THE BESTOF’S
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NS Lyons takes the chocolates this month, revealing how managerial capture has hollowed out democratic function, jamming the gears of government and replacing meaningful accountability with performative politics.
Elections have become theatre — of little more consequence than those staged under authoritarian regimes.
Now with one notable exception: the USA.
This is not an endorsement of Trump’s personality or policies, but a recognition of the rupture he represents to the seamless continuity of managerial governance.
Trump is certainly no solution — only a symptom. When policy remains unchanged despite elections, when public servants covertly (or brazenly) defy or stonewall the elected, and when voters see that nothing really changes — you don’t just get someone like Trump. You get what comes after.
If there’s any positive to Trump in this regard, it’s that he can’t see past himself; nonetheless, he’s paving the way for somebody more malign with greater ambitions.
In countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK— all variations of the Westminster system— our electoral systems are more insulated, offering fewer avenues for outsider disruption, but that pressure doesn’t go away. As Lyons describes, managerialism breeds reaction.
And when the ballot box stops working, people will look to other levers.
…real power is diffused across faceless bureaucracies, nameless processes, and numberless so-called “non-governmental” institutions, obfuscated by a façade of empty public rituals and the meaningless rhetoric of legalism.
It’s also symptomatic of the societal left-brain takeover, as Iain McGilchrist warned in The Master and His Emissary, with the triumph of narrow rationality over embodied, value-laden understanding. A left hemisphere dominance—analytical, utilitarian, and detached—with the right hemisphere’s correspondingly diminished role in connecting us to meaning, depth, and the transcendent, leaving a flattened human experience marked by anxiety, disconnection, and spiritual impoverishment.
Perhaps because modern Scientific Man has unilaterally disarmed himself. In exchange for the promise of autonomy, he liberated himself from his own inner strength, internalizing the technological in its place. He fashioned himself into a cold calculator and a scoffer of values, but now knows neither strong loves nor higher vision; neither a burning passion for lasting worldly glory nor a confident faith in the immortality of his soul… only the constant anxiety of a herd animal.
Until Western nations reckon with the reality that governance, at every level, has been supplanted by administration, something wicked this way comes.
And then to really put me in a bad mood this month, an article about a new book that contains a lot of wisdom, although nothing you haven’t been hearing here since 2010. The fact that this is still news is not the problem, it was when it went from good to bad.
Why do you think the fitness industry doesn't promote weight training more for women? And what does that say about the ingrained misogyny within it?
Given publishing is fighting it out with academia for the most ideologically infected industry there is, it’s entirely possible this angle was a prerequsite, but give me a fucking break.
You’re on the wrong end of something here, but it’s not a power struggle.
Firstly, you well know I am no fan of the fitness industry, but if it gets anything right, it’s that, as a rule, it’s full of men imploring women to lift weights for every fitness and broader health reason there is, aesthetics included.
And, if you want to be super cynical about it— why wouldn’t we? - it doubles the resistance training market.
Meanwhile, you have flat-out charlatans like Tracy Andersen and her heavy-weights-make-you-bulky bullshit, misguiding millions via an all-women crew of celebrity mouthpieces who have the gullible believing it’s not their genetics they have to thank but Tracy, and always served up with a side of ‘girl power’ no less.
And the little better —also overwhelmingly female— yoga and Pilates studios pedalling their ‘toned’ and ‘muscle lengthening’ nonsense.
Does Pilates make you look like a dancer, or do dancers do Pilates?
Correlation is not causation.
Secondly, the article title gets it right— the diet industry doesn’t want you to know about weightlifting. And the diet industry, as a rule, is women lying to other women for money. Even when they don’t need the money. Like Oprah. And Scary Spice. Like Anderson’s stable of talking heads.
If there’s misogyny here, it’s not coming from barbell bros but from billion-dollar brands that infantilise women, lie to them, and shop it back to them as empowerment.
One of the problems with fighting imaginary monsters is that they distract you from the real ones. If you want to fight the power, you go, girl.
But first, know your enemy.
Speaking of which… finally some good news with news that the flagship of dietary deceivers described above has sunk.
But it’s not all good news. I mean, it would be nice to think it was we wised up to the fact that cycle after cycle of caloric restriction will only, can only, mean the steady loss of lean muscle and correspondingly more fat gain.
Sadly, no. It’s because they failed to keep pace with more convenient weight loss options.
Meaning drugs.
And while the jury is still out here, we already know what convenience gets you.
But it’s not the end for WW, apparently, with the bankruptcy purely to rub off the pesky barnacle of massive debt, before reemerging as the same WW, or whatever the hell it’s called, we know and love.
During the bankruptcy process, its massive amount of debt will be eliminated, and it expects to emerge in about 40 days as a publicly traded company. Operations for its members will continue as normal, it said.
“The decisive actions we’re taking today, with the overwhelming support of our lenders and noteholders, will give us the flexibility to accelerate innovation, reinvest in our members, and lead with authority in a rapidly evolving weight management landscape,” said CEO Tara Comonte in a release.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/06/business/weight-watchers-bankruptcy?
In the first of a Finnish double-header, it’s a look at some of the reasons why, even in the shadow of a huge threat— and the dark, and the cold— the Finns still manage to be the happiest people on Earth.
And, I would suggest, not coincidentally.
Beginning with the benefits of being uncomfortably hot and cold.
There is a specific phrase for the blissful drowsiness associated with time spent in a heated box (saunanjälkeinen raukeus) and a specific elf (Saunatonttu) thought to live between a sauna’s wall and heating apparatus. The elf becomes angry if a sauna door is slammed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/magazine/finland-happiest-country.html
The small matter of invasion aside, firing missiles and drones into apartment blocks, medical centres and a theatre marked ‘CHILDREN’, are all fair game in Putin’s special operation, but when Ukraine, in a master stroke, targets the same aircraft that have been hitting their cities daily for the last three and a half and leaving a third of them smoking on the tarmac—that’s ‘a terrorist attack.’
None of us is truly safe from this whackjob, but imagine living right next door. And with an increasing Russian military buildup on the Finnish border, now forecasting his next foray into Europe.
Or feint. Because maybe he’s not that crazy. Not just because this would mean a showdown with NATO, but in light of the difficulties faced in Ukraine, although far smaller, Finland will be a much tougher nut to crack.
But this is not about geopolitics, but a defensive posture that is equally important for psychological health as safeguarding the physical.
Firstly — and Albanese might take note following his foolish rebuff of the Trump administration, similarly advising the Pacific, as it did Europe, to pull their defensive weight: Hope is not a strategy.
And without America, where Australia is concerned, vain hope about covers it.
Inside the Most Prepared Country on Earth explores the Finns’ extensive preparations, underscoring a proactive, collective approach to national security and demonstrating that— as for the individual— self-defence at a national scale is less a desired quality than a required one.
Even in the face of an existential threat.
Which is in no way to suggest these efforts are ornamental. Only that when such a threat has such little regard for life, including that of its own, it’s less about winning or losing than in doing what you can.
And when you’ve done that, what else is there to worry about?
Not much, if the Finns are to be believed.
And from resistance to non-resistance. I’ve covered it here, here, here, here, and here and today Raptitude makes the case for cold showers as a beginner’s guide to learning the difference between can’t and won’t.
As long as an aversion is treated like a real, non-negotiable boundary, it might as well be a stone wall.
https://www.raptitude.com/2025/05/how-to-walk-through-walls/
PN with everything you need to know about processed foods, offering a nutritional middle ground, helping you to see food as a spectrum— rather than good or bad. And that should sound familiar.
The excellent Bio/Acc Substack on the non-negotiables should sound very familiar.
You can choose to chase endless distractions and optimization complexities while your foundation erodes. You can seek pharmaceutical interventions and elaborate biohacks to patch widening cracks in a system failing from fundamental neglect.
Or you can acknowledge the immutable truth of your biological contract.
As will the introduction to Todd Hargrove’s book Healthy Movements for Human Animals, closely mapping the Leftfield philosophy and holistic approach (refreshingly) centred around giving the body what it needs with a focus on movement quality and awareness, and personalised strategies that promote sustainable, long-term health.
We tend to neglect the vast oceans of information about human nature that are embedded in our bodies and revealed through our movements and physical perceptions.
And the BowTiedOx on the importance of purposeful training over random or habitual workouts, structured progression and mindful execution.
Don’t rush to see the result—build the conditions that guarantee it.
Bio/Acc again on resetting your master clock.
When the alignment between internal circadian clock and external environment breaks, negative biological consequences cascade through your entire system. This circadian mismatch isn't merely about poor sleep. It's systemic dysregulation affecting virtually all physiological processes
Don’t sweat the small stuff— and it’s all small stuff.
Richard Carlson
Take a flight—you can click, hold, and drag on the video to steer— through the known universe and the most detailed galaxy map ever created.
And if you’re not already feeling small enough, remember that what you see are not stars but galaxies, many of which contain hundreds of billions of stars —our Sun being one of 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone.
[I would either turn the volume down or put on some Hans Zimmer because the music isn’t doing it any favours]
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
As you can see above I’ve been reading far more on Substack lately than any books of note, with this being the exception. An incredible story, beautifully written.
TV
Mad Men
APP
CLIP
Have a great weekend.
- OLI