Memia on Sunday 27-Mar-2022: 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦// Risk, 2022 edition🎲⚔️// network power🌐// swarms, egregores, autocults😱// new Kremlinology🪆// China's economy under pressure🇨🇳📉// rainwater cities🌧️

A variety of morbid symptoms

Kia ora,

In this week’s monster sized Memia on Sunday, your regular eclectic curation of big-picture thinking about the future, analysis and culture from the last week:

🎲⚔️Risk, 2022 Edition

Via UltraBoardGames. (Notice anything missing?)

• (I wrote briefly about the new rules of 21st Century Risk back in Memia 2020.24):

“In the traditional game of Risk, political powers conquer bordering territories using constantly-reinforced armies. It’s a game of scale, power, dominance (and, of course, dice🎲).

So…if “influencing” is now the name of the game, what are the new rules for 21st Century Risk? (Indeed, what are the new aims to win the game?!)”

• Another big week of flexing in global geopolitics:

  • 🌐Futurist John Robb: the last month has witnessed “network power” replacing “soft power”. (see also: Swarms… below)

  • 🪆Kremlinology is back

  • Imagining some post-Putin, defeated-Russia scenarios

  • A sideways look at US strategic think tanks in all of this

  • Yuval Noah Harari talks with Sam Harris about protecting the “global order”

  • More on the looming global food crisis exacerbated by the Russia / Ukraine war

  • Plus very recently a move by China to establish a landing pad in Solomon Islands - Australia and Aotearoa’s back yard.

🇺🇦#standwithukraine

• No words.

Rob Lee @RALee85

Mariupol.

• Also worth reflecting:

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Every time I see Ukrainians post photos of the unprovoked Russian shelling of their cities, I think "In 2003 that was how Iraqis felt about us." About 7000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the first 2 months of our "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign.

• …and Grozny, and Syria, and Yemen, and Palestine… when will it be the last time?

😱Smarms, egregores, autocults

• Fascinating discussion from 4 futurist edge thinkers, finding meta-framing of what’s going on out there in the infosphere: has the global “permacrisis” and escalating social media memetic velocity generated a new “swarm intelligence”, or “egregore” (a distinct non-physical entity that arises from a collective group of people) which may effectively be using millions of human brains hacked by “empathy triggers” as a substrate to think and evolve? Mindblowing stuff.

🇨🇳📉China’s economy under pressure

• Two opposing positions from economist Adam Tooze and the FT’s Chartbook team on China’s economic outlook.

Weekend exploring

The regular collection of deeper links to go explore:

• After this week’s flash flooding in Tāmaki Makaurau and other parts of Te Ika-a-Māui…Ed Clayton has some thoughtful ideas on how to more effectively include rainwater in city designs:

  Ed Clayton @Kaukapakapa_Kid

  We overwhelmingly still place nuisance value on rainwater in cities. It must be piped and removed to prevent flooding and property damage. But what if we could link wellbeing, climate resilience & equity to rainwater? 2/

  

• A new interpretation of the island-filled chart created by Pacific voyager Tupaia, who guided Captain James Cook through the South Seas, may finally crack a 250-year-old puzzle.

• Music: Introduction to one of my favourite musicians, stalwart multi-instrumentalist (and skilled whistler) Andrew Bird.

• Also music/culture, a new profile of Canadian electro-pop artist Grimes… more famous for other reasons, but she’s been releasing original music since 2009 and worth a deeper dive.

Weekenders

• Another top crop of memes to wrap up with.

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