LIFE OF CHINA
How Shanghai residents evaded — or failed to evade — the Xi regime’s zero-Covid lockdown policies, and the turmoil they caused. Pornography as tech innovation driver part 45,993: Chinese gamers use game engine Steam to evade porn bans. Need another reason to hate the money-laundering, tax-evading, market-rigging HSBC? It’s getting very cosy with the Xi regime. China and nuclear proliferation — an American perspective.
AMERIKKKA THE BEAUTIFUL
White supremacist terrorists are not “lone wolves” — they are part of a deliberate strategy by extremists to evade responsibility for atrocities. How the right celebrated Biden’s COVID diagnosis. Judith Butler on the overturning of Roe v Wade. So California’s governor has just signed a law modelled on a Texas anti-abortion law, but aimed at guns. In order to be consistent with its own rulings against abortion, the US Supreme Court will have to uphold it, or otherwise hand power to the states to regulate guns. Nice trap.
MEDIA
The always excellent Lauren Rosewarne on feel-good TikTok videos. Scientists, evidently with nothing better to do, find a way to beat betting companies — and promptly get themselves banned (no fingers broken though… yet). Two former Trump officials have set up a company that uses influencers as lobbyists (now there’s a marriage made in hell). What exactly are algorithms and why are they making everyone feel so anxious?
ART FOR ART’S SAKE
This week, I have mostly been getting into the text-to-art AI MidJourney — sufficient to take out a subscription, but you can trial it first. While I’m in the don’t-know-much-about-art-and-don’t-even-know-what-I-like category, even a hapless aesthetic n00b like me can have fun creating artworks derived from my decidedly dead white male artistic tastes. Plus, it’s interesting when you see other users in your channel taking inspiration from your cues. Zombies are a popular look so let’s try Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton as the undead:
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If that’s not to your taste, Scott Morrison by impressionist Berthe Morisot, perhaps?
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Then the inevitable greyhounds — first in the style of Hopper, then Leonardo’s designs for a robot greyhound.
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And I asked for Bernard Keane’s Side View in the style of Holbein, but I don’t think it quite got me — although it’s uncanny how accurate my dressing gown is.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere in science — a new way of measuring vacuum (which will presumably become more and more important to high-tech manufacturing). Altruism as mating strategy: you help people you want to sleep with, researchers discover. Archaeologists discover an ancient race of skeleton people. And until recently our knowledge of the sea floor hadn’t changed much since John Wyndham could plausibly write a novel about an alien race waging war on us from the ocean depths. Now nearly one-quarter of the sea floor has been mapped.
PHILOSOPHY AND SPIRITUALITY
Now here’s a thing: last year one of America’s most eminent theologians took on the vexed subject of whether there’s an afterlife for dogs. No, it’s not a joke or a gimmick — last year David Bentley Hart published Roland in Moonlight exploring panpsychism. Ed Simon has a fascinating review. If civil war comes to America, real Christians have a straightforward decision — they can follow God or they can follow the American Revolution. They can’t honour both. A reappraisal of Adam Smith and how his views changed over his life. “Concierge capitalism” — a new take on state capture, inspired by the UK Tory party.
MISC
The massive overhaul of the Indian army — will it work? The also always excellent Elizabeth Flux considers a new version of Looking for Alibrandi and how it has changed from the text everyone studied at school. How Russia is running rings around the EU as it insists the West is responsible for a global food crisis. Subscription-based health care? Amazon is moving into health, doubtlessly figuring it can do at scale what US governments have been inhibited by the right from doing for generations.
And finally, in the spirit of the famous Plato’s Cave video… another dog confronts the gap between appearance and reality.
