blooming in an old Virginia Graveyard
Thought for the day, from Tetraspace on Twitter/X: "Both people win a debate when either of them changes their mind."
Massive gender gap (34%) among young voters in the Korean presidential election. The liberal candidate got 58% of women under 30 and 24% of men under 30. Not looking good for the future Korean birth rate. (Twitter/X, Reuters)
South African police have closed off a gold mine where "zama-zama" rogue miners were working illegally, and there are claims that more than 100 have died.
The Trump administration wants to rename US warships named after prominent Democracts, including the USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the USNS Thurgood Marshall.
According to this paper, people perceived as moral are happier than others: "These studies showed that those who are more moral in the eyes of close others, coworkers, and acquaintances generally experience a greater sense of subjective well-being and meaning in life."
If you have any curiosity about the philosophy of the Renaissance, I recommend this 58-minute video on Giordano Bruno from somebody who calls himself Irevelato. The introduction is discouraging, Irevelato promising to reveal to you dark truths that the establishment burned Bruno to conceal. But it turns out that Irevelato is the kind of crank who has thrown himself into this material, and anyway much of the monologue is read from a 1903 biography of Bruno. The first 20 minutes focus on Bruno's sources, and from this you can get a sense of that weird world, in which scholars tried to synthesize Aristotle, Plato, Christianity, mysticism, classical paganism, alchemy, and much else, leading to some very strange philosophical mishmashes. Also interesting on why they were doing this; the pursuit of contemplation as an end in itself was more important than any belief that knowledge might be useful.
An anti-authoritarian take on Nietzsche, titled "Why People Worship Corrupt Leaders," 25-minute video. Not a great performance, but I endorse this project, challenging young men tempted by dictatorship on ground they think is their own.
Noah Smith takes on Oren Cass and other MAGA "intellectuals" who dismiss economics as a discipline.
Archaeological evidence of maize cultivation in a part of Michigan where it is even now awfully cold for maize. Maybe because it used to be warmer?
The new fad for tattoo removal.
Cerbera odallam, the Pong Pong tree, a highly toxic southeast Asian species recently featured on White Lotus.
In another unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court finds that straight, white plaintiffs do not need to meet a higher standard of proof in discrimination cases. (NY Times, NPR, CNN)
There are still some real Bolsheviks out there: on Twitter/X, Nokolaj argues that killing the Tsar's children was *more* justified than killing the Tsar, because they had unfair advantages of "experiences and education" and you can't have true equality until you get rid of all the people like that. I submit that the most important political divide is the one between people who consider murder and imprisonment legitimate political tools, and those who do not.
A statue of a closet as an AIDS memorial.
European archaeologists are imputing meanings to broken stalagmites within painted caves. I am not convinced.
Ukraine releases drone footage from their strike on Russian bombers. Summary of what it shows here.
Russia is filling up with ugly monuments to the heroes of the SMU. (Twitter/X)
Dmitri Medvedev lays out the Russian agenda: "The talks in Istanbul are needed not for a compromise peace based on unreasonable conditions invented by someone, but for our speedy victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi government."
And Perun on the peace negotiations and the strategic balance, 1-hour video. Says Russia's demands are what you might expect from a nation that has won a total victory, which Russia is "very far" from achieving.
3 comments:
"I submit that the most important political divide is the one between people who consider murder and imprisonment legitimate political tools, and those who do not."
Would you consider the former bad? If so, would you say your views have changed since your post of some years ago on royal clothing and Mao? In that, you seemed to admit a certain ruefulness or even self-mockery about your younger self's instinct that Mao was a good ruler because he wore plain clothes, but then you went on to suggest (as I interpreted it) you might still accept that perhaps the killing of millions of the old Chinese landlord class (as a group, not nice people, I grant) was "necessary" to bring China into the modern world, which sounded like a non-endorsement endorsement.
Russia has been saying all along what demands were non-negotiable. They mentioned them many times. They also have said many times they are prepared to fight for as long as necessary to achieve those demands on the battlefield if they can't get them at the negotiating table. So no one who has been paying attention should be surprised about what the Russians demands are.
Many of their demands are hard for Ukraine to accept and remain a functioning sovereign state. So I suppose in a way the Russians aren't serious about negotiating a settlement right now. But if you carry out a drone attack, like the one last Sunday, on the day before the meeting, perhaps you aren't so serious either? Such is the way of war and peace (talks). Neither is serious about peace until they are serious about peace. But you meet anyway. Perhaps something good will happen. Let's not forget the U.S. and Vietnam squabbled for 10 weeks over the size and shape of the negotiating table before getting serious, something so completely surreal and ridiculous that it must be difficult for anyone who wasn't alive at the time to believe bodies were piling up on the battlefield all that time. I mean, that is truly shocking. The Russians and Ukrainians have gotten that ridiculous . . . yet.
The Trump administration wants to rename US warships named after prominent Democrats, including the USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the USNS Thurgood Marshall.
Ah, yes - I'm sure THAT's a precedent no one would ever regret setting...
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
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