Joe Biden in Poland: "The appetites of autocrats cannot be appeased, they have to be opposed." As I have said before, the war against Putin's Russia is the fight that many American moderates want.
The weird effects of being in the quietest room in the world.
Excellent Scott Siskind essay on culture and mental illness, starting from the problem of penis-stealing witches.
"Art" made by slicing open ordinary electronic gadgets to see their insides. Interesting look at the underpinnings of our world.
The Bronze Age Mindset and the neo-Straussian critique of our civilization, weirdly fascinating. My response is here.
Ross Douthat notes that whatever you think of the weird personalities that have been uncovered by people probing at the Bing chatbot, they are spectacularly unsuited for a search engine or research assistant (NY Times).
And AI-assisted chatbots for erotic fantasy.
Photo tour of a wonderful London townhouse.
West Africa's economy is highly concentrated along the coast; 50% of the region's GDP is generated within 25 km of the ocean, and 31% of the people live in that strip. This "malformation" dates back to colonial times, when the coastal trade replaced the trans-Sahara trade and interior areas stagnated.
Jamaica's economy is not doing well. Which is great for the US and Canada, since Jamaica is one of the world leaders in brain drain, and we benefit from all that talent.
Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating? These physicists say it is "the result of a previously unknown interaction between black holes and spacetime." Weird theory but this explanation is very clear.
Russia's energy warfare did not hurt Europe enough to change any nation's policies toward Ukraine, partly because it turbocharged the transition to green energy. In 2022 Europe's use of fossil fuels for electricity generation fell by 20 percent, and for the first time the continent got more of its electrical power from solar and wind than from fossil fuels. (NY Times)
Bisa Butler's quilted portraits of black Americans.
Roald Dahl's books are being reissued in new editions with "some passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race" edited to remove "colorful language." Argh. A big part of Dahl's appeal was always the childish meanness and cruelty. But nobody seems to be mentioning the real root of this crime, which is that Roald Dahl's estate still has the power to do this 33 years after his death and 60 years after some of these books were published. (AP, Book Riot, NY Times)
Ancient and medieval ghost stories do not satisfy modern readers' taste for "supernatural horror" because most of them were morality plays in which virtue is rewarded. Deep question: why does our age love horror?
Even the NY Times thinks charges of "transphobia" against J.K. Rowling are overblown.
Archaeologists explore the royal palace at Girsu in ancient Sumer. Interesting that a big part of this project is trying to sort out what all the previous excavations at Girsu did, official and not, and tracking down artifacts from Girsu that have been scattered around the world.
The Ingenuity helicopter has now been on Mars for two years and has completed 44 flights. We learn once again how quickly the astonishing can become the boring.
Tyler Cowen interviews economist Brad DeLong, much on economic history of the very long term and the period since 1870, a date he thinks marks a radical break.
Interesting long piece on how painters have used and misused shadows over the past several centuries.
English museums are running out of space to store archaeological artifacts. If you ask me, archaeologists should throw away a lot more of what they find; that's the policy recently adopted by the US National Park Service. The problem goes back to the invention of radiocarbon dating, at which point archaeologists who had thrown away bushels of charcoal cursed themselves and vowed never to throw away anything again.
A primer on ancient brain surgery.
Ukraine Links
Lots of finger-pointing and doubt after Russia's disastrous attack on Vuhledar.
British Ministry of Defence estimates that Russian casualties now total 175,000-200,000, with 40,000 to 60,000 killed. The say the ratio of killed to wounded is high because of "rudimentary" medical facilities. And a US estimate that the Wagner Group has lost 9,000 killed, half since mid December. That's a high price to pay for a foothold in the destroyed city of Bahkmut.
Lots of rumors that Russia is planning an air offensive over Ukraine, using hundreds of planes. I have seen claims of many planes being moved to forward bases from all over Russia. Seems like a strange idea to do this after Ukraine has obtained modern NATO SAM systems.
Institute for the Study of War Assessment for February 18. Interesting to read a rundown of all the Russian attacks made on a single day. There is a Russian offensive under way, it just isn't making the headlines because so little is being gained.
Wagner head Prigozhin released a recorded statement saying that his men cannot get artillery ammunition even though Russia has adequate supplies, because of political interference. But Russian battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky says there is no animus against Wagner, they are just now getting the same artillery ration as everyone else, and the available supply is not enough for any attack to achieve its goal. If so, this is very good news.
Alleged leaked Russian document lays out a plan for absorbing Belarus by 2030.
The tactics used by Wagner in infantry assault, very interesting.
Highlights from an interview with Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, on the war.
Long NY Times piece collecting text messages from the first hours of Russia's invasion. Love this:
Good morning. Russia attacked Ukraine.
Good morning. Russia started the process of self-destruction.
1 comment:
"Ancient and medieval ghost stories do not satisfy modern readers' taste for "supernatural horror" because most of them were morality plays in which virtue is rewarded. Deep question: why does our age love horror?"
I feel like you suggest the answer yourself, with the comment on morality plays.
Modern audiences realize that virtue is frequently NOT rewarded, and modern horror makes the point that bad things often happen to good people for no good reason. I'd argue that modern horror affirms our feelings about the injustice we see in the world, allowing us to grapple with that aspect of reality in a safe and impersonal manner.
Modern horror also gives us a certain 'black comedy' comparative perspective that makes us feel better about our own situations - you may be stuck in a dead end job, being overworked and underpaid while idiots and scoundrels are rewarded over decent people like yourself, but at least you aren't the victim of a grisly murder by an axe wielding maniac, yeah?
To someone in the ancient or medieval world, modern horror wouldn't hold the same appeal, because it would be antithetical to everything they had been trained to be believe. They WANTED to believe in some innate justice to the world - to honestly have faith that bad things only happened to bad people, and that only the deserving were rewarded - because to contemplate the alternative was genuinely horrifying.
I feel we today are at least partly able to accept the injustice of the universe because there is so much LESS of it now, in comparison - but to an ignorant, illiterate peasant toiling away in the fields; leading an insecure life where poor nutrition, lack of medicine, and sheer random chance could rob them of their loved ones of life or limb at any moment; and beholden to the whims of cruel and callous aristocratic elites obsessed with power and senseless warfare; to imagine that it WASN'T all part of "God's Plan" or whatever other explanation was to confront a monstrousness so great that it could easily drive one insane.
In short, what would have been ~genuinely~ horrifying to people living in prior ages is now so much less immediately threatening to us that we can treat it in an offhand manner, using it as a form of entertainment built around cheap (and ultimately safe and acceptable) thrill. We want to be spooked, because we have the security to then turn around and laugh about it and go about our lives - whereas for a medieval individual, they wanted to be comforted, because they already lived in horror-inducing security full time, and to genuinely consider the injustice of the world would be the kind of thing that would drive one to either suicide or revolution.
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