Over at the International Security Off the Page podcast, Abe Newman on weaponized interdependence:
EPISODE SUMMARY
States are increasingly able to weaponize their centralized positions within global informational and economic networks for strategic purposes. Contrary to traditional arguments that globalization and economic interdependence will lead to increasing international cooperation, this episode discusses how states can leverage global networks to engage in coercion. The episode discusses broader trends as they relate to global sanctions, the relationship between foreign policy and private sector interests, and American economic coercion vis-à-vis Iran, China, and Russia.
EPISODE NOTES
Guests:
Abraham Newman is a professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. He currently serves as the Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies.
Elizabeth Rosenberg is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Samuel Moyn in The LRB:
As late as the 20th century, grafting a monkey’s testicle on to your scrotum was considered a plausible cure for impotence and general sluggishness. As early as 1139, it was signed into canonical law that impotence was grounds for the annulment of a marriage, so you can see why the try-anything approach persisted, when a person could be unmade by physical failure, publicly ejected from the organising bond of society. Dough has reminded humans of sex, one way or another, pretty much since the cultivation of wheat began; any loaf of bread worth its salt was originally designed to resemble either a penis or a vagina. But much of the significance of food, especially in the early modern period, was not its erotic redolence but its mediating role in the bewitchery of carnal urges. So a wife might increase her husband’s ardency by keeping a live fish in her vagina for two days, then roasting it and feeding it to him. Or she might, conversely, set out to kill him by covering herself in honey and rolling in wheat, before grinding the wheat and turning it into bread, which she then fed to him. But she’d have to remember to mill it in the opposite direction to the sun, whatever that means.
For those who don’t know about America’s involvement in Laos, which at the time U.S. officials called the “
The early years of the American nuclear program were dominated by men in the mold of 
Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “shit-life syndrome”—and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities. My state of Ohio is home to many shit-life syndrome sufferers. In the 
When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing a theme to focus the attention of the public. The intention has never been to dictate or limit the exploration of the Black experience, but to bring to the public’sattention important developments that merit emphasis. For those interested in the study of identity and ideology, anexploration of ASALH’s Black History themes is itself instructive. Over the years, the themes reflect changes in how people of African descent in the United States have viewed themselves, the influence of social movements on racial ideologies, and the aspirations of the black community. The changes notwithstanding, the list reveals an overarching continuity in ASALH–our dedication to exploring historical issues of importance to people of African descent and race relations in America.
It’s happened. You’ve finally taken that dream trip to England. You have seen Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park. You rode in a London cab and walked all over the Tower of London. Now you’ve decided to leave the hustle and bustle of the city and stretch your legs in the verdant countryside of these green and pleasant lands. You’ve seen all the shows. You know what to expect. You’ll drink a pint in the sunny courtyard of a local pub. You’ll wander down charming alleyways between stone cottages. Residents will tip their flat caps at you as they bicycle along cobblestone streets. It will be idyllic.
January 27th marks the 10th anniversary of the death of the great historian and activist 
Art historian Jean M. Evans (the current Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Oriental Institute) writes in The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archeology of the Early Dynastic Temple that the “eerie effect of the enlarged eyes… has often arisen as a question. These eyes are perplexing.” Several hypotheses have been tendered over the decades as to why the Tal Asmar figurines, and other Sumerian votive statues, have this distinctive characteristic. Wide eyes, especially those absurdly large ones on these idols, could convey an emotion of surprise, or of ecstasy, or pupil-engorged intoxication. Evans gives several examples of modern interactions viewers have had with the figurines, quoting the American painter Willem de Kooning who commented that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had a cache of Sumerian statues with “huge staring goggle eyes” that were “wild-eyed,” and the psychologist George Frankl writing in The Social History of the Unconsciousness that these spheres of obsidian and opal convey a “sense of awe and apprehension which obviously indicated the anxiety those people felt in the presence of the gods.” Regardless of the intent (or multiple purposes) of the statues’ creators, Evans makes the point that the artworks have become “the subjects and objects of gaze.” Consider the first of these functions when deciding why the creatures’ pupils are so wide–it’s because they’re looking at you.
Through the language of his ‘troubling strangeness’,
AMONG THOSE L.A. RESIDENTS who have listened (patiently) over the years to KPFK-FM, our local — and at times volatile — Pacifica-based radio station, many will recall my erstwhile colleague at the station Jacki Apple and her excellent performance art program, Soundings, which ran from 1982 to 1995. Since that was an era long before the crucial turning point of 2012–’13, when humanity finally reached its potential as walking appendages of electronic devices (a development actually prophesied by some of those performance artists), Jacki was an essential, one-woman dervish of activity in this city, a writer-observer who avidly promoted the furthest fringes of performance art and experimental music in the Southland, through both the printed word (in the pages of High Performance and Artweek) and that unlikely 20th-century medium of radio.
Forty thousand years ago in Europe, we were not the only human species alive – there were 
In her just-published “
The scientific work that I do on the brain basis of consciousness is sometimes misunderstood – a misunderstanding which I think comes mainly from the political divide between mystics and materialists. I am a materialist, and reactions to my work tend to follow along the lines of: ‘keep your scientific hands off my consciousness mystery’.
Decision makers atop today’s corporate structures are responsible for delivering short- and long-term financial returns, and in the pursuit of these goals they place profits and growth above all else. Avoidance of financial loss, to many corporate executives, is an alibi for just about any ugly decision. This is not to say that decisions at the highest level are black-and-white or simple; they are dictated by factors such as the cost of possible government regulation and potential loss of market share to less hazardous products. And, of course, companies are afraid of being sued by people sickened by their products, which costs money and can result in serious damage to the brand. All of this is part of the corporate calculus.