“This is the first year when Bill strikes me as an old-fashioned figure, a Boomer outwitted by events, trending toward fuddy-duddy.” Ouch.
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“It’s about humiliation, not sadness. Huge class differentiation and vast wealth disparity is about humbling people.” Hmm. I’d call it resignation rather than humiliation for most.
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“Putin is an oligarch spy autocrat and secret multi-billionaire, but compared to cheap upstarts like Erdogan, Muhammed bin Sultan, Trump, Boris Johnson, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Modi in India, Putin is visibly a seasoned statesman. He’s, by comparison, a classy, on-top-of-it guy”
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“Giorgos Georgiadis: What about institutions? Should we try to prop them up, like fortifications to help us weather the "political climate" change? Or should we let them crumble and build new ones in the midst of chaos?” Me: Yes
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“Kevin Welch: credulous skepticism...People in power say the Earth is round, and they never tell the truth, so it must be flat.” This is a good phrase. Except the best examples are much more normie than flat earth.
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“So the most interesting new institutional innovation is what the Russians call the "curator" figure. The world's foremost "curator" is the guy known as "Putin's Cook," Yevgeny Prigozhin.” This concept needs generalization and theorizing.
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“modern "curators" are more like privateering warlords than spies or political operatives...global marauding goes against the Westphalian Order. Even if you conquer Ukraine, you can't get named "Lord Conqueror Duke of Ukraine." Embarrassingly, you have to fake it indefinitely.”
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“It makes me wonder if “frozen conflict” might become a more general situation. Why can’t more people live just like “Abkhazia,” “Transdnistria,” “Crimea,” “Novorussia,” “South Ossetia,” which are all fake-states under Russian protection?
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“It would be good to have some authoritative, vetted publication along the line of “Foreign Policy” that covered the politically active ultra-rich.” Heh Bruce wants billionaire studies too
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“Also, armed oligarchs, the curators, want to kill each other. They’re not, like, cordial rich-guy pals at Davos Forum. ...So you have to wonder if maybe it’s open season on armed billionaires from now on.”
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“the tech scene is kinda overdoing it with the self-scourging tech-lash. The techies happen to be top dogs in a particularly rotten era, so people naturally blame them for most-everything. Also, the tech moguls love the limelight and would much rather look like massive baddies“
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“In cities from Denver to Las Vegas to Phoenix, water use is either staying stable or going down, even while populations continue to rise."https://reasonstobecheerful.world/how-toilets-saved-the-west/ …
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End of conversation
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