I've long been skeptical of overly simplistic distinctions of "collectivist" China v. the "individualistic" West. Lots of room for analytic slop there. But Greif, Mokyr, and Tabellini's reframing of the discussion as "universalistic" v "communal" avoids some of the pitfalls.

Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness. media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2l...

Drama Mystery GIF by Mammoth Screen - Find & Share on GIPHY

GIPHY image by Mammoth Screen

giphy.com

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 2d ago

Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness.

Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn NY. Beautiful.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Trump: "Look at the blue cities. What do they have in common? They're all dirty. They're filthy dirty. Their streets are dirty. Their streets smell. Their storefronts are broken. Their trees are all gross. Everything about the place is dirty. It's really all of them."

Some of what I'll be teaching @tcddublin.bsky.social this Fall.

Oh no. I'm heading Ireland in a couple of weeks for the rest of the year in large part to get away from this shithead. Donald Trump expected to visit Dublin and Clare during trip to Ireland next month – The Irish Times share.google/ecmQ5eSCCDr6...

Donald Trump expected to visit Dublin and Clare during trip to Ireland next month

US president to attend Irish Open at his resort in Doonbeg and likely to meet Taoiseach in Dublin

share.google

"The engineering state tends to begin impressively and end disastrously." Dan Wang, Breakneck, p. 179.

Hello @izading.bsky.social Have you written up an article on "authoritarian teleology"? I'd really like my students to engage with it.

Without saying your age what is your favorite movie from the year you turned 18.

Jack Nicholson and friend raise hands

ALT: Jack Nicholson and friend raise hands

static.klipy.com

The useless tree

Beijing does have elections- every five years for the Municipal People’s Congress. Needless to say, they are carefully managed by the Party. baike.baidu.com/en/item/Deputies%20to%20the%2016th%20Beijing%20Municipal%20People's%20Congress/1484217

Kai Ryssdal@kairyssdal.bsky.social · 3w ago

I’ve lived in Beijing too. They don’t have elections.

Yes. Much easier with only one party.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

Newsmax talking head: "I've lived in Beijing. I can say the elections in Beijing are much better than California and the United States."

reupping this in light of the news.

Sam Crane@uselesstree.bsky.social · 4w ago

I think an extended halftime is worse than two short water breaks in terms of disrupting the flow of the game.

I had hoped a brilliant French performance would carry the day but they were far from that and Spain earned it. This, however, gives me new reason to back Spain going forward. Vamos La Roja!

Julian Sanchez@normative.bsky.social · 3w ago

Really enjoying the increasingly probable prospect of Trump having to present the World Cup trophy to Spain. Odds he tantrums out?

This sums it up well.

Neil Roberts@neildsroberts.bsky.social · 3w ago

Spain was consistent throughout; few errors. France was flat; defense ineffective; offense out of sync Spain’s midfield was a decisive factor. Zooming out: head to head, Spain simply has outperformed France the last few years in the big tournaments.

It's really not fair: the Marseillaise is the best national anthem.

“The truth is that no modern man, in his heart of hearts, believes that it is right to invade a foreign country and hold the population down by force.” George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), p. 126.

How can we account for the Iliad’s popularity? The Odyssey is a more interesting story.

Sarah E. Bond@sarahebond.bsky.social · 3w ago

Iliad is vastly more popular than Odyssey. Also just want to note that if you search papyri.info by author and book, here are the papyri hits for the Odyssey—266. papyri.info/dispatch/sea... and here is @trismegistostm.bsky.social Homer's author record: www.trismegistos.org/authors/deta...

Interesting. This was obviously in the works for a while. A reminder of the limits on PRC global influence.

Sense Hofstede@sensehofstede.nl · 3w ago

AP: 14 countries and EU reaffirm 2016 ruling invalidating China’s claims in South China Sea – ‘In addition to the U.S. and Britain, the other countries listed […] were the Philippines, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia.’

Thing I remember about Lindsey Graham: his priggish, self-righteous performance during the Clinton impeachment. The depths of his hypocrisy was evident then. RIP

By the power of Ahrima, let the world know that I am now proclaimed Guardian of the Hormuz Strait! All will bow before me and yield a double tithe of all their goods as they pass. Any who disobey will suffer my terrible wrath! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

"The Guardian of the Strait" Guess we'll see if old school colonialism will work in the 21st century.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

Trump: "We're gonna keep the strait, and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the strait. We should be reimbursed for that. When we do that, we're gonna be reimbursed. We're gonna get paid."

A bearish assessment. Combination of rising debt, collapsing property markets, and declining population create structural problems that AI can’t solve. 2021 was “peak China.”

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 3w ago

AI is not enough to arrest China’s decline ft.trib.al/I0tvev0

Qin Shihuangdi has entered the chat.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4w ago

the woke establishment doesn't want you knowing that you can mix the elixir of immortality from cinnabar dust and liquid mercury

Allez la Belgique!

Wisdom from Aristotle" "Spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds....

I think an extended halftime is worse than two short water breaks in terms of disrupting the flow of the game.

This thread, too. Key point: "China's education system fundamentally discourages young people from sports."

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️@chenchenzhang.net · 2mo ago

since it's the World Cup, my hot take about "Chinese football"... it's actually husband's theory, that is, the effectiveness of China's whole-state system (举国体制) depends on how much success in a sport requires organic mass participation versus systematic talent extraction. it's remarkably

This makes sense to me.

samuelwa.de@samuelwa.de · 4w ago

“Football needs to be bottom-up, but China is fundamentally a top-down country. Everything stems from the top, so they focus on the elites instead of focusing on the base of the pyramid. Every country has done it, it’s not rocket science. But China doesn’t work that way.”

Egypt baby!

Great piece. @masonlwong.bsky.social is asking all the right questions. www.publicbooks.org/lineages-of-...

Lineages of the Engineering State: On China, the United States, and the Future - Public Books

“Perhaps, when we claim that China has exhausted the conceptual resources of the West, what we really mean is that China has exhausted the conceptual resources of American journalists and defense inte...

publicbooks.org