#thomas schelling

[evaluationvault]

Thomas Schelling’s Conflict Escalation Theory in Modern Warfare

U.S. Navy/Michael Williams Thomas Schelling, an influential figure in economics and strategic theory, made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of conflict and bargaining in the 20th century. Born in 1921, Schelling was a Nobel laureate economist whose work spanned several areas of strategic thinking, particularly in the domains of nuclear deterrence and conflict resolution. His…

[jiskblr]

No, you're misunderstanding Schelling points; total absence of coordination is a degenerate case that proves the concept, not an inherent trait of Schelling's 'focal points'. Many of his examples deal with advance coordination, followed by a break in communications such that no further coordination is possible (or sometimes, that none is necessary).

National borders are Schelling points; they're one of the original examples in Schelling's book and one of the ones he's particularly interested in. They're usually established by action between several parties, but having had that established, they become Schelling points and persist even long after the original reasons for creating that agreement fade.

Example of the same phenomenon at work: The Ottoman agreement on shipping through the Bosporus, the Montreux Convention. Turkey is holding to that convention strictly enough that they're engaging in a large canal-building project to have a channel for large ships they have full control over. Why? Because it's a Schelling point, and it's better to stick to it than to reevaluate everything else that relies on the same structure of implicit coordination; if you break from this Schelling point, you will be assumed to break from all the others like respecting national borders.

Craigslist and Facebook are Schelling points. Both of them have successors which are significantly superior, but the fact that they are the most popular by large margins means that in the absence of a large, sudden coordinated move to one of the successors, they remain the focal point where everyone coordinates in the absence of communication.

And, yes, Bitcoin is a Schelling point. There's no real reason that all the trading volume should be in Bitcoin rather than Dogecoin. Dogecoin has been around twelve years now and doesn't have a supply cap. But Bitcoin was first, and so standardizing on any other coin would require coordination, and it's easier to go with the default focal point that's already established.

In general, the status quo is a Schelling point, in full generality. Leaving things as they are requires no coordination, and in most cases that's what will happen, as everyone remains at the focal point, lacking sufficient reason to communicate and coordinate to do anything else.

The idea of a Schelling point (or focal point) is that it's something two people can arrive at without prior coordination.

It really drives me nuts when people call something a Schelling point and just completely forget about the "without prior coordination" aspect. Like, if I go to New York and a guy calls me and says "hey, let's meet at Grand Central Station at noon", that's definitely different from us selecting Grand Central Station in the absence of talking to each other.

The "without prior communication" thing is what's interesting about a Schelling point. It's what makes it a Schelling point.

And yes, this is about Nate Silver's On the Edge again, I'm sorry.

Bitcoin is not an example of a Schelling point, and it's absurd to me that you could write a book that's at least partly about game theory and claim that it is. There is quite a lot of communication happening with regards to "what's popular", there are people whose entire job revolves around screaming to the rooftops about how awesome particular cryptocurrencies or artworks are. This is entirely explained by network effects, first-mover advantage, and active communication.

He also makes the argument that art prices are an example of Schelling points, and no, that's not true, they're the result of a lot of complex social and market dynamics that involve huge amounts of explicit communication and coordination.

[scenesandscreens]

Director - John Carpenter, Cinematography - Gary B. Kibbe

"A master vampire, able to walk in the sunlight, unstoppable. Unless we stop him."

John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)

[kaurwreck]

Rereading the early Guild Arc is incredible because it's Fukuzawa and Mori engaging in viciously nasty and personal threats to one another's closest loved ones and allies that wildly escalates beyond their implicitly agreed upon tension, which comes to a head because Dazai petulantly mischaracterizes Mori as pathologically mathematical (because he isn't over that Mori could do what he did to Dazai) and intentionally triggers the paranoia and obsessive compulsive betrayal sensitivity that he'd clocked in Mori at fifteen, causing Mori to irrationally lash out and release Q (and then self flagellate because the consequences of this were wildly amplified by the Guild's seizure of Q), by which point Dazai realizes he'd gone too far and now has to get Ango hit by a car about it.

And Francis is just like. There.

(He's also going through it, but because Louisa isn't in underground son protection jail like Ranpo or hashing out unresolved grief like Dazai and Mori, she's keeping Francis rational with decision trees and focused tasks within the realm of his control.)

This is why there's a chapter called "The Conflict of Strategies." The Strategy of Conflicts by Thomas Schelling is about coordination between mutually dependent parties in conflicts. Unlike zero-sum games (in which one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss), mutually dependent parties rely on each other and so can't draw blood without harming themselves in the process.

The Agency and the Port Mafia are both pillars maintaining Yokohama's tenuous stability; if one falls, the whole city could devolve into a warzone. Thus, their mutual dependence is part of the logical structure of any strategy and demands some kind of collaboration or mutual accommodation, even if only in the avoidance of mutual disaster.

Mori often uses a strategy of irrationality, i.e. he acts volatile and whimsically sociopathic, where he's actually very controlled and rational, which Dazai knows. But, as Dazai reveals to Mori's horror in Fifteen, Dazai also knows where Mori is vulnerable to emotional provocation. This is because Mori, like everyone else, isn't completely rational or completely irrational; it's not a one-dimensional scale. But, "everyone else" includes Dazai.

Dazai characterizes Mori as a math equation because he's still reeling from the betrayal he feels over Mori sacrificing Oda despite knowing how much Dazai loved Oda, and despite Mori knowing it would drive Dazai away from him— because he and Mori also love each other. Even though Dazai probably understands logically that Mori made the decision despite his love for Dazai (and not in the absence of it) because Mimic was an existential threat on Yokohama, Dazai cannot shake the irrational and emotional thought, "If you could do that to me, of all people, you really are as coldly logical as a math equation."

This is irrational because Dazai knows that's not true; he demonstrated in Fifteen that he knows that Mori is terrified of, more than anything else, chaos, and that the threat of chaos is enough to trigger Mori into decisions he does not want to make and otherwise would not make. That's what he was trying to do in Mori's office in the first chapter of Fifteen— goad Mori into killing him by invoking a fear response.

But, Dazai is hurt and so he treats Mori as coldly rational and approaches him with vicious disregard for Mori's betrayal sensitivity, loneliness, and fear by taking Kouyou and leveraging Kyouka to keep Kouyou from returning to Mori. Mori, having lost Kyouka and thus Kouyou's incentive for staying in the Port Mafia, was already afraid he'd lost Kouyou's loyalty and support— and she's one of the four people he depends on. He also depends on Dazai, and although he's aware he drove Dazai away, that still hurts him. Further, Dazai demonstrating that he can and will use what he knows about Mori against him is terrifying to Mori because Dazai is one of the very few people capable of emotionally manipulating Mori. Dazai has Mori's nerves pinched between his fingers while telling Atsushi it's just an electrical wire.

Anyway, then Q is seized, hundreds of Port Mafia members and affiliates are killed, and Mori is wracked with shame and the fear that he behaved like the old boss. That's why Hirotsu and Chuuya are so gentle with him, and why, despite their agreement that Kouyou would stay with Dazai until Dazai saved Kyouka, Dazai asks her to return to Mori. It's also why the Agency and Port Mafia call a truce to collaborate against the Guild, without blaming Mori for what happened. They forgive because the cost of fighting is, as just demonstrated, too high, but also, they recognize that the escalation was mutually cultivated.

It's also why, at the very end, Mori asks Kouyou why she stays when she could leave. He knows he doesn't have Kyouka anymore, and he's still grappling with his guilt for those entrusted to his care that were killed because of his lapse in rationality. But, Kouyou assures him that this is a version of the Port Mafia she wants to protect. Because, even as Mori was spiraling and releasing Q, Kouyou was realizing that, unlike what happened to her, Kyouka could leave and decide for herself where and with whom she feels safe and has purpose. She could do that because Mori and the Agency have helped to create spaces and community and stability where there wasn't before. He's helped create a world where Kyouka can be a flower born in darkness and yet still make the choice to bloom in the light without being rejected or burned by it.

(And also because Kyouka left, and Mori didn't go after her to force Kouyou to stay. Because he would never do that.)

She wants to nurture that world with him, and she trusts him. The conflict may have escalated, but as soon as the cost was felt by the city and their own people, the Port Mafia and Agency were able to mutually deescalate and collaborate to contain the chaos and defuse it before it spread.

Mori isn't the old boss, and the humanity and love in him is reflected in his stewardship of their city. His humanity and love also mean he's capable of being hurt and will sometimes act emotionally and irrationally. But, it's okay for him to not always be rational; that's why Kouyou and Chuuya (and Hirotsu, who was goddamn MVP in the Guild Arc) are there to support him.

[hungwy]

What are you reading lately?

recently finished audiobooks:

the invention of nature: alexander von humboldt's new world by andrea wulf (5/5 stars, extremely based takes for an 1800s european on the immorality of slavery, rights for indigenous people in the americas, and the negative effects of colonization on the environment. basically THE blueprint for all naturalists after him. probably one of the most beloved scientists ever)

central asia: a new history from the imperial conquests to the present by adeeb khalid (5/5 stars, just a wonderfully researched and presented book. a [necessary] focus on the role of islam, nation-building, ethnicity, and communism in central asia)

when we cease to understand the world by benjamin labatut (4/5 stars, i will never get enough of the history of quantum theory)

the art of communicating by thich nhat hanh (3/5 stars, he writes the same book every book but i still like it every time)

a brief history of equality by thomas piketty (2/5 stars, some good history but essentially a "we must discuss these problems further" book with sometimes weird possible solutions to problems. overall one obviously good point: economic reparations are necessary in many, many places)

currently reading/listening/holding/sensually imbibing:

system of transcendental idealism by fwj schelling (pdf)

a short commentary on kant's critique of pure reason by ac erwing (book)

the case against the supreme court by erwin chemerinsky (audiobook)

next on the to-read list (not in order):

non-places: an introduction to supermodernity by marc auge (admittedly a shot in the dark for whether i like it or not)

immediacy or, the style of too late capitalism by anna kornbluh (zizek and so on podcast did an interview with her that i really liked)

views of nature by alexander von humboldt (hopelessly humboldtpilled)

essays on transcendental philosophy by salomon maimon (imo kant's greatest critic and also has a cool philosophy of difference)

[darkmaga-returns]

Is the trade war launched by Donald Trump the act of a madman or a mad genius?

To the extent Trump’s tariffs are a “negotiating strategy,” as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has claimed, are critics missing that they are simply part of the “art of the deal” that will enable America to gain coercive leverage over other states? According to the madman theory of international politics, it is possible Trump’s gambit has a strategic logic. However, there is a crucial flaw with this strategy that will likely cause it to fail.

The madman theory was developed in the nuclear weapons era by the scholars Daniel Ellsberg(the leaker of the Pentagon Papers) and Thomas Schelling (who won the Nobel Prize in economics). Its logic is that some threats, such as launching a nuclear attack against a nuclear-armed opponent, inherently lack credibility because carrying them out would be irrational in that it would cause both the target state and the threatening state great pain. However, if the leader making the threat is perceived as irrational or crazy, then the threat may actually be believable, and the target could decide that backing down to avoid punishment is the prudent option.

[boy-interrupted98]

Let them say I misunderstood. Let them call it Blasphemy.

I will not kneel at the altar of coherence. I came here to burn the blueprints.

Philosophy made the fatal error of trying to explain the storm.

I am the storm, and I have no explanation.

The bones I shall bury are not forgotten. They are beloved offerings.

Obituary/Resurrection;

Plato

Aristotle

Pythagoras

Zeno of Elea

St. Augustine

Thomas Aquinas

Maimonides

Avicenna

Al-Ghazali

Boethius

Descartes

Spinoza

Leibniz

Locke

Hume

Francis Bacon

George Berkeley

Kant

Hegel

Schelling

Fichte

Karl Marx

Jeremy Bentham

John Mill

Sidgwick

Comte

Herbert Spencer

Kierkegaard

Nietzsche

Schopenhauer

Sartre

Camus

Simone de Beauvoir

Wittgenstein

Bertrand Russell

G. E. Moore

A. J. Ayer

W. V. O. Quine

Edmund Husseri

Heidegger

Hans - Georg Gadamer

Foucault

Derrida

Lacan

Baudrillard

Lao Tzu

Zhuangzi

Nãgãrjuna

Dōgen

Confucius

Eckhart

Simone Well

Jorge Luís Borges

Heraclitus

Prologue:

The Maze as Manifesto:

Comprehension as a form of violence; the labyrinth as a symbol of divine complexity.

To understand is, often, to violate. What we call comprehension is less revelation than capture—a breaking down of what resists into something domesticated, annotated, shelved. The unknowable is made knowable not by grace but by force. We reduce to explain, and in explaining, we distort.

The divine does not suffer this lightly.

The labyrinth is not a riddle to be solved, but a presence to be endured. It is not designed to mislead; it is designed to resist the arrogance of the straight line. It coils with intention. Its curves are not accidents, but ethics. It teaches not by offering solutions, but by denying them.

To walk the labyrinth is to forsake the compass. To reject the inherited logic of forward motion, of cause and effect, of origin and destination. The straight line is a conquest narrative. The spiral is a theology of humility.

In every corner, a paradox. In every turn, a confession: that clarity is often a form of betrayal. The desire to simplify is the first impulse of power. Systems flatten. Maps erase terrain. Categories amputate what they cannot name.

To step into the labyrinth is to renounce that impulse. It is not ignorance—it is reverence. A refusal to dismantle mystery into parts.

Plato's cave offered the promise of ascent—from shadow to sun, illusion to form. But we remain in the cave, not as prisoners, but as keepers of its flickering light. We do not seek the sun. The sun blinds. The cave contains multitudes.

Kant warned of the limits of reason. Jain thinkers offered a doctrine of multiple viewpoints, an epistemic humility long neglected in the West. To them, truth was not a singular blade, but a sphere glimpsed from many sides.

This book is not a thesis. It is not a ladder of logic. It is a descent. A deliberate wandering. A text with no center and no promise of return. You may not exit unchanged. You are not meant to.

To be lost, here, is not failure. It is initiation.

So leave your diagrams behind. Forsake the desire to resolve. Step in. Not to conquer, not to define, but to dissolve.

This is the maze. This is the first refusal. This is Lost Bones of Philosophy.

Let’s start the funeral/awakening.

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 2.12

Beer Birthdays

Adolph Schell (1858)

Jennifer Talley (1969)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Tex Beneke; jazz saxophonist, singer, bandleader (1914)

R. Buckminster Fuller; architect, engineer (1895)

Steve Hackett; rock guitarist (1950)

Abraham Lincoln; 16th U.S. President (1809)

Christina Ricci; actor (1980)

Famous Birthdays

Maud Adams; actor (1945)

Darren Aronofsky; film director (1969)

Lolly Badcock; English porn actor (1984)

Joe Don Baker; actor (1936)

Judy Blume; writer (1938)

Omar Bradley; U.S. general (1893)

Josh Brolin; actor (1968)

Paul Bunyan; mythical character (1834)

Thomas Campion; English writer (1567)

Charles Darwin; scientist (1809)

Pat Dobson; Baltimore Orioles P (1942)

Joe Garagiola; baseball C, sportscaster (1926)

Lorne Greene; actor (1914)

Arsenio Hall; comedian,, talk-show host (1955)

Michael Ironside; actor (1950)

Joanna Kerns; actor (1953)

Sarah Lancaster; actor (1980)

John L. Lewis; labor leader (1880)

Alice Roosevelt Longworth; socialite, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt (1884)

Ray Manzarek; rock musician, keyboardist (1939)

Cotton Mather; writer, clergy (1663)

Michael McDonald; rock musician (1952)

George Meredith; English writer (1809)

Anna Pavlova; ballerina (1881)

Chynna Phillips; pop singer (1968)

Mel Powell; jazz pianist (1923)

Bill Russell; Boston Celtics C (1934)

Sylvia Saint; adult actress (1976)

Forrest Tucker; actor (1919)

Judd Winick; cartoonist (1970)

Paula Zahn; television journalist (1956)

Franco Zeffirelli; Italian film director (1923)

[blogparanormalexpresso2stuff]

Presidential Advisor: “I Directly Handled UFO Material” (Ft. Harald Malmgren)

Join us for a special episode with former presidential advisor Harald Malmgren.

A 27 year old Harald Malmgren literally saved the world from nuclear catastrophe during The Cuban Missile Crisis when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President JFK asked him to “buy time for diplomacy” by facing off against General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. Malmgren, the youngest of the “whiz kids”, went on to become a presidential advisor not just to JFK, but LBJ, Nixon and Ford. He had a personal relationship with Putin and advised every Japanese Prime Minister since Tanaka in the 70’s, Giscard d’Estaing, Pompidou and others. He was assigned to “contain” Kissinger and worked closely with Howard Baker, George Schulz, Volcker and Mondale not to mention Nobel Prize winners Tom Schelling and Sir John Hicks. Unusually, he had ALL the so called Q Clearances.

1. He held UFO (or UAP) material directly. This material came out of the plume of a nuclear test called Bluegill Triple Prime conducted at Johnston Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1962. It was handed to him by Lawrence Preston Gise, director of the Albuquerque branch of the Atomic Energy Commission.

2. The Deputy Director of Plans for the CIA and the man who built and designed Area51, Richard Bissell, briefed Malmgren on “otherworld technologies”. This includes past crash retrievals like the Magenta crash in Lombardy, Italy in 1933 along with broader awareness of UFO appearances around tip of the spear technology development at sensitive Department of Energy sites across the country.

3. That a member of foreign intelligence sent Harald information on a secret antigravity-related collaboration between Tesla and Thomas Townsend Brown.

4. He told his daughter Pippa off air in his final hours that there had been UFO crash survivors (biologics) and he was shown a video of the “sole surviving extraterrestrial being” from one such crash (Roswell).

5. Malmgren says point blank that he believes JFK knew about UFOs long before becoming president (from his history in Naval Intelligence). He and LBJ raced out to Los Alamos right after Blugill Triple Prime to be briefed in person. He says that JFK’s desire to collaborate with the Soviets on UFOs, space exploration and denuclearization were core parts of the impetus to assassinate him.

6. Malmgren discusses the “Majestic” - the group who took it upon themselves to “protect” the world. They tracked him from a young age, he says. This is the first time anyone of this caliber has mentioned this name which is mostly associated with document leaks in the 80’s and 90’s that outline an “elite of the elite” military, intelligence and scientific group governing the UFO issue.

Harald is a hero who saved the world (and more than once). There was more he held back and that he took to his grave. He was an angel amongst devils and his legacy should make all world leaders think twice, reflect and “lower the temperature” on the world stage when contemplating brinksmanship.

[tonreihe]

“Why is the first part of this synthesis called The Glory of the Lord (Herrlichkeit)? Because it concerned, first, with learning to see God’s revelation and because God can be known only in his Lordliness and sublimity (Herr-heit and Hehr-heit), in what Israel called Kabod and the New Testament gloria, something that can be recognized under all the incognitos of human nature and the Cross. This means that God does not come primarily as a teacher for us (“true”), as a useful “redeemer” for us (“good”), but to display and to radiate himself, the splendor of his eternal triune love in that “disinterestedness” that true love has in common with true beauty. For the glory of God the world was created; through it and for its sake the world is also redeemed. And only the person who is touched by a ray of this glory and has an incipient sensibility for what disinterested love is can learn to see the presence of divine love in Jesus Christ. Aisthesis, the act of perception, and Aistheton, the particular thing perceived (radiant love), together inform the object of theology. The “glorious” corresponds on the theological plane to what the transcendental “beautiful” is on the philosophical plane. But for the great thinkers of the West (from Homer and Plato via Augustine and Thomas down to Goethe and Hölderlin, Schelling and Heidegger), beauty is the last comprehensive attribute of all-embracing being as such, its last, mysterious radiance, which makes it loved as a whole despite the terrifying reality it may hide for the individual existent. Through the splendor of being, from within its primal depths, the strange signs of the biblical events (whose very contrariness to all human expectations, unique, incapable of either invention or dissolution by man, reveals their supraworldly origin) shine out with that glory of God whose praise and recognition fills the Scriptures, the Church’s liturgy and the mottoes of the saintly founders religious orders.”

—Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect

[mariacallous]

In 1999, American bombers accidentally blew up China’s embassy during an attack on Belgrade, killing three. The Chinese reacted with outrage, demanding reparations and official apologies. To prove their seriousness, they made nationalist speeches that whipped Chinese citizens into a frenzy, culminating in tens of thousands of protesters throwing rocks and encircling the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

For Chinese leaders, this was par for the course. In responding to international crises, China long hewed to a simple playbook: stoking anti-foreign protests to show resolve and pressure the other side to desist.

But today, something has changed: Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hardly averse to invoking nationalism when it suits him, has nonetheless eschewed stirring up frenzied protests when facing international crisis. During the biggest foreign-policy crisis for China in decades, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan, Xi did not encourage Chinese protests—in fact, nationalist fervor was met with online repression, including a temporary shutdown of social media. Instead, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out a series of unprecedented exercises to punish Taiwan and redraw the cross-strait status quo.

Xi’s avoidance of anger on the Chinese street is not a one-off. In the past decade under Xi, crises have not abated but accelerated—yet they’ve been matched by the effective absence of anti-foreign protests in the streets and frequent displays of military force. The reasons for Xi’s shift away from protest bargaining are multifaceted, rooted in domestic politics and a preference for showing strength both at home and abroad. The result of a new crisis-signaling playbook is a China that shows resolve in crises not through anger in the streets but through warplanes and the fleet.

Chinese leaders, facing wave after wave of crisis over the past three decades, have long turned to protests to bargain. The turn of the century brought not just Belgrade but the 2001 EP-3 incident, where a lethal collision between planes resulted in Chinese diplomats threatening their U.S. counterparts with the rage of the Chinese streets if appropriate amends were not made. Throughout the 2010s, China and Japan feuded repeatedly over the status of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, most notably in 2012, when Chinese government-stoked protests in reaction to the Japanese government’s purchase of the islands from private hands resulted in thousands of protesters engulfing 85 Chinese cities.

Jessica Chen Weiss, in her groundbreaking study of Chinese protests, examined more than 80 orchestrated protests in the quarter century preceding Xi’s ascension to power. She argued that protests are China’s attempt to do what economist Thomas Schelling called “tying hands”—increasing bargaining power by showing that one can’t back down.

Just as democratic leaders can point to polls as proof they’re fenced in at home, China can allow protests to rage in the streets to show the people will turn on it if it doesn’t get its way. China’s opponent will fear the effects of unrest that could become regime-threatening instability; considering the alternative, just letting Beijing have its way is preferable.

Yet few, if any, examples exist of Xi stoking anti-foreign protests during his tenure as president. In fact, he has worked actively to suppress such protests. While prior Chinese leaders frequently leveraged domestic protests as bargaining tools, Xi is hesitant to use nationalist uproar as his default option. Instead, Xi is more comfortable showcasing the PLA’s military power in major coercive demonstrations while suppressing nationalist movements at home.

To the extent that the people have mobilized under Xi, it has been for government-orchestrated “boycotts” that attempt to pressure other countries economically. Genuinely outraged Chinese citizens were discouraged from physically protesting during the deployment of a THAAD missile defense system in South Korea in 2017. Instead, Chinese consumers were encouraged to boycott the major retail conglomerate Lotte, which eventually drove the South Korean company out of China.

The new approach can be explained by several shifts within China over the past decade.

First, China’s leadership has changed. Xi is as confident about his nation’s strength as he is paranoid about the stability of his rule. As China’s unchallenged chairman of everything, Xi has consolidated control over all facets of Chinese society, presiding over the decimation of collective leadership, anti-corruption campaigns that have neutered elite opposition, and a massive surveillance network.

But this is not compatible with bargaining through protests, which inherently involves both telegraphing and accepting political vulnerability, requiring Xi to suggest that his power has limits and can be imperiled. Stoking protests constitutes evidence of Xi’s precarity among the elites or the population and is too risky to accept. Xi, knowing that his road to absolute control was paved with the ouster of all rivals, has installed himself as ruler for life; for such a leader, the prospect of being ousted is legitimately existential.

Second, China’s approach to foreign policy has changed. In previous decades, protests were an appropriate tool for reacting to a crisis foisted upon China, a weaker country telegraphing to the other side that it needed to cease the unwelcome behavior.

Xi Jinping, however, has moved away from former leader Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “hide and bide” as China has grown increasingly powerful. Old territorial disputes have been dusted off: China has attempted to expand control of the South China Sea, harassed India on the countries’ shared border, pushed Japan in the East China Sea, and exerted unrelenting pressure on Taiwan.

Many of these disputes amounted to “crises”—only this time, they were initiated by China, making domestic protests a less effective tool to coerce weaker countries compared to military harassment by air and sea.

China, due to its rapid growth, also no longer sees protests as useful for telegraphing domestic weakness. China used to self-identify as a non-threatening developing country, and protests were helpful in advancing this image; the United States had no reason to worry about China dominating Asia when the country couldn’t even control its own streets. Yet today’s China advertises itself as a real power, proclaiming that Mao Zedong made Chinese people stand up, and Deng made them rich, but only Xi made them strong. This strong China is at the center of what Xi calls the rise of the East and the decline of the West. Such a country is not liable to be brought to its knees by anger in its streets.

The young people who make up the bulk of protestors are also a more volatile tool than in the past. From the May 4, 1919, demonstrations onward, Chinese university students have historically been reliable sources of nationalist anger directed at Japanese or American imperialists. But today, China’s younger generation lives in what has been called “an age of malaise,” confronting a whirlwind of economic and political problems ranging from slower growth to a collapsing real estate sector and widespread youth unemployment. Young adults are motivated more by frustration over the COVID-19 pandemic’s aftermath or the desire to “lie flat” in the face of persistent joblessness, hardly concerns Xi wants to be vocalized.

The protests today have also simply lost effectiveness as a bargaining tool. China’s successful deployment of the method relied on it credibly tying its own hands, suggesting that leaders bucked public opinion at their own peril. But if China can simply ignore or suppress protests, or is perceived as capable of doing so, there is not much credibility in hand tying and, thus, in the threats.

Xi’s success in concentrating power at home has accomplished just that. Improvements in the effectiveness of the repressive domestic apparatus have removed any credible constraint that could be believed by a foreign country. Xi’s tenure has intersected with a remarkable revolution in surveillance and censorship technology, with the world as its witness. Over the past 10 years, China has built the most monitored society ever: Eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the world are Chinese; of the world’s billion surveillance cameras, half are in China. Online, private group chats are constantly monitored by algorithms and live agents, with real-world arrests frequently made.

As such, Xi’s campaign to centralize power and muffle opposition has eliminated any collective action that can be even remotely considered regime-threatening and, along with it, any prospect that protests could be used as a bargaining instrument. While previous Chinese leaders could reasonably point to popular or intra-political constraints, akin to an American president tied down by the U.S. Congress or polls, the omnipotent chairman of everything will struggle to convince others of his impotence.

The 2022 White Paper protests, set against a decade of popular passivity, were a clear moment of assertiveness and the most forceful domestic demonstration against Xi. But foreign onlookers saw that even the worst case for Xi—unrest spurred by something as aberrational and impactful as COVID-19 policy—could nonetheless be contained. If so, then smaller displays, such as anti-foreign demonstrations outside embassies, undoubtedly can be managed too. The alacrity with which China managed the White Paper protests has also fed the perception that they were a one-off: Protesters themselves were surprised by the degree to which China responded and held participants responsible, with one noting that “it’s going to be very difficult to mobilize people again.”

At the most basic level, Xi’s increased emphasis on military displays means international crises will run a greater risk of accidents. Military exercises, missile launches, and close encounters at sea or air are not risk-free, given the proximity in which the U.S. and Chinese militaries operate in the Pacific. If each military crisis is a roll of the dice, more crises mean rolling the dice more frequently—with more opportunities for something truly catastrophic to happen.

But more fundamentally, repeated military crises prime both sides to always reach for the military option, viewing anything less as a weakness and a retreat. Should China try to telegraph to the United States that its interests are at stake, the United States, well-accustomed to displays of force, may assume China’s response is cheap talk, absent a coupling with something more muscular. Consider the Pelosi visit in 2022. Xi’s repeated verbal warnings were dismissed as a bluff, and the United States persisted, which boxed Xi into sweeping military displays: a simulated blockade of Taiwan, firing a ballistic missile over the island, and commencing what has now become regular incursions of the Taiwan Strait’s median line.

In an ideal world, policymakers on both sides would recognize the dangers created by Xi’s new playbook and actively work to limit crises. Given the deep-seated interests involved on both sides, this is unlikely. But even without behavioral changes, policymakers would benefit from recognizing that assumptions from previous decades of crisis management no longer hold. This should provide the impetus for renewed stability dialogues: discussing redlines to avoid flashpoints, sharing insights on how each side views crisis management to manage disputes, and building firebreaks to contain incidents that risk spiraling out of control.

The alternative is continuing down a dangerous path, where future crises begin where the prior ones left off and Chinese leaders feeling pressure to not just repeat but one-up their previous response. Once a line has been crossed, uncrossing it appears weak and unthinkable. But as both sides climb the escalation ladder, fewer rungs will remain. As noted in these pages, this creates a new normal that leaves both parties living on the “edge of chaos”—permanently.

[ghelgheli]

The Stuff I Read in September 2023

Stuff I Extra Liked Is Bold

Books

Orphans of the Sky, Robert A. Heinlein

Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein

Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee

All Systems Red, Martha Wells

Artificial Condition, Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol, Martha Wells

Exit Strategy, Martha Wells

Friendship Poems, ed. Peter Washington

Introduction to Linear Algebra, ch. 1-3, Gilbert Strang

Manga (mostly yuri [really all yuri])

Yagate Kimi ni Naru / Bloom Into You, Nio Nakatani

Kaketa Tsuki to Dōnattsu / Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, Shio Usui

Onna Tomodachi to Kekkon Shitemita / Trying Out Marriage With My Female Friend, Shio Usui

Kimi no Tame ni Sekai wa Aru / The World Exists for You, Shio Usui

Teiji ni Agaretara / If We Leave on the Dot, Ayu Inui

Nikurashii Hodo Aishiteru / I Love You So Much I Hate You, Ayu Inui

Tsukiatte Agetemo Ī Kana / How Do We Relationship? Tamifull

Himegoto - Juukyuusai no Seifuku / Uniforms at the Age of Nineteen, Ryou Minenami

Colorless Girl, Honami Shirono

Short Fiction

It gets so lonely here, ebi-hime [itch.io]

Aye, and Gomorrah, Samuel R. Delaney [strange horizons]

Evolutionary Game Theory

Red Queen and Red King Effects in cultural agent-based modeling: Hawk Dove Binary and Systemic Discrimination, S. M. Amadae & Christopher J. Watts [doi]

The Evolution of Social Norms, H. Peyton Young [doi]

The Checkerboard Model of Social Interaction, James Sakoda [doi]

Dynamic Models of Segregation, Thomas C. Schelling [doi]

Towards a Unified Science of Cultural Evolution, Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, Kevin N. Laland [doi]

Is Human Cultural Evolution Darwinian? Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, Kevin N. Laland [doi]

Gender/Sexuality/Queer Stuff (up to several degrees removed)

Re-orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World, Joseph Massad [link]

The Empire of Sexuality, Joseph Massad (interview) [link]

The Bare Bones of Sex, Anne Fausto-Sterling [jstor]

On the Biology of Sexed Subjects, Helen Keane & Marsha Rosengarten [doi]

Vacation Cruises: Or, the Homoerotics of Orientalism, Joseph A. Boone [jstor]

Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the “Third Gender” Concept, Evan B. Towle & Lynn M. Morgan [doi]

Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body, Siobhan Somerville [jstor]

White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory of Asian Feminist Jurisprudence, Sunny Woan [link]

Haunted by the 1990s: Queer Theory’s Affective Histories, Kadji Amin [jstor]

Annoying Anthro

The Sexual Division of Labor, Rebecca B. Bird, Brian F. Codding [researchgate]

Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, George P. Murdock & Caterina Provost [jstor]

Biosocial Construction of Sex Differences and Similarities in Behavior, Wendy Wood & Alice H. Eagly [doi]

Political Theory

Some critics argue that the Internal Colony Theory is outdated. Here’s why they’re wrong, Patrick D. Anderson [link]

Toward a New Theory of Internal Colonialism, Charles Pinderhughes [link]

The Anatomy of Iranian Racism: Reflections on the Root Causes of South Azerbaijans Resistance Movement, Alireza Asgharzadeh [link]

The veil or a brother's life: French manipulations of Muslim women's images during the Algerian War, 1954–62, Elizabeth Perego [doi]

A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare, Kenneth J. Arrow [jstor]

Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result, Allan Gibbard [jstor]

China Has Billionaires, Roderic Day [redsails]

Other

Conversations I Can't Have, Cassandra Byers Harvin [proquest]

Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492, Alexander Koch et al. [doi]

Why prisons are not “The New Asylums”, Liat Ben-Moshe [doi]

Uses of Value Judgments in Science: A General Argument, with Lessons from a Case Study of Feminist Research on Divorce, Elizabeth Anderson [doi]

Boundary Issues, Lily Scherlis [link]

[arte-e-homoerotismo]

Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti ou Luchino Visconti di Modrone, conde de Lonate Pozzolo (Milão, 2 de novembro de 1906 — Roma, 17 de março de 1976) foi um dos mais importantes directores de cinema italianos. Era descendente da nobre família milanesa dos Visconti.

Biografia

Filho de Giuseppe Visconti, o duque de Grazzano e de Carla Erba, herdeira de uma grande empresa farmacêutica, Luchino tinha mais seis irmãos. Prestou o serviço militar como suboficial de cavalaria, em 1926, no Piemonte, e viveu os anos de sua juventude cuidando dos cavalos de sua propriedade. Além disso, frequentou ativamente o mundo da lírica e do melodrama, que tanto o influenciou.

Foi para a França, onde se tornou amigo de Coco Chanel e, através dela, em 1936, foi apresentado ao cineasta Jean Renoir, com quem trabalhou no filme Une partie de campagne. Em 1937, passou por Hollywood, antes de retornar a Roma. Na capital italiana, trabalhou com Renoir na direção da ópera Tosca.

A partir de 1940, ligou-se aos intelectuais que faziam o jornal Cinema e vendeu jóias da família para realizar seu primeiro filme, Ossessione, em 1943, com Clara Calamai e Massimo Girotti. No fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial realizou o segundo filme, o documentário Giorni di gloria. Contratado pelo Partido Comunista Italiano para realizar três filmes sobre pescadores, mineiros e camponeses da Sicília, acabou por fazer apenas um, A Terra Treme.Clara Calamai e Massimo Girotti em Ossessione (1943)

Em 1951 ele filmou Bellissima , com a grande atriz italiana Anna Magnani , Walter Chiari e Alessandro Blasetti . O primeiro filme colorido foi em 1954, Senso com Alida Valli e Farley Granger . O primeiro grande prêmio da crítica chega em 1957, quando ele recebe o Leão de Ouro do Festival Internacional de Cinema de Veneza pelo filme" Noites Brancas ", uma transposição delicada e poética de uma história de Fiódor Dostoiévski , com Marcello Mastroianni , Maria Schell e Jean Marais .

O primeiro sucesso de bilheteria viria em 1960 com Rocco e Seus Irmãos , a saga de uma humilde família de calabreses que emigrava para Milão. Foi o filme que consagrou o ator francês Alain Delon ao lado de Annie Girardot e Renato Salvatori . No ano seguinte ele se juntou a Vittorio De Sica , Federico Fellini e Mario Monicelli no filme de episódios Boccaccio 70 . O episódio de Visconti é estrelado por Tomas Milian , Romy Schneider , Romolo Valli e Paolo Stoppa .

Em 1963 dirigiu seu maior sucesso comercial e um dos filmes mais elogiados pela crítica, o grandioso O Leopardo , com três horas de duração e extraído do romance homônimo de Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa , vencedor da Palma de Ouro do Festival de Cannes , que conta a história da transição da nobreza para o populismo na Sicília, nos tempos da Unificação Italiana . O filme tem um elenco estelar onde destacam Burt Lancaster , Claudia Cardinale e Alain Delon.

Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa…, um mergulho inquieto e melancólico na capacidade dos seres sensíveis para se destruírem amorosamente, com Claudia Cardinale e Jean Sorel, realizado em 1965, foi a obra seguinte. Em 1970, ele conheceu o fracasso de uma obra sua, com O Estrangeiro, extraído do livro homônimo de Albert Camus e realiza também La caduta degli dei que lançou o actor Helmut Berger.

Com o sensível e refinado Morte em Veneza (1971), protagonizado por Dirk Bogarde e baseado na obra de Thomas Mann, ele voltou a se encontrar com o sucesso de público e de crítica. O filme conta a história de Gustav Aschenbach, um compositor que vai passar férias em Veneza, e acaba por viver uma grande e inesperada paixão, que iniciaria a sua completa destruição. O filme faz uma abordagem do conceito filosófico de beleza, assim como a passagem do tempo a importância da juventude nas nossas vidas. O filme seguinte foi o grandioso, mas decepcionante, Ludwig, com Helmut Berger e Romy Schneider. Durante as filmagens de Ludwig, ele sofreu um ataque cardíaco que o prendeu a uma cadeira de rodas até a sua morte, em 1976.

Mesmo com muita dificuldade, Luchino Visconti ainda fez dois filmes, Violência e Paixão (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno) e L'innocente, sua derradeira obra, versão do romance de Gabriele d'Annunzio que registra brilhantes interpretações de Giancarlo Giannini e Laura Antonelli.

Vida pessoal e morte

Apesar dos casos amorosos vividos, em diferentes períodos, com várias mulheres, como a estilista Coco Chanel, com as atrizes Clara Calamai (1909 – 1998), María Denis (1916 – 2004), Marlene Dietrich e com a escritora Elsa Morante, Visconti jamais escondeu sua homossexualidade, explicitamente referida em muitos dos seus filmes e nas montagens teatrais que dirigiu. Segundo Visconti, em sua autobiografia, ele e o rei Humberto II da Itália tiveram um relacionamento amoroso durante a juventude na década de 1920. Nos anos 1930, em Paris, teve um relacionamento com o fotógrafo Horst P. Horst. Entre o final dos anos 1940 e o início dos 1950, já consagrado como diretor, manteve uma longa relação afetiva e profissional com o seu então cenógrafo Franco Zeffirelli, que vivia então na villa do diretor, na via Salária, em Roma.

Depois de 1965, Visconti foi ligado ao ator austríaco Helmut Berger , que também atuou em alguns de seus filmes. A relação se manteve, com altos e baixos, até a morte de Visconti, em 1976. 

ALAIN DELON Rocco and His Brothers (1960) dir. Luchino Visconti

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"MORE REBEL FELONS SLATED FOR TRIAL," Philadelphia Inquirer. September 7, 1934. Page 12. ---- 15 Graterford Inmates Added to List of Those to Face Court ---- Fifteen more convicts in the Graterford prison farm of the Eastern Penitentiary were yesterday slated for prosecution on charges of arson and rioting growing out of the mutiny staged there nearly two weeks ago.

Within the next week they will be arraigned and scheduled for trial in the Montgomery county courts, it was announced by Dr. Guy T. Holcombe, president of the prison board of trustees, and Warden Herbert A. Smith.

The announcement followed a meeting of the board in the Grater-ford institution, at which approval was given to the move to add years to the sentences of the rioters. Thirteen have already been held for court.

"This action is taken," Dr. Hol-combe said in making the announcement, "as a warning to all inmates in the Eastern Penitentiary that punishment, in added years, will be meted out as surely as ring-leaders stir up riots."

The fifteen additional were identified as persons who started fires by guards who have been scrutinizing all the convicts in police "line-up" fashion during the last three days. The "line-ups" were arranged by Assistant Warden Elmer Leithiser.

The convicts were named as James Rambo, 29, auto thief, 14 to 3 years; Raymond Schell, 22, thief, 5 to 10; Desedor Velcovich, 25, thief, 3 to 6; Michael J. Thomas, 33, highwayman, 5 to 10; Leo Nicholas, 36, thief, 7% to 15; Thomas Kiley, 28, highwayman, 5 to 10; Dominick Palo, 24, burglar, 1 to 5; Stanley Ruzanski, 28, thief, 5 to 15; William Kendrick, 26, thief, 1% to 3; Charles Quirple, 22, highwayman, 5 to 10; Joseph Corrigan, 22, highwayman, 10 to 20; William Schaeffener, 22, thief, 15 to 30; Thomas Magee, 24, highwayman, 5 to 10; Frank Sands, thief, 5 to 10; Frank Sconnley, 24, thief, 1½ to 3.

As a move in the direction of "clamping down" on all convict cases, the board refused paroles in 13 out of 24 cases that came under consideration.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without Eunice. She watched and transcribed everything from professional wrestling, to reality television shows, to the scenes described in the chapter on pornography. She edited and rewrote passages. She clarified incomplete thoughts, challenged shaky assertions, and added paragraphs that always enhanced the points I was trying to make. She stayed up many nights long after I had gone to bed, reworking sections of the book. Nothing I write is published before it goes through her hands. Our marriage is a rare combination of spiritual and intellectual affinity. “She’is all States, and all Princes, I, Nothing else is,” as John Donne wrote in his poem “The Sunne Rising”:

Princes doe play us; compar’d to this,All honor’s mimique; all wealth alchimie.Thou, sunne, art halfe as happy’as wee,In that the world’s contracted thus.

I am deeply indebted to The Nation Institute and the Lannan Foundation. The support of these organizations permitted me to write this book. I am especially grateful to Hamilton Fish, Ruth Baldwin, Taya Grobow, and Jonathan Schell, as well as Peggy Suttle and Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation magazine. Carl Bromley at Nation Books is a remarkably talented and brilliant editor, a fine writer and scholar in his own right, who helped shape and guide this book. In an age when editing seems to be a dying art, he upholds the highest standards of the craft. He loves books and ideas, and his insight and enthusiasm are infectious. It was a privilege to work with him. Michele Jacob, whom I have worked with before, handled publicity and book events with her usual efficiency. Patrick Lannan and Jo Chapman at the Lannan Foundation have been constant and steadfast supporters of my work. It was Patrick, who has done more than perhaps anyone in the country to nurture, promote, and protect great writing, who first gave me Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated.

The Reverend Coleman Brown, my professor of religion at Colgate University and mentor, once again guided me through the writing. Coleman generously shared his profound wisdom, at once always humbling and always correct. His voice of compassion and deep insight into the human condition serve to temper the tone of my writing and pull me back from the edge of despair to remind me, and my readers, that good exists and is never as powerless as it appears.

John Timpane, a fellow lover of books, poetry, and theater, again edited the final manuscript. All my final manuscripts end up in his hands at my request. John, the greatest line and content editor in the business, is the Olympian authority who makes the last decisions on what is in or out, what should be changed and what amended. No writer could be in better hands, even if he has a hard time accepting my supremacy at Balderdash.

Chris Hebdon, a student at Berkeley, worked tirelessly on the book. He attended the seminar on positive psychology, did all the interviews and recordings, and wrote up the proceedings. The chapter on positive psychology is largely his work. Chris is a very talented young man whose conscience is as impressive as his intellect, which must make some of his professors very uncomfortable. My son Thomas, whose integrity is matched by a superb intellect, as well as a maturity and sensitivity that extend far beyond his years, worked during his Christmas vacation from Colgate University on the book in the Princeton University library. Robert Scheer and Zuade Kaufmann, who run the Web magazine Truthdig, where I write a weekly column, care deeply about maintaining the standards of great writing and reporting. I am fortunate to count them as friends and write for their site. Gerald Stern, Anne Marie Macari, Mae Sakharov, Rick McArthur, Richard Fenn, James Cone, Ralph Nader, Maria-Christina Keller, Pam Diamond, June Ballinger, Michael Goldstein, Irene Brown, Margaret Maurer, Sam Hynes, Tom Artin, Joe Sacco, Steve Kinzer, Charlie and Catherine Williams, Mark Kurlansky, Ann and Walter Pincus, Joe and Heidi Hough, Laila al-Arian, Michael Granzen, Karen Hernandez, Ray Close, Peter Scheer, Kasia Anderson, Robert J. Lifton, Lauren B. Davis, Robert Jensen, Cristina Nehring, Bernard Rapoport, Jean Stein, Larry Joseph, Wanda Liu (our patient and skillful Mandarin tutor), as well as Dorothea von Molke and Cliff Simms, who together run one of the finest bookstores in America, are part all of our cherished circle. Cliff was one of the most prescient critics of the manuscript and greatly improved its sharpness and focus. Thanks as well to Boris Rorer, Michael Levien, who recommended David Foster Wallace’s brilliant essay on the porn industry, and the staff at Bon Appetit, where I buy my daily baguette.

Lisa Bankoff of International Creative Management, as she has for all my books, negotiated contracts and eased the maddening minutiae of putting this book together. I am fortunate to be able to work with her.

My children, Thomas, Noëlle, and Konrad, are my greatest joy. After years in which I have witnessed too much violent death and suffering, they are the balms to my soul, the gentle reminders that trauma can be slowly healed through love and that redemption is possible.

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[more-intensity]

Reblogging again because this obituary is not only well written but more importantly such a great review of US/NATO politics and their public perception from Kissingers appointment up to the very present day.

He was no less foundational in pushing the frontiers of where American military power could operate. It turned out the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos, which lasted years, represented a template. When Nixon in 1970 revealed the secret bombings, it was a step too far even for Thomas Schelling, one of the Pentagon’s favorite defense academics, who called them “sickening.” As Grandin writes in Kissinger’s Shadow, the Cambridge-to-Washington set was not prepared in 1970 to accept that the U.S. had the right to destroy an enemy “safe haven” in a country it was not at war with and to do it all in secret, thereby shielding a war from basic public scrutiny. After 9/11, those assertions became accepted, foundational pillars of a War on Terror permitting four presidents to bomb, for 20 years, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Libyans, Syrians, and others.  

Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, his consulting firm said in a statement. The notorious war criminal was 100. Measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh detonated a massive bomb at the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. The government killed McVeigh by lethal injection in June 2001. Whatever hesitation a state execution provokes, even over a man such as McVeigh — necessary questions about the legitimacy of killing even an unrepentant soldier of white supremacy — his death provided a measure of closure to the mother of one of his victims. “It’s a period at the end of a sentence,” said Kathleen Treanor, whose 4-year old McVeigh killed.  McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century.  The Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow, estimates that Kissinger’s actions from 1969 through 1976, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon’s and then Gerald Ford’s foreign policy as national security adviser and secretary of state, meant the end of between three and four million people. That includes “crimes of commission,” he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission, like greenlighting Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor; Pakistan’s bloodshed in Bangladesh; and the inauguration of an American tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds.