On Neo-Royalism
The emerging multipolar, postliberal world has a default meso-level mode: clientelist patronage loyalty.
A. Recent talks at the Hudson Institute on Rebooting America’s Defense Industrial Base and the New START Treaty’s end on nuclear proliferation governance.
B. Joseph Voros has kindly made me aware of a new article on neo-royalism: a clientelist, patronage system emerging at the meso-level of the emerging postliberal and multipolar global order. I have cited article co-author Abraham Newman (Google Scholar) in two unsuccessful Postdoc proposals for the University of Melbourne’s McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant Scheme that Timothy Lynch kindly supported. I could not get research funding; the proposed research was never conducted; and the debates and emerging global order dynamics have all moved on. I continue to note some brief aspects in this blog.
C. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on Brain Structure and Its Origins, created by - and now a legacy of - the late Professor Emeritus Gerald Schneider (Google Scholar profile).
D. Australia is having a furore over the attempted return of Islamic State families.
E. Today in why I never pursued a screenwriting career in Australia (after reading in US scriptwriting books about their options market for unproduced scripts and looking at state-based preproduction funding schemes, I realised that the Australian market was probably too small and unprofitable).
F. Today, I learned that New Zealand film producer and developer Grahame McLean passed away in 2025. I last saw him at my late father’s funeral and wake in 2017, for whom McLean was an inspirational (entrepreneurial) mentor. My parents both met in Queenstown, likely at McLean’s restaurant Carroll’s. I saw McLean overseeing the audio soundtrack edits to Worzel Gummidge Down Under starring Doctor Who actor Jon Pertwee. McLean gave (now Dame) Fran Walsh her first gig. Dame Walsh and husband Sir Peter Jackson’s films are well worth seeing. Here is an interview with McLean.
G. On the baddest hedge fund in the United States.
H. Goldman Sachs on the new AI trades.
I. Finnegan Fox has passed over the Rainbow Bridge (and is now with Mikayla Raines of Save A Fox), but you can still hear the Good News from him, hee hee hee.
J. Dr Armin Krishnan on dual use research and neuroscience.