Long gallery
Quote of the Day
”One always learns more from ‘friendly critics’ than from uncritical friends.”
- Henry Kissinger, in a letter to Zbigniew Brzeziński
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Mavis Staples & Levon Helm | “The Weight”
Long Read of the Day
How Trump is dismantling democracy
Further to Noah Smith’s warning in Wednesday’s edition, this careful essay by Christina Pagel is a revealing dissection of what Trump & Co are up to.
Pagel is a formidable researcher who is Professor of Operational Research at UCL. She’s a mathematician with a PhD in space physics who applies operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to topics in healthcare. I first got to know about her during the Covid pandemic, when she became a member of the Independent SAGE group of experts which provided an informed commentary on decisions and analyses made by the Government’s own group of experts.
Since Trump was elected she’s been tracking every single decision, action or step the regime has taken which have implications for the survival of democratic processes and institutions. The result is a formidable spreadsheet, which itself is an amazing — and evolving — record of what’s going on.
It’s not just a list, though. She has an analytic framework which categorises 69 of the entries in the sheet and graphically represented them in this neat Venn diagram.
Screenshot
This is important because at the moment most people are so distracted by the performative circus tricks of Trump and his enablers — which are obediently reported (and therefore highlighted) by mainstream media — that they do not realise the comprehensiveness of the underlying authoritarian project. If you want an example of a useful contribution that academia could make to help citizens understand what’s really going on, then this would be hard to beat.
So many books, so little time
Screenshot
Given my interest in parallels between the 1930s and now, Kevin Cryan suggested I have a look at this.
From the reviews on Amazon:
Timothy Ryback has written an engrossing clock-ticker of a narrative about the behind-the-scenes machinations and open politicking that vaulted Hitler and the Nazi Party to power. Nothing was inevitable about their triumph, and plenty of contemporary observers were caught off guard by it, as Ryback shows to chilling effect. The relevance to authoritarianism today is urgent and unmistakable. Takeover is a vital read for anyone who cares about the future of democracy. — Margaret Talbot, staff writer, The New Yorker
If you ever thought that history is moved only by big, sweeping forces, whether of economics or creed or nature itself, think again. In this riveting, intimate account of the final months in Hitler’s rise to power, Timothy Ryback makes it plain that simple luck, bald ambition, and fallible human hearts can be drivers of earth-changing events. — Max Rodenbeck, Berlin bureau chief, The Economist
How does a flawed republic become something entirely different? We know how the Nazi regime ended, but we think too little about how it began. This admirable account shows us how fragile and avoidable were those beginnings and helps us to reflect upon our own predicament. — Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
Timothy W. Ryback tells a grippingly important tale. His meticulous detailing of the dramatic days before Hitler assumed power make for salutary reading in our times. Will the tragic failure of civil courage and political will be repeated – Germany 1933, America 2024? It’s hard not to imagine. — Philippe Sands
Note the reviewers. I’ve just bought it.
Chart of the Day
Screenshot
From The Pragmatic Engineer:
It is easy to assume that hiring solid engineers has never been simpler because fewer businesses are posting jobs and more engineers are competing for roles. But I’ve been talking with engineering managers, directors, and heads of engineering at startups and mid-sized companies, and got a surprise: they say the opposite is true!
In fact, many report that in 2025 they find it harder to hire than ever. This seems like a contradiction worth digging into, so that’s what we’re doing today, covering:
- Full-remote hiring approaches that used to work – but now don’t. Maestro.dev is hiring backend and mobile engineers and being swamped by “fake” candidates, and applications created by AI tools. It’s a struggle to find qualified engineers and raises the risk of making the wrong hire.
- Return of in-person interviews? A scaleup had to dismiss an engineer after two weeks when it emerged they’d cheated during their remote interview by using AI tools. Could episodes like this make the return of in-person interviews inevitable, even for full-remote companies?
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
Harvard to Award Trump Honorary Doctorate for Making its Approval Rating Soar
From Andy Borowitz:
CAMBRIDGE, MA (The Borowitz Report)—To show thanks for making its approval rating soar, Harvard University announced on Thursday that it would award Donald J. Trump an honorary doctorate.
The Ivy League institution, deeply despised by Americans since its founding in 1636, released a statement thanking Trump for his “game-changing service to Harvard.”
In the statement, Harvard said that it had received Trump’s biggest public relations boost since the one he bestowed on Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
“Donald J. Trump may not have built a wall with Mexico or annexed Canada,” the statement read. “But he has done something far more monumental: made Americans like Harvard.”
This Blog is also available as an email three days a week. If you think that might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays delivered to your inbox at 5am UK time. It’s free, and you can always unsubscribe if you conclude your inbox is full enough already!