Hey! Just wanted to share a few interesting things I’ve come across.
Trump & Iran
Trump is bombing Iran again in response to Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in/near the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s a summary by The Guardian:
The US military launched a series of strikes against Iran on Wednesday, US Central Command confirmed. A US official said those strikes targeted Iranian air defense systems, port facilities, coastal surveillance systems, ground-to-air missiles as well as launch sites for anti-ship cruise missiles and drones. This marks the first known US military strikes against Iran since late last month, when there were several days of strikes and counterstrikes between the two.
When it comes to Iran, Trump’s fundamental problem hasn’t changed. Tehran feels it has won the war, so it’s in no mood to make the kind of concessions that Trump could sell at home. Since he doesn’t want to invade Iran (which would likely be ruinous), he’s stuck in this zone that’s neither all-out war nor actual peace. And the closer he gets to the midterms, the smaller his room for manoeuvre will become.
Trump & NATO
At the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump has once again demanded American control over Greenland. According to AP, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded as follows:
Trump’s threats to invade Denmark mark a real turning point. They will go down in history as the moment at which American allies finally admitted to themselves that the old world has died. It's impossible to just sit out Trump and things will never go back to "normal.”
Nigel Farage & Bins
Over in the UK, Nigel Farage announced that he would force a byelection after he came under pressure for accepting a £5m gift by a cryptocurrency billionaire. Farage’s plan was quite clearly to call the election as a way to shift the media narrative and to demonstrate to all the other parties that he could still beat them. Unfortunately for him, all relevant rival parties have declared that they won’t participate in his stunt. And this is where things take a very British turn. Instead of making himself look good by beating serious politicians from serious political parties, Nigel Farage will be running against Count Binface (left).
In case you aren’t familiar with Count Binface, it’s pretty much what what you would think it is. It’s a man wearing a bin. His manifesto (below) includes the demand to cap the price of croissants at £1. He also wants to force water company bosses to swim in polluted rivers, and he promises to build at least one (1) affordable house. We can’t be sure who will win but my money is on the bin man.
JD Vance & Rabbits
There’s an interesting article in the New York Times that discusses a new book about the Trump administration. This bit caught my eye:
In “Regime Change,” their new book about Trump’s second term, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times write that Vance was something of a “doomer,” as Vance himself joked in private, that he was “always latching onto the most negative possibilities.” He worried, early and presciently, that divides over Israel and the Epstein files would threaten the MAGA coalition, and his fears lurched toward the conspiratorial. After the assassination last year of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and the vice president’s close friend, Vance’s “instincts told him that there was a larger plot behind the murder,” Haberman and Swan write. “He went down countless online rabbit holes, becoming so consumed by the videos and the theories that his wife, Usha, told him she was worried about him.”
This gets at something very important. A whole generation of the smartest minds in the world went to Silicon Valley to build a trillion dollar brain-frying machine. They could’ve tried to solve world hunger, develop vaccines or become something comparatively decent, like an investment banker. But they built the brain-frying machine.
As it turns out, that machine can’t be calibrated to fry just some brains. Everyone can have their brain melted. Your uncle’s brain is probably fried already. Your brain might get fried, your mother’s brain might get fried. The machine melts everything.
Most problematic of all, there’s not that much of a difference between our regular brains and the brains of JD Vance or your senator or the friendly neighbourhood billionaire. They’re probably a bit special, but not special enough to withstand the giant brain-melter. Where the people that govern us used to have regular squishy brains, it’s now just porridge. I say this because it matters when analysing politics. Next time you ask yourself why some leading politician did this or that, don’t discount the possibility that his brain has been replaced by mashed potatoes.
Substack
In his newsletter Chris Miller makes the interesting (albeit worrying) point that modern cars collect enormous amounts of data. He shared this graphic:
Given the amount of Chinese components in many cars, that’s not just a question of individual privacy, there’s also a concern around espionage.
More soon!
-MD