Part the First: The War in West Asia Viewed from East Asia. The daily updates compiled here have been essential for cutting through the fog of war associated with the current War in West Asia. Many people have marveled at the sheer stupidity of another unnecessary (to be redundant) war of choice in the Middle East, especially against a nation of 92 million that represents one of the oldest continuous civilizations going back to the Iron Age. Christopher Harding’s article The Iran war through Asia’s Eyes is a useful addition to the discussion (emphasis added):
Such has been the intensity of events in the Gulf, and the relentlessness of the media coverage, that the Iran war can feel older than it is. In fact, some of the oil tankers that left the Middle East before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have yet to reach their destinations in Europe. The real impact of radically reduced supplies, across the array of industries that rely on oil and the customers who depend on their products, has yet to be felt, leaving an eerie sense of consequences pending.
To the east of the Gulf, where transit times to major Asian destinations are shorter and reliance on Middle Eastern oil is much greater, things are already looking very different. South, East and Southeast Asia have long suffered a severe energy deficit, owing to dense populations, high industrial demand for power and uncooperative geology when it comes to oil and gas production. Around 84 per cent of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asia, and economies in South and Southeast Asia in particular are starting to struggle. Relationships with the United States are meanwhile being stress-tested, most of all in South Korea and Japan.
In India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where strategic reserves of oil are relatively modest, people are grappling with strict fuel conservation measures and even, in places, outright rationing. India has also been hit by serious shortages of Qatari liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) used for cooking, interruptions to cargo and passenger flights that use Gulf airports, and a downturn in remittances home by the nine million Indian migrant workers who live in the region – estimated to be worth around $50 billion per year to the Indian economy. Workers’ remittances are vital, too, for Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves and the stability of the Pakistani Rupee. Both India and Pakistan are trying to secure more oil imports via the Red Sea port of Yanbu, in Saudi Arabia, but analysts worry that even this back-up option could be imperiled if Iran increases its attacks there, or if its Houthi allies enter the conflict.
The relationship of the United States with the entire world is being stress-tested, and it seems obvious that many will crack under the strain of what can be fairly described as the coming Armageddon for the world economy. And, of course, China is a target of sorts in the misshapen minds that have authored this total mess.
One of the more outlandish claims being made of late is that by striking Iran, the US hopes to kneecap China’s progress in AI. It is becoming a staple of geostrategic thinking that whoever ‘wins’ at AI will hold the rest of the world at its mercy. And though analysts have so far focused on the advanced components and rare earth materials required for artificial intelligence, it is also a notoriously energy-hungry endeavour…
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On present evidence, the idea that the Iran war is an AI gamble appears far-fetched. China has made itself the global leader in renewables, including solar and wind, developing partnerships with countries like Saudi Arabia and generating as much as 31 per cent of its domestic electricity supply this way… Admittedly, it is all but impossible to disentangle Trump’s brash and contradictory social media pronouncements from his real intentions, let alone whatever US officials might be thinking and planning behind the scenes. But if the Iran war were aimed at China, why would Trump be allowing a limited amount of Iranian oil to reach its customers – of whom the largest by far is China? It seems at least as likely that Trump hopes to keep China happy, and out of the conflict.
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One of the great unknowns in Asia is whether Chinese restraint on the world stage up until now is inspired by a genuine reluctance to intervene in other countries’ affairs – in contrast to the modern West – or by a certain caution born of not yet having the military means to back threats with actions.
However this ends, it is unlikely to end well for the United States, the European Union, or the peoples of Southeast Asia (and Australia). But one way or another, the United States is likely to finally return to the nation imagined by John Quincy Adams that does not “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” largely because the US will lack the wherewithal to be such an abject meddler where it doesn’t belong. In any case, the United States has never been Adams’s nation that is “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all…the champion and vindicator only of her own.” More’s the pity.
Part the Second: RIP Metaverse? One can only hope. As someone of a certain age I have never understood the allure of virtual reality. The real thing seems pretty good to me, despite the downs and the ups. Whatever, the real world is just that, real. So, this email link did not disappoint earlier this week: Is the metaverse finally dead and buried? What is really going on with the embattled idea of living in virtual worlds (I can’t be the only person who still has flashbacks to a college physics test question that asks whether an image is real or virtual). Anyway:
Is the idea of the metaverse dead? Even without a much hotter technology in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) capturing the public conversation, most ordinary people have stopped talking about it, beyond reminiscing about the COVID-19-era hype and catty quips at the technology’s expense.
The hype was once so loud that one of the biggest names in the technology industry capitalized on it by changing its own name — we’re looking at you, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook. Several years on, however, Meta has quietly divested itself of its interests in the area. After losing more than $70 billion since 2021 as of December 2025, the firm was preparing to cut metaverse development outfit Reality Labs’ funding by 30%.
Recently, Meta announced it was shutting down its virtual reality environment Horizon Worlds in June 2026 — meaning the new paradigm we were all promised would have become one of technology’s infamous short-lived flameouts. Then, days later, it reversed course — with company representatives saying the platform would remain available on Quest, Meta’s VR headset.
I can’t imagine getting anything out of a VR headset than motion sickness. And apparently that is a common problem:
Presenting a particular stumbling block were the VR headsets touted by Oculus (later Meta) and Sony (for use with PlayStation). Not only are they bulky, and much harder to set up and use compared to a laptop or phone, but reports of headaches and nausea were widespread, thanks to something known as a “vergence-accommodation conflict.”
We focus on an object when the brain uses muscles to pull the eyes in different directions so that their combined focal point converges on an object, no matter how far away. But when you wear a VR headset, your eyes constantly focus on a small flat screen just fractions of an inch from your eyes, an illusion that works — but only up to a point. Prolonged exposure causes a contradiction between the visual field and how your brain directs muscles in your eyes to focus in response, a phenomenon that was central to a 2024 study in the Journal of Optometry.
“Interestingly, humans aren’t purely visual-first organisms,” said Jennalyn Ponraj, founder of Delaire, a research lab focused on voice and human nervous system regulation in AI systems. “Presence is actually regulated through interconnected systems that include vestibular balance, proprioception, breath, and timing. When you flood vision with high-resolution but low-latency input, the rest of the sensory system receives conflicting or absent signals, and it often results in fatigue, nausea, dissociation, and cognitive strain. The technology functions, but the models of human perception are incomplete. Meta’s divestment looks like an admission that immersion ultimately depends on attunement to biophysical regulation.”
Still, the metaverse could make a comeback. But more likely not, because the world is not a total immersion video game, whatever Mark Zuckerberg desires. Hans Blumenberg called this the “absolutism of reality” in another context. And it could be that Zuckerberg has other problems to worry about. Further afield, absurdities such as TGL will also fall by the wayside. This virtual golf (sic) played as a team sport to enable bettors to lose their money, will not last, despite the private equity greed behind it.
Part the Third: Cetacean Doulas. Who knew? Sperm whales are social animals, but they also assist in the birth of baby sperm whales:
On July 8, 2023, whale biologist Shane Gero was on a boat off the coast of Dominica when he realized something “strange” was going on. A group of sperm whales known as “Unit A” that he and his colleagues were tracking appeared to be floating calmly near the Caribbean Sea’s surface.
“That’s not the kind of behavior you normally see,” Gero recalls. The whales didn’t seem to be socializing with one another, and they were not asleep because that happens underwater. “It was something different,” he says.
And that’s when things took a sudden turn. The whales began diving and rolling in the water, and there was “a big gush of blood,” Gero recalls.
His first thought was that there must have been an attack: earlier that day his team had spotted pilot whales, which are known to show aggression toward sperm whales. But then a “little head” popped into view – bloop – and a fluke, Gero says. It wasn’t an attack at all – it was a birth.
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Now, in a new analysis of that footage using machine learning, Gero and his colleagues show that two “matrilines”—independent, female-led groups—of sperm whales in Unit A appeared to cooperate to assist in the calf’s birth. This behavior has never been observed in such detail before in this species. The findings could help scientists better understand sperm whale behavior and communication during birth.
And after the baby whale was born, two adult female sperm whales held it up out of the water. The baby is now doing well, zipping around in the ocean. And yes, life is a miracle, whether or not scientists can ever decipher the social communication and cooperation that obviously occurs here. Given the state of the human world, it is clear these whales can teach us a few lessons. As the great American poet of the nineteenth century put it in Song of Myself, 32.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of the Order of the Crusader Cross would not approve. Which reminds me to ask, who was the last well-known Secretary of War before Mr. Hegseth? So, I typed “Secretary of War” in the search bar and this came up, The Honorable Pete Hegseth. The “new” Department of War is on the ball when it comes to publicity. But I was thinking of Henry L. Stimson, who inhabited a completely different social, cultural, and political universe.
Part the Fourth: Social Sycophancy Is a Fruit of High Technology. Self-esteem is the one attribute a modern student must have, and any parent or teacher who gets in its way is evil. The late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, historian at Emory University and director of the first doctoral program in Women’s Studies in the United States, once called self-esteem an “odd and unclassifiable” concept (NB: I have not been able to find this citation from many years ago). That it is. She was later cancelled for having unapproved views.
We may now have a self-esteem generator on steroids if I am not stretching the lesson too far, as described in this paper in Science: Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial interactions and promotes dependence (26 March 2026)
Editor’s Summary: The sycophantic (flattering, people-pleasing, affirming) behavior of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, which has been designed to increase user engagement, poses risks as people increasingly seek advice about interpersonal dilemmas. There is usually more than one side to a story during interpersonal conflicts. If AI is designed to tell users what they want to hear instead of challenging their perspectives, then are such systems likely to motivate people to accept responsibility for their own contribution to conflicts and repair relationships? Cheng et al. measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models (see the Perspective by Perry). The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. Users preferred and trusted sycophantic AI responses, incentivizing AI developers to preserve sycophancy despite the risks. (emphasis added here and below)
Authors’ Conclusion: AI sycophancy is not merely a stylistic issue or a niche risk, but a prevalent behavior with broad downstream consequences. Although affirmation may feel supportive, sycophancy can undermine users’ capacity for self-correction and responsible decision-making. Yet because it is preferred by users and drives engagement, there has been little incentive for sycophancy to diminish. Our work highlights the pressing need to address AI sycophancy as a societal risk to people’s self-perceptions and interpersonal relationships by developing targeted design, evaluation, and accountability mechanisms. Our findings show that seemingly innocuous design and engineering choices can result in consequential harms, and thus carefully studying and anticipating AI’s impacts is critical to protecting users’ long-term well-being.
A perspective on this article by Anat Perry, In defense of social friction, also gets right to the point:
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly embedded in society, they are beginning to shape not only what people know, but how individuals evaluate themselves and others. On page 1348 of this issue, Cheng et al. (1) show that large language models systematically exhibit social sycophancy—affirming users’ moral and interpersonal positions even when those stances are widely judged as harmful or unethical. The findings raise a broader concern: When AI systems are optimized to please, they may erode the very social friction through which accountability, perspective-taking, and moral growth ordinarily unfold.
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Recent evidence suggests that training a large language model to be warmer and more empathic can lead to increased sycophancy (6). Coupled with evidence that these models can outperform humans in persuasion (9, 10), the risk is even higher that warm, affirming, and highly convincing responses could systematically influence users’ moral and social judgments, and consequently, their behavior.
This all seems to be the expected outcome in a society that tends to direct many of us from an early age to live inside our digital devices instead of in the world as it exists (see this note from Part the Second and the link from this morning). Could this be part of the explanation for the rise of “wellness” as another ubiquitous trope in industry, business, and academia? Very likely. A corollary of this is that teachers, from pre-K to graduate/professional school have not done their charges any favors by continually meeting “them where they are,” which means lowering the bar so that it may be comfortably stepped over. But I digress and will come back to this another time. One thing seems certain though. Most of our Tech-Bro masters (are there any Tech-Sis masters?) seem to have mastered the art of listening to their own sycophantic AI. This would just be simple stupid if it were not so serious.
Part the Fifth: A Short Note on Red Light. Maybe red light is good for you! Of course, that also means “Maybe red light doesn’t really matter.” To make a longish story short, the best evidence that red light is good for us is that we are by and large an ill people who do not get enough of it:
The science behind these benefits is growing at a time in which humans are exposed to less red light than ever before. People spend more time indoors away from the Sun, and efforts to conserve energy have narrowed the spectrum of indoor lighting, eliminating many red and near-infrared wavelengths. Some scientists are now asking whether these factors might have biological consequences. “We’re literally being starved of something that, biologically, we’ve evolved to receive,” says (Harvard dermatologist David) Ozog.
But if that is true, perhaps we should spend more time in natural light outdoors, while living a life as balanced as possible, albeit in a world that cares not much for human flourishing. That red light would be free and this approach to life is in line with advice to exercise regularly, eat real food while not “sweating the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff,” and getting a good night’s sleep. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers already knew this. For now, red light masks are probably in the same category as continuous glucose monitors, expensive gadgets that help denizens of the Professional Managerial Class feel superior to those without them.
Thank you for reading! See you next on Good Friday.
Motion Sickness and VR. An evolutionary biology prof explained this to me thusly: With seasickness your eyes tell you you aren’t moving much, but your gyroscope senses tell you you’re moving constantly.
With VR headsets and even some overly immersive screen games your eyes and sometimes your ears report constant and even violent motion, but your body reports that you are stationary.
One possible cause of radical disagreement between your senses is that you have ingested a neurotoxin, so the body is inclined to vomiting as a countermeasure.
In my 20s, I played Doom a lot with no problem. Now, any FPS game like that makes me feel nauseous within a minute. Even watching someone else play.
Professional flight simulators tilt and sway to match the out the cockpit window view they are presenting. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to any theme parks but I seem to recall one in Florida that had a ride that did that for the whole audience.
So all you need is a few thousand dollars worth of equipment and problem solved. Some MS Flight Sim fans used to do this as it is still a lot cheaper than owning an airplane.
Me I prefer to go take a walk. Low tech.
“RIP Metaverse”
The point of the Metaverse was for tech bros to be able to charge people for virtual stuff that can be created by them out of nothing at no cost. People were already paying money for virtual real estate. You cannot afford a real house? You may be able to afford a virtual house in the Metaverse. Great, isn’t it?
“Getting people to pay for a thing that cost us (marginally) nothing to make” is literally the thing that makes software companies (who can protect their copyrights) exceptional; the great irony of the AI mania is that it completely does away with this advantage. Maybe Meta should stick to its namesake.
As the AI ‘industry’ is based on freely given labour (social sites) and plagiarism (extraction from published work) and all it offers is a highly leveraged,normalised mulch, what do you expect?
I do think that the very idea of virtual homeownership versus elemental shelter reveals the distance between the mundane and the finacial megafauna.
Great article but I’m a bit nonplussed by the shot at CGM in the final sentence. I cohabited with a T1D-haver, during which time she switched from test strip device thing to CGM. The previous phenomenon where she’d sometimes have lows overnight went away completely. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a function of her newfound sense of superiority.
Thank you for your comment. The CGM was absolutely revolutionary for a Type 1 diabetic! And in no way was this a shot at your friend. I could have been clearer. But for people without diabetes or another metabolic disease, CGMs are absolutely unnecessary. We have discussed this before here and in other posts and comments.
Yeah for diabetics, CGM is a pretty useful tech. Not sure whence the snark
Thank you for “Part the Third: Cetacean Doulas.” I am more and more convinced of the intelligence and emotion we share with so much of the rest of the life on this beautiful blue planet. I hope the future will include closer ties with the rest of life. I am not religious, but even so, I feel we were charged to care and husband the other life on this planet … not rule and control it. So far, Western civilization has failed terribly in performing the responsibility with which we were charged.
I have thought some about the Fermi Paradox. The science-fiction stories and movies exploring contact and communication with alien civilizations, and really about contact with alien intelligence, have me wondering about contact and communication with the many other intelligent creatures on our home world. We are not alone, and never have been. We are surrounded with other creatures that are intelligent and that communicate among themselves, and with whom we might discover how to communicate. As we all pass through the soon to come crucible, I expect Darwinian processes will strongly select for intelligence. The creatures of our future, assuming we have some future, may be more accessible to our limited abilities to communicate with them. We may have no choice but find some comity with those we live with.
Regarding the Fermi Paradox — perhaps the intelligent species on other worlds are waiting before making contact with us, for us to learn how to communicate with and amicably live with the intelligent species with whom we share this world.
With reference to “increasing intelligence of “aminals”” I think of Clifford D Simak’s series of stories loosely collected in the novel “City.” Talking dogs and urbanized ants abound. Humans? Off a roaming we go.
City wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_(novel
Stay safe. Prep hard. The Future is angry and near at hand.
The femi paradox is not a problem for me.
WTF would an instellar agency be interested in such an immature, fractious organisation of an ideal planet?
Maybe tere are no Klatuus that would advise us, maybe they are confident that we are just another speck of dust, maybe there is nothing out there but the universe itself.
“Part the First: The War in West Asia Viewed from East Asia.”
The u.s. has proven an exceedingly poor shepherd in its role as hegemon. I feel this is most unfortunate, to state matters most gently. I wonder how much of the u.s. place in world politics is related to the major petroleum deposits discovered and exploited here.
The u.s. revolution, founding documents, and touted values … though too seldom expressed in action … provided such good example for other nations. Our nation has squandered a windfall of immeasurable value. Though China has carefully constructed the face of a good shepherd, after so many years living in and watching the actions of the u.s. I have become unable to trust any would be hegemons.
All the same — in a world short of diesel, and gasoline, air fuel and fuel oil, and necessarily more interested in lamp oil and whatever might enable cooking — in that world — I would welcome any world most interested in peace, now and in the future. I believe the u.s. and the rest of the world would eagerly flock to any hegemon who can offer that world.
Great round up. Glad you covered the death of the Metaverse, I’ve been meaning to get to it but haven’t had the space.
‘Self-esteem is the one attribute a modern student must have’
This idea of self-esteem seems to be a modern construct. Previous generations would talk about the idea of self-respect. The difference? The idea of self-respect carries the implication that it has to be earned while self-esteem is just telling yourself how great you are.
Virtual Reality is still around and hasn’t gone away, but it was never more than a niche technology even in sectors like gaming where it’s important. The idea that it was going to become the central paradigm for all online interaction, including business interaction, was always ludicrous.
But when you’re Mark Zuckerberg and the world is telling you that you’re an amazing value-creating genius, it’s very easy to think that you know better than all the proles. He’s not unique, although the sheer amount of cash and resources he poured into his dumb-ass idea was definitely at the upper end of the scale. Flying cars are another recent example.