Cooperation, not competition, is the key to the advancement of the human race. Competition is the law of the jungle.
Big Think, Eric Markowitz, 7 May 2026: How helping your rivals makes you harder to beat, subtitled “A counterpoint to zero-sum thinking from Japan.”
I’ll just quote the Key Takeaways:
• After an earthquake destroyed their town in 1925, rival innkeepers in Kinosaki, Japan, rebuilt it as a single shared inn. They’re still in business today.
• Japan has more century-old companies than anywhere on earth, perhaps because they operate on a different assumption: Survival depends on the health of the system around you, including your competitors.
• In 1997, Ryuzaburo Kaku, the honorary chairman of Canon, described the concept of Kyōsei — Japanese for “living together” — as a five-stage path of cooperation, beginning with self-sufficiency and extending outward to workers, competitors, and the broader systems in which a business operates.
The essay goes on to expand on the original incident, and how Japanese culture has evolved.
This reminds me of a piece of advice I read somehow about how to deal with your antagonists. At work, or wherever. Do them a favor.
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*This* is how you rig an election. You redistrict your opponents out of existence.
The Bulwark, Tim Miller, 8 May 2026: Adam Serwer: Now, This Is Rigged
Tennessee just completely disenfranchised its black voters after the Supreme Court gave red states the green light to rig the midterms by redistricting black majority districts out of existence—as long as lawmakers pretend they don’t see color when they’re doing it. And while partisan gerrymandering is A-OK with Alito & co., it apparently is not alright for Democratic voters in Virginia to do anything like that to Republicans. Sure sounds like the free speech rules of the Trump administration, where people are free to say what Republicans want said.
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Briefly.
- JMG, from Daily Beast, today: MAGA Pastor: Trump Knows Bible Better Than The Pope
- I guarantee you he does not. Trump doesn’t know *anything* about the Bible. What Jeffries means is that Trump aligns with the tribal instincts of Christians more than the Pope does. As always, JMG reminds us of what this guy has said in the past, mostly about how Satan is to blame for everything that he himself doesn’t like.
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- (Is RFK Jr. having a spell?)
- Washington Post, today: RFK Jr.’s crusade against hospital Jell-O is a warning, subtitled “The only thing worse than hospital food is hospital food picked by D.C. bureaucrats.”
- An ongoing story. If people get SNAP benefits, the government should be able to tell them how to spend those benefits, conservatives say.
- What happened to the idea ‘limited’ government? They seem happy to micromanage peoples’ diets.
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- Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, yesterday: Hate-preacher Greg Locke admits lying about Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland
- Subtitled: After years of accusing pastors and celebrities of horrific crimes, the conspiracy theorist now says he never had the evidence he claimed to possess
- A Christian hate-preacher lying? Call me completely unsurprised.
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- JMG, Kyle Mantyla, 8 May 2026: TX State Rep. Brent Money Says His Role As A Legislator Is ‘To Do What God Wants’
- No. He’s precisely wrong. He doesn’t understand his job.
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- JMG, from The Independent, yesterday: Internet Unleashes On Trump “Golden Calf” Ceremony
- Have Trump’s fans read the Bible? Are they the least bit self-aware? Apparently not.
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- Salon, Troy Farah, 8 May 2026: “When it finally happens”: The weaponization of euphemism in MAGA’s shadow
- Subtitled: Social media openly longs for the death of an individual who is hardly ever named
- I confess I’ve not seen this meme, but I try not to spend too much time on social media. And I suspect the MAGA crowd has no idea what the world outside their bubble actually thinks about Trump.
