Notices by Nitin Pai (nitin@thinktanki.social), page 4

@jeffjarvis What irony in German?

Oh they can’t see
What they’ve decided not to see.
But reality bites.
Sometimes.

Okay. I’m happy to declare that Stuart Turton’s “The Last Murder at the End of the World” is brilliant.

#Books #Fiction #ScienceFiction #Philosophy #MindBlowing

Did the gloves come off
or the mask?

Ukraine abstained on Palestinian statehood, understandably on grounds of its national interest.

That should end the debate on whether any country ought to support Ukraine as a matter of principle.

(We are clearly in the world where power and interest trump principle and norms. We are in this world because the West undermined the liberal international order.)

#Realism #Realpolitik #Geopolitics #PublicPolicy

India votes in favour of UNGA resolution seeking Palestines' full membership https://www.firstpost.com/world/united-nations-general-assembly-india-palestine13769610-13769610.html

@markwyner Sorry, I couldn’t tell the difference.

Lezley Hazleton passed away. Her book “After the Prophet” gave me a sense of the early politics of Islam. It’s an unputdownable non-fiction book.

#History #Literature #Arabia #Islam #Books

The Supreme Court is the proverbial horse shoe nail. In every liberal democracy.

Responding to a wrong with a bigger wrong is wrong. And don’t be surprised if people pay more attention to the bigger wrong.

“The pier is aimed at boosting deliveries of aid and is to cost at least $320m.”

Guess who won the Pulitzer for best International Reporting? The New York Times. Anat Schwartz et al.

Well oh well.

Do the headline writers at the New York Times have to pass a course in obfuscation before they are hired? #justasking

“Sensitivities” are like mines laid around Truth; scaring us most of us away from it, the braver among us tiptoeing gingerly around it.

The easiest way to lay a sensitivity mine is using identity. So obviously lot of them are laid. And obviously, therefore, no one can tell the truth. Even when it’s staring you in the face.

No, I still do not think you should short the US, but the harm it has inflicted on itself is perhaps unprecedented. Unless its self-correcting mechanism kicks in soon enough, a decline is possible. Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, I never thought I’d write this sentence. https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/america-is-not-yet-declining-but-appears-willing-to-let-itself-down-11714892823009.html

There was something like this in a Terry Pratchett book. https://ohai.social/@archaeohistories/112380574839926966

Nina Simone, Mississippi Goddam https://youtu.be/ghhaREDM3X8?si=3J1hpKweBrOcgYuB

So much are university presidents selected for dealing with donors and other ‘stakeholders’ that they seem to have rudimentary knowledge on how to deal with students! #UnitedStates

Paul Auster passed away. I liked several of his books, especially the early ones.

It took me four decades but I have figured out the best way to cut a mango; maximising the cut without hitting the seed.

If there’s a Nobel for this, please nominate me. 🙏🏽