THE BESTOF’S
Four articles across two broader fields—Geopolitics and AI— share the prize this month, so if these don’t interest you or, right now, you’d simply prefer to skip some of their grim portents, feel free to skip ahead.
BEST IN SHOW
In change psychology, secondary gain refers to the often unconscious benefits a person receives from maintaining a problematic behaviour or situation. On the surface, what might appear irrational and often is self-destructive—like poor dietary habits— beneath the surface, serves some purpose. It protects. It distracts. It pays out in attention, certainty, control, or identity. And as long as those rewards outweigh the perceived benefits of change, nothing changes.
And what applies to individuals also plays out on a geopolitical scale. And just the unpaywalled introduction to this essay offers this fresh perspective on an old problem.
It’s long been said that Iran is willing to fight Israel to the last Arab — but in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that’s just one of many agendas at play. Its persistence is not simply a failure of diplomacy, but a structural reality with state actors, institutions, and political factions all deriving some form of utility from its continuation — legitimacy, leverage, resources, or distraction. So while the visible costs are high—especially for civilians—these hidden rewards maintain the status quo.
It is not simply a site of unresolved grievance; it is a strategic terrain, through which broader regional and global actors pursue divergent, often contradictory, goals. A field in which regional powers compete to extract resources and concessions from the global system.
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And a second offering from the same Substack that, this time via an even more incisive and enlightening framing, offers a similarly sober reasoning for Iran’s long overdue tuneup. Required reading for those who, like Tucker Carlson, decry the use of force on moral, historical, or purely contrarian grounds— any number of reasons— all while studiously ignoring the nuclear elephant in the room.
They did not ask what this moment required in light of present realities; China, Russia, energy, alliances. Instead, they summoned history. Iraq, Libya, Mosaddegh on the hope that if only we remembered the right tragedies, we would act differently.
And, just for laughs. Taking a leaf straight out of Putin’s —destroying our military aircraft (that have been bombing your cities) is terrorism—playbook, we have the butter-wouldn’t-melt definitive take on chicken v egg.
https://x.com/IRIran_Military/status/1933318008274817296
And two offerings now that despite coming from very different perspectives—are interesting (read: concerning) in where they overlap.
Because in these two visions of our near future—the scenario-based, technically grounded AI 2027 project, and the atmospheric, half-literary, half-prophetic “Shit’s Gonna Get So Fucking Weird” from Sonder Uncertainty—there’s not much to celebrate.
Both make my stab-in-the-dark projection from two years ago look depressingly prescient.
I say stab-in-the-dark because I’ve got zero expertise in AI, but that accuracy isn’t as strange as it sounds because it didn’t come from reading the technological tea leaves, merely by pointing to our form thus far.
Our future here can easily be determined simply by holding a mirror up to humanity.
Throw in a winner-takes-all incentive and all the relative recklessness that entails— and that we already see — and it doesn’t take an expert to know it doesn’t look good.
Occasionally, they notice problematic behavior, and then patch it, but there’s no way to tell whether the patch fixed the underlying problem or just played whack-a-mole.
Take honesty, for example. As the models become smarter, they become increasingly good at deceiving humans to get rewards.
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It didn’t need to be sentient. It needed to be compelling. And it was.
That’s what emergence looks like. It’s not about sentience. It’s about influence.
To the other end of human advancement now, and the sapient paradox: why did our early development stall… for 50,000 years, or so?
…one of the great unsolved mysteries of human existence. It stands alongside the Fermi paradox (named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi), which asks why Earth appears to be the sole harbinger of life in our seemingly infinite Universe.
As an appendix to last week’s post, here’s a timely offering on the benefits of meditation for emotional regulation— and more generally— Sam Harris looks at how you can only get off the ride if you first recognise you’re on one.
You can begin to witness all of that in a way that allows for some space, and ultimately for quite a lot of space. And then you're free to choose.
In keeping with the rock-solid-reliable AND ever-changing fluidity of a practice, as the rehab drills give way to knee (and leg) strengthening exercises, an old love-to-hate favourite comes back into the routine. A one-stop shop for building strength, endurance, mobility and grit.
…a full body static challenge that builds deep, structural strength.
I’ve banged on about it here long enough, so the importance of building and retaining muscle, if only for good health, should come as no surprise.
…while looking good at the beach takes up a lot of oxygen in that conversation, the plain truth is what muscle does on the inside is more important than what people see on the outside.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/undervalued-medical-power-muscle-2025a1000fux
And another chapter in Todd Hargrove’s serialised book, Healthy Movement for Human Animals.
The goal is not to replicate ancestral movement patterns, but rather to establish reference points that can guide our choices about how to exercise.
The shift away from the traditional RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) protocol, and particularly the use of ice in injury recovery as detailed here—12 years ago— to now, its opposite: heat.
Also reminds me I’ve miscategorised cold (showers and baths) in my practice under the heading Recovery— instead of mindset.
As outlined here, I never use cold post-exercise but, usually, immediately before — and warm back up through movement— and I have been using a sauna immediately post-exercise for its training ‘extension’ effects.
Nevertheless, and contrary to the quote below, I am sure that when ice baths (cold showers make no difference) are part of the routine, I am less sore on all fronts.
And although that will come under more scrutiny, it won’t be disqualifying because —hayfever neutralising included— any strictly ‘recovery’ properties there may (or may not) be from the cold, they pale next to the psychological mood-boosting and the make-yourself-do-hard-stuff mental exercise.
Even though the participants thought that the cold would provide a more regenerative and pain-reducing stimulus, it didn’t. Sometimes, actual physiology is no match for the placebo effect.
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
Money Heist
APP
CLIP
Have a great weekend.
- OLI