The Oil-Reactionary Nexus
Energy trading and reactionary politics intersect.
A. The second season of Taylor Sheridan’s Landman mixes Texan energy trading / oil geopolitics and the re-emergence of domestic reactionary politics.
B. Books like The Globotics Upheaval (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020) have been bullish on how robots will transform industry. I saw one in Tokyo in 2023 and it looked pretty slow. Harpers’ James Vincent argues that robotics is just technology industry hype: a con. The New Republic’s Heather Souvaine Horn contends that robots are stealing your children’s future. What drives both - and has also been a long-term narrative of both artificial intelligence and cybernetics - is that these technologies will suppress wages growth and will drive down workers’ collective bargaining power. Here is Richard Baldwin on the Globotics value creation thesis, which convinced some people at the time but that floundered after the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic.
C. I read a scientific paper last week that vitamin B6 and Magnesium are helpful for autistic people. Now, vitamin B6 supplements are being removed in Australia.
D. The Australian National University’s Professor Hugh White is considered to be the Dean of Strategic Studies in Australia. Dismissed for years as an international relations sub-field that is of interest only to old white men, Strategic Studies is now important to the AUKUS security compact and to United States-Russia-China nuclear tripolarity. Here is a 4.5 hour podcast conversation with Professor White by podcaster Joe Walker.
E. Uranium is crucial to the energy geopolitics / security debate in Australia. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Professor David Ruzic explains its importance and its procurement / supply chain.
F. The United States can trace its (cultic, new religious movement) doomsday mindset back to the Pilgrims.
G. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on Economic Growth and is taught by the Nobel laureate Professor Daron Acemoglu. Here is his 2024 Nobel Prize lecture.
H. AI Slop is the Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year for 2025.
I. The US-China nuclear dyad (the background aspect to the AUKUS security compact and to integrated deterrence failure / escalation ladder scenarios) has started its sabre-rattling as part of compellance based (negotiation) brinkmanship.
J. The Thinking Game (2025) - an important new documentary on Google DeepMind and the scientific discovery process (for background, learn about philosophers Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos).