"History is a constant re-invention of hope and meaning in all forms - mythological, technological, philosophical. We keep questioning, answering, building, destroying. Questioning, answering, building, destroying. We can't help ourselves from helping ourselves."
All reasonable people are upset about the recent, current state of the world, but I see that Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times has taken on the brave taste of trying to partially remedy that in his column In Which I Try Valiantly to Cheer You Up. (It's a gift link - go read the whole thing.)
Here's how he opens:
This is the season when I customarily argue that the year just ending has been the best in human history.
So I dutifully sat at my laptop and tried to write something along the lines of: Sure, democracy is eroding, politics are toxic, wars are raging, America is losing allies, the planet is burning, and young people will never afford homes. But other than that …
I’ve done these “best year ever” columns annually, irritating Eeyores. But now I just can’t. The year 2025 was a setback for humanity — and unfortunately, the United States is a reason for the retreat.
He nonetheless goes on to point out the ways in which, despite the dire setbacks of 2025, there are reasons to be hopeful of more progress in certain areas. Some examples:
A starting point is to gain perspective and acknowledge that in the arc of human history, we’re still in good shape. While 2025 wasn’t the best year in human history, measured by child mortality, it was one of the five best years ever. Fewer than half as many children died in 2025 as in 2000.
It also seems likely that the positive trajectories will resume after slippage in 2025 and 2026. The Gates Foundation forecasts that while the trend of declining child deaths will be slowed, deaths will at least drop in the coming years. Similarly, the share of children stunted by malnutrition will most likely be lower in 2030 than it is now, the foundation suggests, but perhaps not as low as if aid funding had been sustained.
Until around 1970, a majority of adults had always been illiterate. Now we’re at 88 percent adult literacy, in part because of increasing numbers of girls going to school — and those educated women transform families, economies and societies.
And further down:
Another area that inspires me with its progress is clean energy. Climate change is still an enormous challenge, but energy economics have turned upside down and now offer a path forward — if we are willing to take it. My old college buddy Bill McKibben, who perhaps has done more than anyone else to raise alarms about climate change and who often as a result sounded rather bleak, is now surprisingly upbeat.
In his terrific new book, “Here Comes the Sun,” about the revolution of solar energy, Bill acknowledges all the challenges, but adds, “We’re also potentially on the edge of one of those rare and enormous transformations in human history — something akin to the moment a few hundred years ago when we learned to burn coal and gas and oil, triggering the Industrial Revolution and hence modernity.”
It took 68 years from the invention of the solar cell in 1954 to install the first terawatt of solar power on the planet, in 2022. It took two years to get the second.
This is because solar is increasingly cheap and simple — balcony solar systems are common in parts of Europe — and because batteries are making immense strides. Remember the line in “The Graduate” about the bright future to be found in “one word,” “plastics”? Today that one word might be “batteries.”
This reminds me, I never linked to this recent article in Science magazine, which you should be able to read for free:
The topic is clear from the title, and it gives the tiniest bit of reason for optimism. But the challenge is still enormous, as shown on this illustration in the article:
New battleships: President Trump announced on Monday that the Navy would build two new “Trump Class” battleships, with the eventual goal of acquiring 25. The announcement by Mr. Trump was the latest example of the president rebranding an aspect of the federal government in his image. The Navy secretary, John Phelan, called the vessels “just one piece of the president’s golden fleet that we’re going to build.”
(From the Washington Post.)
I was only vaguely aware of estimates of dementia according to age, but this Nature article puts some more certainty to it:
Nearly one in ten people over the age of 70 have Alzheimer’s disease dementia, shows a first-of-its-kind study that paired blood-based markers and clinical assessments to study the disease in Norway1.
That prevalence is in line with previous estimates for some other white populations2. But there were also unexpected differences, including higher disease rates than anticipated in individuals older than 85...
The study, published today in Nature, shows that blood-based tools can improve epidemiological estimates of neurodegenerative disease.
But exactly how to use these tests remains controversial, warns Jason Karlawish, a geriatrician and co-director of the Penn Memory Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Blood-based markers can be helpful for physicians treating people with dementia and for answering research questions, but they aren’t ready to be rolled out widely as health screening tools.
“It is the kind of test that, in the wrong hands, could cause a lot of harm,” says Karlawish, who was not involved in the study.
Of course, things get worse the older you get:
Around 10% of participants over the age of 70 had dementia and AD pathology, showing both cognitive impairment and high pTau217, they report. Another 10% had mild cognitive impairments and high pTau217. And 10% had high pTau217 but no signs of cognitive impairment, which the authors refer to as preclinical AD.
These findings are broadly in line with expectations, but there were surprises, too.
Some 25% of people aged 85–89 had dementia and AD pathology, up from previous estimates of around 7% for men and 13% for women in this age group in Western Europeans3. And the incidence of preclinical AD in younger individuals was 8% in those aged 70–74, down from a previous estimate of around 22%.
Anders Gustavsson, a member of the team that compiled the earlier estimates, welcomes the latest data. “I’m not surprised that this study gets somewhat different numbers,” says Gustavsson, who is an adviser to the health-economics consultancy Quantify Research in Stockholm.The discrepancies probably reflect selection bias, says study co-author Anita Lenora Sunde, a physician and dementia researcher at Stavanger University Hospital in Norway. Previous estimates were made by recruiting participants for brain scans, and people with dementia might not have wanted to or been able to participate.
The article eventually gets cut off at a paywall, just as it notes that the study indicates (as many others seem to) that higher education may have a protective effect. Good!
Axios has this good article about a recurring problem, and I will be naughty and post it here in full:
Amongst the many things that have been annoying me greatly in the last few months (I can't wait for 2025 to end) has been the switch to Windows 11. I put it off for as long as possible, and I guess I am glad I did at least that.
The persistent problem: when I take the work laptop home and connect it to my home network (something I used to do regularly under Windows 10 with no issues at all), it connects to the internet, but will not see all websites. It has a particular dislike for some big media ones - the New York Times and Washington Post (but, oddly enough, I can get to The Guardian) - and it has also affected banking websites. I just get an instant message that it can't find the website. It always lets me get to this blog, which allows me to complain, at least! Emails are OK.
The thing is, on one occasion this happened, the laptop was able to do a diagnostic which fixed it. I thought that was the end of it. I recall getting a message saying what the fix involved, but I have forgotten what it said. I also remember something about "this diagnostic tool is being moved/will no longer be available" or something like that.
And then, the problem returned the next time I bought the laptop home. (I don't bring it home every night.) I have tried running diagnostics again, but it just says I am connected to the internet, the network all looks OK. It makes some other suggestions, which all seem useless.
Searching the internet for what causes it brings up many, rather complicated, issues to check. It seems it is not one of the commonest issues.
Maybe I should try searching Reddit.
Anyway, it is very annoying to have an issue which Windows once knew how to fix, and then has forgotten.
When is the replacement for 11 coming?
Of course, so many words have been written already on Trump's intensely narcissistic and offensive comment on Rob Reiner's death. There were few who tried to support it, but in the local scene I saw that old JC at New Catallaxy, who I think occasionally might come here, refused to condemn it because Reiner had promoted the "Russia conspiracy" and been mean to Trump, so Trump could be mean in response (even in death.)
Even ignoring the fact that JC is part of the intense stupidity that has engulfed MAGA world that refuses to believe the reports of bipartisan committees on the involvement of Russia in support of Trump, what I don't get is this: how can anyone possibly excuse the fact that Trump went on a narcissistic fantasy WITH ZERO EVIDENCE that Reiner was murdered because of his "Trump Derangement Syndrome". I mean, it's an absolute invention (and an extremely unlikely one at that, given that the drug addled son was the suspect from the very start) that truly indicates a fabulist imagination so chronic that in many settings, you could see it cited as evidence for dementia and incapacity to make sound decisions.
I mean, how are doctors going to reliably diagnose this man with dementia when he has invented bullshit, if not for his entire life, at least for the last couple of decades, and people just shrug and say "that's just Donald"?
Given the attacks on Biden being tired and sometimes rambling, it just continues to be ridiculous that the media follows the MAGA line of "that's just Trump" when it comes to his continual lies and fabulist rhetoric.
In a Washington Post article:What a scientist who studies protein and healthy aging eats in a day:
The National Academy of Medicine says the amount of protein the average adult needs on a daily basis is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, or the equivalent of 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. That’s about 54 grams of protein for a 150-pound person — or roughly the amount of protein in a 4-ounce chicken breast and one cup of Greek yogurt. Some health influencers point out that this amount — known as the recommended dietary allowance, or RDA — is the bare minimum you need to avoid being malnourished and argue that you should be eating as much as one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
Phillips says the truth lies somewhere in the middle. He says that for optimal health, the average adult should aim to eat around 0.54 to 0.73 grams of protein per pound of body weight daily. Eating this amount — along with regular bouts of strength training — can help you build and maintain lean muscle as you age and stave off conditions such as sarcopenia.
Well, that's annoying how they jump between grams per kilogram and grams per pound! If you are going metric for one, why not for both?
Perplexity tells me it converts to 1.19g to 1.61g per kilogram.
My previous post on this topic settled on 1.2g per kilogram, so this still sounds right...
This guy presents his videos very well, but only has 21K subscribers. Looking at his channel, it seems he had occasional higher numbers on his videos, but the Almighty Algorithm must really hate him or something, because his usual views are in the mere hundreds. It's hard to see why he keeps doing it!
But anyway, I thought this video about human monogamy was interesting:
What with Rob Reiner being murdered, Trump making it about himself (and still having his defenders in the process), the attempt to blame all criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank as being unfair anti-Semitism and lack of control of protest - this is a really good December for unhappy doomscrolling.
Maybe 2026 will be better...
Now, I did say here in August that I didn't see the point in countries saying they recognised a Palestinian state when it was still (and remains today) hopelessly unclear how one was to be governed, and worried that it gave Hamas some sense of encouragement.
That said, what a stupid Right wing tosser freakout we are seeing in blaming Australia's recognition of the state (in September - I don't think I have ever commented on it) for the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
On Twitter X, your guaranteed source for commentary by Right wing tossers from all over the world, the freakout was happening before anyone even knew definitely what was happening. The ABC was blamed for not mentioning fast enough that there was a Hanukkah festival happening; Channel 9 ruffled feathers by having a Muslim reporter on the scene.
Campbell Newman - now a libertarian party figure after ruining Brisbane's King George Square as Lord Mayor, and going on to be the least popular Premier we have ever seen - was reliably hyperventilating, as was clown head Rowan Dean whose outrage (that the Albanese government caused it) was enough to launch his permed head into orbit.
And now the Opposition Leader we are all waiting to be deposed - Susan Ley - is politicising it before the dead are buried:
‘Clear lack of leadership’ over antisemitism, Sussan Ley says
The opposition leader says there has been a “failure” to protect Jewish Australians.
She says there is “palpable anger” in the community and a sense of “bewilderment”.
Antisemitism in Australia has been left to fester … We have seen a clear failure to keep Jewish Australians safe. We have seen a clear lack of leadership in keeping Jewish Australians safe. We have a government that sees antisemitism as a problem to be managed, not evil that needs to be eradicated ...
We’ve seen synagogues fire-bombed, orchestrated by foreign terrorist states. Every single day for the last two years the lives of Jewish Australians have been made harder by this rising tide of antisemitism.
Ley says she’s spoken to antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal this morning, who has been urging the government to respond to her report.
Here's my prediction: unless there turns out to be some specific intelligence warning given to the government of plans for this attack, this will not have the political blowback the Liberals (and even nuttier Right) think it will. That's because all normal people will see it as a revenge attack, likely by individuals acting alone, for the extent of the attack on Gaza in reaction to the wildly stupid terrorist attack on Israel. And of course, it wasn't warranted, and statements of sympathy to Australian Jews are entirely appropriate.
But only the stupidest of the stupid would say that the Albanese government encouraged it.
One of the more amusing things on Twitter/X at the moment is the way all of the wildly gullible and very, very serious UFO believers are freaking out over the posters that have just made an appearance promoting next year's Spielberg movie (which is a return to science fiction and UFOs in particular).
Does it mean his movie will be part of the super secret government plan to soften the public for the disclosure of the reality of UFOs, or what they are about, or whatever? (Or is it just, you know, an entertainment? I know which take I believe.)
And in a way, I would say that it has rehabilitated Spielberg in the mind of the Right, which previously had been holding him in some disdain for being a Hollywood Lefty. But now, given that the recent wave of wild UFO claims has obviously come from the conspiracy world that is the natural mindset of gullible MAGA, it would seem some of them are hoping Spielberg is a good'un will help their cause, after all.
The poster itself (given that the plot of the movie seems a well kept secret) is a pretty great one for creating conversation:
Another six months to find out...
The New York Times runs some commentary on the AI bubble situation: Why the A.I. Boom Is Unlike the Dot-Com Boom.
I have heard this argument before, as some Youtube video argued that the money being put into AI expansion is largely cash the giant tech companies have brought over from the tax haven of Ireland, so who really cares if they blow it away, big time? They are still making wild amounts of money from what they have been doing pre-AI, anyway.
The article does claim this (my bold), without further explanation:
A.I. is very different, Mr. Horowitz contended. The internet is a network, and its value increases as more people are added, he said. Online retailers in 1996 could reach only a small fraction of the population. Amazon now reaches just about everyone.
A.I., on the other hand, is a computer, Mr. Horowitz said. “Computers can be valuable immediately. A.I. is certainly valuable immediately,” he added. “A.I. products are working so well that we are seeing revenue growth that dwarfs anything that came before it.”
Really?
The irony is that, even before scores of new AI centres are built, there is an obvious online backlash against AI slop and its unreliability in many fields. I myself could tell some stories about that from my work, but that would disclose a bit too much...
An article at the Washington Post says that while it seems the numbers of religious young adult continue to decline, those left are perhaps a bit more intensely interested?
Interestingly, it notes a rise in young Catholic enthusiasm in college, but I really wonder where they are coming from culturally. I mean, I thought that there was no doubt that older American Catholics had embarrassingly swung towards Trump (due to the culture war, and abortion, I guess); but it would seem the leadership has started to talk out against him, and we do have a quasi liberal-ish American Pope. For ages, conservative Catholics have claimed that those parts of the Church with a conservative, traditionalist bent were the only parts growing. (Even though numbers were actually tiny.) So, where do these alleged reinvigorated, spiritually seeking Catholics on the culture war/political spectrum?
The other part that is pretty odd sounding to me, a sports skeptic, so to speak:
Zach Golden grew up going to church but never really connected with Christianity. A Baltimore high-schooler during covid lockdowns, he started meditating out of boredom and an affinity for “Star Wars,” which draws heavily from Taoism.
Now a senior at American University, Golden meditates and practices Qigong. Earlier this year he launched a program that combines sports and spirituality, exploring topics like how trauma impacts athletics and the way people experience their bodies and movement.
“We see all these things and we’re so numb. Our generation — we’re the test dummies for the internet and social media,” he said. “That’s what’s leading to what I guess is a spiritual revolution.”
Sports and spirituality?
I'm late to the party, but as many people online have commented, the FIFA hastily invented peace prize (for easily bribed narcissists) has a weirdly creepy design:
Someone on X said "looks like it was based on a scene from the Walking Dead."
Apparently, SNL's take was: “FIFA actually invented a fake peace prize in Trump's honor, and that's why the trophy shows Trump's gnarled hands dragging Earth into hell,”
This is what leapt to my mind when I saw it, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere, has already pointed it out:
I like an essay on the depraved behaviour of the MAGA Right (with respect to their extra-judicial killing of alleged cocaine carriers far at sea) that begins with an anecdote from St Augustine's Confessions.
But here it is, in the New York Times.
I am particularly concerned about how Trump doesn't even have to browbeat his sycophantic cheer squad in the Right wing media to not only excuse, but praise, his actions: the capitalistic self interest in cheering every single thing the goonish administration does relieves him of that. This is the where the American world has changed, for the dramatically worse.
Atrocities weren't cheered in Vietnam or even Iraq - they were hidden. Now, why bother hiding them when you can rely on a large section of the media (the part that your followers watch to the exclusion of all other media) will never criticise or question.
Further to my last post, when you go looking for studies on harm from hallucinogens/psychedelics, a hell of a lot of them start with something like "despite the rise in interest in psychedelics as potentially useful therapeutic tools in recent years, detailed and reliable studies about harmful effects have been lacking."
Anyway, here are some of the more interesting things I have found, so far:
NMURx surveyed 267,268 adults representing 256,742,237 Americans (Table E1; available at http://www.annemergmed.com) over the study period. The prevalence of past year psychedelic use in nondecriminalized US states modestly increased from 2.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.33% to 2.54%) in 2019 to 2020 to 2.84% (95% CI 2.74% to 2.95%) in 2021 to 2023. Oregon and Colorado rates have risen from 3.28% (95% CI 2.66% to 3.89%) in 2019 to 2020 to 5.44% (95% CI 4.63% to6.24%) in 2021 to 2023
The background to that is that Oregon and Colorado " have already legalized and decriminalized the sale, possession, and growth of natural psychedelics for counseling, spiritual guidance, beneficial community-based use, and healing. As of August 2023, 22 states have active legislation on psychedelic medical use." I don't know, but a state in which upwards of 5% having used a psychedelic in the last year sounds like a state with too many people using them.
Going back to 2013, one open-access study found that regular users of psychedelics maybe had less mental health issues(!). But the study itself acknowledges significant limitations. And I see there is also perhaps a bit of the (many decades old) argument used regarding cannabis that if someone did get psychosis after doing the drug, maybe there were going to get schizophrenia anyway:
There are very few case reports of prolonged psychiatric symptoms following psilocybin or mescaline [13], [52]. Almost all claims of psychiatric harm caused by peyote have been found on examination of medical records to be due to pre-existing schizophrenia or other causes [53], [54].
So, count me as suspicious of that study.
I see that the researchers in that study are quoted in a 2022 study which similarly seems determined to find that the risks are pretty low, and keeps emphasising that how they are used (you know, in a supportive, safe context, like a psych's office) makes it much safer. Things like "how they are going to be used recreationally" don't get treated in much detail, for example:
In unprepared individuals and/or in unsafe settings, effects of psychedelics may have the potential to escalate into dangerous behaviour (Johnson et al., 2008). Although very rare, there are reports of individuals jumping from buildings and ending their lives (e.g. Honyiglo et al., 2019; Keeler and Reifler, 1967). While these occurrences are uncommon compared with other psychoactive drugs – especially alcohol – they are widely reported in the media which contributes considerably to public perceptions of their risks.
And:
In Carbonaro et al.’s (2016) online survey about challenging experiences after consuming ‘mushrooms’, 11% of users reported putting themselves or others at risk of physical harm. This was often related to greater (estimated) dosage, difficulty of the experience and lack of physical comfort and social support – all of which can be controlled under clinical conditions.
A study in Nature in 2023 is of limited use, given the small sample that it involved, but it's interesting that the abstract starts with the observation that a lot of studies seem to be biased towards the positive:
Recent controversies have arisen regarding claims of uncritical positive regard and hype surrounding psychedelic drugs and their therapeutic potential. Criticisms have included that study designs and reporting styles bias positive over negative outcomes. The present study was motivated by a desire to address this alleged bias by intentionally focusing exclusively on negative outcomes, defined as self-perceived ‘negative’ psychological responses lasting for at least 72 h after psychedelic use.
Here's another questionable self selecting, self reporting, survey study, but it has this interesting part:
Taken as a whole, these studies provide convergent support for findings from clinical trials, including that psychedelic use (either lifetime or prospective) is associated with increased emotional well-being (19–26), reduced harmful substance use/misuse (i.e., illicit drugs/tobacco/alcohol) (27, 28), a tendency toward liberal political views and an enhanced sense of connection with nature (29, 30). These effects are reliably associated with the occurrence of various types of transformative mental states (e.g., mystical, emotional breakthrough, insight-type) during the acute psychedelic experience that have also predicted outcomes in clinical trials (6, 9, 11, 22, 31–33).
I can assure the reader that I did not become more Left leaning as I aged due to use of a drug!
The study does turn up this figure for harms:
...not all participants reported unqualified benefit from psychedelic usage. Thirteen percent identified at least one harm, and these participants reported receiving significantly less mental health benefit from their psychedelic usage than participants not endorsing any harms.
OK, so a very recent study from Norway did some more survey stuff, and it's really hard to follow from the paper what they found! It does have some interesting passages, though:
Adverse events as conceived in the context of clinical trials (e.g. any undesirable experience associated with the use of a medical product in a patient) overlap with the non-medical concept of ‘challenging experiences’ arising from self-experimentation with psychedelics. In clinical trials, the most common adverse events reported after ingestion of psychedelics are headaches, nausea and transient anxiety (Andersen et al., 2021). However, serious adverse events have been reported after the administration of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, such as severe suicidal (Goodwin et al., 2023) and cases of extreme anxiety induced by LSD requiring the use of benzodiazepines to contain the situation (Holze et al., 2023). In clinical trials, high anxiety during the psychedelic drug administration have been associated with worse clinical outcomes (Roseman et al., 2018). Anxiety following a high dose of psilocybin or LSD is also common among healthy subjects, as 30 % of participants in controlled studies experience fear and panic, and 17–34 % experience paranoid ideation (Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011; Schmid et al., 2015). Recently, there has been increased attention to possible negative effects resulting from both clinical and non-clinical use of psychedelics (Evans et al., 2023), and criticism of the field for not properly assessing and appreciating risks (van Elk and Fried, 2023). Challenging psychedelic experiences during acute effects are quite common, but to what extent and through which mechanisms they are implicated in prolonged negative effects needs more research.
Well, that's a pity, because it's the more prolonged negative effect rate that I'm interested in!
The next paragraph contains the now familiar refrain - more research needed:
The increased interest in psychedelics from researchers and the public merits translation of validated questionnaires for assessing the qualitative nature of subjective states and outcomes resulting from using these compounds. Epidemiological studies indicate that psychedelic drug use is increasing and that more people report difficulties during acute effects and seek help for post-psychedelic health complaints (Bouso et al., 2022; Miech et al., 2023; Simonsson et al., 2023; Tate et al., 2023). It is therefore paramount that researchers pay attention to negative and complex reactions to psychedelic drugs in the general population, as well as to their possible benefits. Measurements that capture these themes are also highly relevant in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, where processing difficult cognitive and emotional material is core to the treatment modality.
Another paragraph talks about research that has looked at the adverse effects:
While not affecting most psychedelic users, there are indications that a significant proportion experience substantial distress and challenges with functioning after psychedelic experimentation (Simonsson et al., 2023). The types and precise causes of enduring negative effects after psychedelics are an ongoing area of research. At present there are studies and reports suggesting increases in anxiety, trauma-like symptoms, feelings of disconnection and dissociative experiences, depersonalization and derealization, existential confusion and loss in sense of purpose, and perceptual abnormalities such as Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder (HPPD) (Bouso et al., 2022; Bremler et al., 2023; Evans et al., 2023; Kvam et al., 2023; Vis et al., 2021). In addition, there are credible reports of worsening and triggering of psychotic symptoms and manic or hypomanic states, induction of suicidal ideation, as well as negative impact on traits among people with personality disorders (Barber et al., 2022; Kramer et al., 2023; Marrocu et al., 2024; Morton et al., 2023). Having pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses is a risk factor for challenging psychedelic experiences in these studies, but not a prerequisite as it also occurs without known psychological risk factors and relates to variables such as higher dose, younger age, chaotic contexts, and absence of social support (Simonsson et al., 2023; Vizeli et al., 2024). These contextual factors appear to play a key role in the development of lasting negative effects and likely apply not only during the acute phase of a challenging psychedelic experience but also in the period afterward. In the future, we suggest that it is fruitful to study post-drug trajectories in combination with emphasis on the broad and varied range of mediating factors that interact with the psychedelic experience.
Well, there's a hell of a lot of links there to go looking at, but I've spent enough time on this for now.
A review here at the New York Times on the kind of book by an academic that sounds interesting, but which I can tell would take too much devotion to read in full: "Capitalism: a Global History".
A couple of extracts:
Previous histories have usually treated capitalism as a European invention, but Beckert, as ambitious as he is erudite, shows how capitalism arose as a global phenomenon, the peculiar behavior of a few merchants in places as far apart as Cairo and Changzhou.
By mapping the diverse origins of capitalism, Beckert reveals its protean and resilient character. Over hundreds of years, merchants created small enclaves of capital within port cities and elaborate networks of trust that stretched over long distances. Such connections, Beckert observes, helped them outflank and survive resistance from above, by landed aristocrats who thought “making money from money seemed closer to sin, sorcery or plain theft,” and from below, by “cultivators and craftspeople” who were loath to give up their local conceptions of prices set by “a shared sense of morality.”
So far, sounds like it supports the generally conservative idea that capitalism is a more-or-less natural evolution arising out of how groups of people like to manage their lives. But there are wrinkles, to put it mildly:
In these remote corners of the world European investors conducted a kind of civil experiment, extending the logic of the market to all aspects of life. Everything, especially human labor, was commodified and could be bought and sold for money.
And:
He offers an especially devastating critique of earlier mythologies of capitalism, showing how the “invisible hand” of the market does not peacefully guide world affairs, and how the development of capitalism was in no sense “natural.”
Like many books before it, “Capitalism” is not only a history but a moral indictment. The metaphor of monstrosity runs throughout Beckert’s pages. In his telling, the hand of capital is visible, cold, hard and vicious, and capitalism is a promiscuous creature, drawing on different kinds of labor, from enslaved to free and many in between, within various political frameworks, from democracy to dictatorship.Two leading thinkers of the 18th century, the French philosopher Montesquieu and the Scottish political economist Adam Smith, argued that world trade promoted peace and harmony because it advanced mutual interest and interdependency.
What actually happened, and indeed was happening during the lifetimes of both men, was that trade was often militarized and violent. Armed fleets pointed their cannons at harbors to open markets for trade, and kings relied on bankers, when they weren’t trying to rein them in, to raise silver to outfit soldiers with guns and swords. Montesquieu was born in 1689. As Beckert points out, “between 1689 and 1815, Britain and France were at war for 64 years.”
I was always interested in Tom Stoppard, who seemed to be a clever, humane, and curious man. (I am reminded in his obituaries that he supported Margaret Thatcher and called himself a "small c conservative" or "timid libertarian" - but this was back at the time before big C conservatives went all culture war nuts on science and immigration, so I don't hold it against him. Besides, he had worked with Spielberg, so he can't have been a pain politically.)
I actually saw his play Arcadia in Brisbane - one of the relatively few times in my life I have been to the theatre to see a drama instead of a musical. I don't remember too much about it, to be honest, apart from recalling that I found it interesting and clever at the time. (I do remember a discussion with my companion about how I thought it could have made one thing clearer, and she disagreed.)
Obituaries also note that he was married 3 times. But people in the arts, you know? If they have been married only once, they were probably an artist failure!
Anyway, I wish we had someone prominent like him now, in theatre, but I am not sure we do...
I've been writing things here for so many years now that I think I start feeling a little, uh,aimless/lacking purpose?, if I don't update it for more than a few days at a time. Unless I am travelling at the tie, I just start getting get the feeling that something is missing.
So, let's rectify that.
* The bad luck with my car: it seemed to have been fixed by a visit to the cheap mechanic (found via my son with the inflammable car) who said it was a faulty ignition coil, which he replaced for relatively little money. The only problem: the car started doing the same thing again on last Friday, barely 3 days after the repair. Either the coil he put in is faulty, or he should have just replaced them all, as someone who knows a lot more about cars told me is the usual practice. Oh well, a telephone call will be made tomorrow.
* I've been really busy at work, but not in a very satisfying way. I have had an unusual string of really annoying people to deal with in the last month or two.
* On the self improvement upside: after the shingles vaccine, I moved to trying the "restricted hours" method of fasting, which I've implemented by just making lunch my first meal of the day. I think that I may still be losing weight, but very slowly now. One thing is certain: this whole fasting thing has made my stomach capacity feel smaller. I can feel surprisingly full for surprisingly long after lunch in particular. I get the feeling that it might be easier to go back to a week of alternative whole day fasts, to drop the further 1 to 2 kg I would like to see go. But we shall see...
* The dog is back to her usual, happy, barky, self.
* The weather bureau says that, after a hot day tomorrow, temperatures will moderate for the rest of the week, and no storms. I am glad.
* As a (relatively) small indulgence, I went looking for the Black Friday sales and found a Lenovo Tablet that comes with a battery powered pen and a matt finish, all for $228. Actually, at The Good Guys, I got it for $218 - because even on their online shopping site it gave the price, but then has a button that was something like "want to get the best price?" which when pressed, automatically dropped $10 off the already cheap sale price.
Do I need another tablet right now? Not really. But I am keen to see how a matt finish one is for reading (and doodling); and I mean, that price...
But let me make one minor gripe: when iPads and tablets first came out, there was a lot of publicity given to their use in making digital art. Remember the videos you might see of, say, someone doing a faux oil portrait on the iPad with their finger? But that use of tablets doesn't attract much attention any more, and I also get the impression that the drawing and painting apps now are actually worse in many ways than the first versions that came out.
I blame Elon Musk. Or one of the other useless tech billionaires.
Anyway, it's not out of its box yet, so I will report further when its opened.
* I have been saving some clips from Bluesky and Twitter to talk about, and my next post might deal with some of them.
* Oh, on a completely unrelated matter, the All Knowing Algorithm of the Mighty Google (Youtube version) brought to my attention a category of product which is very cool: the extraordinarily cheap and easy to use digital mini telescopes that make astrophotography a breeze. And they can cost well under a $1,000.
Have a look at the video below to see how ridiculously easy they make taking photographs of galaxies and nebula. And then bear in mind that this year, we are barely 100 years from even definitively understanding what galaxies are! I've made this point before, but this is a very, very short period of time in which to expect humanity to have fully processed this knowledge of the age and vastness of the universe into its intellectual, philosophical and intellectual framework. As the Smithsonian Magazine site explains:
On a snowy New Year’s afternoon in 1925, on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., astronomer Henry Norris Russell read a paper submitted by Edwin Hubble.
It would change the universe.
For several decades, astronomers had been debating the nature of spiral nebulae—pinwheel-shape objects twirling across the heavens. One view held that the spirals were clouds of gas and dust that were part of the Milky Way galaxy (then thought to constitute the entire universe), with our solar system at the center. Others argued that spiral nebulae were so-called island universes: separate systems of stars much like the Milky Way. The truth about spiral nebulae would determine whether the universe spanned a few hundred thousand light-years—or millions.
Hubble’s paper provided the best evidence to date of the more expansive view. According to Hubble’s calculations, the only two spirals visible to the naked eye—the Andromeda Nebula (also known as Messier 31) and the Triangulum Nebula (Messier 33)—were more than 900,000 light-years away.
“Finding the scale of the universe and our Milky Way’s place in it was a fundamental challenge,” says Barry Madore, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Chicago. “Identifying island universes as individual galaxies of enormous size and great distance was a major paradigm shift.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Hubble would shift the paradigm. In 1929, he reported that all but a few galaxies are moving away from us, with more-distant galaxies moving faster than nearby ones. The discovery led to the realization that the universe is expanding, and that it must have had a beginning: the Big Bang. “Hubble is known as a titan in astronomy, especially American astronomy,” says Samantha Thompson, the Phoebe Waterman Haas Astronomy Curator at the National Air and Space Museum. “He was successful at pulling things together and getting us over the big hump of acknowledging two things: the Milky Way is one of many galaxies and the universe is expanding.”
“A hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble started the race to the edge of the universe,” says Ray Villard, news director for the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which oversees both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. “He fired the starting gun, and the past 100 years have been a marathon to go as far across the universe as we can go.”
Can you imagine how Hubble would react to seeing what images people in their backyard can take now?, for not with an expensive bit of kit, but with a device bought for half a weekly paypacket that you can carry around in your pocket????:
I do wonder a bit about the software added colours to the final image, but still...it's extraordinary compared to how much money and effort used to be needed for hobbyist astronomers to come up with similar results. (I used to go to public meetings of the Queensland Astronomical Association sometimes 45 odd years ago, so I have an idea.)
I guess I am rambling now - in the same way I like to about the way people should spend 10 minutes of every day marvelling at the extraordinary technological achievement that is the mobile phone/computer that they carry in their pocket but mainly use to watch cat videos.
Maybe that is what I should do in retirement: be a placard wearing, semi religious zealot begging people to appreciate technology in their pocket.
There seems to be a run of bad luck going on in my family at the moment.
Last week, our dog's fondness for certain fertiliser in pots seems to have been the cause of a serious bout of vomiting and diarrhoea which required a day at the vet and many dollars. (Well, $1,160.) She did recover, though.
On the weekend, while driving a rental truck to help move my son back from his independent studio apartment living experiment of a year to home, I misjudged its turning circle and scrapped a bollard at a petrol station, causing just enough damage to require repair. Maybe will cost less than a $1000? Probably more, but the excess is $1,500 so there is an upper limit.
And yesterday, in other petrol related news, my son tried to avoid hail on his "new" second hand car by driving onto the footpath at the former apartment to try to get under a tree (a dubious exercise in itself, given Australian trees propensity to drop large branches in storms), overlooking that there was a electrical connection box there (one of the smallish green ones that sit about 40 cm high). Driving over it got the car stuck, sparks ensued, and up the car went in flames. Complete write off. His excess is $2,000. He wasn't hurt, though.
Then, when driving to pick him up and survey the damage, my car started running very rough and a generic warning light "see a Toyota dealer urgently" came on. I don't know exactly its problem yet.
I'm getting the feeling of a general curse affecting the household at the moment.
Anyone wanting to contribute to the family's financial welfare is welcome!
So, the news has even reached the New York Times: Japan has had a year of many bear attacks, many fatal:
Akita Prefecture, home to about 880,000 people, is on the front line of Japan’s bear crisis, which has penetrated the national psyche and drawn an all-out response from the government. Across the country, nearly 200 people have been attacked by bears this year and 13 have died, a record. Bears have been spotted in northern ski towns and southern villages, and on the outskirts of cities like Tokyo and Kyoto. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have recently issued travel warnings about bears in Japan.
As it happens, I have been to Akita in Akita prefecture, for a day trip. There's not a lot there, to be honest; but it looked interestingly isolated on the map, and it was a pleasant enough trip from nearby Morioka to wander around a very good fish market with lots of things to eat, and a park where there once stood an old castle. I guess people would be very cautious about a walk through that park now (although with winter, I presume it's safe.)
As for Morioka: even in its centre, it is seeing bear activity. This video was slightly amusing, the way the police fairly uselessly followed the bear around (and beat a retreat when it turns towards them):
In fact, I have to say, Nippon Television News Japan seems to love reporting dangerous bear stories. They even have a story about to air about the shortage of "bear prevention gear" - such as bear spray, I guess - which I would actually be pretty keen on carrying around on my belt if I walked around anywhere in Akita.
The slightly worrying thing is that in the comments to any of the videos, the public (presumably many Japanese) as really keen to call for culling as the only way the problem can be stopped. And you get videos of (often old) men out with their rifles or other weapons to take them on. I think that Japanese men my age and a bit older might often have a fantasy of being a bear hunter and living off the land as a romantic thing to do in retirement! (Well, I know one Japanese man who has so opined!)
Still, it seems to me that a country that is very high tech in some ways should be able to come up with some better ideas. Perhaps bear tagging expeditions (tagging with some extra long life Air Tags or similar) then set up a perimeter watch around town, with warnings of bear in the vicinity on people's phones?
Or give long lasting contraceptives to female bears, as part of the problem is a booming population, apparently.
Maybe I'm too soft, and some of the bear attacks do seem pretty mean!:
Anyway, I expect to be in Morioka in January, but hopefully, they will all well and truly be hibernating by then.
