💋 Pinecones & Satellites: The Theatre of Power (vol. 2)

30 Aug, 2025

i.
Smiling Assassins
In fragile hierarchies, the sharpest blades are often polished with concerned empathy.

I recently came across a fascinating series of studies about women who disguise negative gossip as concern.

Instead of hearing, "Sophie's a mess," you hear, "I'm so concerned about Sophie… she's been drinking a lot lately; I just hope she's okay." Translation: Sophie's spiraling. Pass it on.

The studies found that framing gossip as concern protects the speaker while quietly damaging the target, and that women who use this tactic are rated as more likable, more trustworthy, and more desirable as allies and partners.

This made no sense to me at all.

We all know people like this. Are they really...
...more likable? Ah, no.
...more trustworthy? Please.
...more credible allies or partners? Not a chance.

So what's going on here?

For most of human history, reputation was survival. In small, interdependent groups, exclusion meant losing access to resources, protection, belonging itself. Among women, where direct confrontation historically carried higher costs, indirect aggression evolved as one of the most effective forms of competition. Whisper networks, reputational sabotage, “bless-her-heart” concern aren’t random behaviors but evolved survival strategies.

And that's why they still work. W. David Marx argues in his excellent book, Status and Culture, that modern life runs on fragile hierarchies where every gesture is a signal, and every signal shapes your place in the ecosystem. "Concern" is the perfect disguise. It broadcasts empathy and virtue while quietly lowering the target's standing. What sounds like gossip is, in practice, strategic positioning, protection, ascension.

Findings be damned. I don't like people like this. They're dangerous. They're not trustworthy. And NO, they don't make great allies or partners. If she's taking an underhanded swipe at Sophie today, you're likely next on her list.

The trick with these types isn't to out-gossip them. You need fight their indirect aggression with smarter gamesmanship. The move is subtler, more Godfather-like: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Stay three steps back, clock her game, and never hand her the knife she'll use on you. Smile when she smiles. Offer warmth, generosity, even friendship. Let her believe you're inside her circle of allies. People who obsessively manage their reputations are easiest to handle when they think you're part of theirs.

Fragile hierarchies breed killers with kind eyes. The smiling assassin polishing her halo and sharpening her knife is dangerous because she actually believes that the wound is mercy. It is not.

So next time, when you see the weapon in the worry, step back before you're the next one cut.

ii.
Entangled: The New Geopolitik
AI isn’t one big noisy transformation; it’s four happening at once. Barely three years into perhaps the most significant tech epoch in human history, AI is already reshaping how we work, how we invest, how we power the world, and how nations compete. What makes this mess messier is that AI systems are now wiring into governments, corporations, energy grids, and geopolitik itself — systems never designed for technology that learns as it goes. We’re bolting something unpredictable onto structures that are, at best, unstable.

The winner-takes-all nature of AI is already on a collision course with a world of dying alliances and fast-spreading weaponized interdependence. For years the U.S. used choke points in finance, design, and information as levers of power. Over time others nations caught on. China moved on rare earths, supply chains, and energy. Slowly, then suddenly, the very interdependence that bound the global economy became a set of weapons pointed at each other’s throats.

The Germans called this Geopolitik. The grand strategy of geography, resources, and control. In the Cold War, it meant oil fields, nuclear arsenals, and naval games. Today it’s chips, code, cables, grids, and the rare earth minerals that keep them humming.

While China built an alternative tech stack around energy and semiconductors, the U.S. got caught flat-footed. Now we’re building the plane while flying it at 30,000 feet. For reasons both structural and stupid, we’ve drifted into conflict with our closest allies while cozying up to odd bedfellows. What once promised prosperity—integrated systems, aligned tech stacks, and shared supply chains—now carries the sharp edge of coercion.

The great irony is that in days past every leap in technology was sold as liberation: the bright lights of electricity, the magic of flight, the promise of the internet. And now, AI. But history shows us that every tool of connection eventually becomes a tool of control.

Welcome to the new geopolitik. Not maps and borders and oil wells and missiles, but networks and fabs and grids and code. The question now is whether we can survive our entanglements long enough to harness AI before it tears everything apart.

iii.
Backgammon's Ancient Dice, Modern Lessons
Backgammon has been played for thousands of years. On carved boards in ancient Mesopotamian courts, on mosaic floors in Roman villas, on café tables in Istanbul, on plastic sets balanced over a swimming pool chair. It’s one of the oldest enduring games we still bother to play.

But why is this? What makes it endure?

I'll start with this: I love backgammon with an obsessive ferocity. And I think others do too, not just for the clatter of the dice or the thrill of snatching a lucky roll, but for the way it braids opposites together. It’s simple enough to learn in a night, but complex enough to play for decades. It moves just fast enough for thrill-seekers, with just enough randomness for risk-takers. It’s a ruthless, zero-sum, winner-takes-all match, and yet, it’s also oddly companionable, two people locked in a similar rhythm, sharing the same board, watching fate unspool in real time.

But beneath it all, something deeper is at work. Play long enough and you realize that backgammon isn’t just a game, but a mirror on the unfolding of life itself.

• Patience pays.
• The game isn’t over until it’s over.
• Skill matters, but the dice decide.
• Luck can crown you or crush you in the same game.
• Have a plan, but every map bends when chance walks in.
• Strategy matters, but the dice will keep you honest.
• Every move opens and closes doors three rolls from now.
• Adaptation is survival. Pivot without losing your nerve.
• The only sight that matters is through the eyes of others. Without that, you know nothing.

Now when I play, I feel like I'm tapping into an ancient rhythm shared across millennia. One that says that life is equal parts wit and the roll of the dice.

#geopolitics #power #society & culture