"The significance Xi has accorded BRICS stands in contrast to his relative ambivalence toward the G20." Olivia Cheung, China's Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping
Neill Perry
@neillperry.com
(尼爾佩里) -- It's been suggested that Stephen Hawking stole his Brief History of Time from my 4th grade paper.
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." Melville, Moby Dick
word inventors: Étienne Cabet: "communism" Pierre Leroux: "socialism", "solidarity" Charles Fourier: "feminism" France was a hotbed of word creation from Evans, A Pursuit of Power.
At this point I'm just assuming that all PhD holders plagiarized parts of their dissertation. Tangentially related to CalTech's approach to admissions: www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...
The ‘Fraud Squad’ at Caltech Will Catch You if You Lie on Your Application
Investigators at the college vet every admitted student’s application as schools nationwide battle AI-fueled cheating.
wsj.com
"Early industrialization in Europe was no respecter of borders; it was characterized above all by the borrowing of techniques, the migration of labour, and the spread of investment and expertise from country to country." Evans, The Pursuit of Power
"Here what marked out Britain from the rest of Europe in the industrial sphere was above all its early use of coal as a source of energy and its continued domination of coal production well into the second half of the century." Evans ,The Pursuit of Power
"These revolutions, and those that swept across Europe in 1830, were the aftershocks of the great political earthquake of 1789." Evans, The Pursuit of Power
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” 1 Corinthians 1:19
"In crushing the Polish uprising, Tsar Nicholas I had flagrantly defied the Vienna Settlement, which had granted Congress Poland a substantial degree of autonomy." Evans, The Pursuit of Power
"everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content." Melville, Moby Dick
"Ivan's exaggerated autocracy provided his country with a model for future rules, in addition to leaving it with a heavy burden." Roeck, The World at First Light
"Between 1700 and 1900, English cotton cloth production grew seven hundred times, pig iron production three hundred times." Roeck, The World at First Light
"Everywhere that Napoleon had ruled he had replaced encrusted custom and privilege with rationality and uniformity." Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power, p.15
Brutal truth - US cybersecurity of essential services fucking sucks. There's water treatment centers etc all over Shodan, just search celluar phone network ranges. SCADA systems with WinVNC, you name it. Most of these providers have 2 IT people and no budget.
Eric Geller@ericjgeller.com · 6d agoAfter cyberattacks on Minnesota water systems, CISA says critical infrastructure operators should disconnect internet-exposed PLCs and other OT assets "as soon as possible." www.cisa.gov/news-events/...
"If the Gospel and the apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love. " John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
"reactionary movement 'are dogged in their determination to restore America's greatness by turning to times past as a means of addressing contemporary problems.'" Parker and Lavine, Status Threat: The Core of Reactionary Politics, DOI: 10.1111/pops.12983
"Galileo possessed no shortage of self-confidence" Roeck, The World at First Light
I love these athletes' advice articles. Professional athletes have more credibility on mentality than anyone I've seen on LinkedIn www.nytimes.com/athletic/746...
We asked 13 athletes for the best mental advice they’ve ever received
Steph Curry, Jason Kelce and Charles Barkley share their best mental advice.
nytimes.com
"The fact that Europe's learned men did not remain in awe of ancient monuments but rather dared to topple them is one of the most astounding aspects of the history of science." Roeck, The World at First Light
"Silver finally gave the Spanish a commodity the Asian markets craved, especially after China's paper money system went up in the flames of inflation. Silver became the super fuel of a nascent worldwide super-economy, powering the imperialism of Catholic kings." Roeck, The World at First Light
The three T's -- tolerance, technology, and talent -- "were the Netherlands' primary contribution to enlarging Europe's realm of possibilities." Roeck, World at First Light
"In addition, people still tried to blame all sorts of evils on the enchantments of malicious women and dangerous magicians, including epidemics, the sudden death of animals and children, and impotence." Roeck, the World at First Light, Chapt 35
"Even by the brutal standards of the world of Archaic Greek epic, Odysseus in not in any sense a morally good person or a person whom readers should wish to emulate." talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/07/23/a...
An Ancient Historian's Breakdown of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' - Tales of Times Forgotten
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is perhaps the most highly anticipated new film of the 2020s. It has already received near-universal acclaim from film critics and earned more at the box office in its ...
talesoftimesforgotten.com
"The printing press enabled cultural transfer of epic proportions." Roeck, The World at First Light, Chap 32, Revolution of Heavenly Spheres
``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision."
"in the Early Middle Ages, an estimated [12,000] manuscripts were created each century; in the [15th] century, it was 5 million plus 12.5 million printed books; around 1600, between 150 and 230 million books were in circulation." Bernd Roeck, The World at First Light, chap 24 Media Revolution
"Measuring what AI can actually do has proven quite difficult." www.federalreserve.gov/econres/note...
The AI Buildout and the Economy: Publicly Available Data to Assess AI's Impact
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC.
federalreserve.gov