A Real Version of Risk, the Strategy Game

SEASONED NUTS: QUOTABLE
 

“Study the past if you would define the future.” – Confucius

 
 
 
IN A NUTSHELL: MUST READ
 

No More Playing Around: President Trump was bored with his current game of Risk and has decided that he no longer wishes to play, so he withdrew the United States from joint military war games with South Korea. The halting of war games was laid out as a treaty agreement with North Korea, which took most politicians and foreign ambassadors by surprise. Joint military exercises between the two countries were scheduled for August, but Trump has called for a full cancellation despite advisors suggesting a scaled back tabletop exercise … much like Risk. (NYT)

Secretary of Defense Mattis has spoken, and it seems that Trump’s “successful summit” may not be as successful as Trump first claimed. There have been no reported attempts made by North Korea in dismantling their nuclear arsenal, and since no negotiations have been made thus far, there is no expectation of further actions to take place. A date has not been scheduled for the next meeting, but Mattis’s counterpart at the State Department thinks that the meeting will likely take place soon. (Guardian)

China hosted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for two days, and the meeting between the leaders bore the fruit expected at the US-Korea Summit. Third time’s the charm for the two leaders, as “peace talks” occurred in Beijing. Both countries had statements praising the efforts of the other in working toward peace and “opening a new future” on the Korean peninsula. (Reuters)

 
 
 
MIXED NUTS: QUICK TAKES ON WORLD NEWS
 

– US lobbyist Adam Waldman has reportedly visited Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange nine times through the 2017 year. His main client is Russian metal tycoon Oleg Deripaska, but there is no known connection between Assange and Deripaska. (Guardian)

– Plagiarism is bad – an elementary school lesson which is now being taught to companies operating in Europe. The European Parliament has created stricter copyright laws; these policies of revenue sharing and copyright liabilities target tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, in an attempt to reign in their market power. (Reuters)

– The Land Down Under is feeling a little under the weather about the state of the world, and more specifically President Donald Trump. A recent poll shows growing numbers of Australians who feel uneasy about world peace and a decreasing number of people who trust that the US will make the right choices under the Trump administration. (NYT)

– Blocking out Chinese corporations is nothing special nowadays. Much like Shaq protecting the rim, many developed countries such as the United States and England are battling China’s corporations for control over domestic markets. This is mostly due to fear of Chinese takeovers of the global economy. (NYT)

– Families will no longer be separated following Trump’s announcement of an executive order stopping the “zero tolerance” policy on immigration. Details have not emerged on how immigration will be dealt with or how detention will be handled. (NPR)

 
 
 
NUTS AND BOLTS: SHOULD READ
 

Immigration Divides Germany and Europe: Germany faces an old school coup as political strife over migration policies divides the nation. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has members of her own party undermining her immigration policy she set up during her first three terms. Germany has held an open door policy toward migrants, but recently, the large numbers of migrants have clogged borders and immigration offices. German politicians are now looking to enact new legislation which would close the doors to people seeking asylum, but Merkel believes that this would cause a large-scale collapse in European unity.

Merkel has sought an emergency European Union meeting on the issue of migration. The EU meeting will look at possibly spreading the responsibility of hosting migrants throughout the twenty-eight countries. Skeptics have placed their doubts that asylum seekers will be welcomed to all the countries as Germany has done. If that is the case, Merkel will be facing even greater political heat.

 
 
 
KEEPING OUR EYE ON
 

Funding War By Supporting the Infidels’ Babies: American and Europeanconsumers are unwittingly helping to fund terrorists in Afghanistan when they buy a very innocent commodity – baby powder – according to a report by the advocacy group Global Witness. Islamic State fighters are reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars from the illegal mining of talc, which is used in many products from paint to baby powder. Most of the nearly 500,000 tons of talc exported from Afghanistan went to Pakistan, which re-exports it to the US and the EU.

All Cats Go To Heaven: Think Pet Sematary, but for your old robot dog. A-Fun, an electronics repair company, has been keeping those Japanese Aibos (Artificial Intelligence Robots) “alive” since Sony quit making them in 2006. In the seven years Aibos were produced, some 150,000 were sold. So the originals would be nearly 20 years old. That’s 140 in robot-dog years, so you know some “rejuvenation” was necessary along the way. (Think any Hollywood actor.)

Fortunately, the compassionate owners of dead robodogs understand that the only way A-Fun can get genuine parts to use in repairs is if their dearly departed become “organ donors” for what is, so sadly, a dying breed.

A-Fun CEO Nobuyuki Norimatsu is himself so compassionate that he will never send someone’s pet to robodog nirvana without a proper farewell. That’s why 114 beloved robopets were given a Buddhist send-off earlier this year at a ceremony at Japan’s 450-year-old Kofukuji Temple, complete with wafting incense smoke and a chanting priest “praying for the peaceful transition of the souls of the departed.” Norimatsu promises: “We don’t take parts before we hold a funeral for them.” A lot has changed since Old Yeller. (NPR)

 

 
 
 
LOOSE NUTS: FASCINATING NEWS
 

– “Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet: Xi Jinping wants to wrest control of global cyber governance from the market economies of the west.” (The Atlantic)

– “America’s Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb: A new report reveals rising rents and surging inequality — and it’s only going to get worse. (HuffPost)

– “Arundhati Roy: ‘The point of the writer is to be unpopular’: The acclaimed author and activist answers questions from our readers and famous fans on the state of modern India, the threat of AI, and why sometimes only fiction can fully address the world” (Guardian)

– “On a stage in San Francisco, IBM’s Project Debater spoke, listened and rebutted a human’s arguments in what was described as a groundbreaking display of artificial intelligence.” (BBC)

– “Best films of 2018 so far: The very best of 2018, from Black Panther rewriting the rules for superheroes, Gary Oldman going to war as Churchill, and Maxine Peake blazing her way through 70s sexism” (Guardian)

LAST MORSELS

“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.” – Napoléon Bonaparte

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” – George S Patton

 

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