Geopolitics

The x-ray style

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Week XV, MMXXV
This might sound odd, but we may not really be under-informed in ways we’re accustomed to feeling we are. You know that feeling? Like when you realize you’re ambiently aware of something about the U.S. president having said something about, what was it?—some country? Or like when you look down at that heightening pile of newsmagazines. Or like when you open almost any social-media app—or even just look at the internet and glimpse the sea of information you can’t begin to filter? But how much of it ends up really mattering? Of course we need to know what’s happening; I just think most things that are really happening are happening on longer time horizons than the news media tends implicitly to want us thinking about. Their whole thing is getting our attention in the moment. I say we need something different—support in being intentional; in developing authentic pattern recognition; in building context, making connections, and cultivating memory.

—John Jamesen Gould

This week:

  • Why is the U.S. trying so hard to find new sources of critical minerals?
  • If Donald Trump isn’t an autocrat, what is he?
  • Why exactly is corruption a problem?
  • Why were American corporate leaders so quick to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—and then to scrap them?
  • & What’s the American president really up to with all these tariffs?

With Justin Callais, Stephen Hanson, Nicholas Kumleben, and Walter Benn Michaels x Adolph Reed Jr.

Music from Barker, Lust for Youth x Croatian Amor, and Groove Armada. + Where did the downtempo sound come from?

But first: The trade-war era, cont. A funding infusion for Ukraine. A new governing coalition in Germany. A regime under pressure in Serbia. Peace talks in London over the civil war in Sudan. & A black hole wakes up in Galaxy SDSS1335+0728 …
Open
Venus Major
‘At the River’
Twenty years ago, one of the sounds of the moment was known as downtempo, represented by bands like London’s Groove Armada. Downtempo was slow-paced, more for the fashionable cocktail bars than the all-night dance clubs. This song, with just under 65 million plays on Spotify, may be the first led by trombone to appear in The Signal. But it shouldn’t be the last.

Where’d the downtempo sound come from?
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Categories: Geopolitics

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