Alex Levine > Recent Status Updates

Interesting point that the early 2010s optimism of renewable energy saving everyone from climate change transformed into a 2020s pessimism, where renewables are instead a solution for the rich (nations/individuals) to secure themselves against the threat of climate change, and insulate themselves against the collapse of broader power/energy systems and supply chains.

Not particularly insightful so far, the only interesting takeaway is how many people associated with PayPal lived at some point in South Africa. But they don’t really analyze this well, they sort of vibe code it by saying: these are the three reasons why apartheid South Africa is like Silicon Valley, all of which apply to a wide range of states and political imaginaries historical and present.

“No new political history was made” on the day of the first Thanksgiving. Rather, the event reflected treaty relations/obligations previously developed between the Massasoit and pilgrims, coming after the latter had grown into a stronger, regional force, as illustrated by their strong defense of Squanto, leading the native sachem to reaffirm their relationship.

Cool! Plymouth was “not an isolated settlement,” but rather “more like the English neighborhood in the recently revived indigenous village of Pawtuxet.”

Pawtuxet settlements were itinerant, moving between different sites in summer and winter. This seasonality incentivized/made practice the gifting of meals to visitors. They practiced a similar reciprocity with the pilgrims, so that teaching them to better farm (once allied, post-treaty) served to grow the “common pot”. In effect, Thanksgiving appears not as exceptional, but regular, sustaining both communities.

Fascinating point that it was likely women who taught the pilgrims to fertilize their crops with fish/eels, not Squanto, as crop rearing was primarily in the women’s knowledge domain. Instead, Squanto was present as translator and recorded in colonists’ accounts of native encounters. This native participation in colonists’ planting served as a means of social integration, common between native groups.

Jamestown in the 1610s: a “site of colliding worlds…mixed up, messy settlement” that merged English and Native Americans’ (and a plethora of different, distinct, and not necessarily mutually intelligible East Coast peoples) structures, styles of farming and land management, and even people.

One of the interesting, unexpected takeaways of this book is how much German immigration/heritage there was in the Cincinnati region, including Rose/his wife as children/grandchildren of German immigrants, as well as coaches and scouts in the Red’s organization.

Interesting that Lipman uses the term “hot Protestants” to describe the brand of non-conformism practiced by the pilgrims, as opposed to the more performative “puritan,” which even at the time was somewhat derogatory. The former is both how these groups - many of which sprang up after the 1580s - characterized themselves, and captures a long overlooked dynamism of thought/levity. They weren’t all dour.

Cool point on early 17th century Spain as characterized by a “multicultural ethnoscape,” including Jews, Berbers, Turks, sub-Saharan Africans, and Native Americans, alongside a host of European peoples. This meant a variety of forms of indenture and freedom/unfreedom regulated by the state. On several occasions, Magrebi “faith slaves” presented themselves as Native Americans to gain freedom in court.

1969 was the first year polls found football to be more popular nationally than baseball: 31% chose football, 28% baseball. The previous two Super Bowls by this time had also outperformed the World Series in tv ratings. This spurred a major reexamination within the baseball world.

We should therefore “never see the meetings between ships and canoes as flat, two-sided affairs. There were always hidden dimensions. Just as Christian nations jousted among each other for access to America’s coastal market in furs and goods, so did native powers.”

Super interesting, the Wampanoag welcomed English shops peacefully, because they saw them as a means to directly access European weapons (and iron supplies) and cut out native middlemen. This was particularly a response to the Mi’kmaq’s “creative approach to new technologies.” They adopted European sailing ships and violently raided the northern Dawn Lands.

By 1963, “a baseball locker room, though still mostly white and by no means progressive, was more integrated than most of America. And as a result, a young white ball player like Pete was exposed to different cultures in a way an average person was not.”

Apparently a team member then brought the name to Boston (voila, Red Sox). The Cincinnati Red Stockings were founded in 1869, were essentially undefeated and extremely popular, and their first president said he’d rather run the team than “be president Ulysses S. Grant in Washington).

Also interesting how central Procter and Gamble was to Cincinnati’s economy/social scene. And the home of the first professional baseball team (Cincinnati Red Stockings): “a history unlike any other…a baseball town through and through.”

Interesting that Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford gave Pete Rose the nickname “Charlie Hustle” during a spring training game against the Yankees before his first major league season in 1963, as an insult for how hard he ran/his effort (and specifically for hustling hard enough to get on base with a bunt).

By the 1560s, the combined tonnage of European ships traveling to the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland to fish equaled that of those going to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South and Central America.

“Indigenous people regularly made overland voyages of 1000 miles or more, propelled by just their feet and canoes. Lakota from the Plains turned up at treaties held at Montreal. Shawnees from the Ohio Valley followed the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico,” etc.

There is extensive evidence of “sprawling and weblike trade networks and migrations that connected indigenous communities across the Americas from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Tropics to the Arctic.”

Squanto and other “Dawn Lands” natives may have had some knowledge, perhaps incorporated into myth, of the massive, maize-based indigenous town in the Mississippi Valley, or even farther south-west in Central America. Their myth of corn’s introduction to New England accurately spoke of it coming from the southwest.