Donald Trump CPAC
Donald Trump (Image: AP/John Raoux via AAP)

UNCHAINING CHENEY

Differing perspectives on the removal by Trumplicans of Liz Cheney from the House leadership in US Congress: the canceling of Trump critics will just make the Republicans’ electoral problems worse.

Republican representative Liz Cheney (Image: AP/J Scott Applewhite)

From the raving socialists of The National Review: Cheney is a winner, being sacrificed to appease a loser. From the isolationist wing of the conservative movement: Cheney’s a genocidal warmonger like her dad, good riddance.

Meanwhile, how did Trump’s steel tariffs go protecting the US steel industry. About as well as free trade critics warned.

GLOBAL PROBLEMS

The population of Italy was already shrinking. Now the birth rate has plummeted further in the wake of the pandemic. Progressives have lost the argument on nationalism. Belatedly trying to co-opt it will fail.

Disinformation is not random, but gendered, and it targets female politicians in particular. There’s one right-wing government that is completely fine with China: how Hungary prevented the European Union from rebuking China’s assault on Hong Kong.

Do identity politics “commodify” us — or had capitalist societies already tried to impose identities on people without regard to their individualism?

NEWS FROM THE LAB

OK, so, this is genuinely weird. Not only does the Placebo Effect work, but it works when you tell people they’ve got the placebo. This week in famous thought experiments: Maxwell’s Demon gets a new lease of life.

While attention has been focused on the disaster in India, Brazil is also undergoing a catastrophic wave of COVID-19 driven by a dangerous variant. And how melting ice will change gravity.

PERVERSE INCENTIVES AND OTHER KEY FEATURES OF MODERN POLICYMAKING

Christianity flourishes best when it has no official support (interesting to find out whether this applies to non-Christian faiths). Patrick Marlborough dissects his drooling cretin of an employment provider.

A racist policeman wanted to use discriminatory US electoral laws to prevent African-Americans from voting (ping Joe Hockey, who thinks electoral fraud is a Democrat problem). Chinese hackers attended a prominent Western hacking competition to acquire a tool to use in Chinese brutalisation of Uyghurs.

CAPITALISM IN ACTION

Yes, the game Fortnite is still around. And it’s still completely free. But it made $9 billion in two years. There’s a business model there…

A new economics paper demonstrates that unions lead to better wage outcomes for workers — even for workers who aren’t union members, even in industries where there are no unions. And a mental health start-up used easy-to-use technology — and then watched a hack expose all their clients’ notes.

FINALLY

Oops — a new hagiography of Edward Said accidentally exposes the flaws of an intellectual fraud. For the Kubrick completists, there’s yet another book, reviewed at length in New York Review of Books. And a warning about never leaving a child with a Rottweiler — otherwise this could happen.