Armas Weekend Reader
The Weekend Reader is back, and we are sending a day early this week — it is usually a Friday sendout — so we don’t miss the Fourth of July essays that lead below. The elections in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will close in several hours, and we have some predictions herein. Also in this week’s sendout: the incapacity of the President of the United States, RFK Jr.’s canine cuisine, the artificial intelligence we could have had, NATO in Kyiv, half a century of the Rubik’s Cube, France at war, the death of Deep England, and more. Let’s go —
The Day I Became an American— “September 18th, the day I was granted American citizenship, was more than just a date on the calendar. It’s a personal milestone, a second birthday, and a fresh start. I firmly believe that Providence orchestrated this moment.”
Born American, but in the Wrong Place— “It was so obvious to [my father]] why we should head for America. There was really no other option in his mind. What was obvious to him, unfortunately, took me nearly 20 years to learn. But then, I had to ‘un-learn’ a lot of things along the way. How is it that this simple man who had none of the benefits or luxuries of freedom and so-called ‘education’ understood this truth so deeply and so purely and expressed it so beautifully? It has something to do with the self-evidence, as Jefferson put it, of America’s principles. Of course, he hadn’t studied Jefferson or America’s Declaration of Independence, but he had come to know deep in his heart the meaning of tyranny. And he hungered for its opposite.”
‘This Fierce People’ Review: Fighting the British Down South — “The southern campaign of 1780-81, Alan Pell Crawford asserts in ‘This Fierce People,’ has tended to be overlooked or at least de-emphasized by historians. Even educated Americans, he writes, think of the war ‘almost exclusively in terms of stirring stories about its beginnings—Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Washington crossing the Delaware, the cruel winter at Valley Forge.’ In fact, the war’s decisive battles, the ones that brought about Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in 1781, took place in the south.”
Making American Independence in Canada: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham— “Forget Lexington. Forget Bunker Hill. The first battle of the American Revolution — the one that made revolution possible, although not inevitable — was James Wolfe’s posthumous triumph on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.”
Why a New Conservative Brain Trust Is Resettling Across America— “Pro-Trump professionals aren’t just talking about remaking Western civilization. Some are uprooting their lives to show that they mean it.”
‘American Covenant’ and ‘No Democracy Lasts Forever’: State of the Constitution— “It’s not that Americans are well informed about what the Constitution says. But they recognize what it does: define and establish our political community. The habit of veneration drives professors crazy. Since the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, a good deal of constitutional scholarship has involved finding fault with the Constitution, viewing it as, at best, the lesser evil from a long-ago time. A charitable explanation of this trend is that scholars recognize tensions within the document—textual, institutional, historical—that escape the general public. An uncharitable explanation is that scholars believe themselves to be smarter than the dead white men of yore.”
Biden's Approval Rating Among Religious Groups in 2023 — “It’s hard to look at these numbers and point to any religious group that feels more warmly toward President Biden today than they did back in 2021. There are some that have held steady, but none that are clearly trending in his direction.”
How babies can bring out the best in their male carers— “One of Hrdy’s claims is that babies were intimately involved in the domestication, or ‘mellowing’, as she puts it, of hominid males and in the ever-increasing ‘prosociality’ of our species in particular. The male developed neural substrates and baby-triggered oxytocin surges – cuddly feelings – to make ‘helping’ feel worthwhile, even pleasurable. He became less habitually aggressive, more willing on average to, say, sleep among women and infants. He started to care, too, about what others thought of him. What has changed in the decades since Hrdy’s previous books is the visibility to the scientific eye of the underlying biological mechanisms that enabled the transition from paternal indifference (or aggression) in our evolutionary past to paternal care, however fickle.”
Anatomy of a populist cynic — “Whereas the average Spaniard is barely aware of the uptick in organized drug trade around Galician and Andalusian shores, Alvise has seized on the issue to throw down the gauntlet, blasting police’s inability to shoot from the distance at high sea: '“'if it’s either your mom crying or mine, let it be yours, and you go down to the depths of the sea!’”
Aux Armes, Citoyennes — “The woman of the Revolution is depicted as earthy and solid, but the harder you look for her the more elusive she becomes. She is, as Dominique Godineau says, ‘lost within a paragraph’. She hides in the thickets of partial and compromised evidence, compiled by male hands and reflecting male concerns. She does not speak, but ‘screams’ or ‘yelps’ down the years. She does not write; on the eve of the Revolution, it is believed, 65 per cent of the women of Paris could not sign their names.”
The AI we could have had — “Johnson and Brodey believed these companies had overlooked a crucial philosophical question about the technology they were working on: were computers really destined to be mere slaves, condemned to an eternity of performing repetitive tasks? Or could they be something more? Could they evolve into craftsmen? While slaves unerringly obey commands, craftsmen have the freedom to explore and even challenge directives. The finest craftsmen do more than just fulfil orders; they educate and enlighten, expanding our horizons through their skill and creativity. Johnson and Brodey wanted to wrest control away from those eager to mass-produce an army of subservient machines.”
Satellite Images Show Expansion of Suspected Chinese Spy Bases in Cuba— “China is using Cuba’s geographical proximity to the southeastern U.S. to scoop up sensitive electronic communications from American military bases, space-launch facilities, and military and commercial shipping.”
What tennis reveals about AI’s impact on human behaviour — “[T]]ennis is one of the most visible settings where final decision rights are granted to AI.”
The Perils of a Second Biden Administration — “[I]]t seems plausible that Biden’s decline has itself encouraged our enemies, and been partially responsible for the gravity of the challenges we face.”
The search for the lost Wren — “Having drawn a blank in our research, we decided to ask the public for help. Perhaps someone might recognise the person in the portrait from a family photograph? Or maybe an internet sleuth would find a crucial piece of evidence that we had missed?”
A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots — “What the companies are creating is technology that makes human judgment about targeting and firing increasingly tangential. The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-design software, powerful automation algorithms and specialized artificial intelligence microchips has pushed a deadly innovation race into uncharted territory, fueling a potential new era of killer robots.”
NATO to Establish Kyiv Post, and Seeks to ‘Trump-Proof’ Ukraine Aid — “NATO will station a senior civilian official in Kyiv, among a raft of new measures designed to shore up long-term support for Ukraine … The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is also establishing a new command in Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate the provision of military equipment to Kyiv and the training of Ukrainian troops. The operation, to be called NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, will be staffed by nearly 700 U.S. and other allied personnel from across the 32-country alliance. It will take over much of a mission that has been run by the American military since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”
The Rubik’s Cube Turns 50— “The cubies display 54 colorful facets, nine each of white, red, blue, orange, yellow and green. In its solved state, the Cube’s six faces are configured such that all nine facets are the same color. Turning the puzzle scrambles the colors — in total, there are precisely 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible positions into which the facets can be permuted. All the while, the puzzle’s essential form — its cubic-ness — remains unchanged. This feature demonstrates group theory, the mathematical study of symmetry: A so-called symmetry group of a geometric object is the collection, or group, of transformations that can be applied to the object but that nonetheless leave the structure preserved. A square has eight symmetries: It can be rotated or reflected four ways each and it’s still a square. A plain cube has 48 symmetries. The Rubik’s Cube has some 43 quintillion.”
Behind the Curtain: The imperial presidency in waiting — “Former President Trump, if re-elected, plans to immediately test the boundaries of presidential and governing power, knowing the restraints of Congress and the courts are dramatically looser than during his first term, his advisers tell us.”
How Biden HQ's ‘bunker’ mentality teed up a debate meltdown — “It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that .It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him. He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it.”
What France’s surprise elections could mean for its relations with the world.— “What appears certain is that with a new French government, whether it is right-wing, left-wing, or from a centrist minority, France will lose any ability to take on leadership roles in foreign and defense policy.”
Just don’t lie.— “To be worthy of the name, democracy’s anchor must be honesty. Even if the party is able to spin its way to an electoral victory in November, it will have caused grave damage to the very concept of democracy. If the Democrats want to be the party of democracy, then they can’t lie.”
How a London fund with a thorny history in Russia won global influence— “In December 2018 Atanas Bostandjiev stepped aboard a Bombardier Global 5000 private jet at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and flew to London. The following afternoon the shaven-headed Bulgarian financier gathered the executives at his investment fund in their glass-fronted offices close to Savile Row. Ahead of the meeting, one of his employees had drafted a memo on a sensitive issue: how to buy influence in politics.”
The Most Essential Battle of the Russo-Ukrainian War— “Tech bros won't save us. If that is where you are placing most of your chips, you are setting yourself up for losing another war - this time a much larger and consequential one.”
Kingsnorth on “Everyday Saints”— “After reading this, you warm to the story of how a group of monks, including the author, were harassed while walking through a city by another gang of drunks, who threw wood and rocks at them and threatened their lives. It was only when they began blaspheming Christ and His Mother, though, that Father Alexander, a black belt in karate, threw off his robe like some Orthodox Gandalf and administered them a beating they would never forget. This is not, of course, very Christian behaviour. Still, I wonder what state the Church of England would be in today if the Archbishop of Canterbury occasionally behaved like this.”
The misfortunes of war — “[M]ilitary failure fits into at least one, or often all, of the following categories: failure to learn, failure to anticipate, and failure to adapt. Every type of failure, individually or in the aggregate, provides an opportunity to learn.”
Secret Signals: Decoding China’s Intelligence Activities in Cuba — “China’s ambitions to expand its global intelligence-gathering capabilities have drawn it to the doorstep of the United States. In a striking revelation last year, Biden administration officials disclosed that China has access to multiple spy facilities in Cuba. While China’s activities on the island remain shrouded in secrecy, satellite imagery analyzed by CSIS provides the latest and most comprehensive assessment of where China is most likely operating.”
🟡 Mixed Signals Special: Blame the media? | Semafor | Semafor — “It’s clear the best news reporters in Washington have failed in the first duty of journalism: to hold power accountable. It is our duty to poke through White House smoke screens and find out the truth. The Biden White House clearly succeeded in a massive cover-up of the degree of the President’s feebleness and his serious physical decline, which may be simply the result of old age. Shame on the White House press corps for not to have pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the President.”
"Freaking the f*** out": Turmoil in the White House over Biden — * "It's dark. It feels like there is zero leadership or information. People are being told to keep their heads down and keep working, but they're not seeing the president or being given any reason why they should have faith in him."
RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets.— “Long before he entered the 2024 race with a wagon train of conspiracy theories, the wider Kennedy family was intimately familiar with RFK Jr.’s problematic personality—the outsize confidence masquerading as expertise, the ‘savior complex’ (as one family member called it) that drives him to take up quixotic causes and cast himself as a lone hero against established powers, and, above all, as one old friend calls it, his ‘pathological need for attention.’ A few months ago I began talking to Kennedy family members and close friends, some on the record, others on background, to get insights into the man they know well, and to ask some pointed questions.”
It’s Time for President Kamala Harris — “The fact is this: Joe Biden is not the only person for the job. No man or woman is. Our Constitution asks the people to elect a potential successor to every president, someone who can step in if the president dies or is incapacitated. We have two constitutional options for removing the president. He can be removed from office by a supermajority in Congress or, according to the 25th Amendment, by his own cabinet, pending approval by Congress. Until one of these remedies is applied and Kamala Harris is rightfully sworn in as president of the United States, we are in a constitutional crisis, a parody of a functioning democracy, and we will continue to project a provocative weakness on the world stage.”
Tight Inner Circle Urges Biden to Press On— “Here is a look at the Biden inner circle, including those who have been most influential in his attempts to rebound from a damaging 90-minute debate.”
How divorce never ends— “[W]hen I recall this history, a rage boils up to the surface. Grief for lost potential and what could have been.”
The Fall of Pride— “After decades of increasing buy-in, Pride appears to be losing public legitimacy. The change is reflected in a corporate retreat from Pride-themed marketing, shifts in public opinion, and conflicts among progressive groups about the meaning of Pride.”
China demands loyalty from young expats in the US— “China is demanding acts of loyalty from its young professionals living and working in the US, sometimes putting them at odds with local law and immigration requirements, as it seeks more control over expatriates amid rising tensions between the two countries.”
Why GPS Is Under Attack— “The American GPS network that was once the gold standard is at risk of becoming a relic as Chinese, Russian and European systems modernize.”
Biden has always been a liar— “The media are just as much to blame for Biden’s habitual dishonesty because instead of covering him, they’ve covered for him.”
Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter’s Future Increasingly Uncertain— “It’s a very expensive platform. It’s three times, roughly, the cost of an F-35, and we can only afford it in small numbers.”
The untold story of the most chaotic Nato summit ever— “During a 15-minute-long oration, Trump called for European nations to raise their defence spending to twice the agreed benchmark and unfathomably high for almost all of the leaders listening. They were taking the US for granted, he said. Pay what they should, he urged, or the US would go it alone on New Year’s Day 2019.”
French participation in the war did not end with the signing of the armistice— “French participation in the war did not end with the signing of the armistice on June 22. The French can be found fighting on numerous fronts for the next four years – even if they were not all serving the same France. French soldiers fought the British in Syria (June 1941) and Madagascar (May 1942); the Soviets on the eastern front in 1942-44; the Americans in Algeria and Morocco (November 1942); the Italians in East Africa and Libya (1941); and the Germans in Libya (1942), Tunisia (1943), Italy (1944), France and Germany (1944-45). Some fought in German uniform and others in British. French soldiers also fought each other: at Dakar in 1940 and in Syria in 1941. Nor were French civilians spared the war: Allied bombing of France caused 67,000 civilian deaths – more than the number of Britons who died from German bombing.”
The Planned Obsolescence of Deep England— “[W]ithin this alcove of what my friend Douglas Murray calls ‘Deep England’ ticks the heart of the agent of its impending erasure. A plaque on the wall bears the names of four generations of Brookes family men, who wound the Church clock for a hundred-and-ten years. The last line informs the reader that the clock was automated from 2006 onwards. In our obsession with efficiency, convenience, and the perpetual pursuit of abundance, we drive the human and particular elements of our national character to extinction. I may be accused of making a Mount Doom out of a molehill. But within the premises of liberal capitalism, beginning sectarian 17th century England, lies this interminable drive to dislocate peoples from times, places, and particular cultures.”
Autonomy and the Automaton— “The yawning abyss ahead is the risk of managerial totalitarianism, the fruit of automatism, and the unprecedented capacity for calculated cruelty produced by its inhuman nature – by its boundless appetite for rationalistic schemes, ideology (the mechanization of the mind), social engineering, centralization, and technocratic control. Jünger – himself all too personally familiar with inhuman cruelty – understood that totalitarianism’s core nature had hardly died with Nazi Germany but had become a defining feature of the modern age.”
The UK’s Brexit dream is dead— “[T]]he Brexit dream has already died. All the key Vote Leave characters have left the stage. Five years after winning a landslide election Boris Johnson is out of parliament, making millions from speeches and newspaper columns. Michael Gove has quit politics rather than suffer life in opposition. Dominic Cummings spends his time writing blogs about Dostoevsky, TikTok and the CIA. As the architects of Britain’s departure from the EU contemplate a decade out of power, the country they envisaged during the 2016 referendum campaign looks further away than ever.”
The British right is about experience its worst defeat - ever— “The ruling Conservative Party, which took the UK out of the EU, gave us Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and so many other disasters, will be defeated, of that there is no doubt. There are insane opinion polls out there predicting that the Conservatives, the supposed ‘natural party of government,’ which has dominated this country for the last 130 years, could be all-but wiped out in its worst defeat ever.”
And finally —
How Argentina was defeated in their own backyard | Falklands Land Battle