Archive for 2019

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Broken China Model: A weak and unstable China is also more dangerous. “What is happening in Hong Kong is not isolated. The China model of authoritarian development is damaged and scarred. What seemed as sturdy and invulnerable as a Borg Cube looks more like a fragile and wobbly mobile by Alexander Calder. The regime of Xi Jinping is under economic and political and diplomatic pressure that it is not handling well.”

OPEN THREAD: Don’t disappoint.

THE COST OF LOW-COST SHIPPING: The Lonely and Dangerous Life of the Filipino Seafarer. Filipinos are amazing people, who the world treats not so well overall. A friend on Facebook comments: “Fifty years ago, you went everywhere, and got to know everywhere well, while now you go almost nowhere, and get to know it not at all. And now you’re expected to do it for wages you could make on shore.”

I remember way back in Admiralty class, when Charles Black observed that the containerization revolution was a huge boon for trade, but that it sharply devalued the traditional role of maritime expertise, which was bad for seamen.

NOW DO GRANDFATHERS: You’re Not The Man Your Father Was. “Studies show that men’s testosterone levels have been declining for decades. The most prominent, a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed a “substantial” drop in U.S. men’s testosterone levels since the 1980s, with average levels declining by about 1% per year. This means, for example, that a 60-year-old man in 2004 had testosterone levels 17% lower than those of a 60-year-old in 1987. Another study of Danish men produced similar findings, with double-digit declines among men born in the 1960s compared to those born in the 1920s. . . . These trends coincide with a decline in musculoskeletal strength among young men: In a 2016 study, the average 20- to 34-year-old man could apply 98 pounds of force with a right-handed grip, down from 117 pounds by a man of the same age in 1985.”

This explains Pajama Boy and the Buzzfeed staff.

Related: Study: Physically Weak Men More Likely To Be Socialists.

THEY’RE NOT DUMB. THEY’RE SMART. NOT DUMB LIKE PEOPLE SAY.