<n>Below are links to articles, highlighted passages<fn>, and occasional annotations<fn> for the week ending on the date in the title, <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4085">enriching the raw data</a> from <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/starred/rss/1890855/5c1g08eoy9skhOr3tCGqTQbZes">Instapaper Likes</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mvonballmo">Twitter</a>. They are intentionally succinct, else they'd be <i>articles</i> and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.</n> <ft><b>Emphases</b> are added, unless otherwise noted.</ft> <ft>Annotations are only lightly edited and are largely <i>contemporaneous</i>.</ft> <h>Table of Contents</h> <ul> <a href="#politics">Public Policy & Politics</a> <a href="#journalism">Journalism & Media</a> <a href="#art">Art & Literature</a> <a href="#philosophy">Philosophy & Sociology</a> <a href="#technology">Technology</a> </ul> <h><span id="politics">Public Policy & Politics</span></h> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/04/patrick-lawrence-the-sino-russian-summit-you-didnt-read-about/" source="Scheer Post" author="Patrick Lawrence">The Sino-Russian Summit You Didn't Read About</a> <bq>It follows that we must always take care to read The Times, odious as we may find it, in the same way millions of Soviet citizens over many decades made it a point to read Pravda. As noted severally in these commentaries, <b>it is important to know what we are supposed to think happened on a given day before going in search of what happened.</b></bq> <bq>It is not difficult to understand what <b>Xi</b> was conveying in these summarized remarks. He <b>was describing the leading role China and Russia have assumed in the construction of a new world order wherein non–Western nations achieve parity with the West</b>, wherein the latter’s presumption of superiority is a thing of the past, wherein international law and the authority of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations are sovereign. Not least, Xi placed the Ukraine crisis in the context of this larger project.</bq> <bq>As a Russian commentator remarked in an analysis of the December 31 summit, “2022 has been a year which has significant consequences for the future of global geopolitics and will be remembered as such in the history books. It <b>marked the closing of three decades of American unipolarity, which had begun with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and forced through a new multipolar world consisting of numerous competing great powers.</b>”</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=92158" source="NachDenkSeiten" author="Jens Berger">Die Billionenfrage – haben die Polen (und auch die Deutschen) im Geschichtsunterricht geschlafen?</a> <bq>Neben innenpolitischen Gründen – die Nationalisten haben Polen nicht zuletzt durch ihre aggressive Militär- und Außenpolitik in eine schwere Krise geführt und <b>wollen nun offenbar durch eine ebenso aggressive antideutsche Linie innenpolitisch punkten.</b></bq> <bq>Wenn ein Nachbar uns auf 1,3 Billionen Euro verklagt und dies in unverschämte Beleidigungen verpackt – so sagte Vizeaußenminister Mularczyk neulich, „Deutschland behandele Polen wie einen Vasallen“ – ist dies ein außenpolitischer Affront, den man sich nicht bieten lassen sollte. <b>Polen zählt nicht zu unseren freundlichen Nachbarn und das sollte man auch offen ansprechen.</b></bq> <bq><b>Es gibt wohl keinen anderen EU-Staat, der derart drastisch die Interessen der USA vertritt.</b> Sicherheitspolitisch ist Polen unberechenbar und beweist das auch immer wieder. Polen ist mitverantwortlich für die Zerrüttung des deutsch-russischen Verhältnisses.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/hope-itself/articles/sex-positivity" source="Hedgehog Review" author="Phoebe Maltz Bovy">Sex Positivity: What does the sexual revolution look like today?</a> <bq><b>Sex positivity is supposed to be about consenting adults maximizing pleasure. But in practice, it involves the convenient epiphany that, actually, what women find pleasurable is pleasing men.</b> Female sexuality, then, is about the thrill of being found sexy, as though this (if true) were something intrinsic to womanhood, and not about how billboards and magazine covers inundate people of all genders and orientations with images of attractive women.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/12/zohran-mamdani-fix-the-mta-new-york-transit-legislation/" source="Jacobin" author="Peter Lucas">New York City’s Public Transit Is Broken. It Doesn’t Have to Be (an interview with Zohran Mamdani).</a> <bq>I also think the general understanding of the MTA is flawed. Viewing the authority as something that needs to generate sufficient revenue to keep itself afloat is inconsistent with the authority’s actual function in our society, which is to provide a public service. It is a public good. And yet <b>for so long we have subscribed to a theory of economics where we need to generate more and more revenue from riders to fund the MTA, as opposed to funding being delivered by the state through taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers.</b></bq> <bq>This bill authorizes the city to come to an agreement with the MTA to create <b>a value-capture program, whereby some of this additional value created would be taxed and redirected back to the MTA as a new source of revenue.</b> That’s critical for producing revenue and addressing the imbalance in how it has so often been, <b>where the state creates value and then private entities get to capture that value and retain it.</b></bq> <bq>When we fight for universal programs, it’s not just because of our ideological belief and the necessity of understanding public goods as being publicly available to every member of the public. It’s also because <b>means-testing does not work. It does not fulfill the mandate that it is supposed to follow.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/12/mikhail-lobanov-arrest-russian-leftist-antiwar-opposition-putin/" source="Jacobin" author="Kirill Medvedev">Mikhail Lobanov Was Jailed Because Putin’s Cronies Are Afraid</a> <bq>In September, the municipal project Vidvyzheniye (Nomination; or You Are the Movement), initiated by Lobanov and Alexander Zamyatin, ran ten of its own candidates in the district elections despite enormous opposition from the authorities. <b>Candidates supported by Vidvyzheniye won twenty-three seats, with their community work serving as a rallying point for residents active at the local level.</b></bq> <bq><b>Mikhail Lobanov wrote in September: The nuclear blackmail of humanity was made possible precisely in a system where a few hold wealth and power</b>, while everyone else humbly works for them, absorbed in everyday problems until their time comes to be called upon and die. The collapse of a system that rests on blatant economic and political inequality will not be the end of history. And it will be up to you and me to see what happens next.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://russiandissent.substack.com/p/the-evolution-of-post-soviet-ideology" source="Russian Dissent" author="Arseniy Krasnikov">The Evolution of Post-Soviet Ideology</a> <bq>“Sycophants were, of course, always and everywhere,” writes G.V. Plekhanov in his classic work “On the Development of the Monistic View of History.” He continues: “But they did not move the human mind forward. Those who really did so cared about the truth, and not about the interests of the powerful of this world. So, <b>people who move the human mind live by ideals (albeit not always true ones), care for the truth, and not only do not want to profit, but often risk their well-being, and are willing to sacrifice.</b></bq> <bq>Today in Russia we see the “amazing transformations” of yesterday’s liberals and Westernizers into today’s “ultrapatriots.” Sometimes this has a comical feel, like a former iPhone fan’s regular swearing on Telegram. <b>Sometimes we reasonably suspect that a lot of money is behind such a transformation. But it would be wrong to take all the words of our political opponents as lies and hypocrisy.</b> Marxist analysis shows that the capitalism that was established in Russia in 1991 has objectively evolved to political-military imperialism, and that <b>the inevitable monopolization and expansion of Russian capital could lead to nothing else</b> [...]</bq> Again, a crazy similarity to the U.S. <bq>It is no coincidence that <b>the ideologues and innovators of our quasi-liberalism were not dissidents</b>, but teachers, graduates of party schools, and members of the editorial boards of semi-official party journals (Burbulis is an example of the former, Gaidar the latter).</bq> Check. ✅ <bq>Our quasi-liberals (they are also former vulgar Marxists) believed in economic development above all, as expressed in the growth of capital, GDP, and markets, but also, and most importantly, in the growth of profits for the capitalists themselves. <b>Our quasi-liberals did not know pity for the humiliated and offended, who could not withstand tough economic competition, nor respect for culture and its institutions, nor reverence for the values ​​of humanism.</b></bq> 🤯 💯 match. <bq><b>The ideal of our quasi-liberals is Western capitalism of the 18th century, without old-age pensions, without unemployment benefits, without maternity leave, without affordable education or medical services</b> or anything else that was brought to the West through the struggle of workers and their political representatives</bq> That sounds like the most extreme libertarian Republicans. <bq>[...] when democracy and civil liberties began to interfere with the development of capitalist markets, <b>when the people robbed as a result of capitalist reforms began to meaningfully oppose the oligarchy, they immediately came out against democracy and for authoritarianism.</b></bq> What similar developmental arcs. They're pretty much synced at this point. Their perceived violence toward one another is the only thing propping up their respective elites and economies. The cold war is truly back. <bq><b>The main criterion for progress was not affordable medicine, education, social achievements, the spread of enlightenment; had that been so, the USSR, even with empty store shelves, would have appeared as the most progressive society!</b> Not even military and industrial power (and in this case the USSR looked good!) counted for anything, but <b>only the notorious GDP, the abundance of consumer goods</b>, the consumer society and, as we said, the superprofits of the capitalists themselves.</bq> <bq>In the modern West, there are elements of real democracy; the presidential elections in France and the United States, despite the imperfection of their political mechanisms, still promise some intrigue. <b>Western capitalists are forced to pay large taxes to their states, which go to social programs.</b> Of course, recently, even in the traditionally social democratic north of Europe, neo-liberals have become stronger, and there is renewed attack on the rights of workers and the unemployed, but <b>compared to Russia, and even more so to the countries on the periphery of the planet, the position of the lower classes of the West is still very prosperous.</b></bq> The part about taxes really applies only to Europe. The U.S. Is notoriously bad at capturing tax value from the upper echelons. <bq>The disappointment of Putin and his friends in America and the European Union is because, from their point of view, the leading Western powers have begun to resemble some kind of “socialism” (which, of course, is a very strong exaggeration!), that <b>too much money is spent there to support “freaks” and “losers,” making life too uncomfortable for billionaires there.</b></bq> Hilarious. They bought the myth that western elites tell about themselves. They sound like republicans fighting a socialism that isn't there. <bq><b>The Kremlin wishes to change the world order, to turn it against Western values. But what order and what values ​​does it offer in return?</b> More social rights, more democracy, more freedom? Far from it. The West, according to the Russian elites, must be defeated because it has too much democracy, too much equality.</bq> A lovely riposte---what indeed do they offer? The only thing I've heard is that Russia and China offer a more hands-off, individually autonomous approach. But, for all the big words, what is Russia offering itself? Its own people? Perhaps the same palsied version of democracy available in the U.S. <bq>When Western “partners” explain to Putin and his friends that the poor and “African-Americans” have to be supported because victory in elections depends on this, <b>Russian leaders are sincerely perplexed: why are elections needed? Is it not possible to create one party that will carry out the will of the presidential administration (for example, the Republican-Democratic Party of the USA)?</b></bq> But this is what the U.S. has! On any issue that may affect the flow of capital upward, there is but a single party in the U.S. ensuring that it will. That capital will flow upward, forever and ever, amen. 🙏 <hr> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/11/former-high-level-us-officials-warn-time-is-not-on-ukraines-side-in-the-conflict/" author="Dave DeCamp" source="Scheer Post">Former High-Level US Officials Warn Time Is Not on Ukraine’s Side in the Conflict</a> <bq>Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Saturday that “time is not on Ukraine’s side” as its economy is in shambles and the country is entirely reliant on foreign aid. The former officials said Russian President Vladimir Putin believes “that he can wear down the Ukrainians and that US and European unity and support for Ukraine will eventually erode and fracture.” They said <b>while Russia’s economy will “suffer as the war continues,” Russians “have endured far worse.”</b> <b>Ukraine, on the other hand, they said, has an economy that’s “in shambles,” and the country is entirely reliant on aid from the US and its allies. “Millions of its people have fled, its infrastructure is being destroyed, and much of its mineral wealth, industrial capacity, and considerable agricultural land are under Russian control</b>,” they wrote.</bq> Condy and Bobby are total assholes and war criminals, but they also happen to be right. They knew this all along, of course, that this was the only possible outcome, but they reserved their opinions until a diplomatic solution was no longer possible---and until all of their defense-contractor customers have finished dipping their beaks deep into Uncle Sam's barrel. And, of course, if you read on, you see that their recommendation is to pour even more money into that leaky canoe, that a negotiated settlement would only leave Russia in too-strong a position. Why even publish their opinions? It makes no sense. After so much investment, Ukraine is in a shambles, but we have to pour even more money into it, so that it will...continue to be a shambles. <h><span id="journalism">Journalism & Media</span></h> <a href="https://taibbi.substack.com/p/twitter-files-why-twitter-let-the" source="TK News" author="Matt Taibbi">Twitter Files: Why Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In</a> <bq>Analysts at Twitter were coming to the conclusion that outsiders were using a kind of academic magic trick to conjure the Russian threat. Researchers took low-engagement, “spammy” accounts with vague indicia pointing to Russia (for instance, retweet activity), and identified them as not only Russian, but specifically as creations of the media’s favorite villain, the Internet Research Agency of “ Putin’s chef ,” Yevgeny Prigozhin.</bq> This is important because they've been manufacturing the threat of Russia for a while. It has heavily influenced the narrative in the U.S. It has directly led to easy-to-approve increases to the military budget. It has led nearly directly to the war in Ukraine. With the commonly accepted demonization of Russia, there is no way that NATO could have brought things to the donnybrook in which we find ourselves today. <bq>They couldn’t contain it. <b>When Twitter didn’t “produce” fast enough, Congress cranked up the pressure</b>, leaking to multiple news outlets the larger original data sets that Facebook and Twitter turned over.</bq> <bq>Before they knew it, Twitter personnel were fending off <b>headlines like the New York Times piece, “Russian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Alone.”</b> The Times was now not only trumpeting the data as exposing the “breadth” of the Kremlin efforts to divide America, but perhaps a road that might lead back to the Trump campaign:</bq> They manufactured the whole story, then gave themselves a Pulitzer for it. <bq><b>Twitter leaders in private were settling on the posture the company would adopt more formally going forward. In public, they would maintain independence</b>, and only remove content “at our sole discretion.” Privately, the company would “off-board” anything “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”</bq> <bq>In August, 2017, executives circulated a Notre Dame Law Review article by law professor Danielle Citron called Extremist Speech, Compelled Conformity, and Censorship Creep, which talked about the very recent experience of Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Twitter in Europe. <b>After Islamic terrorist bombings in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016, the companies were told by EU officials they needed to clamp down, or else.</b></bq> <h><span id="art">Art & Literature</span></h> <a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-approach-the-lifelong-project-of-language-learning" source="Psyche" author="John Gallagher">How to learn a language (and stick at it)</a> <bq>You might already be familiar with Duolingo – of which more below – but that’s not the only one. <b>It’s worth checking out other big hitters such as Memrise and Babbel, or vocabulary-building apps such as Drops</b>, while hardcore polyglots often swear by Anki, an app that uses the ‘spaced repetition’ method to help you learn and retain information about many topics, including languages.</bq> <bq>For a small but growing number of languages, including Arabic (both Modern Standard and dialects) as well as Spanish and Russian, <b>I’ve been seriously impressed by the resources created by Lingualism</b>, who work with native speakers to create materials that actually reflect language as it’s spoken by ordinary people, and teach relevant content for situations you might actually encounter.</bq> <bq>Whenever I’m learning a language – or trying to slot back into using one I know – <b>I’ll talk myself through whatever I’m doing in that language, like I’m doing the voiceover for the movie of my life.</b> It keeps the machinery greased but also lets me know what I’m not able to express, where my vocabulary is lacking or what I need to focus on learning next.</bq> In fairness, this is a really good tip. I do this a lot with Italian and French for exactly the reasons stated above. <bq><b>If you’re on the more extraverted side, you might enjoy recording videos of yourself speaking the target language</b> (such as this one, by a learner of Levantine Arabic), which can be great for accountability or as a means of getting helpful comments and tips from other speakers.</bq> I don't understand what the point of learning to speak a language is if you have to search online for someone to talk to. Wouldn't you have someone you want to talk to as the inspiration for learning the language? <h><span id="philosophy">Philosophy & Sociology</span></h> <a href="http://ayjay.org/helprin.html" source="AYJAY" author="Mark Helprin">The Acceleration of Tranquility</a> <bq>Indeed, your memory has been trained with lifelong diligence. You know tens of thousands of words in your own language, in Latin, Greek, French, and German. <b>You are haunted by declensions, conjugations, rules, exceptions, and passages that linger many years after the fact.</b></bq> <bq>Necessity you find to be your greatest ally, an anchor of stability, a pier off of which, sometimes, you may dive. Discipline and memory are strengths that in their exercise open up worlds. <b>The lack of certain things when you want them makes your desire keener and you better rewarded when eventually you get them.</b></bq> Or not. You will realize what you really desire, what you really need. Those are the things that you continue to pursue beyond the initial <i>Habenwollen</i>. <bq>It was like that when you were courting your wife. <b>Sometimes you did not see her for weeks or months.</b> It sharpened your desire and deepened your love.</bq> <bq><b>You have learned to enjoy the attribute of patience in itself</b>, for it slows time, honors tranquility, and lets you savor a world in which you are clearly aware that your passage is but a brief candle.</bq> <bq><b>Because of our physical constraints we require a specific environment and a harmony in elements that relate to us and of which we are often unaware.</b> The Parthenon is a very pleasing building, and Mozart's Fifth Piano Concerto a very pleasing work, because each makes use of proportions, relations, and variations that go beyond subjective preference, education, and culture into the realm of universal appeal conditioned by universal human requirements and constraints.</bq> <bq>A life lived with these understood, even if vaguely, will have the grace that a life lived unaware of them will not. When expanding one's powers, as we are in the midst of now doing by many orders of magnitude in the mastery of information, <b>we must always be aware of our natural limitations, mortal requirements, and humane preferences.</b></bq> <bq><b>The capacious, swelling streams of information have brought little change in quality and vast overflows of quantity.</b> In this they are comparable to the ornamental explosions of the baroque, when a corresponding richness of resource found its outlet mainly in decorating the leaner body of a previous age.</bq> That's a lovely, lovely metaphor, <iq>decorating the leaner body of a [prior] age.</iq> (I like "prior" better than "previous" here...it feels more poetic.) <bq>Of course, <b>one always needs ethics, principles, and etiquette, but now more than ever do we need them as we leave the age of brick and iron.</b> For the age of brick and iron, shock as it might have been to Wordsworth, was friendlier to mankind than is the digital age,</bq> <bq>[...] one can have a quiet refuge, dignified dress, paper, a fountain pen, books, postage, Mozart with astonishing fidelity and ease, an excellent diet, much time to one's self, the opportunity to travel, a few nice pieces of furniture and decoration, medical care far beyond what the British statesman might have dreamed of, and, yes, a single-malt scotch in a crystal glass, for less than the average middle-class income. If you think not, then add up the prices and see how it is that people with a strong sense of what they want, need, and do not require can live like kings of a sort if they exhibit the appropriate discipline and self-restraint.</bq> You're Losing me here. Careful before you blame poverty on the poor. <bq>The revolution that you have made is indeed wonderful, powerful, and great, and it has hardly begun. But <b>you have not brought to it the discipline, the anticipation, or the clarity of vision that it, like any vast augmentation in the potential of humankind, demands.</b> You have been too enthusiastic in your welcome of it, and not wary enough. Some of you have become arrogant and careless, and, quite frankly, too many of you at the forefront of this revolution lack any guiding principles whatsoever or even the urge to seek them out.</bq> <bq>[ Forbes Magazine, December 1996]</bq> Whoa, this was written way back when things were comparatively sane. It is now much, much, much worse than it was then. Helprin and Neil Postman are positively spinning in their graves. <hr> I found the article above linked from this short and thoughtful post. <a href="https://blog.ayjay.org/and-then/" author="ayjay" source="The Homebound Symphony">and then?</a> <bq><b>The whole attitude seems to be: <i>Let me get through this thing I don’t especially enjoy so I can do another thing just like it, which I won’t enjoy either.</i></b> This is precisely what Paul Virilio means when he talks about living at a “frenetic standstill” and what Hartmut Rosa means when he talks about “social acceleration.” </bq> <h><span id="technology">Technology</span></h> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/01/the-shape-of-things/" source="CounterPunch" author="Nicky Otis Smith">The Shape of Things</a> <bq><b>Most televisions come with a feature called “motion smoothing” turned on, which adjusts the frame rate closer to 60 frames per second.</b> Helps with football, but ruins movies and anything filmed without soap opera cameras—so most television produced in the last two decades (sitcoms like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory are spared). You can’t turn this thing off when you go to a hotel, and televisions are not straightforward or easy to set up, despite their plummeting price. It’s easier than ever to buy a television, so why are they so confusing? What I hear people complaining about more often than images are sounds: <b>commercials have always been too loud, but now certain channels and streaming services like Hulu have botched sound mixing: dialogue is whisper quiet, screams deafening, gunshots blasting, everything a mess.</b></bq> I wrote about this 10 years ago in <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=2723">How to purchase and configure a TV</a>.