The virality of evil
And other highlights of my week on the net
#FunFact
The life expectancy of a child born in Beijing today is higher than that of a child born in Washington, D.C.
Scott Stevens and Waleed Aly on contempt
Quarterly Essays are a good Australian institution, though I always think it’s a pity that, in striving for ‘relevance’, they’re not more ambitious as pieces of writing or thinking. So we get plenty of attempts at what might be called ‘op-ed long-form’ like “What really makes #ScoMo tick” or “The Unlikely Rise and Rise of #Albo”. But once in a while you get something that hits its relevance KPI while plumbing deeper issues and doing it well. I thought Uncivil Wars was extremely good.
(And just by the way, this is the first of what will be a number of posts from me over the next few weeks drawing your attention to free Audible content. If you’re subscribed to Audible a bunch of stuff is free. Like this. And Lewis Hyde’s Magnificent “The Gift” and some great lectures on he whose name cannot be spelled: Nietzsche.)
Feature for next week: the glories of Norman Sicily
More next week.
A Hot New Thing on the New York art scene
These two paintings by 27 year old Anna Weyant brought in US $3 mil!
Here’s a video of her latest exhibition — which is on till Dec 23 if you’re going to be in New York. And here she is in her flat — sorry “apartment”.
Melbourne International Film Festival short films
60 short films by some of Australia’s most exciting emerging filmmakers
The largest ever presentation of short films from the 2022 graduating class of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) Film and Television is streaming now for free on MIFF Play from 5 to 18 December.
This year’s showcase boasts the largest selection of films in a single season and explores an extraordinary range of genres, including comedy, drama, thriller, arthouse horror, animation and documentary. The films tell stories of love and infidelity, transition, share-housing, missing persons, immigration detention, bad haircuts and a kleptomaniac photographer.
MIFF rather overdo the charging to watch films if you ask me (though I can’t pretend that you have). But all these are free to watch.
#EnvironmentalNarcissism
Martin Wolf on Ukraine
The principles of postwar European life are at stake: borders may not be changed by force and citizens may not be prevented from choosing those who rule them. In addition, if Russia were to win, it would sit on Europe’s eastern border under the rule of a revanchist tyrant. But, if Ukraine were to win, it would be a potent bulwark against Russia. This war, then, is existential — not just for Ukraine, but also for Europe.
The west needs to ensure that Ukraine survives and then thrives as a prosperous and democratic nation. This is not just a moral necessity, but in its interests, too. …
Ultimately, war is a matter of resources and motivation. Those Ukraine has: it is smaller than Russia, but it has demonstrated far greater motivation; and its allies have the resources. The combined gross domestic products of the US, EU, UK and Canada are some 22 times that of Russia. Even fiscal support of $60bn next year would cost only 0.1 per cent of the allies’ combined incomes.
Who could argue this is unaffordable? Is it not far more unaffordable to let Putin triumph? Yes, it is painful to suffer the energy shock from this war. But it is the west’s duty to cope. It is Ukraine and Ukrainians who bear the brunt of the conflict. We in the comfortable west must give them the resources they need. Only when Putin knows he will not be allowed to win is the war likely finally to end.
Robert Skidelsky reviews 800 page bio of Hayek
And that’s just the first volume. I used to be a fan of Hayek but my opinion has slowly sunk as I observed not just that he was a one-trick pony, but also that he wildly overdid the importance of his trick. He showed that central planning diddn’t work, but attached to it a tendentious slippery slope argument which dispensed with any difficulties for his own case. He raised corporate money for the Economics Department at the University of Chicago which then abruptly reversed its position on anti-trust consistent with the interests of its funders. And he backed Pinochet with his death squads.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, at misogyny in economics
How could it have snuck in there?
Who’da thunk:
Once again, women are coming forward to out their colleagues, teachers, and co-authors as misogynists and abusers. Once again, women are noting how pervasive and persistent sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination are within the field. And once again, economists are asking how to make their subject area safer, more welcoming, and more diverse.
This is not just an internecine battle for greater equality and opportunity within an elite profession. It is a battle to improve economics itself, and thus to improve our understanding of the economy, and thus to improve public policy, and thus to improve everyone’s lives. For such researchers to understand the world, they need to confront their own biases. And the testimonies of any number of women show how far the profession has to go in doing so.
As for that last paragraph — about economics’ itself, I argued, in effect that economics had a parodically male bias in its whole way of approaching its subject matter. I called it “Was Adam Smith a feminist economist? Care—the essay”.
#FruitcakeWatch: extended edition
Like I said in a tweet, most of the feedstock for #FruitcakeWatch comes from the US Republicans, but, sad to say, some influential folks here aspire to such heights. Like people being appointed to high ministerial office in secret, apparently this is OK. And then there was the Liberal candidate who stood against Dan Andrews and then played the delusion card.
#FruitcakeWatch: Corporate Grand-Auto Theft edition
When people say crime is a social construct this is what they mean: when a corporation accuses you of stealing you’re caged. When a corporation lies and has you caged, they hand over some cash
Read the whole thread
With a brief word from the non-fruitcake wing of American politics
A maternal cutie from the Warnock clan.
And regarding fruitcake participation in the election
See here for a long and amusing list of such comparisons.
Violent fruitcakery seems to have a right-wing bias
Read the whole thread.The rise of Archaeologists Anonymous
Censorship is driving dissident researchers underground
Fascinating piece in Unherd. Bias warning: the story chimes with Unherd’s anti-woke priors (and mine even though mine haven't led me into the arms of the right).
In the absence of genetic data, it was once possible to argue that changes in the material record (objects and artefacts such as pottery, stone and metal tools, craft objects, clothing and so on) reflected some kind of passive or diffuse spread of technologies and fashions, but this is no longer the case. For instance, for many years students and the public were told that “pots are not people” — that new styles of pottery suddenly appearing in the record does not mean that new people had arrived with them — and the appearance of the so-called “Bell Beaker” pottery in the British Bronze Age showed how imitation and trade allowed new styles of ceramics to spread from the continent.
But in 2018, a bombshell paper proved this was fundamentally incorrect. In fact, nearly 90% of the population of Britain was replaced in a short period, corresponding to the movement of the Bell Beaker people into Britain and the subsequent disappearance of the previous Neolithic inhabitants. We know this because careful genetic work, building from paper to paper, shows clearly that the new arrivals were different people, with different maternal and paternal DNA. Papers like this appear almost weekly now. Most recently, the confirmation that the Anglo-Saxons did indeed arrive from northern Europe has caused many academics a great headache, since for years the very idea of an invasion of Germanic peoples has been downplayed and even dismissed.
What seems obvious to the general public — that prehistory was a bloody mess of invasions, migrations, battles and conflict — is not always a commonplace view among researchers. Worse, the idea that ancient peoples organised themselves among clear ethnic and tribal lines is also taboo. Obvious statements of common sense, such as the existence of patriarchy in the past, are constantly challenged and the general tone of academia is one of refutation: both of established theories and thinkers and of disagreeable parts of the past itself.
If you like chess this is one for the ages
Not so different to the end of the game that broke Nepo in the last World Championship. Which is also subject to a fabulous commentary by Nakamura here.
Are meat substitutes really better for the environment than meat?
Short answer — YES
The nihilism of oppositional culture
Richard Hanania thinks gerrymandering is OK, but draws the line at lying about losing elections. I don’t think it’s at all OK, but include this piece as a powerful takedown of the scorched earth of “Oppositional Culture” on the left and right.
A simple text command — pitch-perfect satire.
From a computer. Completely extraordinary …
HT: Paul Nicolarakis
Who followed up with this video which explains how the video was made.
