Some decent Twitter humour

The "every legal scholar" bit

An explanation of the Trumpian exaggeration lie regarding liberal scholars who wanted Roe overturned.

On psychics

This documentary, described in the article as a sympathetic take on why people see psychics (and why psychics do what they do), sounds pretty interesting to me.   I assume it will turn up on one of the streaming services pretty soon.

On reaching the "Beatle" age

That would be - 64.   It's a number that makes it difficult (very difficult!) to cling to the idea that I'm merely "upper middle age", and a recent bout of unexplained shoulder bursitis in a joint that has never had a problem before makes the gradual deterioration of bits and pieces of the body undeniable.

But hey, lots of things still interest me, the family is (mostly) healthy and (mostly) happy, and (maybe) there's another 25 - 30 years of relative good health, and thinking about stuff, to go.   (That's how long most on my mother's side have lived, anyway.  Not all in the greatest of health, though.)

I have felt a bit odd lately thinking that I am of an age at which I feel I can write off ever visiting certain places - Africa has never held much interest, for example, although that new museum in Egypt does look good.   I guess if you live forever, you would just never write off a continent as a place you would never visit, like I am starting to now.

So, what am I trying to say - getting into my 60's has finally made me start to think that I'll die one day?   Yes, I suppose that's true, which seems a bit of a downer on which to end a birthday post.  Instead, I can amuse myself by imagining that AI has probably already reached a good enough level that, if fed this entire blog, a reasonable simulation of me could go on blogging forever.  Or, at least, until Google stop supporting Blogger...:)

The debate

I can't watch the Trump/Harris debate (just winding up now as I type), but on Twitter and elsewhere, it seems Harris supporters are very, very happy with her performance.   I think I can safely say that Trump clearly has not won when, according to a couple of the Hot Air staff, this will be seen as a draw.  (That is, they're not bragging about a Trump triumph - the best they think they can say is "draw".)

This is good, and something of a relief.  

Update:  the TV coverage I just saw from the US is very clear that Harris won.   Also, the Taylor Swift endorsement is attracting attention.   Trump needs to start looking for apartments in Moscow, I think.

A sweet night of baroque

After going to the Ring Cycle last year, I'm no longer afraid of going to a concert of arias in a language I don't understand, and for some reason (slow sales, presumably), QPAC emailed a few weeks ago offering cheap but good seats ($59!) in the concert hall for the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's "Handel's House".  I went (with my wife) last night.

I've a soft spot for Handel, and baroque music generally, which, now that I think of it, may be partly due to Lurch playing the harpsichord in The Addam's Family!

While being vaguely aware of the ABO, I've never seen them before, and they were great.   The concert featured a guest Japanese soprano singing Handel arias I was unfamiliar with, but her voice was pure and she looked lovely.  I went to the concert with modest expectations, but it was better than expected.

The arias were broken up with other pieces, included a Vivaldi concerto and one a violinist/composer I never heard of before - Pisendel.  I see that he was a contemporary of Handel, Bach and Vivaldi, and his violin concerto last night was lively and immediately likeable.   

Should I mention the guy one seat away from me who was continually using his phone during the first half?   Sure, he had the light on (probably) as low as possible, but I could see he was actually texting in the middle of the concert.  Then would stop.  Then a few minutes later turn the phone on again.  And he was in about mid 30's - absolutely old enough not to have the fried attention span of every single person under the age of 30.  The problem for me is, once noticing the fidgeting fingers out of the corner of my eye, it was impossible to stop noticing it.

Anyway, it was dealt with by an usher in the second half.  I managed to get my way without any direct confrontation.  Yay.   

But back to the concert.  I see now that it has already played in Sydney and got good reviews, so my musically uneducated gut reaction was pretty accurate.  Yay, again.

Back to the Monkey King

I explained back in 2020 that I had started reading an abridged version of Journey to the West, but I confess, I kept forgetting to go back to it and may have stopped at about 90 pages in.   I was reading it on Scribd, which I wasn't using enough to justify the subscription, so cancelled it.   

But Sun Wukong keeps appearing on Twitter ads at the moment because of a high profile Chinese video game that's just been released, and I thought I should go back to the book and resume the story.  I found via nefarious means a downloadable copy of the same abridged version in epub format and have started again.

(Incidentally, I was reading books on my cheapo Lenovo tablet using Google Books, but I had this bad feeling that you can never trust Google to keep a service going, and didn't really understand where it was storing the books anyway, so I looked at other reader apps for Android.  Turns out there are plenty, and I have been using eBoox, which seems fine.  It goes and finds books whereever they have ended up in your tablet's drive, which I like.)

So, this is all preamble to noting that Youtube referred me to a young Chinese woman's channel in which she visits various scenic spots, and again makes me annoyed that so much of the landscape there looks fantastic but I am not sure I am up to visiting it out of concern of accidentally ending up in jail for 3 years for something inconsequential.   (Incidentally, I wonder what will happen to Western tourists in China if ever they start an invasion of Taiwan.  That worries me, too.) 

And now for the Monkey King connection:  this video she did, of a truly spectacular waterfall seemingly in the middle of nowhere, reminded me of his initial home in the "water curtain cave" - the entrance to which was concealed behind a waterfall:

Just gorgeous, although there seems a good chance of spraining your ankle while walking the rough path to get to this particular viewing site.    

While Googling around this topic, I came across this Journey to the West information site, which explains the appeal of the character generally: 

...Sun Wukong can be used as a great model for positive ambivalence in media, moving away from set limits of a single stereotype and rather being a constant motion of new ideas and new identities. Monkey has been changed from a mischievous monkey to a revolutionary hero to a post-modern rebel against authority throughout the years. But even throughout the constant changes and interpretations, people never lose sight of what the nature of Sun Wukong is: rebelliousness, variability, optimism, and persistence. 

Monkey is a transcending character as he is able to mediate contradictions within his own design, one being his gold-banded staff, a symbol of breaking barriers, and his golden filet (fig. 3), a symbol of limits. These two simple but prominent pieces of iconography immediately tell audiences who the character is supposed to be and what they are about.

Seems a fair take.  In one other post, we get this, much more hair-raising, bit of information:

The earliest mention of the name “Sun Wukong” that I’m aware of appears in an early-15th-century zaju play. It depicts the character as a sex-crazed maniac who kidnaps a princess to be his wife, tries to seduce Princess Iron Fan, and later gets erectile disfunction when his golden headband tightens while trying to have sex with a young maiden in the Kingdom of Women.

But, apparently I can expect no sudden shock of sexual antics in Journey:

He serves as a physical manifestation of the “Mind Monkey” (xinyuan, 心猿), a Buddho-Daoist philosophy denoting the disquieted thoughts that keep Man trapped in the illusory world of Saṃsāra (see the material below figure three here). This phrase is also surprisingly associated with sexual desire.

Despite the association above, Monkey shows no interest in sex throughout the entire novel. This may be a response to the highly sexualized Sun Wukong from the zaju play.

So, there you go.   I should do some work now...

Update:   It's hard to resist the temptation to follow the link to an article about Sun Wukong's lack of interest in sex.   And here it is:   

Lust, Caution, and Enlightenment
A Reexamination of Su Wukong’s Sexuality in Xiyou ji 

The abstract does make it sound an intriguing read, especially since I have posted before about how some Buddhists have thought sex (even of the pederast kind) could sometimes bring horny people to enlightenment:

The formation of the character of Sun Wukong has remained one of the most controversial issues in the field of Xiyou ji studies. While acknowledging that different strands might have fed into the image of Sun Wukong in the sixteenth- century novel Xiyou ji (Journey to the West), this paper calls attention to complex and sometimes contradictory representations of Sun Wukong’s sexuality and explores the mechanism of displacement that subtly operates in the novel and reveals itself through such representations. It further demonstrates the dual function performed by the displacement of Sun Wukong’s sexuality: on the one hand, it connects Sun Wukong to the image of the lustful ape in the white ape tradition; on the other hand, such displacement allows him to utilize and transcend his desire by experiencing the process of awakening to kong 空 by means of se 色 on his path to enlightenment. Therefore, a reexamination of Sun Wukong through the lens of sexuality helps draw together these two seemingly separate aspects and reveals a narrative in which Sun Wukong’s sexual desire not only encodes his hidden past associated with the white ape tradition but also generates significant meaning in light of the Buddhist context, that is, the notion that erotic encounters and fulfillment of sexual desire can be integrated into the Buddhist journey to enlightenment.

 Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a free copy of the paper on the net.  Must look harder...

Not a great start to the week

I see lots of depression on US twitter about the latest NYT poll indicating Trump improving slightly in the polls, to be nationally 1% higher than Harris in popular vote.  

It could just be me with an invalid hunch, but if the battleground States are pretty much tied, as the polls indicate, I would have thought that Democrat enthusiasm to get out and vote may still win the day.   

But it's hard not to disagree with this sentiment:

It's also a worry that so much weight is being put on the "debate" this week - mainly because Trump benefits from the "he's special" status he gets from his followers and the media - he is never held truly accountable for the ridiculousness of what he says, unlike the Democrat side.

Anyhoo:   I am also waiting for the counter to this silliness from Musk:

 I'm betting there is absolutely no way that crewed missions to Mars are going to be ready in that timeframe, due to life support systems for a colony being in no way ready for another 20 or 30 years.   (That's my hunch, anyway.)

Trump and tariffs - just ridiculous

If there is one thing as clear as day, and has been for years (do a Google search), is that no one has been able to get into Trump's head how tariffs work!     

He repeated it again in an answer he gave yesterday to the Economic Club of New York, which apparently was a room full of people too polite to follow up his answer with "Sir, that first part, about tariffs - is just plain wrong":

Some Twitter people are legitimately complaining that the NYT "sane washed" his answer: 

Even the Washington Post doesn't make it clear the fundamental problem with Trump's answer with this headline:

Trump offers confusing plan to pay for U.S. child care with foreign tariffs

while The Independent offers a blunter assessment in the link to its report, but didn't explain it properly in the actual article:   

It takes someone in comments at the WAPO to make the obvious point, and I find it incredibly annoying that journalists do not automatically make it whenever Trump says "foreign governments pay tariffs":

Indeed.   It seems the Los Angeles Times is the one outlet that makes the point bluntly, even though the article itself is behind a paywall.   (Incidentally - the LA Times digital access for $60 - US - for a year is one of the best value online subs around - I'm seriously tempted.)   Anyway, from the Google search:

It's very frustrating to think that MAGA people don't understand that their cult leader doesn't understand - because they won't read the MSM, and the Fox News's of the world won't make the point because it would be too embarrassing to tell their audience.

Twitter is awful now (continued)

This morning, the "For You" side of my Twitter featured tweets of the photo of the extended Walz family* wearing "vote Trump" T shirts about every 15 or so tweets, I reckon; yet I would have scrolled about 60 tweets before I even saw mention of the Georgia school shooting.   And it continues to be barely mentioned.   But now that I check - I just got an Alex Jones tweet about vaccinations in my "For You" column!! 

As so many now lament, Twitter used to be good for quick comments and links to stories about breaking news, even at the local level.  If you were sitting in a big storm and wondered how other parts of the city were going, you could search and expect to get a dozen or two recent tweets from fellow residents commenting on it.  Now, that hardly works.  

And no competitor has taken its place in that role.  Sad....

*   By the way, I discovered later in the day that this was a gigantic nothingburger - the family were "distant cousins" - descendants of Tim Walz's grandfather's brother - and Walz's sister said they didn't know them at all when growing up.   

A pretty rare Wordle

I don't play it every day, and have never before posted about any particular game, but the steps on the way to the solution today seem pretty unusual to me: 

Wordle 1,173 3/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Encouraging news

The Guardian:

Mobile phones are not linked to brain and head cancers, a comprehensive review of the highest quality evidence available commissioned by the World Health Organization has found.

Led by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa), the systematic review examined more than 5,000 studies from which the most scientifically rigorous were identified and weak studies were excluded.

The final analysis included 63 observational studies in humans published between 1994 and 2022, making it “the most comprehensive review to date”, the review lead author, associate prof Ken Karipidis, said.

“We concluded the evidence does not show a link between mobile phones and brain cancer or other head and neck cancers.”

Published on Wednesday, the review focused on cancers of the central nervous system (including brain, meninges, pituitary gland and ear), salivary gland tumours and brain tumours.

The review found no overall association between mobile phone use and cancer, no association with prolonged use (if people use their mobile phones for 10 years or more), and no association with the amount of mobile phone use (the number of calls made or the time spent on the phone).

“I’m quite confident with our conclusion. And what makes us quite confident is … even though mobile phone use has skyrocketed, brain tumour rates have remained stable,” said Karipidis, Arpansa’s health impact assessment assistant director.

 

Seriously, what is up with white American men?

I really find this hard to comprehend:

While the overall numbers are essentially unchanged from before the convention, the gender gap has widened. Harris leads by 13 points among women, 54-41 percent, while it’s Trump +5 points among men, 51-46 percent, for an 18-point gap. (The Trump-Harris difference among men is not statistically significant.) Pre-convention, Harris had been a slight +6 points among women and a non-significant +3 among men, a 3-point gap. The gender gap now is more in line with recent elections, an average of 19 points in exit polls since 1996.

Much of the moves among women and men have occurred among white people. White women have gone from +13 points for Trump pre-convention to a virtual dead heat (Trump +2) now;  white men, from +13 points for Trump before the convention to +21 points now.

I mean, I think this would freak me out a bit if travelling in the USA - knowing that if I ever get into a conversation with a white male, the odds are extremely high that they will be intending to vote for Trump!

You could make out the case that the problem is pretty much white people generally, to be honest.  This is from exit polling at the last election:

But I just don't see how it is possible to interpret the massive jump in polling support amongst white males since Harris was the candidate as anything other than residual sexism.   (Come on, if she was an appalling candidate in all respects, she wouldn't have jumped significantly with white women.)   

Here's a good article from the New York Times in 2020 that seeks to explain the massive gender difference.  Some extracts:

When Ronald Reagan defeated the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, in the 1980 presidential election, exit polls showed that women favored him by a slim 2-percentage-point margin but that he won the male vote 55 to 36 percent. The last time the gender gap was that big was the 1950s, but at that point — and traditionally — it was women who were the more conservative voters, which was largely attributed to their greater religiosity.

Polling is consistent that women are more likely to favor government spending on social issues, and that is likely one reason the gender gap emerged in 1980....

Some argued that the gender gap emerged because women were voting in their self-interest. But the sociologist Martin Gilens, now the chairman of the public policy department at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, took issue with that idea.

In a paper published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology late in Mr. Reagan’s first term, he wrote, “I do not believe that ‘women’s issues’ such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) or abortion, nor economic conditions such as the growing number of impoverished women, are primarily responsible for the gender gap, though they may play a part.” Instead, he continued, “I think the gender gap reflects traditional differences in male and female values and personalities, differences such as men’s greater competitiveness and concerns with issues of power and control, and women’s greater compassion and nurturance, rejection of force and violence, and concern with interpersonal relations.”

The language is a bit dated, but much of the research since has come to similar conclusions. A 2012 report from what is now the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University reviewed polling results and summed up the issues dividing male and female voters.

Women, it found, were more likely to favor an “activist role for government” and were more supportive of guaranteed health care, same-sex marriage and restrictions on firearms. They were more likely to favor legal abortion without restrictions, though polls sometimes show fairly equal support among men and women on abortion.

Men’s political views were shaped by a more individualistic attitude, the report found — a feeling that government should not help so much.

The piece also then notes that the parties have "branded" themselves in (what I suppose you could call) gendered ways too:

You can make an argument that, rather than men and women having changed their ways of thinking over the past several decades, the two major parties have basically branded themselves by gender, as well as by race. The hundreds of million of dollars spent each election cycle to “energize the base” serve to herd voters into their respective tents. Once inside, they hear messages that reaffirm and cement their party identity.

The Republican Party is for white men and people who think like white men. “We see it in poll questions that ask, “Is America getting too soft and feminine?” Dr. Deckman said. “Those who answer ‘yes’ lean strongly Republican.”

The Democratic Party is the party for women and for people of color, who are even more dependable Democrats than women. It is also, increasingly, the party of the college educated: In a late September Washington Post-ABC News poll, Mr. Trump led Mr. Biden by a modest 8 points among white men with a college degree, but by a whopping 39 points among white men without a college degree. In other words, white college-educated men are beginning to vote more like women and people of color.

Towards the end, some straight talking:

The gender gap cannot be completely differentiated from rank misogyny. Some would argue that it is misogyny. At the very least, it is a sign of our nation’s broken culture that men and women cannot agree on fundamental moral questions: The importance of integrity and common decency. The humane treatment of society’s most vulnerable. The worthiness of a man to lead our nation who apparently paid hush money to a porn star.

Anyway, while MAGA types always go on about how it could take a civil war to sort out America, I might be starting to agree; except it shouldn't be one between Democrats and Republicans - it just needs to be one that's pretty much a race war - Blacks, Hispanics and Asian against white - particularly white males - and especially if they never went to college!  

Unfortunately, that's probably also the category most likely to have an arsenal at home ready for such a war.  But they aren't so smart - some nerdy Asian American military leadership can probably put together a pretty good home made drone war against them.   But then again, Musk would naturally want a leadership role in the incel Army.  I don't know that he would be much of a military leader though - he might flame out on ketamine or something.

Apart from that, I don't know how this terrible situation in the US is going to change.  No doubt, some aerial bombing of Fox News and Newsmax would surely help.  Especially if it is by female pilots...

Update:   Further to the discussion in comments about how much it might be a "culture war" related issue of how masculinity is perceived, the thing that I don't get is why it seems to be primarily a white male thing.   Why would white men be so disproportionately insecure in that way?   I mean, Black and Latino men as a group generally have a reputation for macho type masculinity, yet the exit polls indicate it doesn't affect their voting in the way it does white men:

So, if I am reading these correctly, about 80% plus of Black men voted for Biden, 60% of "Latinex" men and 68% of Asian Americans.   Compared to 40% of white male voters!

One partial explanation might be that the macho-est of macho Black and Latino men might not vote at the same rate as white men?  This article does indicate that Black men vote at lower rates, but doesn't explain by how much, and it wouldn't seem likely to account for it   

So, as the title of the post says....why white men in particular??

Update 2:   A few related jokes from the late night shows:

“Forty-eight percent,” Stephen Colbert said, referring to a recent USA Today survey in which Harris led Donald Trump, 48 percent to 43 percent. “That really restores my faith in almost half of humanity.”

“Harris is particularly popular with women, while Trump is ahead among men, leading some to call this ‘the boys versus girls election.’ And, remember, many Trump voters are not vaccinated against cooties.” — STEPHEN COLBERT

“A new poll found that Harris has widened her lead among women to 13 points. Thirteen. Trump heard the news and was like, ‘Was it everything I said?’” — JIMMY FALLON

 

Some tweets and observations

This was a week or so ago....

 

....and it has clearly come to pass.  The "For You" column in Twitter is chock full of not only Musk tweeting (seemingly) every five minutes, but Right Wing accounts of all varieties are definitely flooding the place and getting pushed into the feed.

Musk is very, very upset with Brazil, too, for blocking X.  I've also seen people saying he was asked to block 7 accounts, refused to do so and was country banned.  But this:

"Interesting", as Musk would say.

He's also being as childish as usual, but I liked the response:

He does make a good Nazi.

Any other tweet I have forgotten to post?  This one:

Such sophisticated politics from Tucker.

And there's this:

Always fantasising about a civil war if they don't get their way. 

Back to pebble bed

Sabine Hossenfelder has posted another video about something I used to post about in the early days of this blog:  pebble bed nuclear reactors.

I used to follow a now defunct website by an enthusiast who wrote about progress in the development of this type of reactor, particularly with a group that wanted to build one in South Africa. (The link is still in the sidebar.)   The idea of the reactor sounded very encouraging - the design of the fuel meant it really couldn't melt down - a passive safety system that should work regardless of power outages or other problems.

However, the South African project never got going, and although China went ahead and developed one (which is what Sabine's video is about), I did read back in the day about a German research reactor of this type that had a lot of problems - particularly with the fuel pellets breaking up and causing a real radioactive mess inside the core that was difficult to deal with.   (I'm pretty sure I also read someone claiming if the pellets at high temperature were exposed to air, they could burn, which is not ideal!  But I could be wrong about that.)

Anyway, Sabine's video is about the Chinese doing an actual "will it meltdown" test of their reactor, and it passed.

However, she doesn't mention the German reactor experience at all - but many people in comments have.   

Some claim that the fuel pellet design has changed and improved since the German attempt - but given the huge number of pellets needed in these reactors, I wonder how hard it is to guarantee that you won't have some break apart (and how hard they will be to remove) during the life of the reactor.   (I think - but could be wrong! - that the pellets, which are re-circulated through the reactor - move down through it via gravity - and hence having some pellets split could well represent a major problem if the pieces somehow jam the flow of the pellets.)  This really seems the major problem, as far as I can tell.

Anyhow, here's her video:

Arlington context

Oh, the New York Times does a useful bit of context setting for Trump's disgraceful use of Arlington video in a campaign video:

In November 1999, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former prisoner of war in Vietnam who was widely considered a military hero, said that his newly launched presidential campaign had made “a very bad mistake.”

Mr. McCain, who at the time was trailing far behind George W. Bush in the race for their party’s nomination, had produced a campaign ad highlighting his career as a Navy pilot and his reverence for his fellow service members. At one moment, the ad showed Mr. McCain walking solemnly through Arlington National Cemetery.

The Army soon said that Mr. McCain’s campaign had never requested permission to film in the cemetery. Even if it had, an Army spokesman said at the time, the request would have been denied because partisan activity is banned at Army installations. A campaign spokesman said that the clip had come from one of the senator’s periodic visits to the graves of his father and his grandfather.

It was an incident in campaign politics that closely mirrored, before it sharply diverged from, another that took place last week. An Army spokesman said on Thursday that former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign had similarly not been given permission to film in a restricted area of Arlington National Cemetery during Mr. Trump’s visit on Monday — and that it could not have received such permission because it would violate federal law.....

In Mr. McCain’s case, by contrast, the senator quickly moved to cut the cemetery footage — a two-second clip in which no particular grave is visible — from his campaign ad just days after the Army issued its statement. Mr. McCain said it was “stupidity” that his campaign had not acted even sooner to respond to the criticism.

Other candidates involved in similar incidents often quickly removed the images. In late 2015, John Bel Edwards, a Democrat running for governor in Louisiana, cut an image of Arlington National Cemetery from a campaign ad after its presence prompted a backlash. “When my husband and I see your commercial,” the mother of a man buried at the cemetery had written to Mr. Edwards, “we are both uncomfortable and disappointed to see the Arlington National Cemetery used for politics.”...

“It is not uncommon that a politician drags the military into a partisan moment — that happens all too often, and both parties do it,” Mr. Feaver said. “What is unusual in this instance is how the Trump team reacted when they were called out for it. Instead of apologizing or claiming it was all a misunderstanding, they doubled down.”

Which all goes to show that it's irrelevant what the Trump supporting families think about it.  It was wrong of Trump to use the video in campaign video, full stop.