timelets

“There are, after all, two kinds of growth. One proceeds gradually, allowing adjustments to environments as environments adjust to whatever’s new. Skillful growers can shape this process.

The other kind of growth defies environments. It’s inner-directed, and hence outwardly oblivious. It resists cultivation, setting its own direction, pace, and purpose. Anticipating no obstacles, it makes no compromises. Like an unchecked predator, an ineradicable weed, or a metastasizing cancer, it fails to see where it’s going until it’s too late. It sequentially consumes its surroundings, and ultimately itself.”
...
That’s the difference, fundamental in strategy, between respecting constraints and denying their existence.

--- John Lewis Gaddis. “On Grand Strategy.”

The usage of the term asabiya has several advantages. The most important reason is that it has very little theoretical baggage, because (unfortunately) few people are familiar with lbn Khaldun's writings.

Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall.

The execution of Malaysian drug trafficker, Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, was stayed after he tested positive for Covid-19.

He was scheduled to be hanged on Wednesday for drug trafficking.

The statement said that Nagaenthran, who opted not to be vaccinated, will receive medical attention and proceedings will resume on a date to be fixed, after he has recovered.


https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/drug-trafficker-facing-execution-gets-further-stay-after-testing-positive-for

This portion of Chelmsford was renamed Low- ell after Francis Cabot Lowell (1775–1817), an American businessman who improved American spinning and weaving machines and founded the first mill in America where raw cotton was processed and converted into cloth in the same building. Lowell, Massachusetts, is significant to the history of American industrialization because the town was entirely based around mill life. The mills employed primarily female workers, who lived in local boarding houses, shopped at company stores, and engaged in company-approved leisure-time activities, making Lowell the first company town.
...
By 1836, Lowell was the home to over 17,000 people, most of whom were female mill workers. Work began at 5:00 a.m. and ended at 7:00 p.m., with two breaks lasting a half hour each. In 1834, the company announced it would cut wages. Women workers took to the streets in protest. Though the strike did not raise wages, it did provide female workers with strike experience. In 1836, owners once again announced that wages would be cut. Also, workers would pay housing and meals, which had previously been par- tially paid for by the factory, in full.


--- Welch R & Lamphier P.A., Technical Innovation in America. 2019.

“IN OCTOBER 2019, just a few months before the novel coronavirus swept the world, Johns Hopkins University released its first Global Heath Security Index, a comprehensive analysis of countries that were best prepared to handle an epidemic or pandemic. The United States ranked first overall, and first in four of the six categories—prevention, early detection and reporting, sufficient and robust health system, and compliance with international norms”

--- Zakaria, Fareed. “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World.” 2020.

( Read more... )

The 2016 election was a result of anxiety about dominant groups’ future status rather than a result of being overlooked in the past. In many ways, a sense of group threat is a much tougher opponent than an economic downturn, because it is a psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune. Given current demographic trends within the United States, minority influence will only increase with time, thus heightening this source of perceived status threat. Although whites will likely still be the best-educated and most well-off racial group, by 2040, they are unlikely to dominate in numbers. Likewise, despite US status as an extremely wealthy country relative to those countries perceived to threaten it economically, many Americans find that small comfort.
...
Negative attitudes toward racial and ethnic diversity are also correlated with low levels of education. In this election, education represented group status threat rather than being left behind economically. Those who felt that the hierarchy was being upended—with whites discriminated against more than blacks, Christians discriminated against more than Muslims, and men discriminated against more than women—were most likely to support Trump.