Re:Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefull...
by sho_hn on Saturday February 01, 2025 @06:10PM
(#42903490)
Thanks!
I also think this is a good summary for those who had never heard of Weimar before: https://archive.is/xh2Ci
But like most summaries, it suffers a bit from focusing on the key events, and not capturing this sort of ... change in the ambient noise floor, and what relationship the average citizen had to what was going on, and what perception of events. I think it's the "Would you have been able to tell that it'd get this bad?" is kind of the more interesting part. A political weather forecasting model, if you will.
Using your Weimar example, I would not argue that Germany or humanity is/are better off for having gone through the cataclysm of WW2. In terms of building context, you might find it helpful to read this dry but very detailed examination of the nazi administrative state, and how it delivered economic resources to its political clients through a combination of reorganization, financial engineering, and striaght-up theft:
https://archive.org/details/hitlersbeneficia00alyg
On a more abstract level, try 'The logic of political survival' by Smith & Bueno de Mesquita. both books will give you a useful framework within which to assess the contextual significance of ongoing news events.