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8 billion humans, Hegel treasure trove, Hungarian revisionism, Dionne Warwick & the weak rupee.

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Adam Tooze

Nov 30, 2022

Statues of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong and Jiang Zemin, at the Military Museum of Chinese People’s Revolution in Beijing. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES From Tunku Varadarajan @tunkuv fascinting review of new books on post-Maoist China in WSJ.

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8 billion humans …

… on November 15 2022 humanity passed a new demographic landmark.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett

8 billion! That's the global population count as of today, according to the United Nations.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett

This month the world's population hits 8 billion! Half of us are in just 7 countries: China 1.4 billion India 1.4 billion US 338m Indonesia 276m Pakistan 236m Nigeria 219m Brazil 215m My post: https://t.co/FlpkpMrFhO https://t.co/jv7yyjMdmd

After 2008 the American and European labour markets diverged. After 2020 they have diverged again.

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Weak rupee

The Indian rupee has been quite the controversial newsmaker this year. Having fallen more than 11 percent against the US dollar so far in 2022, the rupee breached the much-feared 80-mark in July and went on to set record lows, touching 83 to a dollar late in October. With the United States (US) on a war path to curtail inflation and the supply side stifled by the conflict in Ukraine, even historically strong currencies like the euro and the British pound have plummeted against the raging dollar, more than the rupee. Although India is far from a crisis given the safe cushion of forex reserves, it bodes well to be prudent, but without stifling growth.

While this fall has triggered much speculation and worry, the rupee’s depreciation should be assessed in a larger, more nuanced context. Even economic theory does not always peg a depreciating currency as a harbinger of doom. The article attempts to diagnose the extent of three macroeconomic phenomena in the Indian economy to better assess the impact of a falling rupee–focusing primarily on the trends in trade, the behaviour of foreign investment, and the response of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Nice piece this by Diya Dixit at ORF

Worn-out howitzers or why maintenance matters

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Computer game Trianon revanchism

Thomas Escritt @tomescritt

Unmissable: an unknown (but presumably financed) Hungarian developer is about to launch REVÁNS, an FPS that allows you, the shooter, to take revenge for the Trianon treaty. Set in a “hidden Transylvanian fortress”, but it’s unclear who the enemy will be

hu.ign.comRevans címmel készül magyar lövöldözős játék, amiben Trianont lehet megbosszulniA történelem alternatív útvonala

FYI the Trianon Treaty was the post-WWI peace imposed on Habsburg Hungary at Paris in 1920, which inflicted a massive reduction in the country’s territory and has been a source of nationalist resentment for the last century.