The nutty politics of aliens

The forthcoming release of Spielberg's Disclosure Day, as well as the continued trickle of obscure government videos of things that may, or may not, be balloons or other human stuff, is causing me to re-visit the topic of the strange inversion of US politics around UFO's.

Firstly, I have to say that I have a suspicion that the movie might not be testing all that well with audiences, as the final trailer features Steven Spielberg talking to camera about it, and I think does give away the key plot elements. There was also Stephen Colbert interviewing Spielberg in the final week of the Late Show, and it seems a tad odd that Spielberg has felt the need to promote his own movie in person to this degree.   

The combination of both of these do tell us one thing:  the movie seems to have aliens who enable telepathic empathy in humans.   This ties in nicely with ET, The Extraterrestrial when you think about it.  It's a little more puzzling as to how it ties in with the aliens in Close Encounters, which many think has its direct sequel in Disclosure Day, as the aliens in it didn't seem to have much empathy for the families of the people they kidnapped for a few decades!   (That said, I think the obscure motivation of the aliens in that movie is one of the reasons to like it, as it not dissimilar to the religious mystery of why a good God would let some of his (or her) followers suffer so much.)   

So, what does this have to do with weirdo changes in US politics in particular?  Well, as I have explained before, it feels very peculiar that belief in UFOs used to be perceived as a bit of a countercultural, hippy-ish thing, and therefore probably aligned with Left leaning politics, and it has now flipped and become the interest of Right wing conspiracy mongers.   Yeah, believing that climate change is not real (which is a "conspiracy of scientists and socialist billionaires" belief) now aligns with "aliens are real and already here and the government is hiding it from us".  Look at this recent tweet by the incredibly gullible Ross Coulthart, who thinks a government somewhere found a crashed UFO so big it build a huge building over it to hide it:

(By the way, the whole "they have backed away from the worst predictions and lied to us for decades" is a dumbass beat up, and climate change "skepticism" - by which I mean denial - generally is having an algorithmically driven heyday again at Musk's X.  My own conspiracy theory is that it might be because Musk wants to get ahead of the growing concern that his money making Starlink - not to mention his intended huge number of Starship launches - is actually a big environmental problem for the upper atmosphere.)   

 Now, Spielberg himself, as a Hollywood liberal, is playing with fire here, as while there are some Right aligned people who think he is on their side on the question of alien reality and government secret knowledge of it (see Coulthart, for example), there are also plenty of others who will find a way to continue to condemn him in the nuttiest of Right wing ways.   Already in comments to Disclosure Day content on Youtube, I have seen them bring up the old, completely without foundation, rumour that he was responsible for the child abuse related death of the young actress in Poltergeist.  And on today's final trailer, there are a few comments bringing up the Right wing religious nutter theory - promoted by Tucker Carlson and others - that UFOs and aliens are demons and Spielberg is doing their bidding by making a movie pretending that they are good and should be welcomed!

So yeah, I expect that MAGA conspiracy types who might be tempted by the topic of the movie are going to do their regular routine of finding the movie objectionable because, basically, Spielberg is a Hollywood liberal and liberals cannot be trusted.      

Update:   Ooh, I might be wrong in worrying about audience reactions.  We finally have a handful of reactions from people who have seen it, and they seem all positive.  (One does call it Spielberg's "weirdest" movie - but seemingly in a good way.)

Update 2:  As I suspected from the start, the final trailer seems to confirm that there was no need to worry about the CGI looking animals in parts of the film, as they were never meant to be real, anyway.

And yes, it is clear from social media that there is a anti-Spielberg pushback going on, even though most comments about him and his movie legacy are positive.  Again, there is a bit of an odd turnaround about this - it used to be Left leaning critics who would criticise Spielberg as too emotionally manipulative for them, so liking him used to feel like you were part of middle class class mainstream which the Republicans used to try to appeal to.  Now, after making many specifically liberal themed movies (none of which are extreme in message, but stand in a solid tradition of Hollywood movies and their makers mostly being soft liberal), the MAGA crowd went into nutjob land and invented reasons to dislike him.  

A government that needs to counter rumour and spin

I know we are a long way off an election, but I'm bothered by the lack of concerted pushback from the Labor government against the populist and right wing spin machine that is running wildly out of control on the topics of both tax reform and immigration.  (And hence the surge in support for One Nation.)

(I have a bit of concern for the culture war topic of trans rights too, given that recent decision of the Federal Court which was caused by poor old Julia Gillard more than a decade ago.  Presumably, she didn't imagine that a man who does not pass well as a transwoman would actually try to join a women's online social app and then claim discrimination.)    

But back to tax and immigration.

The other day I was speaking to a 60-70 year old retiree who told me that her friends had warned her that she should put her house into a family trust, otherwise the government would take 40% of it when she died.

On further questioning, it had always been her principal place of residence, and never rented it out.  There was therefore no basis on which to fear Capital Gains Tax would apply to it on her death - there has never been any serious suggestion that the government would apply CGT to the family home, as it would be wildly unpopular and seen as a de facto death duty.

Yet, this fear mongering is presumably running riot amongst retirees at the moment.

Then there is the spectacle of Dave Hughes - the former working class poor man (who still looks like he can't afford decent grooming - he's a seriously unattractive man)  turning up on social media complaining bitterly about CGT changes and Labor.   This from the guy who invests in real estate, including a high profile purchase of a 3 million dollar house that he claimed he should not have as the banks valuation showed he paid too much.  But he also turned up a few years later confirming that he had offers for it well above the price he paid.   Websites which give an estimate of celebrities' net worth put his at $10 million, although I those estimates are old now too.

So yeah, of course he's a very rich man complaining about taxes.  But he would be influential with some people.

And as for immigration:  it's the other topic that is extremely susceptible to lies and gut reactions that are based on exaggeration and misleading use of figures - all with the added assistance of easily stoked racism.   (I really feel sorry for Indians at the moment.)

So yeah, in this day of social media crapola, I don't think the government can afford to let people continue with RW propaganda without pushing back in advertising and social media themselves.   Maybe they are keeping the powder dry, so to speak; but I think early action may be better. 

   

 

 

 

 

Science fiction death (and sex too!)

Well, I guess money was the motivation, but it's unusual to hear of a murder related to a Netflix project:

Chinese authorities have executed a man for murdering his associate, billionaire gaming tycoon Lin Qi.

In 2020, a disgruntled Xu Yao poisoned Lin for sidelining him shortly after he helped him land a Netflix deal, local media reported.

Lin's Yoozoo Games holds the film adaptation rights for the Chinese science fiction trilogy which Netflix made into the series 3 Body Problem.

Xu was convicted in 2024 and his execution, which reportedly happened on 21 May, was confirmed on Tuesday by his company in a statement, adding "justice has ultimately been served".

"We deeply mourn Mr. Lin and extend our heartfelt condolences to his family," the statement said.

"As colleagues who fought alongside him, all members of the company are grateful for the impartiality of the judicial process."

The science fiction trilogy 3 Body Problem is based on Chinese author Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past. First published in Chinese, the books have been translated into nearly 30 languages and inspired multiple adaptations.

 For what it's worth:  I only watched the first episode of 3 Body Problem, and I had enough issues with it to not bother continuing.  (I can't remember now all of the reasons it felt unconvincing, but I am sure one of them was some pretty inauthentic sounding dialogue between characters.)   

As far as I can tell, some people like the books for the big ideas, but hardly anyone thinks it is great in a literary sense (even with allowances being made for it being translated into English.)   Maybe it's a bit like a lot of Arthur C Clarke in that way?   

Speaking of Clarke, for some reason his book "A Fall of Moondust" often comes to mind when I look at the Moon, perhaps 45 years after I read it. 

Maybe because I read it at an impressionable young adult age, but it has stuck in memory that it has an implied sexual liaison in the stranded surface crafts toilet.  I hope I'm not imagining that.   Wait - this is what AI is built for - confirming ridiculously unimportant stuff like this? 

Yes, Claude tells me my memory is right:

 ...the scene involves Radley and Miss Morley, two passengers aboard the Selene who are trapped together after the dust cruiser sinks. At one point, a character uses the toilet cubicle, and shortly afterward another character emerges from it as well — with Clarke leaving a distinct but entirely unspoken implication that the two had a sexual encounter in there while ostensibly using the facilities separately. 

Oddly enough, for a writer who later because a bit creepily obsessed with sex, there is very little in the way of sex scenes that I can remember from Robert Heinlein's books.  The way he wrote about them just didn't stick in memory.   (OK, I do remember a couple, but won't bother recounting which ones.)   

"The Pitt" - season 2

I finished the second season the other night, and I have thoughts:

*   I guess that for dramatic purposes, there won't ever be a season built around an unusually quiet day in that workplace;  but I don't know that they will be able to build a third season around the premise that it's such a stressful place to work that the head doctors routinely feel a touch suicidal by the end of the day!

*   That said, there was still so much to enjoy, from the ensemble acting to the topical inclusion of political issues (like ICE), and generally being proud to fly a "liberal" flag in the face of Trumpian politics.   (The multicultural, multiracial, harmonious workforce is not unrealistic, I don't think - but just seeing a portrayal of successful workplace of that kind feels like a much needed pushback against anti-immigrant populism.)   

*   I do want to see the two lead characters in particular having a better day next time - Dana, the charismatic nurse, and of course, poor old Dr Robby.   But I suspect that one more season of such a demanding and intense show might be where it should stop.   I don't want to see it start to slide in quality and direction, like ER.   

The Saudi history of "more money than sense"

The BBC has a lengthy article about Saudi Arabia abandoning most of the ridiculous Vision 2030 projects (such as The Line, and the ski resort, etc.)

Some extracts:

Some longtime observers of Saudi Arabia, such as Ellen R Wald, the author of Saudi, Inc., feel like they've seen it all before.

"This is the same playbook, the same thing again with The Line. You know, 'We're going to build this huge thing. Oh wait, well now we're going to significantly downscale it.' And it's the same thing over and over again, and it's been that way even since before Mohammed bin Salman. They make these big announcements, they're very splashy, and then it either doesn't get built or it gets built in a significantly scaled down or [in a] 'not what it was' way."

Wald recalls the new cities that were to be built in the 2000s under a previous monarch, King Abdullah.

The "Economic Cities" programme was also aimed at diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil, which has been a perennial imperative in the Kingdom for decades. Relying almost entirely on one natural resource that will not last for ever has long been seen as an obstacle to the development of a much more well-rounded and resilient economy.

The results were largely underwhelming even as billions of dollars were expended. Several of the proposed cities never got off the ground, others were recast as more modest enterprises. The biggest, the $100bn King Abdullah Economic City on the Red Sea coast north of Jeddah, did come to fruition, but the goal of it becoming a business and tourism hub hasn't materialised.

The hope had been to bring in major new foreign investment and create jobs – real ones, away from the calcified state sector – for Saudi Arabia's large and ever-growing young population. But by 2016, the rate of unemployment still stood at around 12%.

I'm always a bit puzzled by the birthrate of Muslim countries:  is the secret to higher birthrates not having much in the way of Western entertainment (in the form of bars, nightclubs and even cinemas?)  Anyway, I see that it has not been immune for dropping birthrates:  just that it has not been as precipitous as in the West.

Back to the BBC.  I didn't recall reading about the lockup in the Ritz-Carlton:

The social control exerted by the powerful and very conservative Islamic leadership of the country was seen by MBS and his advisors as a major obstacle in the ability of Saudi Arabia to achieve its full economic potential. Political change under MBS was presented as the handing over for the first time of the reins of power to a more dynamic, younger generation. But this did not mean that any new space for political discourse was allowed.

Indeed – as Nuseibeh acknowledges – MBS himself was responsible for some of the issues that have impeded the scope and rate of change - as well as casting a long shadow over his rule.

Just as he became de facto ruler in 2017, he ordered the mass detention of Saudi Arabia's elite officials and businessmen in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, which the Saudi government portrayed as a crackdown on corruption, but others saw as a shakedown. And the savage killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country's consulate in Istanbul in 2018 left a stain on the Crown Prince's reputation, which may have faded but remains indelible.

One Saudi who has direct experience of how the authorities there deal with dissent is Abdullah al-Ouda, an academic and human rights activist based in the US. His father, Salman al-Ouda, a prominent Saudi Islamic scholar, has been detained in prison since 2017 on charges including "stirring up unrest".

Abdullah believes that episodes like the Ritz-Carlton purge have been counterproductive to the aim of funding Vision 2030, even if those held in that gilded cage did cough up an estimated $100bn.

That's one way for government to encourage private investment, I guess!

 

  

The much ignored Chinese space programme

Perhaps because I have watched some Chinese space content in the past, Youtube did remind me yesterday that the country was about to launch another crew to its space station, with one member destined to stay there a whole year (!).

You can watch a short video about the launch, showing the highly "choreographed for nationalism" way they do things:

The American media seem to pay very little attention to the enormous strides that the Chinese have made in putting humans into space, and all without any major catastrophe (so far).

I've probably mentioned some of this before, but again I will make a few comments about the peculiar aspects of the Chinese programme:

*    The technology seems very accomplished, but the pro-patriotism visuals around it look like they are from another, earlier, era.

*    The integration of women into the program looks so modern, though.   I guess it fits in with old images of Chinese communism having women involved in the fight, too.   

*      Why does their space station look so neat and tidy inside, compared to the mass of junk everywhere that is the interior of the International Space Station?   

*     And what research of any use are they doing in their own space station?   I have no idea...  

Goodbye to Colbert

I think it obvious that Stephen Colbert is a smart, empathetic, talented guy, and as far as I know has a reputation of being a very decent man off screen as well as on.   (On the latter point, he's rather like Steven Spielberg - happily, a guest on the last week of his chat show - and who also has had a long career with no virtually no one claiming he treated them poorly.)  

So, of course I am sad to see the demise of his Late Show, especially given the clear corporate greed and politics behind it.   (There really is a Nazi era, "what's good for the Fuehrer is good for the company", feel about so much of America at the moment, and as such I'm quietly amused that a bunch of tech billionaires accompanying Trump to China seems to have resulted in them walking away empty handed.)

That said, I do feel the last few Late Night shows felt a tad - off kilter? - in a way I find hard to pin down.  

I think he wanted to go out on a note of positivity rather than self-pity, emphasising how much pleasure the show has brought him and how lucky he has been to be able to host it.   This is admirable in a way, but I think in trying to do so, he came across a bit flat, or defeated, or something?   

The comedy writing for the last show similarly fell a bit flat, if you ask me.  And while I think it was a great idea for Paul McCartney to sing "Hello Goodbye" as the final song, there's no doubt the preceding interview felt lifeless.   I think Paul at the stage of having already said everything that could possibly be said about what it was like to be a Beatle in America in the 1960's, and to be honest, no one cares about his new music.  

Similarly, the episode which featured Stephen taking the lightweight questionnaire he has delivered to many guests felt a bit self indulgent.   It certainly proved he has a hell of a lot of media friends, though!

Maybe I am being too hard on him given he had a thankless task in deciding the right tone to hit.   I mean if he had done what I think the situation really deserved, which was something akin to the "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" speech from Network, that would self indulgent in its own worse way. 

The whole thing (particularly as a reflection on corporate America and the way money runs to reward the most corrupt American administration in history) has left me feeling more deflated that I expected. 

PS:  I just checked what I wrote when David Letterman ended his run, and in line with my memory of being impressed with his last show in a bittersweet way, I said it was "perfect".  The huge difference, of course, is that he was leaving on his own terms.  

What a country

From a New England Journal of Medicine article, as summarised at phys.org:

 Update:  I also wondered how Australia's motor vehicle death rate would compare, given that I now America has long had higher road death tolls (on a population basis) than here.

If I can trust Claude, it seems our rate would be around 2 to 2.5 per 100,000 - about half of America's.   

Tone deaf?

Given the state of the Middle East at the moment, I am genuinely surprised that a theatre company is going to start a run of Fiddler on the Roof in Australian capital cities soon.   

It's not a bad musical (although I have only seen the movie version, as a child, and a bit of it again some years ago on TV.  I do think it's a bit of a downer, overall, though.)   But really, running a show full of sympathy for the plight of poor Jews seems to be a bit, um, tone deaf? at the moment. 

 Update:   I asked Claude.ai about this, and here is the most relevant paragraph:

 The debate centres on a genuine irony that several commentators have identified. Fiddler on the Roof is a musical about a people thrown out of their homes as their land is seized — a story that resonates achingly with both Jewish history and the current Palestinian crisis. One American theatre director who staged the show in 2024 wrote that his cast was directly challenged on this: they were asked "Is it okay to portray Jewish suffering in a time when Israel is causing so much suffering?" — and one Jewish member of the artistic staff actually dropped out of the production due to concerns that continuing was insensitive in the current climate.

 

How's the home for Australia's stupid old(er) people going?

I look at New Catallaxy perhaps a few times a week because, like checking X, it seems appropriate to know what Right wing brain washed people are saying and thinking on the topics on which they will never, ever, change their minds.

There remain a few provocateurs there who will dare post stuff critical of Trump (or Israel), but it's a thankless job because, well, these people are thoroughly brainwashed and incapable of engaging in genuine responses.   (Yes, I know, it was like that forever under Sinclair's old Catallaxy too - but the Trump administration and the refusal of Right wing media to criticise it one iota has made the situation just ridiculous.)

For example - it is 100% obvious that Trump suing his own government's departments to try to get a payout for past alleged transgressions was absurdly corrupt - especially from a man who patently stacks leadership positions on the basis of loyalty to him.  The $1.8 "slush fund" that can be used (it would seem) to reimburse rioters who injured police and damaged Congress is, again, absurdly open to corruption and we have seen nothing like it in the history of the country (as far as I know.)    

And now the news that Trump, by shear co-incidence, I'm sure, will promote companies that his "blind trust" (run by his kids) have just bought stock in - is (again) just absurdly corrupt.

Yet if a person posts a extract from MSM about any of these, you know the first reaction of Trump's minions downunder:    

LOL, NYT, FT, WaPo, you’ve hit the trifecta!     

And even old JC tries to excuse it because Democrats have funded NGOs before.  Yeah, sure, that's similar - not.

I do get annoyed at their obvious refusal to engage- to admit the plainly, 100% obvious - but they feel supported by Right wing media commentary which has found its market by never, ever, criticising Trump.  If people on Sky News at Night or Fox News are not criticising the President, well, it's not unreasonable to agree with them.

Are they that stupid that they don't realise how they are played and conned by a branch of media that exists only to always support Trump?     

And why not try honesty for a change? 

Let it go...

I lost interest in the Star Wars universe long ago, and have only watched a few episodes of any of the TV spin offs and found they just weren't engaging for me.  

So I was never interested in the new Mandalorian movie, except to see whether it could kill off the franchise entirely.  With Rottentomatoes rating of 61%, I think there is a good chance it might.

The only problem is, of course, that presumably Disney just can't let the franchise die (or go into hibernation) completely, because they have invested too much into it.   If this movie flops at the box office (as seems quite likely), I can imagine the company having crisis meetings for months as to what to do.

Some fictional franchises can make a good comeback after being rested for a decade or more (I'm thinking Doctor Who - another franchise which needs to lay fallow for at least 10 years.)   I just can't see a way that Star Wars can rise to relevance again without a long, long rest.       

Jewish hatred (no, not that kind)

I initially thought that reports of conservative Jewish acts of hostility towards obvious Christians in the streets of Jerusalem might be a tad exaggerated, especially when the PR wars over Israeli behaviour is very heated.

But after seeing this video report from an American network, interviewing a nun with a first hand account of it becoming virtually routine, I was obviously wrong to doubt it:

 

 

 

And a call out to my regular reader John: care to ask at New Catallaxy on my behald how they feel about this - especially mad old Cassie, who will blow a gasket with the impertinence of the question!   

 

Dwindling Buddhists

I don't think I had read about this before:

Buddhists are the world’s only major religious group whose population shrank between 2010 and 2020, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of religion in 201 countries and territories.

In 2010, an estimated 343 million people around the world identified as Buddhists. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 324 million. That’s a decline of roughly 5%.

During this period, the global population grew by 12%. The size of other religious groups we track at the global level also grew. As a result, Buddhists’ share of the global population dropped from 4.9% in 2010 to 4.1% in 2020. 

And here's the graph:

 Holidaying in Buddhist countries certainly doesn't give one the impression of Buddhism being only 4% or so of the world's population!

 

The Perfect Karen surprised me in a good way

 I don't actually care much for true crime documentaries on Netflix, but The Perfect Neighbor (set in Florida) kept being at the top of watched and recommended stuff, so I gave in on Saturday and watched it.

I'm glad I did.  For readers who don't know, it is unusual in that there is no narration and compromises police bodycam (and office cam) video stitched together to tell a story that took perhaps 2 to 3 years to unfold.  (There is a very small amount of other context setting stuff.)  

The basic story is that an older white woman living in a street of (what looks like) relatively low cost housing develops continual hatred of the neighbouring (most black) families, mainly because they (especially the kids) play a lot on a spare open bit of land next to her duplex residence.  She at some point gets a gun, and hey, it's America and you can probably guess where it goes.  (She is, inevitably, referred to as a "Karen" by some of the neighbours, hence my post title.)

There were two things that surprised me though, and in a rather pleasant way, given the setting:

*  the police from the local sheriff's office who get called out to the street on many occasions to try to deal with the woman's complaints come across so well, and this is not an image we typically get from a lot of reports of American policing, especially when black people are part of the story.  They are reasonable, empathetic, patient and pretty much impossible to fault.   There doesn't appear to be a speck of racism in their dealing with the black families, either.   And more than once you hear them say something like "I'm glad the kids are playing outside - better than sitting around stuck on a screen."   It was very heartening to see.

*  similarly, the image it gives of the black families was much more positive than we are used to from a lot of media and (at least crime) TV shows.   I don't know whether its because they were from church going families, but the kids and parents were respectful of the police when they talked to them, the kids were amusingly careful of not swearing openly, and you get a sense that the whole street knew each other and looked out for each other.  As I said, the design of the housing did look on the cheaper side - the street was tidy enough, but was devoid of trees or decoration.  I guess what I am trying to say is that, by the look of the street, you might think that it maybe had its share of dysfunctional family life - but the impression you get from this documentary is that it was actually a pretty good street for kids to be raised in.  Apart from the crazy woman across the road, of course.

So yeah, it feels a bit surprising to watch true crime and come out of it feeling a bit more optimistic for American society.   Part of the problem is that reports of the worst suburban crimes - the mass shootings, the police interactions where black people come out injured or dead - do tend to hide that fact that for a lot of Americans, suburban life is pretty much like suburban life anywhere, and isn't always touched by gun or other crime.  We used to get a sense of that from suburban sitcoms, but they are out of fashion now and there is little selling a positive image of ordinary life there.  As I say, it's funny that a true crime documentary that did involve a shooting nonetheless partially remedies the continually bad impression one gets of American life.      

Antarctic madness

The novel I recently read The Thing Itself features an episode of murderous madness happening at an Antarctic station, so I was interested to read this article about real life incidents down there:

An Antarctic expeditioner who allegedly threatened colleagues with a large, makeshift knife has been removed from a Korean research station in a rare mid-winter emergency evacuation.

The incident occurred at the Jang Bogo Station, 2,000 kilometres south-east of Australia's Casey Station, on April 13, according to Korean media.

CCTV footage broadcast on Korean media purportedly shows a man walking up a staircase carrying what appears to be a makeshift bladed weapon.

Other footage shows other expeditioners running away from the station's kitchen.

And:

It is not the first time threatening behaviour has occurred at isolated bases in Antarctica, where there are no police to deal with offences.

Hanne Nielsen, a senior lecturer in Antarctic law and governance at the University of Tasmania, said there have also been other high-profile criminal cases on the icy continent.

Last year, reports emerged of an incident at South Africa's SANAE IV that left fellow expeditioners fearing for their safety.

According to South African media, the alleged victim said the accused had threatened to kill someone, "creating an environment of fear and intimidation".

In one incident in 2018, a Russian scientist was accused of stabbing a colleague in the chest for spoiling the endings of books.

And back in 1959, a scientist at another Russian station allegedly murdered a colleague with an ice axe after losing a game of chess.

Dr Nielsen said issues in Antarctica sometimes rapidly escalate because of the challenges of living and working in confined and remote places for long periods.

 That 2018 incident is pretty close in character to the dispute that led to the incident in The Thing Itself.  

It's almost a surprise that it doesn't happen more often, I guess...