Memia on Sunday 20-Mar-2022: #standwithukraine week 4✊🇺🇦// the universe is very big🌌// 28 degrees above normal🌡️// wave 7🦠🌊 // network state: the book🕸️// empower people over algorithms🔃

A very thoughtful human

Mar 19

Kia ora,

I’m working on a longer form article this weekend (and next…) so this week’s Memia on Sunday edition is a bit more compact - mostly pointers to events and insights I’ve been tracking… and a few recommended weekend reads / watches as usual.

Have a relaxing Sunday!

ngā mihi

Ben

(I’ve opened this post up to all readers… but as always, feel free to:)

🌌The universe is very big

The new James Webb telescope sent back its first full image from testing… with incredible results. An image of the obscure star HD84406, 100 times fainter than what can be seen with the human eye - astronomers are more excited by the spray of tiny dots scattered across the background. Each is a distant galaxy…and this is the first time humanity has ever been able to capture them.🤯

James Webb telescope first focused image

🌡️28 degrees above normal

In case we’re lulled into thinking climate change is taking a break while there’s a war going on (50 degrees fahrenheit → 28 degrees celsius):

Elizabeth Kolbert @ElizKolbert

Fifty degrees above normal in the Arctic:

Record ‘bomb cyclone’ bringing exceptional warmth to North PoleTemperatures at the North Pole could approach the melting point as they surge nearly 50 degrees above normal.washingtonpost.com

🦠🌊Wave 7

Over in England they’re on Covid Wave 7:

✊🇺🇦#standwithukraine week 4

Harder to read events this week. May be turning into an extended war of attrition. Some triangulation points below.

Devastating.

Richard Chambers @newschambers

Just catching up. The video Zelensky showed to US Congress today. Devastating.

A profile of Ukraine’s 31-year-old Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, responsible for coordinating the country’s highly effective 21st-century digital communications war campaign.
- (In amongst a background of noise blocking out the signal: for example, Deepfake videos of both Zelenskyy and Putin surrendering surfaced all over the internet this week.)
- Analysis of Russian digital operations points to a different target sphere of influence:
  Carl Miller @carljackmiller
  When we say Kyiv is winning the information war, far too often we only mean information spaces we inhabit. Pulling apart the most obvious RU info op to date (as we did using semantic modelling), very clear it is targeting BRICS, Africa, Asia. Not the West really at all.
  March 18th 2022
  6,574 Retweets15,995 Likes
A definitive historical moment as Russia exits the Council of Europe human rights organisation:
Polina Ivanova @polinaivanovva
Russia exits the Council of Europe. A photo for the ages:
March 16th 2022
13,479 Retweets62,140 Likes
As the Ukraine war atrocities by Russia are catalogued, a special war crimes tribunal has been proposed by ex-UK prime ministers Brown and Major and over 140 others, to operate alongside the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigations:
Glasnost Gone @GlasnostGone
Gordon Brown & Sir John Major want an international tribunal set up to investigate Putin for his actions in #Ukraine. Former PMs among 140 academics/lawyers/politicians to sign petition for a legal system modelled on Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals bbc.co.uk/news/uk-608031…
March 19th 2022
101 Retweets259 Likes
And a darkly sardonic take below after another Russian attack on civilians in Ukraine: I think we can all see Putin’s palace receiving “stray” missile treatment as a distinctly possible outcome of the conflict…

Sputnik @Sputnik_Not

BREAKING: Putin rushed to bunker after someone writes 'children' on his palace

🤝💣Business in a time of war

To get some kind of insight on what it’s like to continue trying to run an international business through the sudden onset of war, Boma NZ’s Kaila Colbin is in conversation with Ukrainian Agritech entrepreneur Michael Utkin this coming Friday 25th:

Boma New Zealand @BomaNewZealand

Michael Utkin, Ukrainian entrepreneur and agritech CEO, is having to deal with a situation nobody trains for: caring for his team, business and community as bombs begin to fall. Join us for a free virtual conversation with Michael 8 a.m 25 March (NZDT). bit.ly/37zpEYN

🇨🇳💵China and world trade

Continuing attempts to divine China’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

The Economist’s coverage has been deeply insightful throughout, not least their latest piece: the war in Ukraine will determine how China sees the world…and how threatening it becomes:

“Both China’s president, Xi Jinping, and Mr Putin want to carve up the world into spheres of influence dominated by a few big countries. China would run East Asia, Russia would have a veto over European security and America would be forced back home. This alternative order would not feature universal values or human rights, which Mr Xi and Mr Putin see as a trick to justify Western subversion of their regimes. They appear to reckon that such ideas will soon be relics of a liberal system that is racist and unstable, replaced by hierarchies in which each country knows its place within the overall balance of power.”

As China’s official media censorship rules now appear to have shifted to more “balanced” representation of both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian views, this was the most on-point tweet of the week for me:

Bob @trebuchet_guy

@AlexandruC4 Watch China in the coming weeks and months. I have a feeling they are going to put on a master class demonstration of "playing both sides."

With this in mind, read this essential thread from Bernard Hickey on the existential moment for Aotearoa’s trade relationship with China:

Bernard Hickey @bernardchickey

For nearly 30 years, Aotearoa-NZ embraced trade, investment & diplomacy with China, as part of a post-Cold War strategy that assumed that the more China enmeshed into the global economy, the more liberal and friendly it would become. But that's over now and here's why... 🧵1/n

(Uncanny timing also for the NZ-US Council to release a report on the NZ-US trade relationship - stability and diversity in a time of change.)
South Korea is another free-trading country caught between the two elephants stomping:
Memia @memialabs
South Korea’s Strategic Dilemma Amid US-China Competition • Stimson Center buff.ly/3tiffcu
March 17th 2022
Meanwhile western trade sanctions on Russia appear to be driving global economic adaptation:

Memia @memialabs

US dollar's dominance in oil markets may face challenge as Saudis reportedly eye yuan-based sales deal with China

US dollar’s dominance in oil markets may face challenge as Saudis reportedly eye yuan-based sales deal with ChinaSaudi Arabia may sell oil to China and be paid in yuan, potentially ending nearly 50 years of trading crude exclusively in US dollars, WSJ reported.buff.ly

EIN Presswire: Intl Trade Newswire @EINIntlTrade

India in talks with Egypt, China, others to export wheat s.einnews.com/TmXmQRPSi9

Longer reads

🕸️Network State: the book

Coming soon from Balaji Srinivasan:

The Network State: How To Start a New Country by [Balaji Srinivasan]

Balaji Srinivasan @balajis

I've been writing a book on how to start a new country. It's finally coming out. You can preorder it now. It arrives on July 4.

The Network State: How To Start a New Country , Srinivasan, Balaji - Amazon.comThe Network State: How To Start a New Country - Kindle edition by Srinivasan, Balaji. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Network State: How To Start a New Country.amazon.com

But…

Ava Schiffer @AvaSchiffer

@pmarca @balajis and what will happen to the new country if the internet (the backbone of the new country) falls? “Never build something where you don’t own the land underneath. They can take it away at any time.” — Meyer Lansky

…Wondering out loud, can we realistically imagine an inhabited world where the internet (…and crypto…) doesn’t function in the foreseeable future? Modern territorial state infrastructure already depends upon technologies like written language, fossil fuels or electricity…is the internet fundamentally any different? Even with a massive solar-scale EMP event… the technology would be recoverable in a short time? Looking forward to reading the book.

🔮FTI’s Massive Tech Trends Report

Huge. Massive. Insightful: Future Today Institute's 15th Anniversary Tech Trends Report just released. Go deep.

🧠Vitalik Buterin profile

A thoughtful profile of a very thoughtful human in this week’s Time Magazine.

(That cover photo, tho…)

🫁Covid will become like smoking?

The Atlantic: Covid will become like smoking

“Smokers are 15 to 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Quitting the habit is akin to receiving a staggeringly powerful medicine, one that wipes out most of this excess risk. Yet smokers, like those who now refuse vaccines, often continue their dangerous lifestyle in the face of aggressive attempts to persuade them otherwise. Even in absolute numbers, America’s unvaccinated and current-smoker populations seem to match up rather well: Right now, the CDC pegs them at 13 percent and 14 percent of all U.S. adults, respectively, and both groups are likely to be poorer and less educated.”

🔃Algorithm law

China has released a new law “to empower people over algorithms”. Hmmm.

Memia @memialabs

China Has Pioneered a Law To Empower People Over Algorithms

China Has Pioneered a Law To Empower People Over AlgorithmsIt’s unprecedented in the worldbuff.ly

Weekenders

No time zones

🕐🕤🕧There is a vigorous debate about daylight savings time happening in the US right now, with the Senate unanimously passing legislation that would eliminate switching and make daylight saving time permanent.
- Here’s a simple solution for a modern world: