This week’s cuttings
Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” may be one of the great unread books, but this paper is considerably shorter, the article (Why economists are at war over inequality) shorter still. It’s a serious challenge to the celebrated findings of Piketty and co. Is it suspicious that all the faults they find lean the same way or is that just an indication that Piketty was the one doing the skewing?
If you’re not feeling paranoid enough these days then Robert Kagan is your man. He describes, at some length, here (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/) the doomsday scenario of a Trump return with competent people and an agenda, rather than the complacent vulgarity we got last time. Time will tell whether these increasingly shrill warnings rally the troops or are counter-productive.
Steve Bannon is still around (Steve Bannon: Con Artist or Mastermind of the the Ugly, Messy Future of American Politics? (esquire.com)). But is he a skilled zeitgeist whisperer about to see his dreams and prognostications come true, or an ageing blowhard warding off fears of mortality with a fantasy of legacy?
Scientists at UCL think they’ve finally managed to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics. You can pretend to understand it here.
Struggling for a holiday destination for 2024? How about this striking location in northern Iraq?
Or you could go to Burning Man, which is especially useful if you are feeling a bit broody apparently…(After the Orgy | Compact Mag)
Take a break from the strife by trawling through the BBC’s musical archive.
This offering from Nico is worth it for the title alone.
Finally, you know who could stop the conflict in Gaza like that? Taylor Swift, that’s who. But will she? Will she ‘eck as like.
