Better take more ketamine...

I never actually understood why getting a conservative state Supreme Court in Wisconsin entrenched for some years was supposed to be so important anyway, but if Elon doesn't get the message that his personal brand is poison at the moment after spending millions on this pointless exercise, he'll never learn.

MADISON, Wis. — A liberal candidate for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court glided to victory Tuesday, overcoming a flood of political cash from tech billionaire Elon Musk in a race seen as a referendum on him and President Donald Trump.

The Associated Press called the race a little over an hour after the polls closed.

Musk and groups affiliated with him invested more than $20 million in the race. The top Trump adviser and leader of Tesla and SpaceX handed out cash prizes to generate interest in the race. At a rally Sunday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he cast the election as one that could chart the course of Western civilization because of what it could mean for Trump’s agenda.

But Musk’s spending and hyperbolic framing weren’t enough to win the most expensive court race in U.S. history. The contest cost more than $100 million, nearly doubling the past record and putting it in line with top Senate races.

 

The "authentic self" discussed

I've only recently found Joe Folley's philosophy Youtube channel, but I'm liking what I've watched so far.

This video, about the modern idea prevalent in self help advice, of the importance of "finding" and living in accordance with your "authentic self" is pretty good and expresses scepticism I have long had with the whole approach:

 

I would have liked it to reference Aristotelian virtue ethics more, and also perhaps make more of a connection to the whole free will debate as well, but it's a good start!

It also reminded me about how long "acting authentically" has been in the psychological parlance.  I remember a snippet of a conversation with a priest in my teenage years who was leaving the priesthood, and I am sure that he said that the reason was that he found too many people in the church were not living "authentically."   I think he was into a particular series of Catholic pop psychology books at the time, the name and author of which I now forget, because I never found them very convincing or helpful.   And, who knows?, given that we are talking of the 1970's and the post sexual revolution period, he may have been making a coded reference to either him or other priests being gay (or straight) and living out a secret sex life.   Anyway, I didn't quite know what the term was meant to cover then, and didn't care for the looseness of meaning, and haven't shaken that feeling for 50 odd years!

Update:  I also am often reminded of CS Lewis's book Til We Have Faces whenever this issue comes to my attention.  

 

Unhappy with algorithms

I've noticed that the Youtube algorithm seems to refuse to notify me in the "recommended" category about lots of new videos by people I follow.

Also, it's very hard, it seems, to get Bluesky to show me all new posts by people I follow, even if I am using the "following" tab/feed.

I mean, I did manage to get Bluesky to recognise I was not interested in digital art and amateur anime drawing.   But in the Discover tab, it insists of showing every single post by a handful of people who I do follow, instead of just some of them, meaning that there is not that much space to "discover" anything.

I guess, in other words, the issue I have with Bluesky is the opposite of that with Youtube.

I only just realised that by making this post.  See - writing things down helps.

Why have I lost interest in Australian politics?

Yeah, ever since the Albanese election win I just haven't found Australian politics all that interesting.  Sure, I thought the controversy around the Voice referendum was worth commenting on, and worried that Labor was losing support due to the priority it gave that as an issue;  but since then, federal politics has seemed a bit of a bore to me.

It is interesting, though, that now that everything about indigenous policy has gone quiet, I get the feeling that a combination of the complete charmlessness of Peter Dutton and the malevolent craziness of Right wing politics on full display in the USA have enhanced Albanese's chances quite strongly. 

Everyone seems to think that the moderate independents are going to do well, and the Greens should go backwards.   I would be happy with the latter result - I just find that the people the Greens seems to attract as politicians here are also unappealing and way too ideological to know how to get the things they want done.

Today's trivia post - I have a problem with ravioli

Of course I couldn't be bothered making my own ravioli, and I imagine that like the majority of the population, my main exposure to it is via the pre-made stuff from the refrigerator in the supermarket, which can make for a quick meal.

But my beef (ha, a slight pun):  the filling never lives up to the description.  It doesn't matter what it's alleged to be on the packet, the filling is always a disappointment:  pasty, and with the slightest of flavour.  The only reason to eat ravioli at all is if there is a decent sauce on the outside.

I've also been unimpressed with the filling at a restaurant.   

It's just the least impressive way to eat pasta, and I think someone enterprising should do a lab test on things like alleged beef filling, because I would not be at all surprised if the protein content is hard to discern.   Then sue them.

Ravioli justice for all...

Appropriate

Dad is almost certainly your Dad (although results may vary)

Interesting free article up at Science:

How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers? 

Tackling a touchy subject, genetic detective finds only 1% of European children have unexpected paternity 

It notes that earlier, much higher, estimates for Western societies were just guesswork:

In the absence of reliable numbers, scientists speculated. In his 1991 book The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, biologist Jared Diamond claimed the adultery rate among humans was between 5% and 30%. In a widely cited 1997 paper, University of Reading evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel argued EPP was so common in humans that babies evolved to be indistinguishable at birth, concealing their true paternity as a protective mechanism.

Eventually, a consensus emerged, based mostly on back-of-the-envelope calculations from early genetic paternity testing. In an article in The Lancet published the same year as Diamond’s book, researchers reported the idea that 10% of children were the product of a clandestine affair, but complained there were no solid data to either confirm or disprove the figure. Nonetheless, it continued to be repeated by journalists and researchers. Eventually it took on a life of its own. 

But the new type of research seems to confirm that this was an overestimate:

Subsequent studies elsewhere in Europe by Larmuseau and others came up with essentially the same results: In European societies since at least the Middle Ages, the likelihood a child’s recorded father wasn’t the genetic father was vanishingly small—typically 1%, or less.

But, there are those societies still where things are very different:

The obsession with genetic paternity isn’t universal. South American tribes such as the Yanomami believe multiple men can contribute to a child’s paternity by having sex with the same woman. Among the Nyimba of Nepal, women traditionally have multiple husbands—all of whom are expected to act as fathers to all of their spouse’s children. “There are lots of examples that counter this stereotype of wily women versus bamboozled men,” says Brooke Scelza, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

One of the best documented is found among the Himba people of Namibia. When Scelza first visited Himba villages 15 years ago, she was surprised by how openly women discussed children fathered with partners outside of marriage. “It ran against so much of what we as evolutionary biologists think,” she says. “This looked really different from what Maarten Larmuseau and other people were finding in Europe.”

Intrigued, Scelza worked with the community to conduct anonymized paternity testing. The results showed the EPP rate among the Himba was 48%. Fathers were usually aware of which children were theirs biologically, while simultaneously considering themselves the social and legal fathers of all their wives’ children. “It’s not that they’re being duped—these men still really consider themselves the social fathers, even if they’re not the biological fathers,” Scelza says. “It really shows the importance of getting this kind of data from other regions.”

Another busy, busy week

I wish I could get back to posting more often here, but many distractions continue.

I am dropping in to make a couple of not very important comments:

*    I am finding the situation in the US so obviously dangerously dire that I am starting to have a bit of a  problem with satire and comedy based on it.   I still watch clips of the Daily Show, and some of Colbert, but it is starting to make me uncomfortable that the use of comedy underplays the seriousness in an inappropriate way.

I also feel this about Planet America, which is primarily serious commentary and criticism, but the side comedy bits now feel too trite for what was just discussed.  (I did criticise them in the lead up to the election too, for not emphasising how nuts and ridiculous Trump's campaign claims were - pretty much "normalising" that a politician could now say anything regardless of connection to reality and not be called out for it.  Of course, the whole MSM had the same issue.)   

Maybe you could argue that late night comedy, and even ridiculous shows like Laugh In,  survived the turbulent 60's and 70's, so I shouldn't expect comedy TV to stop now.   But I think the show of those decades got through by largely ignoring the national politics and dire situations as the Vietnam War.  That is, of course, not what topical comedy in the US does any more.

*   Even though I think 1984 was a well intentioned but poorly executed book, and would love to find an online connection with someone I consider smart who shares this opinion, I continue to have a vague interest in George Orwell because he was a pretty odd character, and (who knows?) his essays and other books of reportage might convince he could write well, if ever I get around to reading them.

Hence I was interested to read an interview with his adopted son, now 80, who is happy to say plenty of nice things about his late Dad, yet it takes quite a long way into the article to get to the somewhat significant point that Richard (the son) was only 5 years old when his Dad passed away.

I mean - really - how seriously am I meant to take his memories of the period on the remote island of Jura where he Dad went to write 1984?    

And on a happier note - I see that Reddit does have threads by people arguing that 1984 is not a good book.  I wonder if I had looked there before?

*  Speaking of books - here's a decent article at The Guardian about the way self publishing has allowed for a ridiculous number of books to be available each year:

The complaint that there are too many books is not a new one. “My son, be warned by them: of making many books there is no end,” reads one line in Ecclesiastes, written at least 2,000 years before the invention of the printing press.

Now the bestselling author Bill Bryson has added his voice to the millennia-old chorus. There are 200,000 books published annually in the UK alone, “more books than you could possibly read,” the writer of Notes from a Small Island told the Times. He is not sure that the growth in self-publishing, in particular, is “a healthy development”. He said he gets sent “a lot of self-published books, and most of the time it is just some anonymous person’s life, and it is of no interest.”

Bryson is not wrong that self-publishing has contributed significantly to book slop mountain. More than 2.6 million books were self-published in 2023 – many of which are uploaded to the dominant platform, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing – and they can’t all be masterpieces.

The article goes on to explain that self publishing has worked for some - but the success rate is extremely small, of course.   Still, I am not immune from the idea that I might have one story in me that could work as a novel - or more likely, film - it's just that I don't have the confidence that I could execute it.

Saudi Arabia stays high on my list of countries best avoided

The New York Times will no doubt be displeasing the Saudi royal family, and via that route, Donald Trump, with this detailed story about the remarkable number of East African workers who keep dying there:

Lured by company recruiters and encouraged by Kenya’s government, the women have reason for optimism. Spend two years in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper or nanny, the pitch goes, and you can earn enough to build a house, educate your children and save for the future.

While the departure terminal hums with anticipation, the arrivals area is where hope meets grim reality. Hollow-cheeked women return, often ground down by unpaid wages, beatings, starvation and sexual assault. Some are broke. Others are in coffins.

At least 274 Kenyan workers, mostly women, have died in Saudi Arabia in the past five years — an extraordinary figure for a young work force doing jobs that, in most countries, are considered extremely safe. At least 55 Kenyan workers died last year, twice as many as the previous year.

 

That's interesting...

Sometimes, you end up watching new stuff on Youtube and learn things that are good to know, even if they might never affect you.

For example, I've never been particularly drawn to reading Dostoevsky, and The Brothers Karamazov in particular, but now I know (from watching a guy talking about one star online reviews of classic books) that the very common reaction for modern readers of Karamazov is that nothing happens for the first 300 or so pages.    (It's a lot of talking, setting up the different brothers' views and philosophies, apparently.)

I also didn't realise that no one accuses him of writing particularly realistic characters - they are all somewhat over-the-top in a theatrical kind of way.  Again, apparently. 

I also enjoyed a video from Business Insider making the case that I always suspected was true:  that 5G networking was massively oversold and may never be as significant as they claimed.

Meanwhile, what's the latest stupid thing Musk did:

Early on Friday, Elon Musk shared a post written by an X user about the actions of three 20th century dictators — then quickly deleted it after it sparked a backlash.

The post falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union until 1953; Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, didn’t cause the deaths of millions of people under their watch. Instead, the post said, their public sector workers did.

Mr. Musk shared the post without any other comment. He removed it soon after users on X criticized the post, saying it was antisemitic and dismissive of genocide. Historians have widely chronicled that millions of people died under Stalin, that millions of Jews were massacred under Hitler during the Holocaust, and that millions of Chinese were displaced or killed during Mao’s cultural revolution.

 Bizarrely, that post that he deleted sounds like an argument for the exact opposite of what Trump wants - an independent public service that won't follow the appalling orders of the leader if they are immoral and/or illegal.

The state of US politics, part 2

The depressing summary

Alan Kohler's summary of the Trumpian project seems very accurate:  

To make America great, Donald Trump is undoing its greatness as global stock markets fall

This part:

There are two immediate questions: first, will the Trump revolution collapse from its own incompetence?

 And second, will an effective opposition/resistance emerge and blunt it?

The incompetence comes from "common sense".

In his speech to Congress last week, Trump described what he is doing as a "common-sense revolution that is now — because of us — sweeping the entire world".

Who can argue against common sense? Sounds fine, right?

Well, yes, except that in practice it means decisions and executive orders are not based on data, inquiries or science, but simply what Trump thinks.

For example, there was no Treasury inquiry and report into the impact of 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, with the result — among other things — that General Motors told him they'd be bankrupt in three months, so its parts had to be exempted.

In fact, the whole tariff venture has become a complete mess of U-turns and exemptions, because it was based on common sense and not thought through. It's also the main reason the US economy is in danger of a big slowdown.

And of course the abandonment of efforts to reduce fossil fuels and combat climate change — in favour of "drill, baby, drill" — are not based on science, but simply his "common sense", along with that of other people on the right, that the energy transition is expensive and pointless.

I have been looking at the example of Australian Trump supporters who hang out online at New Catallaxy.  Look, the average age seems to be about 65 to 70, so it's not as if they are any representative cross section of the population, but reading them, as well as online Right wing America sites, makes it absolutely clear that they are so much still in the thrill of having their culture war priorities put into place by Trump that they simply don't care at all about his entirely haphazard way of governing, and his  neverending stream of lies and grifting that, with 100% certainty, would have appalled them if it were being said or done by a Democrat.  

In the media landscape:  not that I subscribe, but from what I can gather, the Wall Street Journal is a traditionally Right wing outlet that is giving substantial pushback due to the economic damage Trump policies will cause.   But it's galling that this also represents the Murdochs in his traditional fashion:  making money by letting one outlet appeal to the "not on board with Trump" element of the Right, while letting its MAGA devoted night time lineup on Fox News continue to compete with North Korean media in how far they can suck up to the cult leader.   Daddy Murdoch, and his Right wing son, are entirely unprincipled and happy to see the world burn as long as it makes money for them in the process.

A couple of recipes

Because my posting rate has been so slow this year, I've overlooked this blog's function of recording useful recipes I've tried.

 First one - lamb shoulder cooked at low temperature for hours is something I had never got around to before, but I recently followed this recipe which featured a side of white bean puree.   (I see the recipe calls it a roast - but there was lots of liquid involved, so surely it was a braise?)   The most pleasant surprise was how nice the white bean puree was - another thing I never got around to making before.

Second one, as a counter to all the meat in the first:  chick pea curry, using dried chickpeas.   Of course I've used canned chickpeas many times, but the online cooks (especially vegan ones) all suggest that cooking your own dried pulses gives a much nicer result, so I bought a kilo of chickpeas and gave it a try.

I soaked them for 8 hours, changing the water a couple of times as someone somewhere recommended.  Then boiled them for about an hour.  The texture was still slightly firmer than canned, but that was fine by me.   And as for using them in a curry - there are dozens of examples on line and it seems you can use virtually any curry base (dried spices, or jar paste - I used leftover Thai red curry paste), fry an onion first, add the paste or dry spices, a can of tomatoes (and maybe some fresh ones like I did), the chickpeas and a can of coconut milk.   It comes out fine.  (I added some spinach at the end, for colour as well as a fresh contribution.)

And I can tell you, two cups of dried chickpeas, which should cost at most about $2, together with these other ingredients (total cost maybe $4- $5 extra?) made enough for 6 very large servings.

Honestly, this experience has led me to believe that government support for the poor must include a push to getting them to learn how to cook dried beans and chickpeas.   Even allowing for the cost of the electricity or gas (which may be the same for cooking a meat curry too) protein derived from this source is incredibly cheap compared to meat.   And it was pretty tasty and filling.

Tide turning

As I now primarily use BlueSky and live happily amongst the Democrat/Lefty/centrist types who moved there from Twitter, it was there that I saw Californian Govenor (and likely runner for presidential candidate) Gavin Newsom being castigated for saying to Right wing young nut Charlie Kirk that he agreed there was a fairness issue with transwomen competing in women's sports.  

The problem is that the progressive Left steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that there does indeed need to be nuance on trans policy.  Their reasoning, if you can call it that, is that because Republicans have way overreacted on this culture war issue, the Left cannot concede an inch, because that would be giving support to an enemy who has to be defeated with zero compromise.

I find this very frustrating. As I have been saying for a while now, the Left is not going to win this on common sense grounds.  The cases where it matters may be relatively rare and infrequent, but no way is the broader public ready to think that a man with a penis declaring himself to be a woman is being fair if he insists he compete against them as a woman.  If you can't admit that, you're just pushing against unrealistic extremism with your own preferred version of unrealistic extremism.

I am pleased to see, however, that there are finally signs of pushback within Democrat supporters against the progressive tactic. 

This is shown in the tweets here, where David Roberts (a pretty sensible man on most issues with a huge blindspot on this one) gets told:

 

This is good.

 

Even poor Noah Smith is suffering for his lack of ideological purity:

 

 

Brain glass

There's been a lot of reporting on this odd story.  Here's part of the New York Time's version:

Five years ago Italian researchers published a study on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. that detailed how one victim of the blast, a male presumed to be in his mid 20s, had been found nearby in the seaside settlement of Herculaneum. He was lying facedown and buried by ash on a wooden bed in the College of the Augustales, a public building dedicated to the worship of Emperor Augustus. Some scholars believe that the man was the center’s caretaker and was asleep at the time of the disaster.

In 2018, one researcher discovered black, glossy shards embedded inside the caretaker’s skull. The paper, published in 2020, speculated that the heat of the explosion was so immense that it had fused the victim’s brain tissue into glass.

This was, according to some reports, a controversial conclusion, but it's in the news because a new study appears to confirm it:

On Thursday, a paper published in Nature verified that the fragments are indeed glassified brain. Using techniques such as electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry, scientists examined the physical properties of samples taken from the glassy fragments and demonstrated how they were formed and preserved. “The unique finding implies unique processes,” said Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at the Roma Tre University and lead author of the new study.

Maybe it's still a bit controversial:

The 2020 study was met with some skepticism by other scientists, largely because the raw data was not available. Tim Thompson, a forensic anthropologist at Maynooth University in Ireland, was perhaps the most vocal doubter. This time around, the results excited him. “I very much enjoy seeing new scientific methods applied to the archaeological context,” he said.

But Dr. Thompson would like to see more evidence and more of the original data: “The heating and cooling within Herculaneum following the eruption is likely to be complicated, and the results of the investigation certainly support their conclusions. It just depends on whether the material is brain.”

And why am I posting about it?   Because it reminded me of one of the more curious things to be found in the Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore -  examples of Sarira, the pearl or jewel like beads claimed to have been recovered from the cremated remains of Buddhist spiritual masters.  I mentioned this in a previous post.

Now, the ones in Singapore are often very pretty, and I'm not saying that the apparent example of one brain apparently turned by the right kind of heat into something resembling black glass is a good explanation. But I am just surprised to learn that any sort of organic stuff can turn into something that looks glassy...

 

Wet and windy

I'm not telling anyone who lives in Brisbane anything new - but this Cyclone Alfred weather event turned out to be very odd.

Late on Friday night, when it was still a small category 1 cyclone crossing Moreton Bay, it got a bit windy and showery for a couple of hours (after the Western sun had been out at about 6 pm when I was walking the dog.)   I thought it might continue being windy all night, but it died down, and it didn't even rain that much.  It was worse on the Gold Coast, but in Brisbane it felt very anti-climatic, as I always suspected it might.

Then Saturday was very grey and showery, not all shops opened and the city was still pretty much shut down.  Unexpectedly for everyone, in the early evening, it became far windier (and I think wetter) than the night before.  It really felt like what a close cyclone should feel like, and the wind was strong for hours.

Followed by today - I'm not sure if it was showering when I woke up, but it was certainly raining by 8am, quite hard, and it has not stopped all day.   Intensity has varied a little bit, but flash flooding is happening everywhere, and with many trees down last night, the city was more or less at a standstill again.  (I mean, shops re-opened, but I am sure no one was travelling further than they really needed to, as it was obvious that certain streets would be flooding, and trees on footpaths might in some cases be in a precarious state.)

So on social media the "it was a fizzer" cynicism has been replaced by other people going "ha ha".

And poor Harvey Bay, on the northern edge of the influence of the system, had a storm that brought a record amount of intense rain in a short number of hours, leading to 400 emergency calls for flash flooding (I just heard that number on the radio.)  My brother, on the Sunshine Coast between Hervey Bay and Brisbane, seems to have been relatively unaffected. 

It's supposed to stop raining sometime overnight, but at the moment, it slows down for a while, then picks up again.    I think we can all agree we've had enough, please move on...

   

Waiting for weather

So, the cyclone that could have arrived a day or more ago is now not arriving until tonight - maybe.

Sure, it's been windy on the coast (especially the Gold Coast, where, as it happens, I was due to spend a night in a high rise apartment tomorrow - it's been cancelled), but in Brisbane it's been a couple of days of "oh, the rain is picking up" and "it's finally getting breezy", only to have it stop a few hours later and feel as calm as anything.

If the cyclone weakens to a couple of hours of rain and a bit of gusty wind, I bet people will start complaining a lot about over-reaction in terms of preparedness....

 

And now, a South East cyclone

It's been many a year since a cyclone wandered as far south as Brisbane.   From dim memory, one very small cyclone might have approached the Sunshine Coast when I was a youngster, but it didn't do much. Well, that's not counting one that came pretty close one Christmas when I was a toddler and the family was in a tent at Maroochydore and had to pack it up and go to - I think - the surf lifesaving club.  I have no memory of that at all.  

They all tend to fizzle out once this far down (except for the rain, which I think comes more from the post-cyclonic depression if it gets stuck in place)

This hasn't stopped a ridiculous amount of panic shopping, even in supermarkets probably 10 km from the coast, like my local ones.   It seems Covid lockdowns have damaged the psyche of Australians forever such that any prospect of disruption to shopping for even a day causes a rush on toilet paper, bread, eggs (already in short supply) and some fresh fruit and vegetables.  (No sign of a tomato - apart from cherry tomatoes - or bananas in the shop yesterday evening.  Plenty of potatoes though.) 

Of course, I could be wrong, I suppose, and there might be damage of an unexpected scale, especially to places right on the coast.  I just can't see much risk of Category 1 or 2 causing much problem with 90% of Brisbane, though.

Let's see.  Here's the current forecast path:

 

 

Did COVID or politics kill movie going?

Again, I find myself in the mood to kind of ignore the rapidly evolving disaster that is the Trump administration, and note (as I usually do each year) that it's Oscar time today.  I will go over my poor mood regarding the state of cinema again, instead.*

It seems to me that the world is having trouble getting over the apparent fatal blow that Covid and/or the polarisation of American politics has caused to interest in attending the cinema.  Or is it that I'm just getting older and getting lazier to going out?  (I don't think it's the latter.)

As I said to my daughter a few months ago, the problem with cinema feels a bit like we're waiting for a new trend that simply isn't turning up.   In the depressing 70's, you had dark social realism as a thing;  by the end of it, though, you had the science fiction/adventure blockbuster era kicking off, which took us through the 80's.  I'm not sure, without checking, what the 90's brought us - off the top of my head, we had the best 'serious Spielberg' era (with Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan, and then in the 2000's his excellent adult oriented science fiction);  but overall, I think it was a decent decade with a decent mix of themes.

In the 2000's, I was mostly becoming a father and not going out much, but towards the end was enjoying a lot of kids animation.   And then in the 2010's was the peak of the Marvel superhero movies, which I only half followed, but the best were pretty decent.

Now, Marvel and superheros feels well and truly dead, with efforts to revive it spluttering badly.  DC superhero movies never appealed that much.  And there is a well defined backlash to Disney's culture warring efforts (heavy emphasis on female protagonists and diverse sexuality), which I reluctantly agree is kinda deserved. 

One thing I continually feel puzzled about is how Hollywood used to be capable to making mature movies on current US political and cultural issues - yet at the time US politics is most intensely deserving of fictional drama and scrutiny, it seems the political polarisation has killed off interest in doing it.  I suspect it may be because there feels like there is no "middle" to appeal to anymore, and if you make a movie slanted to the Left or Right, the polarisation means social media campaigns can kill off a movie's box office so easily.

It's all a pity.

 

*   I think I wrote a very similar post late last year, but I am feeling sufficient depressed by the state of the world to not bother checking!   

The state of US politics

Some light hearted content (while we wait for the shooting to start)