Hey there,
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekly Crystallizations, a weekly newsletter where I highlight tweets (and occasional Telegram messages) from people making sense of what’s going on in the world today!
Personal Update
Greetings from the (for now) rainy Algarves in Portugal. I’ll be spending the next 2 months here with my partner and our pets.
I always find it interesting to see what other cultures have chosen to devote their resources and creativity towards. In a Dutch supermarket you’ll find plenty of different options for cheeses and sandwich spreads. The Swiss will have different types of bircher muesli on display.
In Portugal — as I’m discovering — you’ll have shelves filled with different canned fish options. Most of them so far are excellent and on an entirely different level than I’m used to.
What I've been reading/watching
https://www.leftbrainwave.com/2022/11/the-coming-european-economic-apocalypse.html
"The US has been actively trying to stop the rise of China, the latest indication of which is the US sanctions announced by President Biden on high-tech semiconductors with regard to China. China, therefore, would not want Ukraine, which is merely a proxy for the US, to prevail over Russia, an ally, in this conflict. And so, in the unlikely scenario where Russia, on its own, appears to be losing this war, China will provide enough support to Russia (both economic and military) to prevent this from happening, because if Russia falls into American control, China will be next."
"Europe was therefore unable to completely stop financing Russia’s war on Ukraine, and in fact Russia made far more money in six months than they normally would make in a year. It is to plug this loophole that Europe is now thinking of placing a price cap on Russian oil."
"There is no reason for Russia to agree to any cap on its price, and Putin has clearly told Europe that if any country tries to impose a price cap, he will simply stop selling to that country."
"The Korean War cost about 50,000 American lives, but it cost a million Chinese lives. Most of the Chinese troops were lightly armed, with only rifles, as compared to the heavily armed and equipped American troops. But Mao wanted to draw a red line. He had made his point. China would never tolerate America on its borders."
When a powerful state is driven in a corner, they will defend their red lines with all they’ve got.
This is a similar point Professor John Mearsheimer — whose 2015 lecture "Why the Ukraine crisis is the West's fault" went viral with the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war — makes in a new interview with Unherd's Freddie Sayers.
Mearsheimer, interestingly, believes there is currently no possible peace deal to be made between Russia and Ukraine.
News in the U.S. used to appeal to everyone e.g. the whole family and this inspired trust.
"After the Internet arrived and flooded the market with new voices, some outlets found that instead of going after the whole audience, it made more financial sense to pick one demographic and dominate it. How? That’s easy. You feed the audience news you know they will like."
"Call it the “audience-optimization” model: instead of starting with a story and following the facts, you start with what pleases your audience, and work backward to the story."
"In this system, the overwhelming majority of national media organizations cater to one “side” or the other."
"Moscow-based journalist John Helmer [...] thinks the Russian army will clear a vast area of central Ukraine in its upcoming winter offensive, and that much of that land will become part of a 100 kilometer-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that will protect Russia from Ukrainian missile and artillery attacks. As Helmer notes, the model for this military-imposed settlement is the armistice of Panmunjom of July 27, 1953, which ended the Korean War. On the ground inside the UDZ (Ukraine Demilitarized Zone) there may be no electricity, no people, nothing except for the means to monitor and enforce the terms of the armistice."
Russo-Ukrainian War
EU's Russian oil price cap takes effect today.
Here's Goldman Sach's former chief FX strategist claiming an even lower price cap will send Russia into crisis.
I’m doubtful. If removing Russia from the international banking system and appropriating hundreds of millions of its reserves didn't work to destabilize Russia — why would this?
Misc
Crypto
The Twitter Files
Matt Taibi covers the internal conversations (released by Musk) around Twitter's censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election. Taibbi alleges it shows "routine" requests from connected actors to remove tweets — including the Biden team (pre-election).
It remains unclear to me to what extent there was collusion between the government and Twitter. Also Taibbi makes it sounds like this happened on both the left on the right, but it remains to be seen why he chose to focus more on the left.
AI
Open AI releases a new AI optimized for chat and AI-twitter was going nuts about it.