Short Form Saturdays – 6th May 2023
Thoughts of the Week
· Robotics in The Future of War. – A video posted to TikTok by Botsom_Dynamics demonstrated a robot performing a backflip and fighting moves. This video was proven fake as it wasn’t posted under Boston Dynamics' true socials. But, just because the fighting robot isn’t real now, doesn’t mean it won’t be one day. In the future, war will be fought through technology. Drone warfare, cyber warfare, space warfare, robotic warfare, and infrastructure warfare. If we all go underground hiding in our bunkers while we fight wars remotely through technology we’ve created to “advance” humanity, what sort of backwards world would be left? Cycles have always interested me, and we usually see the most innovation after a war cycle is over. In this current war cycle, it seems innovation and survival as global superpowers are hand-in-hand. If regulation can’t keep up, something needs to be done to put safety controls in place for this rapid innovation. I’m all for innovation to advance humanity, but controlled innovation. Nothing good comes from the unlimited chaotic development of new technology.
Current Reading
· Connectography by Parag Khanna. – In the section I listened to on my flights to and back from Sweden, the author discussed devolution and aggregation. Devolution is the decentralisation of government power to smaller-scale leadership structures within cities, smaller regions, and towns. Aggregation is a collection of things that come together.
Devolution allows for “autonomy without independence”. There are still border tensions and states that wish to have independence over their territory. Kurdistan, Scotland, the Basque Region. Can these states gain autonomy without independence through devolution?
Aggregation is seen within the EU. It allows for infrastructure connectivity, labour migration, and greater potential for economies of scale.
The pivot is from exclusive to inclusive mapping. Exclusive mapping details that states draw the lines of their political borders where they want to. Inclusive mapping blurs these political borders through connectivity. The importance of functional borders through connectivity will decrease the power of political borders that we draw on world maps.
Blog of the Week
· The TRUTH About The Dutch Farmers Protest. – The Freedom Corner With PeterSweden – This post is behind a paywall but even the first few paragraphs that are readable for free are worth it. Peter travelled to the Netherlands to gain first-hand experience with the farmers who are protesting. You can also get a 7-day free trial that I’d argue is well worth it for posts of this quality, right on the front lines.
· Peter Zeihan is the Jim Cramer of Geopolitics. – India and Geopolitics by SL Kanthan – We should seek out alternative viewpoints to our own to form a more complete picture. As one of the biggest names in geopolitics, seeing a post that provides a critical opinion of Peter Zeihan is well worth a read to question our own beliefs about the topics discussed.
Song of the Week
The River - Daisy Jones and the Six
· Spotify:
· YouTube:
Film/TV Show of the Week
· Daisy Jones and the Six – Amazon Prime. – Based on a book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six depicts a fictional band who experience a rapid rise to superstardom and navigate the troubles and tensions within the group that come with that. Has similarities to the Fleetwood Mac story, and who doesn’t love Fleetwood Mac? I enjoyed it so much that it's going to take up the majority of this week’s Short Form Saturday.
Podcast of the Week
· MacroVoices #374 Chris Whalen: Are More Banks Going To Fail? – Wonderfully explains the current banking crisis and if it's over or not. Chris also provides some potential ideas for solutions to limit the damage an escalation of the banking crisis would cause. Well worth a listen.
Quote of the Week
“There’s a right thing to do and the right thing to do for yourself. The problem is they’re almost never the same.” – Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid