The Scholar's Stage

Australia Politics, an independant and thoughtful analysis but an journalist: https://johnmenadue.com/ South East Asian Affairs, a collation of a scholars own writings and compliaiton of others that they find interesting: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/ and of course WaitbutWhy for the joy of reading about the universe as it relates to ourselves, all through great doodles: https://waitbutwhy.com/

Riots are a classic coordination problem [1]. Peaceful protests, of course, can use official means of communication. The hard part is how to coordinate violence and looting, which would otherwise preempted by law enforcement. The linked essay is a fascinating read on the topic. [1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disorder.html

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2014/08/passages-i-highlighted-in-m… The entire Chinese economy is as rigged as the government can make it. The stock and bond markets are fake, the state owned enterprises are run as fiefs of the Party-State, not for profit, all the major banks included. Nothing is trustworthy. Combine that with a property market that’s been going up for decades and a ruling class that would not be happy if the middle class that started rioting if their savings in property went up in smoke and you have a fake property market too.

Nothing consolidated. It's _recent_ read between the line consensus from US/PRC strategic thinkers if you follow the space closely. See most recent US war gaming scenarios and current indo-pac PRC proposals. War games mostly conclude PRC accomplishes air superiority and control over TW within days and the US can't credibly operate near PRC shores to defend TW. Think tank blobs are all about blockades or IRBMs within 1st island chain to box PRC in, or making TW porcupine to create deterrence, or making US deployments in Japan more survivable. The TLDR is that defending TW directly isn’t even being contemplated anymore, it's assumed to be lost to PRC. The literature around “rescuing” TW if island can put up a fight is becoming just as sparse. >Amphibious landings are the hardest thing in all of warfare, especially since landings can only occur along Taiwan's well-fortified beaches, and not along its rocky cliff coastline and given the Taiwanese are dug-in and well-armed. TW is well defended the same way Iraq’s Republican guard was well dug in. All of it will be gone after PRC controls the battle space from air, TW won’t be in position to threaten the amphib fleet in the first place. Again think Iraq/Afghanistan not Normandy. PRC military modernization was modelled around these capabilities. PLANavy doesn't even have major amphib acquisitions, they're relying on civilian sealift capacity. PLAN too focused on challenging the USN, large scale landing on TW is a secondary…

A nice demonstration of the theory that riots start when a well-known signal synchronizes the actions of a critical mass of would-be rioters: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disorder.html > 1. An event occurs that signals to would-be rioters that they may soon be able to riot. In this case, the end of straw hat season. > 2. This event gathers a crowd. A significant percentage of this crowd—though rarely, it seems, the majority—are eager for destruction. In this case, teenagers on the lookout for people wearing straw hats. > 3. An entrepreneurial would-be rioter tests the crowd for the presence of other rioters by engaging in a minor (yet easily perceived) act of carnage. In this case, by knocking the straw hat off someone's head and stomping on it. > 4. Other rioters follow suit, and as the number of offenders grow so does their willingness to take increasingly brazen acts of vandalism, theft, or violence.

> undermined by the fact that other channels will report on this stuff, but not the BBC. If you think the willingness of a news organization to publish something depends on how newsworthy it is, I guess all I can do is respond by quoting the Daily Mail Song: Pop stars take drugs Teen boys wear hoods Sports stars have sex Bears shit in woods ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI ) But that's still English news. I guess I can quote something else: > the more lurid, titillating, sensational, or nationalistic, the better. Even the distinguished Xinhua News Service is not immune from this sort of thing. I couldn't help but chuckle when the podcast host Scott Peters worried whether or not the American press corps' obsession with non-stories like Kim Kardashian and Bruce/Catelynn Jenner would give it [Xinhua] a strategic advantage in the contest to control global media narratives. My guess is Mr. Peters doesn't read Xinhua too often. If I had few dollars [for] every time Xinhua placed a photo collage like "Beautiful Female Soldiers From All Over the World," "Singer Valen Hsu Poses For Fashion Shots," "Sleeping Babies With Their Cutest Pets," on their front page... ( http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/07/chinese-journalism-and-chin… ) Newsworthiness is something that can force news organizations to begrudgingly give up space they would rather have allocated to -- going back to the song -- their photo feature on schoolgirl skirt styles.…

This reminded me of https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than-…

My Taiwanese friends seem to have the same attitude. I think it's a combination of either naivety or fatalism. The PLAN is clearly making a massive investment in amphibious warfare vessels. The odds of a cross-straight invasion are certainly not 100%, but they are definitely not low enough to discount. This post from Tanner Greer is a good deep dive of the political attitude towards the issue within Taiwan: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/09/why-i-fear-for-taiwan.html…

I am very much not interested in what Cade Metz has to say after the way he treated Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex. (see, e.g. https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-framers-and-framed-not…

Non-mobile link: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/10/we-were-builders-once-and-…

Changed from https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/10/we-were-builders-once-and-… Thanks!

"History is Written by the Losers" https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2016/11/history-is-written-by-lose…

Reminds me of the "Tradition is smarter than you are" article that was posted here a few days ago. http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than-y…

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/10/a-non-western-canon-what-wo… -- A Non-Western Canon (along with some words on Harold Bloom)

It's going to be cyber war and no one is prepared. Here is an example how it may look like: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/07/what-cyber-war-will-look-l…

Very nice Burkean argument. There's a fascinating related example of what you describe: cassava [1]. Proper preparation of this staple food involves multiple steps over multiple days. Few of the steps serve an obvious purpose, yet omitting any of them has deadly long-term consequences. What appear to be "superstitions" or "rituals" to the individual performing them are anything but. [1] http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than-y…

Here is a list I keep for weekend reading Got some of these links from previous HN posts like this.. Not entirely tech sites http://nautil.us/ https://lwn.net/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ https://meaningness.com/ http://slatestarcodex.com/ http://www.britishpathe.com/ http://www.atlasobscura.com/ https://scholars-stage.blogspot.my http://www.counterpunch.org/ http://harpers.org/history/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/ https://zcomm.org/zmag/ https://the-artifice.com https://liliputing.com/ https://dev.to/ http://chneukirchen.org/trivium/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/ https://stratechery.com/ http://www.tedunangst.com/inks/

> Everything else - government, media, academia, military - is in decay and has lost all of its legitimacy. This seems like a stretch. Media certainly fits both of these, but it's hard to claim academia is in decay by most measures, and I have no idea how you could possibly claim American government or military are illegitimate OR in decay without resorting to completely subjective measures, such as how partisan the republic is or how few things get done (of the things you care about, no doubt). (Note: one could construct a plausible claim that military is in decay based on what percentage of spending goes to operations instead of R&D and acquisition[0], but I'd argue this doesn't mean our military is in decay so much as entering a period of restructuring as a result of a series of unfortunate long-term planning misses) [0] as seen on HN, https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2021/04/welcome-to-decade-of-conce…

I feel obliged to contextualize "Billionaires Build" on behalf of the unaware. Marc Andreesen published an essay "It's Time to Build" [0]. He claims that ostensibly, COVID-19 inflicted acute trauma on the U.S. economy. But it merely excaberated the symptoms of a deeper dysfuntion. The root problem is the cultural decay of "a will to build". The solution is to rekindle this norm. Several have published their own takes [1]. pg must have figured "What you can Learn from How to Ace a YC Interview" conveniently dovetails into the larger debate. Had he written the essay in a vacuum, I suspect he'd have emphasized "sell users what they want". Rather than the grand narrative "civilization is built by founders" which might increase exposure but possibly dilute the original intent. [0] https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ [1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/06/on-cultures-that-build.htm…

Campbell and Manning's paper is interesting, a touch too anecdotal for my tastes, but I do agree that dignity and respectability politics has seemingly vanished from the ether. By the way, this article is short and useless, check out these links for some more in depth reviews of the book and its position - I don't agree or disagree with these articles, they just cover the topic in more detail. Caveat lector. https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/honor-dignity-victim-cultures/ https://fee.org/articles/victimhood-has-become-the-ultimate-status-sym… https://www.thecut.com/2015/09/microaggression-complaints-and-victimho… http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really-come-from/ https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/09/honor-dignity-victimhood-a… And of course the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/3319703285?