Knowledge inequality is creating a world of primitives ruled by sorcerers. Take California …
Baghdadi learns some things don’t change
The 21st century collides with the 8th and the 1st joins in.
Changing how you see yourself
How much of the transgender surge is caused by social media? And has this phenomenon happened before?
Taliban blow up mosque in peace negotiations
The Taliban and Islamic State fighters are actively operating in parts of Nangarhar, which shares a border with Pakistan in the east.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-blast-idUSKBN1WY09U
The mosque attack was the latest act of violence in the country. A U.N. report this week said 4,313 civilians were killed and wounded in Afghanistan’s war between July and September.
Zuckerberg avoided yoking himself to China
It’s one of the reasons we don’t operate Facebook, Instagram or our other services in China. I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society. I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in.
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/mark-zuckerberg-takes-a-surprising-stand-for-freedom
Where no man has gone before
Jeff Bezos driven by Star Trek but is driven to go through Washington.
When reporters tracked down Bezos’s high-school girlfriend, she said, “The reason he’s earning so much money is to get to outer space.” This assessment hardly required a leap of imagination. As the valedictorian of Miami Palmetto Senior High School’s class of 1982, Bezos used his graduation speech to unfurl his vision for humanity. He dreamed aloud of the day when millions of his fellow earthlings would relocate to colonies in space. A local newspaper reported that his intention was “to get all people off the Earth and see it turned into a huge national park.”
As China becomes less derivative its incentive to protect its own patents will grow
- Chinese telecoms giant is stepping up pursuit of royalties and licensing fees as US restricts access to American markets and suppliers
- Huawei is currently engaged in negotiations or disputes with Verizon, Qualcomm and defence firm Harris Corp.
The Kurdish problem becomes a NATO crisis
The cans can no longer be kicked down the road as the realities of the 21st century overwhelm the politics of the 20th.
The Turkish offensive
The Kurds aren’t doomed to lose.
Should the US midwife Kurdistan?
Do the right thing, but do it in a bipartisan manner.
The fate of the Kurds
It’s not clear how far Turkey will go. See map provided by NYT. But the lack of clarity is the problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/trump-turkey-syria.html#click=https://t.co/A6JY7viPn4
Man does not live by 5 year plans alone
My opinion piece at the Wall Street Journal on what lights up the soul. It’s a surprise.
How “By Any Means Necessary” created its mirror image.
Do you want to know why so many GOP candidates who looked good on paper fell so quickly during the 2016 primary? I'll tell you why: it's because primary voters could readily imagine the lovely, principled, dignified concession speeches they would give.
— John Hayward (@Cobretata) October 1, 2019
The march of folly
Political leaders can miscalculate. At some point in the current American power struggle events can take on a life of their own.
The long cold civil war
No one can afford to lose.
The day the 21st century began
September 11 is not an event in the past but a warning for the future
How we lost the future
Because we “know it already”.
US vs China
The Communist Party of China vs the Western elites.
New at the Belmont Club
Simulated reality
“I would never lie to you.” We’ll know the truth in the future.
Who would fardels bear
The “shock of confinement” makes the newly arrested more likely to commit suicide than the convicted.
One reason why jails have a higher suicide rate (46 per 100,000 in 2013) than prisons (15 PER 100,0001) is that people who enter a jail often face a first-time “shock of confinement”; they are stripped of their job, housing, and basic sense of normalcy. Many commit suicide before they have been convicted at all. According to the BJS report, those rates are seven times higher than for convicted inmates.
The Marshall Project
But Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t new to prison nor was he the only person to fall from the heights. At least 10 billionaires have gone to jail, some for life. Bernie Madoff may be the most famous. The list of prominent American politicians serving sentences is extensive. Many heads of government have been imprisoned. But very few have committed suicide.
The most recent major political suicide was former Peru president Alan Garcia’s.
Former Peruvian President Alan García has died after shooting himself as police arrived at his home to arrest him over bribery allegations. …
Officers had been sent to arrest him at his home in the affluent Miraflores neighbourhood in connection with the allegations.
BBC
Interior Minister Carlos Morán told reporters that when police arrived, Mr García asked to make a phone call and went into a room and closed the door.
Minutes later, a shot rang out, Mr Morán said. Police forced the door open and found Mr García sitting on a chair with a bullet wound to his head.
To what extent were loose ends rather than the fear of confinement the driving motive?
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?