Bloody Shovel 4

There are quite a few Telegram channels that I follow, so not here as much due to that, but a couple of the channels have interesting observations on life, Europe and the Ukraine conflict. Now, that d...

Ever since the assassination attempt against Anatolij Sharij (Ukraine's second most popular opposition party leader who lives in exile in Spain), likely ordered by the Ukrainian government according t...

What do you think of 'Climate, the movie'? I was impressed that pretty much everyone interviewed in the film was an actual scientist, with a lot of them being climate scientists and physicists. That s...

“So what do you stand for?” I've been asked... surprisingly few times. There used to be a tradition of intellectual debate; adversarial, but polite. With clear rules so people didn't abuse their time to shill their own stuff instead of contributing to the actual debate. But we don't do debates in these parts; we never have. Which is unfortunate. Understandable, though, to the extent public debates are still a thing they've become an incredibly stale, cringe, Reddit-ish spectacle (I wish we h...

I'm accused of timing my last post just before the New York Times launched it's much awaited hit-piece on Scott Alexander.

It's all a funny coincidence. But funny it is. Indeed Scott Alexander was the subject of a post I wrote exactly 5 years ago where I also mention the story of Ying Bu.

It's been interesting to see Scott's development since then. On one hand he hasn't changed much. He's got progressively more famous, and deservedly so. He's also got progressively more fat. Which is sad, but not ...

Hi, it's been a while.

I don't know if anyone was expecting my take on the 2020 US Presidential election. I mean, I called it. I won a few hundred bucks betting that Trump would lose. But of course I'm not happy about it.

I mean, I'm personally cool. Quite cool really. US global power is coming down, and fast. Pressure on China will soften up (not disappear), Europe is starting to show some balls in asserting some independent foreign policy. See the EU-China Investment Treaty, and Germany actually...

Well well, tomorrow is the big day.

All big elections are interesting but the 2020 US presidential election is the most bizarre I can remember. People worthy of respect can be seen holding the whole range of opinions: Trump will get a landslide, Biden will get a landslide, it will be very close, etc.

So which is it? Who the hell knows. I sure don't. You, however, might have some idea. If you do, please head to https://spandrell.com/uselection2020 where I published a nice interactive survey.

Best of...