"History serves as only the blindest and most stumbling guide to the future. America is not Rome. Donald Trump is not Commodus. There is nothing written into the DNA of a superpower that says that it must inevitably decline and fall. This is not an argument for complacency; it is an argument against despair. Americans have been worrying about the future of their republic for centuries now. There is every prospect that they will be worrying about it for centuries more." Fun piece on the perils of comparing the United States with Rome.

A Nice piece from the spring on the idea of "tradition". 

A fun tool to map how much time you spend wasting time on social media.   

Interesting survey in Foreign Affairs of some of the world's most energetic autocrats, and I don't mean that in a good way:  

Within that Foreign Affairs survey, this piece on Xi Jinping struck me as especially insightful: "Xi has chosen to govern China as a crisis manager. That might help him in China’s immediate rivalry with the United States. But along the way, his enemies at home and his critics abroad have piled up. Thousands of wealthy Chinese families and their associates who have seen their lives of luxury and privilege destroyed in the anticorruption campaign will carry their anger at Xi for generations. The technocratic elite feels betrayed by Xi’s across-the-board power grab, his trashing of emerging legal reforms, and his coddling of the state economy. Until recently, Xi rarely commented on the private sector, which is responsible for about 70 percent of the country’s economic output and an even greater proportion of its job creation. His rhetorical about-face on this issue late last year, when Xi invited a group of entrepreneurs to a morale-boosting meeting at the Great Hall of the People, was a rare sign of a course correction. In the short term, Xi has been lifted by a rally-round-the-flag mood prompted by the trade war with the United States and President Donald Trump’s erratic antagonism. But none of the problems that have festered on Xi’s watch are going away. "

Hope Sunday's keeping you keeping on.