Week 14

Week 13

I would go farther than this article and echo what others have said: it's no accident that colonial nostalgia is being weaponized by the wealthy against Mainland Communism. "Make Hong Kong Great Britain again" says it all, and so succinctly too.

This peek into the economics behind BUMBLEBEE helps contextualize it in the broader turn toward "progressive" female-focused mega-entertainment, and how that relates to downturns in both the toy and movie industry.

Reading between the lines of Bloomberg's virulent anti-Catalan bias, it's pretty plain to see that Catalonia has its own objectives that Spain is wisely trying to accommodate.

Week 12

40 years out, Spanish fascism casts a dark shadow.

Congratulations to Bolivia.

Week 11

Sarah Jones recently gave a rundown of some prominent liberal conspiracy theorists on Twitter, with the offending tweets and their authors gathered here. She also linked to this unusually thorough essay on the nature of conspiracy thinking, which extrapolates from some overlapping case studies.

I felt sheepish recognizing that I've been sucked in by some of these people before, and that some of my thinking verges on conspiratorial. I do however hope my approach is dialogical rather than monological. That's part of the purpose of my blogpost roundups. I want to juxtapose the contradictions and see what results. Maybe that will mean finding new information that overwrites the old, or perhaps new information shows up wanting compared to what I've read before.

I think many people have suspected this, but it's nice to see it written so bluntly and persuasively: the more left-wing parties compromise, the better right-wing parties get at snatching those votes. On the other hand, parties that remain steadfastly leftist can fight off both right-wing and center-left challengers.

The idea of approaching Errol Morris' new book as insight into the author appeals to me. Not just because Morris sounds unhelpfully dogmatic about his side of the dispute, but also because I'm interested in works that lay bare their authors' beliefs.

BIG LITTLE LIES

A key to understanding the rigor of this show is how thoroughly it rejects the possibility, raised by Jane, that "violence is part of Ziggy's blood." That would imply that she's to blame for hypothetical acts of violence on his part, or indeed any fallout from her fateful encounter. When in fact she's a lovely person and a very good mother, and that's never in doubt to those reading between the lines.

Instead, the finger is pointed where it really belongs. When Ziggy finally reveals the kid who's been hurting Amabella, I exclaimed "Oh my god" out loud. I knew it, but his revelation closed the enormous circle this show had been drawing. Everything made sense and it was just as horrible as it needed to be.

There's an unusual inversion to the Greek chorus conceit in BIG LITTLE LIES. The onlookers are just ignorant commentators, and the main characters' problems can't be reduced to snide quips. Everyone's pain is deeply felt and expressed. Outsiders can't understand, nor do they want to.

(Crucially, none of the supporting characters play much of a role in what unfolds. Celeste, Jane, Renata, Bonnie, and Madeline are changed forever, while the community at large can only smirk from afar. To give any more weight to the glib outside perspective would be to deny the seriousness of what was really happening in Monterey.)

Week 10

East and Southeast Asia will soon become a major trading bloc all their own.

Here's something unexpected: for decades, indeed almost all of post-war US American history, it was the Democrats who benefitted most from gerrymandering. Recent Republican gerrymanders can therefore be seen as an overcorrection, though of course anything the Republicans do will have a more pernicious motivation.

No amount of alcohol use is safe, as all benefits of moderate drinking are outweighed by the risks. Bleak, honestly.

Kelley Dong on Twilight.

Week 9

Before Ross Perot came Pat Buchanan, and before him: David Duke. Great epidemiology here, though I'm going to add that Buchanan's influence lives on quite literally through The American Conservative, a publication I monitor for trends in the conservative netherworld. More than just a symbolic forebear, Buchanan's influence persists to this very day.

Speaking of epidemiology. More proof that the scientific can't fully be understood without the social.

Really needed this argument that Abe is a lame duck with constraints facing him on every side.

I always thought my need to document disappearing places was something personal and melancholic, maybe shared with a few others at most. Turns out there are thousands upon thousands of others, and they've been digitally archiving the real world with obsessive intensity. I'm amazed at the connections Kate Wagner was able to draw from this phenomenon, many of which dovetail with my own perception of life under capitalism.

The economics of K-Pop. Hard not to feel like the best years are behind us, and that K-Pop is destined to become smaller and more niche. I've definitely been wondering how a group like Loona can expect to see any revenue with all the money lavished upon it by BlockBerry.

I was surprised how much this article describes my own experiences online. (And yes, let continental drift take Facebook away.)