operation vittles

When in late June of 1948 Soviet forces tried to starve West Berlin into surrender during the blockade the American forces—headquartered in Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden—responded by dispatching some two-hundred thousand re-supply flights that brought food and materiel to the isolated enclave—nearly one flight every half-minute for the following fifteen months until rail-access was restored. One response of the dependents, one thousand wives and children, of US soldiers stationed there was to create a cheerful little austerity cookbook made up of improvised and not so bleak recipes (maybe some indulgence and exotic tastes is the answer to a geopolitical crisis) to tide their families and their Germany hosts through rationing and power-cuts and general uncertainty. Within this gesture too is the stance of solidarity as the families could have been evacuated, rather than choosing to remain and tough it out.

the prisoners’ dilemma

Of course the online world is not reality—though sometimes that fact is easy to overlook—but the interactive demonstration, The Evolution of Trust by Nicky Case, is a good heuristic tool not only for exploring how relationship of trust and the opposite are cultivated but also an appreciation of the frameworks and experiences that prompt and promote cooperation.
Models of conflict and optimising agents can be structured to persuade people to have confidence in one another that one’s not seeking profit at the expense of another but they can also be created (and perhaps it’s easier to digest psychologically as general mistrust given the pace of the internet and nature of interaction) where cheating is the best strategy. The internet entire isn’t rigged like that, but suspicions are justified—especially it seems against a milieu that’s being manipulative in inscrutable ways. The canonical prisoner’s dilemma that the iterative game’s set up (but updated and couched in more familiar experiences) is premised upon posits that two members of a criminal gang are caught and incarcerated and put in solitary confinement (no way to communicate or form a strategy with one another). Due to insufficient evidence, there’s a possibility for them both to have the sentences commuted, but are separately give the opportunity to either betray the other by profession his own innocence or remain silent (thick as thieves). If they betray each other, they both are sentenced and if one betrays the other, one goes free and the other goes to prison, while if they both are truthful, they both are released.

i am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people in the country

In a desperate plea for help, some brave soul at the White House leaked the full transcripts of Dear Leader’s conversations with the president of Mexico and the Australian prime minister, demonstrating that in private, one-on-one situations he’s still every bit as sub-literate, narcissistic and nasty as he is in public—for those holds-out that hoped he might have cultivated two personæ like his presidential opponent prescribed since he seems to be guilty of all the accusations that he hurled at Clinton. The transcripts are indeed humiliating and undermine America’s position when it comes to future negotiations on anything, but it is necessary to expose this regime for the vacuous and nihilistic sham it is. Imagine that these conversations occurred just after his inauguration (epochs ago in Trumpian time)—I wonder how much more unhinged he’s become since then.

home improvement

An omnipotent electronic, on-demand retail empire has had its furtive plans to use its fleet of delivery drones (previously) to survey and assess the state of the customer’s abode and garden and recommend fixes—or at least subtly advertise suggested products or services that one might be interested investing in, as Super Punch informs, receive official endorsement in the form of letters patent and the sole intellectual-heir to such fly-bys.
Not only would this buzzing and strafing let one know that the roof over one’s head might be in need of repairs, collusion between marketers and insurance providers might also inflate one’s rates and liabilities accordingly. What do you think? It might also spot dangers early so that catastrophes might be prevented. Convenience has its costs in any case and this development, which seems far more fraught with potential for abuse and manipulation, is following right after the maker of autonomous vacuum cleaners made a pledge not to sell on data the units had gleaned in respect to the layout and manifest of owners’ living spaces.

emotional rescue

We acquired the extremely useful term gigil just recently and have long been captivated with needful words and those with no English equivalent, but are really indebted to Futility Closet for introducing us to the notion of emotional granularity, which failed to register with us earlier despite having come across the same good feeling thesaurus ourselves previously. Having the vocabulary to articulate finer distinctions in one’s psyche imparts mental well-being and has tangible benefits, like greater emotional resiliency and lessens incidence of dependency and abuse. Coarsen up your way of talking about feelings—some will certainly resound for us and we’ll recognise those positive qualities in others—at the links directly above.

donbass

Disconcertingly the Russian prime minister has issued a statement in reaction to Dear Leader’s reluctant signing into law a bill continuing sanctions against Russia, North Korea and Iran (Dear Leader had reservation because he believed that Congress was undermining his executive authority and as a businessman who founded a company worth many billions, he was far more qualified than the legislative branch to negotiate a deal with foreign powers) that characterises the decision as a trade-war.
Dear Leader could have tried vetoing the bill but given almost universal bipartisan support to levy the embargo, which began in 2014 in response to the annexation of the Crimea, but that would have been even more damning confirmation of collusion and there was support enough to overturn any attempts to block its passage. The previous US administration expelled dozens of Russian diplomats and commandeered some of their property holdings that weren’t accorded extraterritorial status, but at the time, the Russian response was not symmetrical or immediate. Instead, Russia barred US citizens from adopting Russian orphans, ostensibly, over gay marriage—with adoption understood as code for sanctions throughout. Just now, the American mission to Moscow is being told to reduce staffing by half and its properties are being seized. The continued embargo foremost jeopardises the profitability of the Russian energy sector by making it harder to seek investors and business partners for its natural gas pipeline to western Europe. The broadly accepted narrative holds that Russia was motivated to interfere with the US presidential election with an aggressive social media campaign of sophistry to make Dear Leader appear to be the more palatable alternative.