise, a generally good film. The only thing that keeps it from being a “great” film, in my view, is that it doesn't offer anything truly revelatory, or even sough any seeds for critical thought. It's fine. It's not bad at all. I'd certainly watch it again (and again) for the aesthetic, but not necessarily the narrative.
(Image above is a work-in-progress from the final THE SOLAR GRID)