links und rechts: mar. 6
THE INTERSTITIAL DIME:
Adam Tooze characterizes bitcoin and cryptocurrency as “the morbid symptom of an interregnum”; i.e., bitcoin fills a lacuna in the global currency infrastructure as the West is slow to adopt a top-down digital currency similar to the Chinese ‘digital renminbi’. he characterizes the bitcoin fever as a consequence of a radical fiscal libertarianism— as following exclusively from belief in fiat currencies being ‘unbacked’ and that hoarding gold and silver will inspire government response. it strikes me that if Tooze were to grasp some of the more radical impulses that truly drive cryptocurrency, he would likely fear them more deeply than he fears the Ruby Ridge archetype. pray he remain innocent of such understanding!
THE RIPPLE OF THE PAST:
from Polish video game studio Bloober Team comes psych-horror title The Medium, inspired by the nation’s history and the works of painter Zdzisław Beksiński. Reid McCarter gives a detailed analysis— I don’t play a great deal of video games these days, but for this I’ll likely make exception
THE JEWELS OF FORMOSA:
insider publication War on the Rocks argues that a war over Taiwan is more likely than America believes. “China is doing what a country would do if it were moving into a prewar mode,” write Robert D. Blackwill and Philip Zelikow. “Politically, it is preparing and conditioning its population for the possibility of an armed conflict. Militarily, it is engaging now in a tempo of exercises and military preparations that are both sharpening and widening the readiness of its armed forces across a range of different contingencies on sea, air, land, cyber, and in space.”
RELATIVISTIC POVERTY:
blogger Resident Contrarian picked up some traction lately for a good post on the experience of the American ‘working poor’.
THE ZACK SNYDER DECADE:
alt-philosophy blogger Xenogothic describes cultural amnesia over the naughties, using memories of the film 300 as a guide.
THE NEUROTIMER:
Life is Computation describes a seven-minute timer in a single neuron in a fruit fly.
READING LIST:
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun just released— my next read.