Weaponized Interdependence

Conflict in our time starts from the fact of deep integration. The different sides are so deeply connected through political, economic and technical links that no clear borders can be drawn and everyone is, in a way, present inside the enemy camp, and will try to weaken his forces from within. The image of conflict more »

The Bruno Maçães Lens

Bruno Maçães’ “The Dawn of Eurasia” was a fun travelogue and meditation on geopolitics from the perspective of China, Russia, the European Union, and some of the border regions that lie between these powers. I actually enjoyed the vignettes a lot more than I thought I would- stories of his travels through the Eurasian badlands, more »

The Mark Blyth Lens

In a nutshell Mark Blyth argues the economic-political justification for Global Trumpism around the world is simple: debts are too high, wages are too low to pay the debt off, and inflation is too low to eat the debt. The Right Trumpist response is to blame immigrants and globalization for pushing wages down and wrecking more »

The Peter Zeihan Lens (part 1/n)

Almost two years ago I started scribbling for a project mapping out LeftTube, but now those guys are basically mainstreaming and I lost steam. Internet archaeology is a capricious art. I want to record some more on geopolitical forecasting and futurism, and if I don’t start immediately the muse might leave me, so here we more »

Constitutional Hardball

Notes from a few papers on ‘Constitutional Hardball’ Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding more »

The Power Broker I

The New York Sun reports Moses, in the totality of his reign as ‘Master Builder,’ “built 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkways, 658 playgrounds, and 150,000 housing units, spending $150 billion in today’s dollars” across the City of New York. Nearly unfathomable nowadays is that Moses was able to wield such lofty power, from the more »

Before Reading “The Power Broker”

I’m 1/6 of the way through The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. The audiobook doesn’t divide in exactly the same way as the book does, but that sixth takes me through Moses’ first 35 years. Most of that time, he personally has no power at all. Brief overview: Robert Moses would become more »

What I don’t know

I had a great year last year, although I didn’t return to publish much of anything here (3 pretty short posts in 2015). The previous year (2014), I published 74 posts, some of which I was even pretty proud of. I felt that writing helped me to crystalize my thinking, even when I didn’t publish. When I more »

Fukuyama: Political Decay

Next time I publish notes on a book, I’ll be more careful to frame why it’s actually interesting to me. It’s been a pretty dry month for this blog. The notes took a particularly long time because I lost my little offline copy of quote transcriptions, and a significant amount of willpower with it. A few more posts coming more »

Notes on Graham Harman

Did I finish the Fukuyama dive this week like I said I would? No. Are you gonna do something about it? Nope. — These notes are pulled from a few online lectures I’ve listened to by Graham Harman. I still haven’t read any of his books but the signals are good that he’s a person worth reading more »