The economics of thinness and other quotations

"Anyone who takes a sure road is as good as dead." Carl Jung

"Brunettes are full of electricity." Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

"Rich women are much thinner than poor women but rich men are about as fat as poor men." The Economist, Dec 20th 2022 The economics of thinness

"Europe doesn't matter anymore. You know, Europe is basically a giant museum.” John Mearsheimer

“Had the United States and its allies not moved to bring Ukraine into NATO in April 2008 ... there probably would be no war in Ukraine today... The West made a colossal blunder, which it and many others are not done paying for.” John Mearsheimer

Max Abrahms

@MaxAbrahms

·

Jul 10

I can certainly showing you hundreds of stories with high expectations of the counteroffensive, Mearsheimer saying it won’t go well because of artillery, him getting mocked and then loads of stories saying you know what artillery is a non-trivial problem. No need to wait.

"In 2008, the U.S. announced plans to bring certain non-Baltic republics of the former Soviet Union—notably Ukraine and Georgia—into NATO and the American sphere of influence. Should Ukraine prevail in this proxy war the U.S. will have succeeded, in a way. But it will have done so at an almost unspeakable price. It will have undermined the international economic architecture on which rests its control of global markets (and its ability to safely run government deficits). It will have carried out a shotgun wedding of Russia and China, forcing the most natural-resource-rich country on the planet into the arms of the West’s most dangerous adversary. Should Ukraine fail, the Ukraine policy of the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations will be counted among the significant foreign policy blunders in American history." Christopher Caldwell

"The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe," Nixon explained. "Latin America doesn't matter. Long as we've been in it, people don't give one damn about Latin America, Don." Stay away from Africa, too, Nixon warned. As for the Middle East, getting involved there carried too many potential hazards for a politician. "People think it's for the purpose of catering to the Jewish vote," Nixon told Rumsfeld. "And anyway, there's nothing you can do about the Middle East."
James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (2003)

If only Rumsfeld had followed this good advice. Let's all ignore the Middle East now. 

“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all,” Bishop Américo Aguiar, head of World Youth Day (WYD) Lisbon 2023