THE BESTOF’S
With the fallout already swept aside by the next batshit-crazy event in world affairs, it brings to mind Hemingway’s observation on how you go bankrupt two ways: Gradually, then suddenly.
Writing this time last year about the decline of the Pax Americana, I never believed I’d see it dissolve on live television and from the seat of American power, no less.
But here we are.
And a moral bankruptcy it is. But it’s fair to say mistakes were made on both sides, with Russia coming out as the only winner.
In earlier calling Zelensky a dictator, blaming Ukraine for the war, and the US —alongside North Korea and Iran— voting against a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression, short of referring to the war as a ‘special military operation, Trump is parroting every Kremlin propaganda talking point.
Prioritising America and domestic concerns over the rest of the world is one thing, but what Trump, Vance and the MAGA faithful don’t seem to realise is by that interpretation of America ‘first’ — coming at the expense of a global order defending liberal democracy— it makes America first-equal, at best, and far more likely America second.
And for the undoubtedly colossal cost in blood and treasure America has spent in their 80-year role as global policeman, it’s also true that nobody has benefitted more—not by having a seat at the table, but by owning the table.
A scant knowledge of history and understanding of geopolitics on full display with Trump telling Zelensky, “You right now are not in a very good position. You've allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. You don't have the cards right now.”
In a barrage of them, the most galling charge, because in 1994 Ukraine had a very good security hand indeed, with something in the order of 1900 nuclear ‘cards’. Cards they surrendered in the best interests of the wider world on the explicit assurances of protection. A decision that would come at the expense of their sovereignty 18 years later and — if ever realised— conveniently forgotten by an American president, never one to miss an opportunity for a shakedown.
The minerals deal they were in the Oval Office to sign is mercenary, no doubt, but while this is textbook Trump, by cutting aid and— an act of pure pettiness— intelligence also, he’s clearly prepared to concede Ukraine, and by extension, Europe, to Russsia, and have the world divided into 3 — US, China, Russia — spheres of influence.
As for Zelensky. I’m reluctant to criticise him because cometh the hour, cometh the man and the duty, honour and civic responsibility he has shown are all attributes we are given endless reason to suspect would be found wanting from political representatives from any other country — and, know for certain from draft-dodger Trump’s own words in questioning a Marine’s sacrifice, standing at the graveside of General John Kelly’s son saying “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
So, Trump is everything but a mystery. The heft and fragility of his ego precede him, and to challenge him in his own office, on camera, was never going to end well.
To further offer an opening to Vance when he’d spent his entire campaign explicitly stating that support to Ukraine should end was just as foolish, and Vance—in a manner that made you long for the wallpaper-insignificance of the vice-president past—jumped in with both feet.
It didn’t matter that Zelensky was right— what good is diplomacy when Putin has consistently said one thing and done another?— but, as they say in self-defence, you can be right and dead.
And so it was.
But this is a can kicked down a long road and in light of repeated failures to address this in the past— none of which can be attributed to Trump— and, bad as the optics may be, it is arguably a policy decision that was largely made for him by simple acknowledgement that America cannot afford to wage war on opposite sides of the globe. But for those suggesting abandonment of Ukraine signals an intent to confront China in the Pacific, I wouldn’t be so sure.
Not least because every argument cited against supporting Ukraine and for an inward-focused America only goes two or three-fold for the Pacific. China is a far more serious military threat than Russia. And under the protection racket Trump is running, while Japan and South Korea might be able to stump up, where does that leave Vietnam and the Philippines?
Less appreciated is that this turn towards the domestic may be reflective of a further stark reality: that the US cannot fight a war on two fronts because there is much to suggest they can’t afford to fight a war on one.
In a full-scale exchange, America currently has a missile stockpile of just 7-10 days. If things go kinetic, they have exactly that long before the nuclear option goes on the table. Submarines can make the Taiwan Strait a no-man's-land for the Chinese Navy, including any invasion force and supply, but this could be done by air, and the US can no longer offer carrier support unless they are prepared to lose one or more of them.
And if Americans have little appetite to send good money after bad in defending Ukraine, they are not going to stomach the spectre of flag-draped coffins arriving home again from anywhere, let alone losing 5000 at a time to the bottom of the South China Sea.
All very grim stuff. But the clock is ticking for China and through coordination with Russia, formal or otherwise, they are poised to either force the dissolution of NATO, the annexation of Taiwan, or both, and—short of opening the nuclear Pandora’s Box— there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
Speaking of which....
Meanwhile, and not at all coincidentally, a Chinese Navy patrol was conducting live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea.
And when you can do nothing about it, the best response is to do nothing. Sure, file a protest at the predictable CCP disregard for all norms, but otherwise, shut up about it. The whole idea is to provoke so the response is simple— don't be provoked - overtly, at least: If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it… and all that.
In the background, of course, you should definitely be doing something about it.
A useful something, that is.
But not to be outdone and making his own case for worst strategic move of the week, Peter Dutton piped up, pledging to buy 3B dollars of F-35A’s to shore up Australia's defences.
In about the most expensive, least effective way you could imagine. And that’s before the fact that it only keeps us further beholden to an increasingly unreliable ally. Just because the leader of the free world opens his mouth without thinking, it doesn't mean you have to follow suit, because this is flat-out strategic madness.
You might as well burn the cash because in literally the first seconds of push coming to shove, that’s exactly what will happen to that particular ace up our sleeve. An opening salvo will take care of most of them sitting in unhardened shelters and will crater the runways— preventing those remaining from taking off— before a further salvo knocks them out, too.
Making the idea even more absurd is that it would hardly matter if they did get airborne because their limited range means they’re good for almost one strike mission and — absent US protection— they’ll be ditching in the Arafura Sea after their refuelling tankers get picked off.
Half of them should be fine, though, because the operational readiness of these aircraft, sitting at a shade over 50%, means that you too can have the most expensive armament in history for the extra special deal of 1 for the price of 2.
Our AUKUS submarine purchase—altough no help for a long time yet— has Australia meeting it’s alliance obligations but in the absence of a big brother— and I wouldn't be counting on it—Australia doesn't need a strike capability nearly as much as it needs a home guard, and an F-35’s value in deterrence is mainly in its ability to menace with anti-ship missiles.
So why not skip the expensive to buy, expensive to fly, expensive to maintain and offering little where it counts, middle man and cut straight to the missile chase? Here, Australia should follow the same area-denial playbook as China has done in the South China Sea with batteries of anti-ship missiles protected by anti-air hardening Australia's northern approaches.
China will only send more patrols, but when we know, and they know, that we can, at our discretion, light up any vessel inside 500km with a targeting radar — the same there-and-back range of the F-35A, just quietly— this act of intimidation loses much of its bluster.
Having the Gucci-gear is all well and good if you’ve got the deep pockets to pay for it, and a collection of Plan B’s available if a software glitch stalls them in the hanger, and Australia has neither. But our enemies are not just spending far more on defence than we can; they are getting a far higher return on investment and by many orders of magnitude.
I can’t find the source, but I’ve read that the cost to put a US soldier on the ground is 1.3M dollars, with the sandal-wearing, rusty-AK-equipped Taliban equivalent clocking it at a paltry 7 dollars. Seven.
So how long are you keeping that up? As the Taliban said, you have the watches, but we have the time. Although, that was before the US bailed out, leaving 7B dollars worth of kit behind, so now, they have watches too. And Blackhawks.
But both the Afghanistan and Ukraine conflicts have shown that fancy can be neutralised by the no-frills. And not for pennies on the dollar, but pennies for every 1000 dollars — or, compared to an F35— pennies for every ten thousand dollars.
Instead of buying expensive, unsuitable weaponry, this presents an opportunity to Australia to solve their problem and build a mid-low tier defence industry. Then, it could sell missiles and drones to the US, while better protecting its sovereign interests, creating jobs and industry and further support our ally by helping to break up the cartel of American defence manufacturers that, for all their flagwaving pretensions of patriotism, have long been sucking the American taxpayer dry.
I am a huge fighter fan and love a fighter jet way more than the next guy, but buying more of these jets is madness.
BEST IN SHOW
Neil Postman— featured in two previous Bestof’s, and there is a straight line from his work 1985 Amusing Ourselves to Death warning of the conflation of information and entertainment, to the shitshow in the Oval Office this past week.
Worrying also that the two contrasting dystopian visions of literary fiction have both been realised in the modern day. Orwell’s oppressive surveillance state and associated social credit system is in full swing in China, and even the surveillance part, at least, if you can believe it, in the UK, with prison time being served for social media posts.
But it’s Huxley’s version that has the West in its thrall.
Orwell’s vision is compelling. We can easily imagine authoritarian powers wielding advanced technology as a tool of control––because some authoritarian regimes do so today. There is a clear villain in these cases. Although citizens may be powerless to throw off such repressions, they maintain their sense of innocence and even moral superiority.
Huxley’s vision is subtler and harder to swallow. There’s no crushing oppressor, just gradual capitulation and surrender to amusing technologies. We are the danger to ourselves. We like the pleasure, the shortcuts, the distractions, so we don’t care how our technology degrades our minds, our relationships, and our culture.
BowTiedOx and neuroscientist Anne Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs detail two concepts central to the methodology I promote—and teach— as the ‘practice approach’ to fitness.
A process-oriented mindset (and the dangers of complacency).
…because if we can operate from that personal state, getting the results and achieving the goals we want is just kind of a byproduct of who we are.
And the value of curiosity and an experiential (course-correction) mindset.
When we make big, sweeping changes, we’re often acting on impulse — chasing the immediate dopamine hit of taking action. Small, iterative changes work differently. They activate the same reward pathways but in a more sustainable way, allowing our brains to adapt through consistent experimentation.
By replacing big changes with tiny experiments, we’re essentially rewiring our brain’s relationship with uncertainty. Instead of seeking the immediate gratification of dramatic change, we learn to find reward in the process of experimentation itself. This is particularly powerful in domains that require long-term thinking…
Seth Godin with:
Bigthink with a warning about the ‘AI Manipulation Problem’ alluded to here
…we are all about to become unwitting players in “The Game of Humans” and it will be the AI agents trying to earn the high score.
The theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once said that the first rule of science is that “you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
But as discussed here and here, in the fitness and dietary domains, using ‘science’ to pull the wool over your eyes is standard.
Here’s Bigthink (again) on the problem of scienceploitation and how to recognise the three— science, goodness and opinion— illusions that, working hand-in-glove with algorithms, are aiming to circumvent your bullshit detector.
Because science is so valuable in the current marketplace of ideas and attention economy, it gets manipulated. It’s the illusion of science, not real science.
Dr Rhonda Patrick addresses the (US) Senate Aging Committee Hearing on Optimizing Longevity. I’ve put this in the nutrition section because diet is the main contributing factor here, but on the understanding that exercise, recovery and stress are all relevant, and it’s a good deal more complex than that.
I’ve hit the wavetops below, and it makes for pretty grim reading. If the numbers cited are any different in Australia and NZ, it’s not by much, and the overall trend is identical.
And, should there be any doubt, it gives the lie to the ‘healthy at any size’ nonsense.
If you want to meaningfully impact aging in America, start with obesity—few things erode longevity and quality of life as profoundly, accelerating the biological aging process and fueling nearly every major chronic disease.
Food is part of the problem. We’re overfed but undernourished. A staggering 60% of all calories Americans consume come from ultra-processed foods that fail to induce proper satiety, remain cheaper than whole foods, and hijack our dopamine reward pathways, pushing us to overeat, incentivizing unhealthy food choices, and reinforcing addictive eating behaviors.
This trifecta—no satiety, low cost, and built-in addictiveness—keeps us in a cycle of poor health outcomes and runaway healthcare costs.
But caloric excess is only part of the issue—we are also nutrient-deficient.
We are not solving these problems—we are medicating them. The average American over 65 takes five or more prescription drugs daily—stacking interactions that compound in unpredictable ways.
Physical inactivity is as dangerous as disease—and we need to treat it that way.
And yet, we are letting physical strength deteriorate. By age 50, many Americans have already lost 10% of their peak muscle mass and by 70, they’ve lost up to 40%. This isn’t just about looking strong. It’s about survival.
Higher muscle mass means improved insulin sensitivity and a 30% lower mortality risk.
Grip strength is a stronger predictor of cardiovascular mortality than high blood pressure.
The strongest middle-aged adults have a 42% lower dementia risk.
Hip fractures alone kill 20–60% of older adults within a year—yet resistance training can lower fracture risk by 30-40%.
We cannot medicate our way out of what we have behaved our way into.
Focus on building strength and intensity—not just counting movement minutes.
Current guidelines focus too much on minimums and not enough on intensity. We need to increase weekly exercise recommendations to 300 minutes or more for moderate intensity exercise, emphasize HIIT as a primary strategy for metabolic and cardiovascular health, and recognize the impact of short, effortful movements like "exercise snacks" and vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA).
Strength training isn’t optional—it’s the foundation of long-term health and survival.
GMB with the 4 foundational crawling (locomotion) patterns offer HUGE bang for your exercise buck in pulling double, double-duty first in undoing the damage of daily life but further in offering strength, mobility, agility and aerobic benefits all at the same time.
…these exercises stimulate and build high levels of strength, flexibility, and body control, everything you need that most sport-specific, singular programs cannot fully cover.
MISCELLANEOUS
Recommendations reflect what I’ve been reading/listening to/watching/using recently but, in most instances, and especially where music is concerned, will not have been released in the past month.
MUSIC
BOOKS
TV
The Bear S3
APP
CLIP
Have a great weekend.
- OLI