China announces new law to formalise further the project of ‘Sinicization’ to ‘promote national unity’. Few countries prepared to top-down systematically integrate their minorities with their majorities like this. Which model of integration is most likely to work?
‘THE ART OF THE DEAL’ has a major flaw in that it doesn’t include a chapter on securing deals by threatening to drop missiles on people if they don’t accept your deals. Hopefully new editions of the book will fix this - it’s a very powerful and underused negotiating technique
Sense of it being done out of ‘completionism’ rather than any particular ideological commitment. You know like when you want to 100% a video game, collect all the collectibles and unlock all the achievements... In many ways a more noble sentiment than ‘ideology’ in-and-of-itself
Cuba in a very very enshittified state and ripe for upheaval as below but I don’t think ‘regime change’ will come internally, whole place is too lethargic - needs a big push from outside in order to topple. Cometh the hour cometh the man…
Lights are from the infamous ‘Rocinha’ favela. You might think they spoil the view of Ipanema beach but actually in a way they contribute to it; you look out and you really get full-on Brazil, full-on Lusotropicalism all included in just the one vista
Islam in the 21st Century has seen the emergence of two new major aesthetic and ideological forms of the religion - ‘Mr. Beast Islam’ and ‘Rubber Dinghy Rapids Islam’. Both exist along the same spectrum but represent two very different evolutions for Islam under hypermodernity
‘Mr. Beast Islam’ is the aesthetic and ideological evolution of Islam especially in the Gulf - in wealthy, increasingly liberal, demographically secure and competently governed ‘Basically Fine’ often previously quite hardline Islamist states
‘Rubber Dinghy Rapids Islam’ is the aesthetic and ideological evolution of Islam especially in Islamic diaspora populations in the liberal west - often from poorer migrant backgrounds with less sophisticated versions of Islam in societies where as deracinated minority populations they cling to increasingly hardline interpretations of that Islam as an in-group identifier