And most serious lefties of my acquaintance say he is also not very bright.
I can see that, though I have to admit, the past 5 or 10 years, I've gotten quite disenchanted with using intelligence as a yardstick for anything. I still get angry when people do stupid things, so I do give intelligence some weight, but I've gotten to the point where kindness and human decency weigh a lot more to me. Unfortunately, I think we are in a time where it is easy to railroad kind people.
And just an observation about italics. If you look at the image I'm adding below, you can see that the middle comment has the italics but the ones on the left and right don't. I've never been happy with how the site doesn't italicize in the summary, so it looks like the author is saying something that they are quoting. The same problem happens in summarized posts on LGM (see here for an example).
What makes this a bit strange is that the middle one is what would be ideal, but the other two are not. Not sure if there is a fix, but just noticed it.
Thanks for all of the comments. I'm still curious what people think of Corbyn and Sultana as well as Polanski. He was recently on The rest is politics and I thought Cory Stewart was going to have a heart attack because Polanski didn't have totals of debt interest the UK gov was liable for at his fingertips. I'm not sure if it was an ambush, Polanski does come off as a bit glib to me, but given the Green's position, I think he has to push the aspirational stuff over the actual planning. I suppose this opens him up to the charge that he is unserious, but this seems like the way they always dismiss any left of center ideas.
Sultana seems like a person who relishes being a chaos agent so the combination of her and Corbyn seems doomed to failure, but I can't tell if that's because every thing I have read pushes that point. The New Statesman podcast was discussing how it was a clash between a federated system, where each group would get a vote or a more purely democratic system where each member would get a vote (if I understood it correctly) but I wasn't sure who was for what.
India started doing it after it was clear that the world had already overshot the climate boundaries
Yes, it plugs into the idea that Robinson said started the book, which was the observation that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. It is difficult to imagine a profit motive sufficient to move the current titans of industry, though one could imagine a savior complex moving them to do it.
The point about geoengineering startups had me think about Kim Stanley Robinson's book The Ministry for the Future, a science fiction work about climate change. Crooked Timber did a seminar on it if you aren't into reading the fiction, but are interested in some of the ideas. I believe Donald mentioned the book for its horrific description of a heat wave in India, which then has India engage in geoengineering, specifically seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfur dioxide. I guess Robinson has a national effort because it avoids the question of capitalism trying to harness geo-engineering, but it seems to me the latter is much more likely than the former.
There is a thought that nous' comment puts in my mind. One thing that I note is how German fascism was underpinned by particular notions of science, while the current American instantiation seems to me to completely ignore science. The Germans had notions that we've pretty much abandoned (though they still float around in the cultural psyche, such as eugenics and biological determinism), but I feel like there was a culture of putting science on a pedestal. The discussion of Heritage Americans, which nous notes is infinitely malleable, is, like other MAGA snipes that are chased down, fundamentally unserious. Another example is something like this
https://www.newsweek.com/anti-government-militia-targets-weather-radars-2097670
I suppose that the MAHA movement has some sort of scientific notions, in the idea that science is being perverted to tout vaccines and other medical interventions, and 'real' science just needs people doing internet research (like putting forward invermectin).
I realize that the US has a strong 'know-nothing' streak, but it's remarkable how easy it has been for Trump supporters to simply reject science and I'm wondering what others think.
The term "Heritage Americans" is new to me, it's interesting that it is seems like it is trying to plug into the terminology of heritage varieties (also called Heirloom varieties). You can see how, like anti-vax rhetoric, it pulls people who might have been previous placed on the left over to the right.
Pro bono, I felt like the last part of the Deputy speaker's admonition was accusing Labour of leaking the OBR report. I've been reading how the budget is supposed to be secret because it could move markets, but it seems like a very anachronistic practice, any government, especially in one in a country that seems to have splintered politically as much as the UK, has to test possible lines. (Another possibility would be to fine media that make misrepresentations about the budget, though I imagine that horse has left the barn)
While the content of Badanoch's reply was unsurprising, the clearly theatrical aspects (changing of voices when inferring Reeve's, the invocation and subsequent dismissal of 'mansplaining') that caught me by surprise.
Rofer points out that one question is who leaked it, and it seems obvious that it is from Rubio's camp, because Rubio wouldn't pee on Witkoff if he were on fire. Other is how it was recorded, which gets into questions of spooks and surveillance. State has their own intelligence service, but the current head of the CIA was in Congress when Rubio was a senator. Maybe I should shout vive le petit Marco!
So what happens to nationalism if many more people are either moving from place to place or or at least relocating from where they were raised? Does it become stronger among the relatively few who stay put? How do they handle being outnumbered by “the others”? Do the movers become citizens of the world?
Well, you might have the Dubai model with a small number of citizens (roughly 5% in the case of Dubai) and the rest viewing it transactionally. One could scoff at that, because the numbers are so extreme in the case of Dubai, but the whole discourse of "diversity is what makes us strong" is being discarded like yesterday's trash. While moving from one state to another doesn't trigger dystopian images, you start to get a larger and larger group of people who move further afield.
But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I’d put the threshold for “perpetually moving”/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
We seem to be reaching a point where everyone will be more like me: perhaps not perpetually moving, but moving enough that the idea of being rooted in a place no longer holds. I feel like that inflection point is coming in the next few decades, helped along by the fact that climate will make the places we live so different from what they were. People may not be perpetually moving, but the place they are living will change with enough speed and strength as to make everyone strangers in their own towns.
Hartmut, no worries, It's complicated by the fact that Karp is a non-native speaker of German, so it would be difficult to know what is from the translator and what is from Karp's German. In the New Statesman podcast, they say that Habermas turned down Karp's request to be the second reader on his dissertation because he didn't think that Karp's German was good enough, though softened that rejection by acknowledging that the ideas in the dissertation were probably difficult for native speakers of German to get across.
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I've done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren't deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren't so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency.
I'm not sure exactly what would be the focus of 'hating dishonour', but I don't think American voters, as a general rule, give a shit about what goes on outside of the borders, unless it is for the purposes of mythologizing, so the 2nd Trump dumpster fire is only marginally related to that.
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn't finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% 'immigrant' and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
Keep those context free facts coming Charles! There were probably as many, if not more who came from 1950-60. However, at that time, they were called citizens of the Empire, not immigrants.
And they survive by doing capitalism right. Not “right” as a lot of economists seem define it. They take care of their customers and they take care of their people. Without screwing over either in pursuit of a tiny fraction of a percent better numbers. And their executives don’t make tens (or hundreds) of thousands of times as much as their average employees.
I dunno, this sounds like that AI slop that I get all the time on facebook.
The CEO looked out the window and thought about his customers: all the athletes who actually cared about the planet they trained on. The company's mission statement, which prominently featured the word "sustainability," sounded like a cheap lie given the audit results. The boardroom fell silent waiting for his decision...
Say rather that the Chinese are a lot better at it than enormous Silicon Valley firms.
Given that the so-called 'Magnificent 7' account for half of the NASDAQ, I think I can get away with calling it American capitalism. It's not like there are some tiny companies, hidden in the shadows, that are somehow 'doing capitalism right'.
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
And most serious lefties of my acquaintance say he is also not very bright.
I can see that, though I have to admit, the past 5 or 10 years, I've gotten quite disenchanted with using intelligence as a yardstick for anything. I still get angry when people do stupid things, so I do give intelligence some weight, but I've gotten to the point where kindness and human decency weigh a lot more to me. Unfortunately, I think we are in a time where it is easy to railroad kind people.
On “Site Experiment”
And just an observation about italics. If you look at the image I'm adding below, you can see that the middle comment has the italics but the ones on the left and right don't. I've never been happy with how the site doesn't italicize in the summary, so it looks like the author is saying something that they are quoting. The same problem happens in summarized posts on LGM (see here for an example).
What makes this a bit strange is that the middle one is what would be ideal, but the other two are not. Not sure if there is a fix, but just noticed it.
"
This looks really nice, thank you! I've added a link to the page at the top, next to About our mascot.
On “Open Thread”
Pro bono, thanks, I must have skipped over that chunk of the file. The archive was out of sight, out of mind, so thanks for noting that.
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
Thanks for all of the comments. I'm still curious what people think of Corbyn and Sultana as well as Polanski. He was recently on The rest is politics and I thought Cory Stewart was going to have a heart attack because Polanski didn't have totals of debt interest the UK gov was liable for at his fingertips. I'm not sure if it was an ambush, Polanski does come off as a bit glib to me, but given the Green's position, I think he has to push the aspirational stuff over the actual planning. I suppose this opens him up to the charge that he is unserious, but this seems like the way they always dismiss any left of center ideas.
Sultana seems like a person who relishes being a chaos agent so the combination of her and Corbyn seems doomed to failure, but I can't tell if that's because every thing I have read pushes that point. The New Statesman podcast was discussing how it was a clash between a federated system, where each group would get a vote or a more purely democratic system where each member would get a vote (if I understood it correctly) but I wasn't sure who was for what.
On “Am I missing something?”
GftNC, AppleTV is 50% off for Black Friday if you want to do a binge. There are some other shows that are pretty good to binge thru as well.
"
Re Badanoch, this by Stephen Bush via Zoe Williams in the Grauniad
There was no state. Who does she think crucified him, an anarchist collective?
On “The surprising philosophy behind Palantir”
India started doing it after it was clear that the world had already overshot the climate boundaries
Yes, it plugs into the idea that Robinson said started the book, which was the observation that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. It is difficult to imagine a profit motive sufficient to move the current titans of industry, though one could imagine a savior complex moving them to do it.
"
The point about geoengineering startups had me think about Kim Stanley Robinson's book The Ministry for the Future, a science fiction work about climate change. Crooked Timber did a seminar on it if you aren't into reading the fiction, but are interested in some of the ideas. I believe Donald mentioned the book for its horrific description of a heat wave in India, which then has India engage in geoengineering, specifically seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfur dioxide. I guess Robinson has a national effort because it avoids the question of capitalism trying to harness geo-engineering, but it seems to me the latter is much more likely than the former.
"
There is a thought that nous' comment puts in my mind. One thing that I note is how German fascism was underpinned by particular notions of science, while the current American instantiation seems to me to completely ignore science. The Germans had notions that we've pretty much abandoned (though they still float around in the cultural psyche, such as eugenics and biological determinism), but I feel like there was a culture of putting science on a pedestal. The discussion of Heritage Americans, which nous notes is infinitely malleable, is, like other MAGA snipes that are chased down, fundamentally unserious. Another example is something like this
https://www.newsweek.com/anti-government-militia-targets-weather-radars-2097670
I suppose that the MAHA movement has some sort of scientific notions, in the idea that science is being perverted to tout vaccines and other medical interventions, and 'real' science just needs people doing internet research (like putting forward invermectin).
I realize that the US has a strong 'know-nothing' streak, but it's remarkable how easy it has been for Trump supporters to simply reject science and I'm wondering what others think.
"
The term "Heritage Americans" is new to me, it's interesting that it is seems like it is trying to plug into the terminology of heritage varieties (also called Heirloom varieties). You can see how, like anti-vax rhetoric, it pulls people who might have been previous placed on the left over to the right.
On “Am I missing something?”
Pro bono, I felt like the last part of the Deputy speaker's admonition was accusing Labour of leaking the OBR report. I've been reading how the budget is supposed to be secret because it could move markets, but it seems like a very anachronistic practice, any government, especially in one in a country that seems to have splintered politically as much as the UK, has to test possible lines. (Another possibility would be to fine media that make misrepresentations about the budget, though I imagine that horse has left the barn)
While the content of Badanoch's reply was unsurprising, the clearly theatrical aspects (changing of voices when inferring Reeve's, the invocation and subsequent dismissal of 'mansplaining') that caught me by surprise.
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
GftNC
https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2013/05/10/steve-witkoff-revealed-as-friend-of-indicted-russian-mobster/
"
That's a good point nous, I didn't think of that.
And GftNC, sorry for the late note, but thanks for the pointer to Stewart Lee in The Nerve. His writing is fun, but I prefer the standup a bit more.
"
At first, I thought the conversation was a joke, but here it is (from Cheryl Rofer at LGM)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-25/witkoff-discusses-ukraine-plans-with-key-putin-aide-transcript?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2NDEwMTcyMiwiZXhwIjoxNzY0NzA2NTIyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNkFGR1dLSkg2VkwwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJGMUM1Mzc1OEY5Qjg0MDZCOUJCNzMyODRDN0RBMEY3QyJ9.R55A7wfpKrimqSTKzT8ij6J3HqjPMIFE84iKN_Bp9Q0&leadSource=uverify%20wall
Rofer points out that one question is who leaked it, and it seems obvious that it is from Rubio's camp, because Rubio wouldn't pee on Witkoff if he were on fire. Other is how it was recorded, which gets into questions of spooks and surveillance. State has their own intelligence service, but the current head of the CIA was in Congress when Rubio was a senator. Maybe I should shout vive le petit Marco!
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
So what happens to nationalism if many more people are either moving from place to place or or at least relocating from where they were raised? Does it become stronger among the relatively few who stay put? How do they handle being outnumbered by “the others”? Do the movers become citizens of the world?
Well, you might have the Dubai model with a small number of citizens (roughly 5% in the case of Dubai) and the rest viewing it transactionally. One could scoff at that, because the numbers are so extreme in the case of Dubai, but the whole discourse of "diversity is what makes us strong" is being discarded like yesterday's trash. While moving from one state to another doesn't trigger dystopian images, you start to get a larger and larger group of people who move further afield.
"
But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I’d put the threshold for “perpetually moving”/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
We seem to be reaching a point where everyone will be more like me: perhaps not perpetually moving, but moving enough that the idea of being rooted in a place no longer holds. I feel like that inflection point is coming in the next few decades, helped along by the fact that climate will make the places we live so different from what they were. People may not be perpetually moving, but the place they are living will change with enough speed and strength as to make everyone strangers in their own towns.
On “The surprising philosophy behind Palantir”
Hartmut, no worries, It's complicated by the fact that Karp is a non-native speaker of German, so it would be difficult to know what is from the translator and what is from Karp's German. In the New Statesman podcast, they say that Habermas turned down Karp's request to be the second reader on his dissertation because he didn't think that Karp's German was good enough, though softened that rejection by acknowledging that the ideas in the dissertation were probably difficult for native speakers of German to get across.
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I've done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren't deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren't so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
"
GftNC, thanks!
I was struck by the close of that article, which was:
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency.
I'm not sure exactly what would be the focus of 'hating dishonour', but I don't think American voters, as a general rule, give a shit about what goes on outside of the borders, unless it is for the purposes of mythologizing, so the 2nd Trump dumpster fire is only marginally related to that.
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn't finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% 'immigrant' and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
"
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
Keep those context free facts coming Charles! There were probably as many, if not more who came from 1950-60. However, at that time, they were called citizens of the Empire, not immigrants.
On “Pop!”
And they survive by doing capitalism right. Not “right” as a lot of economists seem define it. They take care of their customers and they take care of their people. Without screwing over either in pursuit of a tiny fraction of a percent better numbers. And their executives don’t make tens (or hundreds) of thousands of times as much as their average employees.
I dunno, this sounds like that AI slop that I get all the time on facebook.
The CEO looked out the window and thought about his customers: all the athletes who actually cared about the planet they trained on. The company's mission statement, which prominently featured the word "sustainability," sounded like a cheap lie given the audit results. The boardroom fell silent waiting for his decision...
cf. Marx General Law of Capitalist Accumulation
"
Say rather that the Chinese are a lot better at it than enormous Silicon Valley firms.
Given that the so-called 'Magnificent 7' account for half of the NASDAQ, I think I can get away with calling it American capitalism. It's not like there are some tiny companies, hidden in the shadows, that are somehow 'doing capitalism right'.