Ed Bithell

Apple have had a massive cube on Fifth Avenue since 2006 and as far as I'm aware New Yorkers do not mistake it for the Kaaba

Are there attempts to disrupt this market? Especially given that distribution can be almost entirely digital, could a group of sufficiently prominent academics in a given field just found a new journal that doesn't charge ludicrous access fees?

if you're lucky, you might get 200ml of tonic water for £6

Also even among the rest of the racialised stuff, stands out to me now that "Outcast of Redwall" starts like a story that could be pretty meaningful for adopted kids from rough backgrounds then more or less concludes nope genetics is the main thing that determines whether people are good or evil

I like that they think their audience will get in on armour but are not yet sold on having spare cash

Did a little bit for fun during undergrad (mainly jokes and so on shared between classmates, writing 诗 etc) but never since. Studied the language for four years and was never assigned to compose/translate into classical

It's a pity because I think there's an interesting set of questions to ask around why big corporates spend money disseminating poststructuralist social theories they don't understand, but the answer is not "HR are Red Guards"

The gap between news written for retirees who think they already know everything about business, and news for actual business leaders (the woke cabal FT), keeps widening

In short yes there is a whole undercurrent around the self-disciplining supposedly needed to stay thin and how (relevant for TCW!) society associates that with ideals of whiteness, even though it's not necessarily how our bodies work

@katemanne.bsky.social has done some really interesting work on the social and moral values attached to fatness and working for thinness (book is called "Unshrinking")

In fact I think this goes back in many ways to your original point about Trump – he ran a very hostile *primary* campaign which likely attracted a lot of disengaged voters, who were "non partisan" but didn't trust either party, and then yeah like you say partisan GOP voters held their nose and voted

Also wonder whether Obama partly bucks the trend because he first ran as a low profile insurgent against the party machine; voters increasingly partisan but also generally don't like politicians (think this may help explain Trump support from low engagement voters who think of him more like Perot)

That's true but Clinton was still much less popular than 2012 Obama or even 2020 Biden; although it would be interesting to see the exact timing of the polls (guessing it's in election week, but not stated?) as Trump did attack her personally throughout the campaign

This but also how the hell did Democrat machine politicians insist on the least popular Democratic nominee in polling history

This type of conversation is also a consequence of internet fights cooking everyone's brains – acknowledging ambivalence/ concern without a premade answer is treated as weakness/hypocrisy a lot

Especially when you consider that e.g. the ruling parties in UK/France lost 19.9pp/14pp of their support in elections this summer – inflation is hurting incumbents everywhere

Also I think most history is written with narratives that don't suit fiction expectations so either you weave different narrative structure and meaning into it, or write a story that doesn't follow standard story structure (eg Wolf Hall), rather than just plug ~new characters into their roles

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Read more here: jamestown.org/program/six-... 7/ends

Chinese state media has hit back at the strategy and ministers Baerbock and Habeck, praising Scholz as more moderate. The federal coalition is divided but the new strategy will only be credible if they maintain unity both among themselves — and with EU counterparts. 6/

The headline trade deficit is now €86 billion (2022), but that’s even worse in key emerging sectors. 2021 rechargeable batteries 🇨🇳➡️🇩🇪 $3.6bn ; 🇩🇪➡️🇨🇳 $842m; photovoltaics 🇨🇳➡️🇩🇪 $1.69bn ; 🇩🇪➡️🇨🇳 $111m (!) So these key new industries are losing out 5/

The Chosen Few: A Fresh Look at European FDI in China | Rhodium Group After decades in which China felt like a one way bet for European firms, market conditions have become far more challenging due to restrictive COVID-19 policies, slowing economic growth and rising geo...

A handful of huge German companies (incl VW, BMW, Daimler, BASF) are massively invested in, and exposed to, China, and not willing to change their position. (@noahbarkin.bsky.social Agatha Kratz and Lauren Dudley
did great analysis in 2022) 4/

The strategy is clear-eyed on many issues, and prioritises a cohesive, EU-wide position. But in the last six months we’ve seen Germany's de facto stance on major issues (e.g. EV subsidies, 5G infrastructure) drifting into old patterns of foot-dragging. 3/

Governments make hay with trumpeting public foreign policy strategies because they are a chance to at least appear detailed and clear (unlike day-to-day foreign policy). But the strategy is only a published menu of policy options; you have to actually follow through as well. 2/

Six Months of Germany’s New China Strategy: Old Ways Die Hard - Jamestown On December 1, the first visa-free travelers entered China from a select group of mainly European countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Malaysia (Xinhua, December 2). Expandin...

It's been six months since Germany launched its China strategy — what's changed? I review for Jamestown Foundation China Brief (spoiler alert — less change than promised) Key takeaways 🧵

This is why you really do have to learn stroke order...

Do you think we can rely on him / the very risk averse Palace machine to intervene in a given situation? I found it striking how the Queen was unable to resist prorogation directly – even if in the end the courts overturned it before No Deal could happen