Weekly Grounding #33
News, links, writing
After a two-week hiatus, Weekly Groundings are back at Handful of Earth. I received positive feedback on the formatting style in my Best of Weekly Groundings: 2023 post, so have decided to stick with this new look in the new year. I hope you enjoy this Grounding and, as always, please feel free to subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox every Friday.
“Donald Trump’s Win in Iowa Shows His Appeal Is Expanding Beyond His Base”
The Financial Times breaks down Donald Trump’s “sweeping victory” in Iowa’s Republican caucuses earlier this week. The analysis notes that “While Trump won support nearly everywhere in Iowa and among nearly every demographic, he appealed in particular to counties with larger populations of lower-income families and those with fewer college graduates.”
“The Elite Misunderstands American Globalisation Grievances”
Also at The Financial Times, Oren Cass summarizes some fascinating survey results recently released by American Compass: “The survey, conducted in partnership with YouGov, asked 1,000 American adults whether ‘you, personally,’ had ‘benefited’ or ‘suffered’ from America’s embrace of globalisation and China. Overall, 41 per cent reported benefiting while 28 per cent reported suffering. The share benefiting was higher across classes and regions. Yet as the frame of reference expanded, the sentiment turned more negative. The margin in favour of ‘benefited’ was only +7 per cent when the question was about ‘your family and friends,’ fell to zero for ‘the community where you live,’ and reached -13 per cent for ‘the nation as a whole.’ Rather than nursing resentment, Americans appear simultaneously to appreciate the personal benefits of globalisation while worrying about its broader effects.”
Cass offers the following analysis of these seemingly counterintuitive results: “First, place matters. While globalisation’s boosters take for granted that its disruptions can be remedied by ‘helping people move to opportunity,’ Americans prefer a focus on ‘helping struggling areas recover’ by 70 per cent to 30 per cent. Second, making things matters. By 83 per cent to 8 per cent, Americans agree that ‘we need a stronger manufacturing sector.’”
“Samsung to Build All-AI, No-Human Chip Factories”
The manufacturing sector certainly does matter, but many companies are hellbent on making sure humans play little to no part in it. At Asia Times, Scott Foster reports that “Samsung Electronics is planning to fully automate its semiconductor factories by 2030, with ‘smart sensors’ set to control the manufacturing process.” He summarizes South Korean media reports which note that “The world’s largest maker of memory chips aims to create an ‘artificial intelligence fab’ that operates without human labor…This is important because Samsung currently has the largest wafer processing capacity in the semiconductor industry with more than a dozen production lines in South Korea, China and the US. All of the facilities are reportedly candidates for smart sensor upgrades. Samsung is preparing to build a new chip factory in Texas and plans to add five new ‘state-of-the-art’ production lines in South Korea by 2042 at a total cost of about 300 trillion won (US$230 billion).”
For my writing on automation and artificial intelligence here at Handful of Earth, see “The Left’s Problem with Technology” and “Telos or Transhumanism?,” respectively.
“The Case of Typhoid Mary”
At The Brownstone Institute, Jeffrey A. Tucker revisits the case of “Typhoid Mary” in light of the covid pandemic response: “Typhoid Mary was a real person, Mary Mallon (1869-1938). By all accounts an excellent chef who had served many families and had outstanding skills. She was never symptomatic for typhoid. She was healthy and well. But when there was an outbreak at a home she served, she was hunted down, her stool tested positive, and then she was quarantined in New York as an asymptomatic carrier (1907-1910). Legal pushback led her to be released three years later on the condition that she check in and never cook again. She defied both conditions and so was hunted down yet again. This time medical authorities demanded to remove her gallbladder which she refused to permit. She ended up spending a total of 26 years in solitary confinement before she died (1915-1938).”
Tucker continues: “No question that tagging her as public enemy number one was a reflection of prevailing bias against Irish immigrants who were seen as dirty and lower class…[S]he was treated like an animal, not a patient, and then later experimented upon with random untested treatments.” Over one hundred years later, it’s incredible just how little the public health establishment has changed.
“‘It Is a Time of Witch Hunts in Israel’: Teacher Held in Solitary Confinement for Posting Concern About Gaza Deaths”
Speaking of solitary confinement as a weapon of the authoritarian state, The Guardian reports on the case of Meir Baruchin, an Israeli teacher who was fired and subsequently jailed and placed in solitary confinement on the charge of “intent to commit treason.” His crime? A “series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticising the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge.” Specifically, Baruchin had written that “Most Israelis don’t know much about Palestinians. They think they are terrorists, all of them, or vague images with no names, no faces, no family, no homes, no hopes…What I am trying to do in my posts is present Palestinians as human beings.” The article reports that “Ten days after that Facebook message, he was fired from his teaching job in Petach Tikvah municipality. Less than a month later he was in a high-security jail, detained to give police more time to investigate critical views he had never tried to hide.”
Another Israeli teacher, Yael Ayalon, was also targeted after sharing an article about Israeli media efforts to hide civilian deaths in Gaza from the public: “Her students rioted in the school after news of the post spread; she took her employers to a tribunal and was reinstated, but when she returned to school she was attacked again by students chanting ‘go home.’” With increasing American involvement in Israel’s war on Gaza, coupled with direct participation in a broader transregional conflagration, all Americans should be deeply concerned about attacks on free speech in both Israel and the United States.
“The Hollow Boys, and Girls: Restoring Risk, Efficacy, and the Small Triumphs of Life”
At
, and meditate on the “unique struggle for boys” in the face of an increasingly digitized world dominated by the incessant pull of internet pornography and gaming. They write that “Convenience, safety, and security often figure as major selling points for new tech, yet they are anti-motivational values, even anti-boy. Risk and struggle are vital ingredients in any real adventure…Not all risk is bodily risk. Mental, emotional, and social challenges can be existentially significant. There are spiritual battles to be fought. There are personal battles as to whether we can keep on loving somebody who might not be easily loved. These experiences, too, can push us beyond the usual limits of our confidence and into realms of anguish and fear.” Peco and Gaskovski conclude with a series of practical resources to help restore “risk, efficacy, and the small triumphs of life” for boys, and girls, which will be especially useful for parents.What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.