ANTIFRAGILE

The 16th book in the Castalia Library subscription (May-June) is ANTIFRAGILE, by bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s arguably Taleb’s most important book, given the challenges presented in this day and age, and I consider it to be an absolutely essential read.

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

NN Taleb

If you are a May-June subscriber, you will receive ANTIFRAGILE when it is produced. If you wish to buy a copy but do not have a subscription, you will have to either a) subscribe or b) wait until the books are bound and the unsold portion of the print run goes on sale. A limited print run of 900 Library and 100 Libraria editions of ANTIFRAGILE will be bound.

Also, for the first time, Castalia House is offering an individual deluxe, leather-bound edition as part of the Castalia Library that is not included in the Library subscription. This is Taleb’s first bestseller, THE BLACK SWAN, which is available at the subscription price for subscribers using the subscription discount code. Please note that the image on the page is merely a placeholder, as we have not yet designed the cover or the spine of the Library edition. A Libraria edition is also available.

A limited print run of 900 Library and 100 Libraria editions of THE BLACK SWAN will be bound. Both books will be part of a four-volume deluxe INCERTO collection.

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You Can’t Fight the Market

Even mighty Amazon has finally been forced to submit to the inexorable forces of the market:

Amazon quietly updated its help documentation to state that Kindle devices will start supporting EPUB files.

There’s a catch, though. “Beginning in late 2022, Send to Kindle applications will support EPUB (.EPUB) format,” says the document. This means you’ll be able to send EPUB files to your Kindle via Amazon’s handy Send to Kindle system, which essentially lets you upload documents to your Kindle by emailing them to your Kindle email address. It’s unclear, however, whether Kindles will natively support EPUB files, allowing you to purchase ebooks from Amazon’s library in the EPUB format directly.

This is a big deal for everyone who owns a Kindle and isn’t completely reliant on Amazon’s library. Until now, you had to manually convert EPUB files into MOBI (or another format) to load them onto your Kindle, and this often brought additional issues as the conversion wasn’t always perfect.

Also, the news is notable for the sheer fact that Amazon avoided supporting the otherwise widely supported EPUB format for nearly 15 years (EPUB is an open standard that originally launched in September 2007).

Additionally, Amazon’s document says that – also in late 2022 – its Send to Kindle system will stop supporting MOBI files (ironically, MOBI was Amazon’s long-preferred standard, and the company has its own version of MOBI called AZW).

It certainly took them long enough to accept the inevitable. But it’s a very powerful lesson in learning not to fight the market. It is said that the heart wants what it wants, regardless of what logic dictates, and the same is true of the market. The sooner any entrepreneur or business accepts this reality, the less likely it is to make unnecessary and unforced errors.

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Rumors of Roe v Wade

A draft legal opinion written by Alito that indictes the Supreme Court has decided to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion has reportedly been leaked:

The US Supreme Court looks set to overturn a landmark ruling that effectively legalised abortions across America, handing the power to decide whether or not to permit the procedure back to individual states.

A draft legal opinion, which was leaked to Politico, reveals a majority of the court’s nine judges are in agreement on the issue which would be enough to force a change in the law – though their decision is not final until the ruling is officially published.

In the document, Justice Samuel Alito writes that Roe v Wade – the 1973 Supreme Court ruling which found that excessive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional – was ‘egregiously wrong from the start’ and ‘must be overruled’.

If the ruling is overturned, it would give individual states the power to decide on whether to ban abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group, has said that 26 states are ‘certain or likely’ to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Alito, who was nominated to the court in 2006 by George W Bush, also takes aim at another 1992 case – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – which upheld Roe’s findings.

He argues that Roe’s ‘reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. Far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.’

If the leak proves to be genuine – and the Supreme Court has not denied that it is – it would mark the first time that a draft opinion has ever appeared in public before being officially published, a move expected within the next two months.

This may or may not be legitimate, but I tend to suspect it is, because it’s exactly the sort of document some idiotic female clerk would feel justified in leaking in a desperate attempt to somehow prevent the decision from being published.

And the leak it’s real, it’s long past time to get rid of the evil, idiotic, and fictional “emanations and penumbras” that were invented by the Warren Court. It’s certainly going to be difficult for anyone to convincingly make the “my body, my choice” argument any longer after two years of vaccine mandates. The overturning of Roe v Wade would also prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Donald Trump was the best U.S. president since Andrew Jackson.

Next, do “posterity”.

UPDATE: Based on the reactions of former Supreme Court staff, it sounds as if the leak is real.

Just spoke with former Supreme Court clerk. They are horrified. This is a quote:

“This leak has to come from a clerk or Justice themselves. It is intended to blow up the court. Criminal investigation needs to happen now.”

They suggest Sotomayor has most radical leftist staff.

UPDATE: It wasn’t a woman, it was a Fake American.

Amit Jain, a clerk for Justice Sotomayor, is reported to be the individual responsible for leaking Justice Alito’s draft opinion.

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You Don’t Say

The former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO says the quiet part out loud.

“I think we are in a proxy war with Russia. We are using the Ukrainians as our proxy forces.”

Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Minister let a little something slip out too.

“So what if Zelenskyy is Jewish? The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood. It means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people said that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”

Wait, what?

Oh, that’s right. Of course Hitler is Jewish. After all, we’re all one race, the human race.

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China Prepares for Decoupling

Recent Chinese actions on the financial front make it appear stage two of the Great Bifurcation is incoming, and it looks as if it’s going to be on a scale much larger than most observers of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict were prepared to believe.

The Chinese government reportedly held an internal conference with officials from foreign and local banks as the nation seeks to protect overseas assets from US sanctions over potential military tensions in Taiwan. The meeting between officials from China’s Central Bank and Finance Ministry, as well as executives from foreign and domestic lenders, was held on April 22, FT reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the discussion.

“If China attacks Taiwan, decoupling of the Chinese and western economies will be far more severe than [decoupling with] Russia, because China’s economic footprint touches every part of the world,” one of the people briefed on the meeting told the media.

Chinese officials are reportedly worried that penalties similar to those imposed on Russia over the military operation in Ukraine could be introduced against China in the event of a regional military conflict or other crisis.

China summons banks over sanctions fears, 1 May 2022

I very much doubt that the Chinese officials are worried in the slightest. They have clearly intended the break with the neo-liberal financial system for at least a decade, it’s only the preferred timing that is unknown. For me, the only serious question here is whether the Chinese will wait for the neo-liberal financial order to make a partial break in reaction to something, as per the article, or whether they prefer to make a preemptive break themselves. The evidence of prior Chinese behavior, including the erection of the Great Firewall of China, tends to indicate the latter, especially since their ability to choose the timing of the decoupling would permit the Chinese to create maximum disruption in the West while minimizing the disruption to the East.

Furthermore, the delicacy of the Russians in pursuing the moral and rhetorical high ground has gone mostly unrewarded, so there isn’t much tangible benefit to the Chinese in being able to proclaim that they are being further victimized by the imperialist colonial forces. A preemptive move would not only be materially beneficial, but would also be a powerful psychological blow to a Western elite that perceives itself to be dictating reality by calling all the shots.

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