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Chapter seven: Nuclear missiles were intended for offensive capability and excersicing defensive diplomacy. Misha explains how this new laser technology renders this mutual deterrence between the U.S. and Russia was rendered obsolete.

This was a very good chapter. Tom Clancy really knows how to create bad ass antagonists.

Very Tom Clancy so far. Lots of tech and suspense but I fear the plot is repetitive as compared with The Hunt for Red October.

The history of the evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously but life finds a ways. - Ian Malcolm page 179.

I grew up binging on this movie on VHS in my formative years. It’s hard not thinking about the scenes in the movie. I hated Ian Michael as a kid. He was too cynical and a party pooper. Turns out he was just using math and logic.

Jeff Goldblum is an amazing actor and I have more appreciation for him now.

Chapter 7 speaks about Simone and Malcolm. After having private conversations with the couple, Harry describes the difference between their polished media image and point of view and how it contrasts with their private opinions. The cater their message filter the elite investors. They also believe in a lot of outlandish and fringe beliefs such as human selective breeding for IQ.

First half of chapter 6 is devoted to the Pioneer Fund. It finances right wing ideologies and race science, rumors that Peter Thiel is a whale that donates to this and other groups in the U.S. and UK.

So far this book offers insight into the motivations, aspirations, and investors. There’s a significant amount of manipulation tactics.

Chapter two is devoted to the author’s trip to Europe to participate in a right wing conference. He describes his interactions with the audience members and speakers. Describes both as easily manipulated and believers of conspiracy theories such as semen retention but also dangerous ones such as the great replacement. Ryan uses his leadership status and social media presence to to fund his gambling addiction.

So far a good introspective analysis of a journalist with a career and aspirations that were the total opposite of his private life. A right wing mouthpiece willing to spew hate and disinformation. Meanwhile hiding and repressing his private life since the right wing was opposed to his lifestyle.

Hopefully his eventual transition to the left is also open to the bias of his work, regardless is political party.

Went to the local bookshop and picked up a few books. Bought it just on the strength of the provocative title.

Based on the content on his Wikipedia page, David Brock seemed to be a very vocal propagandist for the right and then had an abrupt shift to the left. He is also very appreciative of fundings for his book publication. But that won’t stop me from reading his book.

This is purely a scenario that Carlo creates using his knowledge and experience within political science but it starts off like a dystopian fiction. Ukraine capitulates and starts to become a strategized mess with secret informants, very much Stalin USSR tactics.

Very interesting, plausible, scary.

Rereading after learning a bit more about Marxism.

When Chinese forces met ROK forces, it had success but when it faced coalition forces they suffered major loses. The Offensive attacks in the western front during May proved successful after applying deceptive tactics in the eastern front to keep the Coalition forces occupied with Seoul.

I picked up this book to contrast my current knowledge of the Korean War.

From what is gathered in the introduction, China’s warfare tactics were thought to have been derived from the principles laid out on Sun Tzu’s art of war. Avoidance of conflict and defensive tactics using terrain. The west brought a face to face confrontation and rapid resolution of military conflicts by main force.

Holy smokes. This book is interesting.

This was written in 1996 about a Russian politician that no one took seriously. Pretty standard but makes you think…

“And here’s the paradox: the odder Zhirinovsky is with his deliberate manners, scandalous capers, and loose tongue, the warmly and more seriously the audience of the people treated him, laughing all the while.”

So far this book paints him as a useful idiot for the KGB as an argent provocateur, the communist party as a way to take away votes from the right wing, and student travel guides that got him arrested and expelled from Turkey.

Russian interpretation and implementation of Marxism ideals was full of contradictions, purges, and even mass executions.

Stalin recognized the vulnerability within post revolution Russia towards right leaning and cult of personality ideologies. And in the end he participated when he injected himself into the agriculture industry.

A few chapters in and I found this quote from Lenin quite profound.

Lenin's best-known remark in the Philosophical Notebooks was on the relation of Hegel to Capital:
“It is impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!"

There’s a certain inconsistency with the characters and plot armors to tie things together.

It is certainly very descriptive of the males in the story. It reads like YA but it certainly has an adult demo in mind.

Risqué is the word I can think of.

Reminds me about the devil wears Prada but with a nut job as a boss.

The chapter about reactionaries and progressives made me think about George Orwell‘s 1984. The sentiment at the time was very much aligned between these two writers. Is communism an inevitable police state that forces isolation, or is it what was propagated during war time?

I find this fascinating. I would like to see the what kind of books were being published by the opposition at the time. P138

Very interesting how the Chinese intervention in the war changed the tactics of managing POW and how they introduced indoctrination.

The timing of the book being published and the anti communist sentiment makes it feel like post war propaganda.

The difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is complex and interesting. The blockchain is faster and can contain code.

The difference between electronic signature and digital signature is that electronic signatures can be a name written in a box or a copy of the inked signature. Whereas the digital signature is generated using a private key and cannot be replicated without the private key. P148

Money needs to fulfill three functions: a medium of exchange, a store value, a unit of account.

I like the intrinsic value argument. When banks shifted from cattle to silver people could argue that silver did not have intrinsic value, “I can’t feed my family with it”. P45

The importance of regulations such as when people losing money on scams and asking that something must be done to stop scams. P46

I feel like this book is just about applying optimism regardless of the situation.

After reading spillover during the beginning of pandemic I have to say that David knows his way around transmissible diseases. And pretty much called this whole thing a decade before it happened.