 |
| A diagram of I Ching hexagrams owned by German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It was sent to Leibniz from the French Jesuit Joachim Bouvet. The Arabic numerals written on the diagram were added by Leibniz. The grid in the center presents the hexagrams in Fuxi or binary sequence, reading across and down. The same order is used on the outside, reading up from the bottom around on the right, then up again on the left to the top.
Leibniz Archive, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek |
Category: the true
Keir Giles : Ten “Don’ts” For Dealing With Russia
Abstracted from a twitter thread by Keir Giles [ @KeirGiles ]
From his book : “Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront The West” – available at: amzn.to/2SKa8ND (US) and amzn.to/2Qw9dyo (UK and Europe).
KEIR GILES’ work has appeared in a wide range of academic and military publications across Europe and in North America, and he is a regular contributor and commentator on Russian affairs for international print and broadcast media. He is a Senior Consulting Fellow at the UK’s Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), and also works with the Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC), a group of deep subject matter experts on Eurasian security formerly attached to the British Ministry of Defence. He is a regular contributor to research projects on Russian security issues in the U.S., UK and Europe.
Ten “Don’ts” For Dealing With Russia
1. Don’t say “they wouldn’t do that, it doesn’t make sense”.
Abandon any assumptions about what Russia might do that are based on what a Western liberal democracy would consider rational. Russia‘s decision-making framework is bounded by an entirely different understanding of history, geography, social policy and relations between countries from that of the West. To understand the choices open to Moscow, it is critically important to see the world through a Russian lens, rather than be guided by what “makes sense” in Washington or Brussels.
2. Don’t confuse understanding Russia with excusing Russia.
Russia is guided by its own distinctive sense of historical imperatives, and consequently an enduring sense of privilege to disregard commonly accepted norms of behaviour. But the conviction with which these views are expressed does not necessarily make them right, or provide an excuse when they are acted on in ways the West finds repugnant.
3. Don’t ask binary questions.
Don’t ask about Russia “is it either this or that”, “either yes or no”. The answer is likely to be both, at the same time, or neither, or more. Dealing with Russia necessitates being comfortable with paradoxes and contradictions, and many things spoken and written about Russia are both true and not true at the same time, Consequently, when you ask “why does Russia do X”. don‘t look for just one answer There will be several reasons, some of which will overlap and some of which will contradict each other.
4. Don’t be distracted by bluster, bravado and bluff.
Just because Russia makes a lot of angry noise about your plans or proposals doesn’t mean Moscow will not be prepared to live with them when they are implemented. Russia defaults to threats and feigned outrage in order to improve its negotiating position, because the West’s responses show that this sometimes works. Listen instead for changes in tone that indicate real concerns.
5. Don’t forget that Russia does not consist of just one man.
The current leader in the Kremlin at any one time is not the problem if he is driven by persistent Russian beliefs and imperatives. The country and its leaders respond to internal and external challenges in ways that remain consistent over centuries; course corrections that accompany a change of leadership tend to be temporary aberrations.
6. Don’t just hope for “change”.
Change in Russia is rarely as deep as it appears, and certainly not always for the better; so it is dangerous to assume that political change in Russia is desirable because it will necessarily be an improvement. Russia’s current behaviour towards other countries and its own citizens is reprehensible. But by historical standards, Russia is still in a period of unprecedented liberalism. It would be hard for things to get better, but it would be very easy for things to get far, far worse.
7. Don’t expect Russia to respect values and standards that were invented elsewhere.
You can’t embarrass Russia over its behaviour at times when it places no value on its reputation. “Naming and shaming” has limited effect: it is important to “name” by continuing to call attention to Russian actions and holding Moscow to account for them, but do not expect Russia to feel the “shame”. What western liberal democracies think, or believe, or would like to happen is not a deciding criterion when Russia considers which course of action to choose.
8. Don’t hope to appeal to Russia’s better nature.
Russia sees compromise and cooperation, with no evident and immediate benefit to state or leadership interests, as unnatural and deeply suspicious. This places strict limits on the potential for working with Moscow even on what may appear to be shared challenges.
9. Don’t assume that there must be common ground.
It’s natural to search for these shared challenges. assuming there must be some way we can work with Russia on mutual interests. But there is a reason this search does not bring results, despite being conducted intensively throughout the almost three decades since the end of the USSR. Whenever it appears that Russia and the West could work together on a problem, it quickly becomes clear that not only Moscow‘s understanding of the issue, but also its preferred solution and the methods it would favour to deliver it are entirely incompatible with Western norms, values and even laws.
10. Don’t think that you can choose whether to be at war with Russia or not.
Sometimes de-escalation, taken to its logical conclusion, equates to surrender. At the same time, Russia will never be “at peace” with you. Normal relations with Russia include fending off a wide range of hostile actions from Moscow; this is the default state throughout history, and Western nations should by now be realising this is the norm.
Russian aggression in Ukraine
understanding the conflict – 3 excellent sources
Kamil Galeev
Galina Starovoitova Fellow @TheWilsonCenter. MLitt in Early Modern History, St Andrews. MA in China Studies, Peking University
twitter : @kamilkazani
threadreader : https://threadreaderapp.com/user/kamilkazani
Phillips P. OBrien
Professor of Strategic Studies, University St Andrews, Author: How the War was Won, and Second Most Powerful Man in the World. Editor in Chief, War in History
twitter : @PhillipsPOBrien
threadreader : https://threadreaderapp.com/user/PhillipsPOBrien
Trent Telenko
twitter : @TrentTelenko
threadreader : https://threadreaderapp.com/user/TrentTelenko
Jing Hao 荆浩 [ c. 855-915 ]
Pi-fa-chi (Notes on Brush Method)
| The six essentials for landscape painting, according to the sage, are :
氣 Ch’i (life breath): 韻 Yün (resonance and elegance): 思 Si (thought): 景 Jing (scenery): 筆 Bi (brushwork): 墨 Mo (ink wash): |
 |
| Wintry Forests and Layered Banks Hanging scroll on silk, attributed to Dong Yuan 董源 [ c. 934 – 962 ] Kurokawa Foundation | Hyogo | Japan |
on Anaxaminder [ circa 570 BCE ]
| Anaximander claimed that the cosmic order is not monarchic but geometric, and that this causes the equilibrium of the earth, which is lying in the centre of the universe. This is the projection on nature of a new political order and a new space organized around a centre which is the static point of the system in the society as in nature (1). In this space there is isonomy (equal rights) and all the forces are symmetrical and transferable. The decisions are now taken by the assembly of demos in the agora which is lying in the middle of the city (2).
1. C. Mosse (1984) La Grece archaique d’Homere a Eschyle. Edition du Seuil. p 235 |
| wikipedia |
 |
| Peplos Kore | circa 530 BCE | Parian marble | height : 120 cm | Acropolis Museum Athens |
Edward Witten on the anthropic principle
| What about new approaches to the fine-tuning problem such as the relaxion or “Nnaturalness”?
Unfortunately, it has been very hard to find a conventional natural explanation of the dark energy and hierarchy problems. Reluctantly, I think we have to take seriously the anthropic alternative, according to which we live in a universe that has a “landscape”of possibilities, which are realised in different regions of space or maybe in different portions of the quantum mechanical wavefunction, and we inevitably live where we can. I have no idea if this interpretation is correct, but it provides a yardstick against which to measure other proposals. Twenty years ago, I used to find the anthropic interpretation of the universe upsetting, in part because of the difficulty it might present in understanding physics. Over the years I have mellowed. I suppose I reluctantly came to accept that the universe was not created for our convenience in understanding it. |
| a very good interview the full text of which can be found here |
 |
|
Calabi–Yau manifoldApplications in superstring theory Calabi–Yau manifolds are important in superstring theory. Essentially, Calabi–Yau manifolds are shapes that satisfy the requirement of space for the six “unseen” spatial dimensions of string theory, which may be smaller than our currently observable lengths as they have not yet been detected. A popular alternative known as large extra dimensions, which often occurs in braneworld models, is that the Calabi–Yau is large but we are confined to a small subset on which it intersects a D-brane. Further extensions into higher dimensions are currently being explored with additional ramifications for general relativity. In the most conventional superstring models, ten conjectural dimensions in string theory are supposed to come as four of which we are aware, carrying some kind of fibration with fiber dimension six. Compactification on Calabi–Yau n-folds are important because they leave some of the original supersymmetry unbroken. More precisely, in the absence of fluxes, compactification on a Calabi–Yau 3-fold (real dimension 6) leaves one quarter of the original supersymmetry unbroken if the holonomy is the full SU(3). More generally, a flux-free compactification on an n-manifold with holonomy SU(n) leaves 21−n of the original supersymmetry unbroken, corresponding to 26−n supercharges in a compactification of type II supergravity or 25−n supercharges in a compactification of type I. When fluxes are included the supersymmetry condition instead implies that the compactification manifold be a generalized Calabi–Yau, a notion introduced by Hitchin (2003). These models are known as flux compactifications. F-theory compactifications on various Calabi–Yau four-folds provide physicists with a method to find a large number of classical solutions in the so-called string theory landscape. Connected with each hole in the Calabi–Yau space is a group of low-energy string vibrational patterns. Since string theory states that our familiar elementary particles correspond to low-energy string vibrations, the presence of multiple holes causes the string patterns to fall into multiple groups, or families. Although the following statement has been simplified, it conveys the logic of the argument: if the Calabi–Yau has three holes, then three families of vibrational patterns and thus three families of particles will be observed experimentally. Logically, since strings vibrate through all the dimensions, the shape of the curled-up ones will affect their vibrations and thus the properties of the elementary particles observed. For example, Andrew Strominger and Edward Witten have shown that the masses of particles depend on the manner of the intersection of the various holes in a Calabi–Yau. In other words, the positions of the holes relative to one another and to the substance of the Calabi–Yau space was found by Strominger and Witten to affect the masses of particles in a certain way. This is true of all particle properties. |
|
Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown
Interpretation : These figures indicate that high-income countries have a greater degree of responsibility for climate damages than previous methods have implied. These results offer a just framework for attributing national responsibility for excess emissions, and a guide for determining national liability for damages related to climate change, consistent with the principles of planetary boundaries and equal access to atmospheric commons.
thanks to @jasonhickel
La Via Campesina North America
| This powerful exposé of United Nations Food Systems Summit shows how UN Secretary General António Guterres is consolidating a corporate takeover of the UN system, through partnerships with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and billionaires behind the ‘Great Reset’. La Via Campesina North America and journalist Camila Escalante unveil the role of megaphilanthropy and even his royal highness Prince Charles in trying to displace peasant agriculture. Following the stunning failure of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), its president, Agnes Kalibata, was repurposed to head the Summit. On September 23rd, the Summit will occur virtually and without the participation of LVC, as peasant organizations and popular movements across the world reject corporate control over food governance. Only redistributive land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty can ensure healthy and just food systems for all, as stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants. |
Analysis of the Middle and the Extremes
English translation of the text Analysis of the Middle and the Extremes. From the Chinese translation of the Madhyāntavibhāga-bhāṣya from Sanskrit by Xuanzang 玄奘 (602–664). Part of the BDK English Tripiṭaka Series.
Xuanzang’s disciple Ji 基 (632–682, also known as Kuiji 窺基), gives the following explanation in his commentary on this work:
Nine hundred years after the Buddha passed away, the bodhisattva Asaṅga was born into the world. He went to Maitreya to request a teaching on the great śāstra, the circumstances of which are as explained elsewhere. Maitreya taught the verses (kārikā) of this śāstra, called the “Verses Analyzing the Middle and Extremes,” which Asaṅga received and subsequently passed onto Vasubandhu to have them explained in detail. Hence, this prose was produced by Vasubandhu, called Śāstra Analyzing the Middle and Extremes (Madhyānta- vibhāga-bhāṣya).
Carlo Rovelli – The disappearance of space and time
Bach
… This is a classic example of Bach being caught up in the process of elaboratio, the second stage in the fleshing out of a musical composition as defined by Christoph Bernhard. In his Tractatus compositions augmentatus (c. 1657), widely circulated in manuscript during the second half of the seventeenth century, Bernhard brought Cicero’s five divisions of rhetoric * up to date and in applying them to music reduced them to three: inventio, elaboratio and executio. First, Bach crafts a workable idea (inventio), one that opens the door to creative embellishment (elaboratio), and then puts it to the test in performance (executio). These concepts are complementary and vital. The first two require intense mental activity, but there is a crucial difference between them: whereas invention is work, elaboration is play. Laurence Dreyfus expands on this: ‘while invention requires foresight, planning, consistency, savvy, and seriousness of purpose, elaboration is content with elegance, an associative logic, and an eye for similarities.’ The latter allowed Bach to explore dormant qualities in composition that most composers of his day would have missed. The hallmark of Bach’s skill in elaboratio lies in the intricacy and connectedness of his methods, such as variation and parody: these come across as far more refined and distinctive than those of his contemporaries, who, as Dreyfus observes, tend to treat elaboration in a more casual manner. But we are liable to be disappointed and may be trivialising the creative process if we expect to find all the germs of a new work neatly contained in its beginnings and then elaborated in logical progression. At certain times this does happen; at others Bach introduces new thematic material that involves discarding or cutting short the trajectory of an opening theme, but in such a way that we would probably not notice that anything was amiss, so accomplished is he at papering over the joins and bringing things to a natural-seeming conclusion. Dreyfus points to the formal oddity of an immensely popular piece, the opening movement of Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto, to illustrate how the formation of its two competing ritornellos is incomplete and in a sense defective. Bach seems to acknowledge the fact by his inability to repeat both of them intact at the end of the movement. Yet the listener is probably not in the least disturbed by the irrationality of its construction, delighting instead in its playfulness, wit and brilliance. What is most valuable about this sort of approach is that Bach could be shown to be at his most creative when his chosen inventive material falls short in some way, or when some sort of irregularity gives rise to ideas that he probably would not otherwise have had. What Dreyfuss reveals is that there is a real human intelligence operative here, not some detached Godlike figure who just creates ex nihilo.
* Cicero’s treatment of rhetoric was derived from earlier Hellenistic tradition and divided by him into five canons : Inventio – invention, Dispositio – arrangement, Elocutio – style, Memoria – memory and Pronuntiatio – delivery.
– from Music in the Castle of Heaven : A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach by John Eliot Gardiner pgs 214-215
Degrowth
…. We can take this observation one step further. It is important to recognize that the word ‘growth’ has
become a kind of propaganda term. In reality, what is going on is a process of elite accumulation, the
commodification of commons, and the appropriation of human labour and natural resources — a process
that is quite often colonial in character. This process, which is generally destructive to human commu-
nities and to ecology, is glossed as growth. Growth sounds natural and positive (who could possibly be
against growth?) so people are easily persuaded to buy into it, and to back policies that will generate more
of it, when otherwise they might not. Growth is the ideology of capitalism, in the Gramscian sense. It is
the core tenet of capitalism’s cultural hegemony. The word degrowth is powerful and effective because it
identifies this trick, and rejects it. Degrowth calls for the reversal of the processes that lie behind growth: it
calls for disaccumulation, decommodification, and decolonization.
Jason Hickel | @jasonhickel
Noam Chomsky
“Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation.
Now, it’s long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it’s possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited: that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage-can. At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.
As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole and, by now, that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass-communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to he avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.”
Noam Chomsky
Gran Sasso Xenon Collaboration
 |
 |
| The Xenon Collaboration’s dark matter detector in the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy. | The Gran Sasso Laboratory is the largest underground research center in the world, buried more than 4,500 feet underground. |
On the Fine-Structure of Space-Time – Alain Connes