Low birthrate

Here's something I didn't know:

Presumably, it's pretty good?

 I have now seen 3 Youtube reviews of the movie version of Wicked, all by male reviewers who are not the most "bro" reviewers around, but still feel like their tastes skew towards the Rightwing-ish views on "woke" as a cultural issue.  And they all enjoyed the movie quite a lot - saying they went in with no or low expectations, and two I think said they had never seen the stage play (nor have I), so they were surprised about how good they found it.

I think this is particularly surprising given that (as the Critical Drinker said in a video about the lead actress going a bit nuts about changes to the movie poster), the musical could be said to have started something of a "woke-ish" cycle of movies about a misunderstood villain (often female) who we would have some sympathy for if only we understood the backstory and her perspective.

So, maybe I should see it...

Talk about your sourdough

I quite enjoyed this article, which I found via Bluesky:

Why "manifesting" is far more irrational than using a medieval service magician

In the medieval past, people would routinely employ "cunning folk" or "service magicians" to help them. They were much more effective, rational, and ethical than many spiritual practices today.

This part, about love magic, I found pretty amusing:

Before there was Tinder, there was seduction magic. It was deemed so powerful that a thirteenth century Christian theologian named William de Montibus felt it necessary to warn his fellow believers about the perils of consuming food prepared with a love spell, infused with the essence of a courting woman in, well, rather unique ways.

The first worry was that one might consume a loaf of bread kneaded not by hand, but by buttocks. Bread, a staple of a medieval diet also used in religious rites, could be a vector for an irresistibly magical feminine essence embedded in the dough, particularly if the cunning woman had sat on it and wriggled around in her natural state to prepare the loaf.

Is the New Age kinda back?

Martha Gill (who I am unfamiliar with) writing at The Guardian talks a bit about Jordan Peterson's new book, and notes more broadly that his approach sort of fits in with a general renewed popularity of New Age-ish ideas amongst the younger set:

With mainstream religion in the west in long-term decline, something else is emerging. Not quite religion, not quite self-help – but a tantalising mix of the two. Where self-improvement sections of bookshops once contained straightforward advice on dating, dieting or getting rich quick, now they ask you to buy into a whole canon of spiritual beliefs. Call it mystical self-help.

You see it, for example, in the astonishing popularity of astrology among young people. For my generation, for whom reading your horoscope is an embarrassing secret, this can be jarring. At a recent party, I was surprised to stumble into an earnest astrology conversation between people in their late 20s, bonding over the fact that two of them were Capricorns, and analysing their moon signs in great detail.

Really, of course, it was a jumping off point to open up about their lives, relate to each other, and explore how they tended to deal with problems. No wonder generation Z seems to find it therapeutic. The global market for astrology was valued at $12.8bn in 2021 and was projected to nearly double in the following decade.

Then there is tarot, which is also on the rise, driven mostly by TikTok. More young people are turning to spiritual readings “as an alternative to therapy”. Meditation techniques used to be advocated as a method for calming down; now they are sold, via semi-Buddhist beliefs, as a route to complete personal transformation. See, for example, the huge success of The Power of Now, a book that asks the reader to believe in a system of universal energy flow. Wellness has meanwhile fused with a set of anti-science beliefs, including the idea – dangerously championed by Elle Macpherson – that you can think yourself better, via your “inner sense” of what will cure you.

This sits alongside a cabal of celebrities on the right – Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, Andrew Tate, Peterson – who are tapping into the self-improvement market among young men and advocating religion as a route to the answer. The market is growing: the largest segment of buyers of self-help books is now men aged 25 to 34. They are sold a rebranded and cherry-picked system of faith, drawn from various religions and packaged to fit their needs.

The bit about astrology is interesting.  I thought it was long dead and buried; or at least, now a very fringe interest with much less popular following than in what seems to have been its heyday from the 1960's to the 1980's.  But then again, I was surprised recently to see the most generic type of astrological weekly forecast pap being put up near the end of one of the commercial TV news services on (I think) a Sunday.

And, of course, as I don't use TikTok, I have no idea what things are gaining popularity there with the youth.

Anyway, Gill ends with a bit of overreach, I think:

Mystic self-help may largely be harmless but we should ask what its popularity says about us and where we are going. After all, we owe nearly all modern progress to the fight against religion, allowing rational deductions to hold sway over tribally mediated beliefs. Are we now seeing the dawn of a post-information age?

Still, it's a topic that always interests me - how people find meaning and how much religion or other metaphysical beliefs really have to do with it.

   

Lulz

 A couple of days later:

Historically brief, but Gaetz’s Cabinet bid still did a lot of damage

No candidate for the Cabinet has been named so soon after an election and then withdrawn as rapidly as Gaetz.

Billionairies and the interests of humanity

Surely I am not alone in thinking this:   never has my opinion of billionaires been lower, in light of recent events. 

The prime example, although there are so many to chose from, is (of course) Elon Musk.   A peculiar man seeking to exercise immense power by proxy, having succeeded in helping get said proxy elected via his social media empire, dwindling though it may now be.   

Yet if questioned, he would claim it is all in the interest of "making humanity multiplanetary", his perceived vital long term goal.

What is irking me at the moment, with the "gee whiz" factor of the recent Starship test flights (the most recent one featuring a gormless Trump in tow), is that the future technical challenges to doing anything especially useful with this rocket system seem so far below the public radar.     

I mean, relying on both a booster and the enormous manned vehicle to land safely via retrorocket and guidance that are to work perfectly each time?   The deadstick landing of the space shuttle had a worrying enough component of "everything has to go right", but at least if they got close to the ground but not near a runway, there was some chance of exit of the horizontally moving machine.  Seems to me that there are going to no similar systems possible on Starship, because if there is going to be a major problem, it is more likely to be at the very last minute, with the rocket having no opportunity to align itself to allow a slower descent or an attitude to allow easy crew escape. 

Sure, the landing system looks cool, and it's not great disaster if it doesn't work each time with the booster - although there is a very good chance of huge and expensive destruction of the landing pad and facilities.  But the manned rocket?   I reckon it will only take a couple of fatal accidents and people will leap from "that's so cool" to "you know, this is just inherently dangerous and can you really ever use such a system reliably enough for humans?"  

And how many people are really following the development story close enough to realise that it's going to be an enormous problem getting the thing to the Moon, or Mars, because of the need for in-orbit refuelling?

Have a read of this lengthy article from earlier this year, pointing out that it seems already the system is heavier than expected, and noting the huge difference it makes to the whole re-fuelling idea:

Starship Faces Performance Shortfall for Lunar Missions

 “Currently, Flight 3 would be around 40-50 tons to orbit.”

To understand the significance of this statement, one only needs to review prior statements about Starship’s performance.  Ever since Musk’s 2017 presentation, Starship’s estimated payload capacity has ranged between 100 and 150 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).  SpaceX’s official Starship Payload Users Guide clearly states that “At the baseline reusable design, Starship can deliver over 100 metric tons to LEO” [3].  For the past six years, Starship’s diameter, height, and propellant mixture have remained constant.  The most straightforward interpretation of Musk’s comment is that the rocket is suffering from a 50% underperformance.....

The success or failure of the Human Landing System program will be decided by Starship’s payload capacity. Due to its high dry (unfueled) mass, Starship HLS cannot reach the Moon without first refueling in LEO.  To complete the Artemis 3 mission, SpaceX must therefore implement orbital refueling on an unprecedented scale.  Even on Earth, loading cryogenic propellants into a launch vehicle is no easy feat; if anything, this will be more difficult in space.  Prior to every Artemis mission, a flotilla of reusable Starship tankers will transfer liquid oxygen and liquid methane to an orbiting propellant depot.  The lunar lander will then launch, receive a full load of fuel and oxidizer from the depot, and continue onwards to the Moon.

The number of tanker flights which will be required to complete Artemis 3 is hotly debated.  Estimates range from four [5] to nineteen [6] launches of propellant per lunar landing.  Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin recently noted that the probability of mission success is directly correlated with the number of launches in each refueling campaign [7].  For instance, it is reasonable to assume that each individual Starship launch, plus the subsequent propellant transfer operation, will have a 98% probability of success once the procedure is refined.  If five tanker flights are required, the mission as a whole will succeed in 90% of scenarios.  In contrast, if twenty launches are needed, that probability drops to just 67%. 

The precise number of tanker flights depends on several variables, including the Starship launch rate and the rate at which cryogenic propellant boils off to space while the depot is in orbit.  However, no parameter is more important than the vehicle’s payload capacity.  If Starship’s payload mass grows, the number of tanker flights required to complete an Artemis mission will decrease.  Conversely, a reduction in payload capacity will increase the number of propellant launches.

The current iteration of Starship can store 1,200 tons of liquid methane and liquid oxygen in its propellant tanks.  Recent renderings suggest that the lunar lander will be slightly taller, with a propellant load of approximately 1,500 tons.  If each tanker can deliver 100 tons of fuel to orbit as advertised, then it will take 15 flights to complete an Artemis mission.  This number is large, but given SpaceX’s demonstrated ability to scale up to a high cadence of missions, it is not insurmountable in medium- to long-term timeframes.  

However, if SpaceX is only able to launch 50 tons of propellant to orbit inside each Starship tanker, then it will need to launch the world’s largest rocket a staggering 30 times to refuel a single lunar lander.  Two additional launches will be required to place the Starship HLS and the propellant depot into orbit.  To make matters worse, this hypothetical manifest does not take boiloff into account.  Even if NASA and SpaceX achieve their stated goal of a 6-day turnaround between Starship launches, it will take over half a year to stage all of the propellant in orbit.  Several additional flights might be required to replace the oxygen and methane which are lost during this time period.

I know there has been some publicity about the extraordinary complicated system NASA has been planning all these years for a return to the Moon, but it seems to me not enough.

And it's all because making a large rocket land vertically looks cool.   

Another irony about Musk - I mean, beyond the one where he thinks everyone should have lots of kids, yet seems like the most absent father possible to his own - is the recent discussion on Sabine Hossenfelder's channel about concerns that we are getting much closer to a making low earth orbit unuseable due to a Kessler syndrome disaster.

Given that Muck Musk is already cluttering up the orbits with Starlink (another example of something with a "cool" factor but on deeper consideration, we might be better off not using), the ultimate irony would be an exploding Starship in orbit, combined with his hundreds of his other satellites, making low Earth orbit pretty much impossible to safely traverse to get to Mars.

Here's the video: 

I think there is a better than even chance that Musk will go down in history as leading humanity to disaster and/or expensive dead ends, rather than being the saviour he thinks he will be.

Yes, if you mean "by being black, well spoken, and President" and sending the Right lurching further to the Right in response

 You can see I'm still looking at Twitter for laughs and giggles - seriously though, if Noah Smith ever abandons it for Bluesky, I'll probably only be back there once a week or so.

But have a look at this for an absurd claim:

Such shameless stupid gaslighting.   He would be insta-blocked by so many at Bluesky if ever he shows up there.

Gosh - Rowan Williams reviews Jordan Peterson

 How old is Rowan Williams now?*   Have his eyebrows been allowed to grow ever higher til they reach his hairline?  

Well, that's a bitchy way to start talking about him, because despite his strong inclination towards the sort of modern Church of England waffle theology that tries to offend no one and ends up losing relevancy because of it, I have always had a soft spot for him.   Let me search this blog to see if this is right - gosh, yes, I have mentioned him in posts a half dozen times over the years, and yeah, I had forgotten I once described him like this:

"...seems to be a philosopher who ended up a Church's world leader by accident. He's a nice enough sounding man, but one suspects he has helped more people out of his Church than into it." 

Anyway, here he is turning up in The Guardian to offer his review of Jordan Peterson's latest version of his version of "how to find modern meaning in the Bible without really believing anything in it happened or that there is necessarily a God".   

I suppose, now that I think about, that there is something pretty common in their approaches - except that if I recall correctly, Williams did try to convince us that he really did believe that God (or something close to God - "ineffable transcendence" or some such, probably! - was real.)

I actually have been feeling the need to talk about the whole "how do we find meaning in the modern world" topic, but work is so busy today.   Will come back to it soon....

*74 - about the age he has seemed for 20 years.

Krugman on the decline of Twitter and the rise of Bluesky

This very much reflects my views, and it explains why I am not worried about the "but it's bad to have echo chambers" aspect.  (See, Tim T, if Krugman agrees with me, how can I be wrong!):

Pre-Elon Musk, Twitter was the place people in my business had to be. I know different people used it for different purposes — nothing against Katy Perry, but not all of her nearly 106 million followers are on social media platforms for the same reasons I am. What I used Twitter for was to learn from and interact with people possessing real expertise, sometimes in areas I know pretty well, sometimes in areas I don’t, like international relations and climate policy.

I won’t go through the litany of ways the platform has changed for the worse under Musk’s leadership, but from my point of view it has become basically unusable, overrun by bots, trolls, cranks and extremists.

But where could you go instead? In the past couple of years, there have been several attempts to promote alternatives to X, but none of them really caught on. To some extent this may have reflected flaws in their designs, but a lot of it was simply lack of critical mass: Not enough of the people you wanted to interact with could be found on the alternative sites.

Then came this year’s presidential election, which seems to have sparked an exodus (“Xodus”?) from Muskland. From my point of view, Bluesky, in particular — a site that functions a lot like pre-Musk Twitter — quite suddenly has reached critical mass, in the sense that most of the people I want to hear from are now posting there. The raw number of users is still far smaller than X’s, but as far as I can tell, Bluesky is now the place to find smart, useful analysis.

And yes, most of the new Bluesky posters I find useful are liberal, but that reflects the modern right’s anti-intellectualism rather than political bias on the part of the site.

I have no idea what this means for X’s financials, and I don’t care. What I see is that you can indeed ruin a network if you try hard enough. And it’s starting to look as if Musk has managed to pull it off.

Probably why the relationship will soon end

 Seriously, though:   can you imagine the MAGA uproar if a liberal billionaire was Harris's shadow everywhere if she had won?    

We have never seen anything like this, and it's bound to end badly.  The only question is "how badly?"

Update:  It did occur to me that this might be a photoshop, and while I have seen many MAGA types claim it is, I have seen others deny it and claim it was on Musk's own feed.   If there is an original photo "hair on", I haven't seen it yet...

In which I pretty much agree with a retired porn star

On the ABC news this morning:

Brisbane City Council is working with police to crack down on "anti-social behaviour" at the city's homeless camps.

Council City Standards chairwoman Sarah Hutton said the council was receiving increasing numbers of complaints from local residents and businesses near the tent cities.

"Following the Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner's personal call to the Police Commissioner, we've established a joint taskforce to help address escalating violent, aggressive and anti-social behaviour in Brisbane parks," Cr Hutton said.

Roma Street resident David Mech said he had repeatedly complained to the council about the state of homeless camps around the inner city.

He said he wanted to see homeless camping criminalised to make the Brisbane cityscape "aesthetically beautiful" again.

The retired porn star gave a speech at council chambers on Tuesday last week, where he advocated that Brisbane follow the likes of Florida and make public camping a crime.

He told ABC Radio Brisbane there should be a designated campsite in Brisbane where homeless sleepers were permitted, but outlawed everywhere else.

"There's an old saying all around the world that beggars can't be choosers, but here in Brisbane they absolutely can," Mr Mech said.

As I've complained before - it's pretty much a modern nonsense to think that a reasonable response to homelessness is to let encampments develop in any public park or space.   I know we are far behind America in the extent of the problem, but as the backlash there is finally gathering pace,  I see no reason to let our cities even start developing the same issue.  

 

3000 years of boredom

I really don't care at all for director George Miller's movies, but I do usually find Tilda Swinton extremely watchable.   Hence I decided to take a chance and watch their 2022 fantasy flop 3000 Years of Longing on Netflix.

I found it extremely dull, with problems that should have been obvious from the screenplay to any studio funding it.   I can't think of any other film with such long, long periods of purely narrated flashback story, without the characters on the screen in said scenes actually speaking.   And the fantasy versions of the past were just too silly, even for a movie about a genie from a bottle.

Overall, after the first 10 minutes (which do seem to show some promise), once another 20 or 30 minutes passed I found it impossible to avoid thinking "when is this film going to give us a hint as to where it's going."   It does, eventually, get to a relationship of sorts between the two characters, but there is no reason at all to feel invested in it; and once established (like the rest of the movie) it has a profound feeling of "going nowhere".  It is such a badly written film.  Nothing feels real about any of the characters, including Swinton's, or their reactions.   (And Miller co-wrote it, so he can bear all the blame.)

Yet it seems George Miller gets some sort of "benefit of the doubt" all the time from reviewers.  I can't help but feel it's something to do with the glasses and always seeming to give off  the (pretty typical for an Australian director) vibe of "I'm in the artist class, so if your politics are Left you must appreciate me".   Here, for example, Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian gave it 3 out of 5, but his description suggests it deserves a "fail" more than a "pass":

It’s a garrulous, yet almost static movie, and weirdly for a film about narrative there is no single overwhelmingly important storyline. Swinton and Elba sit around in the hotel room while all the exotic drama is given to us in flashback-fragments of wonder. There is something very old-fashioned about it, and I think a younger film-maker might have wanted to engage more knowingly with ideas of orientalism, race and gender. Yet for all that it is a little bit underpowered, with not much of a screen-relationship between Elba and Swinton.

Of course, I have to admit that some people seemed to like it, if online reviews are anything to go by.  I can't fathom why, but I guess its commercial failure gives me some encouragement that my view is the more widely shared.

Why the interest?

It's rare that I have any interest at all in a boxing match, but I'm having a particularly hard time understanding why anyone on the planet would be keen to watch Jake Paul fight Mike Tyson.  Yet somehow, this has been promoted as if it's something consequential.

It feels more to me like the modern Roman circus in the days of a declining empire.   

Paul is 27, I see.  With his heavy set body, tatts and beard, he could easily pass for 40.   

I wonder if even Jason Soon is cynical about this?   

The strangest of time lines

Here we were thinking the first Trump presidency was full of weirdness; but the American public decided to just see how much weirder it could get, and man, are they being rewarded.

Trump's Reckless Choices for National Leadership 

Donald Trump has demonstrated his lack of fitness for the presidency in countless ways, but one of the clearest is in the company he keeps, surrounding himself with fringe figures, conspiracy theorists and sycophants who put fealty to him above all else. This week, a series of cabinet nominations by Mr. Trump showed the potential dangers posed by his reliance on his inner circle in the starkest way possible.

For three of the nation’s highest-ranking and most vital positions, Mr. Trump said he would appoint loyalists with no discernible qualifications for their jobs, people manifestly inappropriate for crucial positions of leadership in law enforcement and national security.

But even away from Trump, this seems pretty weird too, doesn't it?:

The Onion wins auction to take control of Alex Jones’s Infowars

And a random one:

Human in Bear Suit Was Used to Defraud Insurance Companies, Officials Say

Footage of a bear rifling through luxury cars was submitted to insurance companies, which paid out $140,000. But something seemed off.

But here is some decent news:

Liberals are fleeing X again — this time for Bluesky

Yes - I can confirm that BlueSky is looking pretty good - for whatever reason, I finally seem to have managed to stop the weird overrun of my "Discover" feed by cat photo and amateur anime art accounts.  (It took a fair bit of blocking accounts for the first week or two - or maybe they changed something else in the algorithm - I really don't know.)

But it is now feeling somewhat like old Twitter: pretty much a micro-blogging site with a liberal bent, although still without the quick and often witty community input, because the numbers aren't there yet.  At least a lot of journalists, commentators and scientists who I like to follow have made the move recently, and I like it.    (The thing I miss about old Twitter was that its popularity meant it was actually good for breaking news in your own area - if a big storm was happening, say, you could search "Brisbane storm" and find a lot of contributions to how bad it was in other parts of the city.)

Must post about something other than American politics....

 *  More good news for those of us (that is, me) who want to do the lowest possible amount of exercise for blood pressure:

Just five minutes of activity a day was estimated to potentially reduce blood pressure, while replacing sedentary behaviours with 20-27 minutes of exercise per day, including uphill walking, stair-climbing, running and cycling, was also estimated to lead to a clinically meaningful reduction in blood pressure.

Joint senior author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, Director of the ProPASS Consortium from the Charles Perkins Centre said: "High blood pressure is one of the biggest health issues globally, but unlike some major causes of cardiovascular mortality there may be relatively accessible ways to tackle the problem in addition to medication."

"The finding that doing as little as five extra minutes of exercise per day could be associated with measurably lower blood pressure readings emphasises how powerful short bouts of higher intensity movement could be for blood pressure management."

*  The space garbage problem:

 Astronauts on the International Space Station generate their share of garbage, filling up cargo ships that then deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere. Now Sierra Space has won a contract to build a trash compactor for the space station. The device will compact space trash by 75% in volume and allow water and other gases to be extracted for reclamation. The resulting garbage blocks are easily stored and could even be used as radiation shielding on long missions.

As I thought the ISS didn't have that much working life left, seems an odd thing to be spending money on right now.

*  Oh look, someone defending Kant from an unfair attack in a new book. Context, and translation, is everything:

At the risk of being labeled an apologist, I would like to defend Kant on just one of the many criticisms Wilson levels. In Chapter Nine, Wilson ascribes to Kant the genuinely abhorrent view that any woman who sells or rents her body forfeits her own dignity in such a way that makes it morally permissible for anyone to use her as a mere thing and thus, presumably, to enslave or even to kill her.^[3] As she writes with subtle but biting sarcasm, “[a]ccording to the Kantian metaphysics of morality and justice, a person turns herself into a thing by becoming a prostitute” (208). But could this really be what Kant thought?

The evidence Wilson presents for this interpretation is a single quotation from student lecture notes that has been mistranslated, taken out of context, and does not even concern prostitution. As quoted by Wilson, it reads: “As soon as a person becomes an object of appetite for another, all motives of moral relationship cease to function. . .a person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by everyone (27:386 [sic])” (208). The line is from the Collins lecture notes (27:384–5) as rendered in the outdated translation by Louis Infield and concerns not prostitution but rather the moral impropriety of sex in the absence of the sort of human affection wherein each aims to promote the happiness of the other. As the student in Kant’s lecture hall recorded him as saying, now as translated in the Cambridge Edition:

The sexual impulse can admittedly be combined with human affection, and then it also carries with it the aims of the latter, but if it is taken in and by itself, it is nothing more than appetite. But, so considered, there lies in this inclination a degradation of man; for as soon as anyone becomes an object of another’s appetite, all motives of moral relationship fall away; as object of another’s appetite, that person is in fact a thing, whereby the other’s appetite is sated, and can be misused [gemißbraucht] as such a thing by anybody. (27:384–5)

Taken in its proper context, the plain meaning of the passage is that when viewed exclusively “as the object of another’s appetite,” a person is being regarded by them as a mere thing and so as an instrument that anyone may “misuse” (not “use”). And this Kant claims is morally contrary to the dignity that a person, including a prostitute, actually possesses and certainly never loses by such an act. To my knowledge, Kant never states that sex in the absence of affection transforms a person into a thing in such a manner that it then becomes morally permissible for anyone to use them as a tool. Furthermore, when Kant does seem to raise the issue of prostitution a few pages after the line quoted by Wilson, his point is that it is morally wrong because through it a person’s “humanity is in danger of being used by anyone as a thing” (27:386; emphasis added). Kant may well be incorrect to regard prostitution as immoral; but he did not hold the abhorrent view Wilson so casually ascribes to him here and elsewhere in the book (see also, 267).

 

 

Tiny bits of cheerful news

*  Ms Gauze Filter, the MAGA nut Kari Lake, has definitely lost her Senate bid.   We have to be thankful for any small blessing we can find.

*  His "career" may continue, but he's still not happy that this is happening:

Conspiracy theory purveyor Infowars and most of its assets are set to go on the auction block Wednesday, with Alex Jones waiting to see if he will be allowed to stay or if he will get kicked off its online platforms.

The private auction is being held as part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy, which resulted from the nearly $1.5 billion in defamation lawsuit judgments a judge and jurors ordered the bombastic internet show and radio host to pay to families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for repeatedly telling his audience that the Connecticut massacre of 20 children and six adults was a hoax staged by crisis actors.

Jones has said that he believes he could remain at the Infowars studios in Austin, Texas, and continue to use its online platforms if supporters win the bidding. But if opponents buy the assets, he said it could be shut down immediately. He said he has set up a new studio, new websites and new social media accounts in case the latter happens.

On his show Tuesday, Jones alleged that the auction was “rigged” and that he believed “bad guys” will buy Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, and its assets. He did not elaborate but said he would “just drive down the road” and broadcast at another studio. 

One would hope that American bankruptcy laws are a little like ours, in allowing for any earnings he makes to be partially taken to pay for the judgement debt.   But maybe not - bankruptcy in the US never seems to keep losers down for long - or at all, in some cases.

*  There hasn't been much discussion, it seems, of the fact that Trump may still be sentenced within a couple of weeks over the existing New York conviction - with (in theory) jail time of up to 4 years.  

The view seems to be that being elected President means it would be wrong to send him to jail, as an inappropriate interference with his "doing his job".   But I haven't seem anyone actually explain how giving him the punishment he deserves could be stopped (I mean, if it is upheld on appeal):

Under the law, Trump faces a range of sentences, including fines, probation and up to four years in prison. But many options are rendered impractical by re-election win.

“Sentencing a sitting president may be one of the most complicated, fraught sentencing decisions you can imagine,” said Anna Cominsky, a professor at the New York Law School.

“It’s hard to imagine what sentence could be imposed that would not impede a president’s ability to do their job or compromise the president’s security."

Few expect Justice Merchan to sentence Trump to a stint behind bars at this point and if he did, Trump's team would almost certainly appeal it.

“He’s a 78-year old man with no criminal history, who has been convicted of a non-violent felony,” said retired New York Supreme Court Justice Diane Kiesel.

“I don’t think a judge would give a person under those sentences an incarceration sentence.”

Trump could leave a sentencing hearing with the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Justice Merchan could ask the former president to pay a relatively small fine in the three- or four-figure range.

He could also give Trump an unconditional discharge; “basically, goodbye”, as Justice Kiesel puts it.

That Kiesel has always thought he shouldn't get prison - but she is only one voice, and I think others have said a prison term would be a real option.  

It's not as if the guy has shown any remorse, and he has continually carried on in a way that should have been dealt with as contempt of court.

For these reasons, I don't know why getting elected to President should be a "get out of jail free" card.  

It's the information environment, stupid. Mainly. I think...

I really do think there is not enough thought put into this basic explanation of modern American politics.  That Will Stancil guy on Twitter keeps saying it, and I agree.  Two articles:

 An Overlooked — and Increasingly Important — Clue to How People Vote

Most election post-mortems neglect a key determinant of how people vote — where they get their news.

Some extracts:

The nature of these platforms has changed too — as more of their users come to rely on them for news. In 2020, 28 percent of regular Instagram users got their news there; in 2024, 40 percent did, according to Pew Research Center. In 2020, 22 percent of TikTok users got news there; in 2024, 52 percent did.

The other big factor that changed was one of the biggest platforms, X, formerly Twitter, having its owner (with 200 million followers) go all-in for one candidate.

These studies reveal an interesting fault line. While most women get their news from TikTok, most young men get their news from YouTube, Twitter and Reddit, Pew found. This confirms that men and women often act on different sources of information. Yet while we spill many words analyzing whether New York Times headlines normalize bad behavior, we know very little about what news and information rises to the top on Reddit and YouTube.

Trump supporters will argue that this re-sorting of media consumption was a positive development, allowing people to get information unfiltered by the (biased) elite media. Indeed, Elon Musk declared that with this election, “Legacy media is dead. Long live citizen journalism!”

But there is much evidence that information on social media is more likely to include misinformation and provide news that reinforces preexisting beliefs than traditional mainstream media. And in 2020, studies showed that people who relied on social media for news were less knowledgeable. We’ll see if that remains true in 2024. At a minimum, we need to better understand the dynamics.

One meta-cause of the change is obvious: the rise of social media. The other is more indirect but still significant: the collapse of local news. We’ve lost one-third of our local newspapers; the number of reporters has dropped 60 percent in two decades. Studies have shown that the contraction of local news has created a vacuum — which has been filled by partisan news sources and social media (both polarizing and more likely to spread misinformation).

I’m certainly not arguing that issues like inflation or immigration were not important factors, or that if people just had different information they might have voted differently. But if we want to grasp the meaning of this election, we can’t ignore one of the biggest forces that shaped the electorate — or how the collapse of local news has changed the political equation.

And at New Republic, a broader look at the whole Right wing media networks (which obviously feed a lot of misinformation into the social media world):

Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.

Extracts (with my bold):

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.

Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often.

If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.

I’ve been in the media for three decades, and I’ve watched this happen from the front row. Fox News came on the air in 1996. Then, it was an annoyance, a little bug the mainstream media could brush off its shoulder. There was also Rush Limbaugh; still, no comparison between the two medias. Rush was talented, after a fashion anyway, but couldn’t survive in a mainstream lane (recall how quickly the experiment of having him be an ESPN color commentator went off the rails.) But in the late 1990s, and after the Internet exploded and George W. Bush took office, the right-wing media grew and grew. At first, the liberal media grew as well along with the Internet, in the form of a robust blogosphere that eventually spawned influential, agenda-setting web sites like HuffPost. But billionaires on the right have invested far more heavily in media in the last two decades than their counterparts on the left—whose ad-supported, VC-funded operations started to fizzle out once social media and Google starting eating up the revenue pie.

And the result is what we see today. The readily visual analogy I use is: Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the right-wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media (what with layoffs and closures and the near death of serious local news reporting) is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the size of a basketball, which, in case you’re wondering, is bigger.

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.

And that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and The New York Times. 

That atmosphere would have denied an outrageous figure like Trump the oxygen he needed to survive and flourish. He just would not have been taken seriously at all. In that world, ruled by a traditional mainstream media, Trump would have been seen by Republicans as a liability, and they would have done what they failed to do in real life—banded together to marginalize him.

But the existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch’s personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible.

And this year, Fox and the rest of the right-wing media elected him.

The only confounding thing about this fundamental theory for this election, which a lot of Democrat supporting people have been noting on Twitter with puzzlement,  is the apparent significant number of people who split their vote.  Voted Democrat for Senators or state positions, yet swapped to Trump for President.

That really is hard to fathom.   (Some on Twitter arguing it's evidence of fraud in the system - even going as far as to say it was due to some election tallies been sent via Starlink, where Musk had the figures changed!)  I don't believe the conspiracies, but there is much further analysis to be done on understanding what was going on in the minds of voters who did that....

What to do about Twitter

 I'm surprised that there isn't a clearer online campaign for all non MAGA, Trump supporting persons to abandon Twitter and move to BlueSky, given the election results.

It seems that most of the major climate scientists have made the move, but there are a couple who are arguing that it shouldn't be abandoned and left to be a breeding ground for self supporting illusion.   

And Noah Smith, and a couple of other people I like to read, don't seem interested in a move either.

For what it's worth, I think the move should be made - and the app deleted - because a forum that it left to become its own bog of increasingly detached Right wing opinion loses credibility, at least if Truth Social is any guide.    And besides, Musk deserves to be punished for his pushing of conspiracy and fact free memes.  

But probably like lots of people, I still want to read the output of those holdouts who either can't be bothered, or who think they are fighting the good fight where it needs to be fought (or whatever).

So I am still reading it, for some of the post election analysis (see last post), but I'm feeling guilty about it.

Some better analysis

Just a random thought...

I think I have to reluctantly say that Biden trying to do a "normal" transition of power to Trump (and probably spending most of the time trying to convince him not to abandon Ukraine) is the moral and right thing to do.  (Same as when Biden rang him after the assassination attempt.)  But at the same time, you know that MAGA nuts will give zero credit to Biden for doing so - and Trump will do something like make one mention of having "a very nice meeting" and the next day call Biden demented and the cause of everything bad in the world, again.

If we wanted the ultimate in drama, though, let's say Biden asks Trump about his (and Elon's) relationship with Putin, gets some less than satisfactory responses, then pulls out a pistol and shoots him dead in the Oval Office.  And for the extra "MAGA" spice, then claims it was the dementia at fault.

So, two possible defences arising from MAGA and conservatives directly - acting in the interests of protecting America's security and therefore within the role of the Presidency, and going along with what MAGA kept telling themselves for the last 4 years. 

I know it won't happen, but as scenario for some movie, seems almost semi-plausible.

I'm in the "don't analyse too quickly" and "don't count numbers too quickly" group

Jon Stewart's early reaction to the Trump (and Republican) election win was pretty good, I think:  don't pay too much attention to the pundits' early rush to assess the alleged "lessons" of an election.  It takes a while to do any decent analysis, and anyway, a party that can look in a great condition after one election can be severely humbled in the next, making rushed views of how a party is going wrong look very dubious in retrospect.     

There were also some silly Lefty twitter accounts claiming that the total vote count indicated 20 million votes were "missing" - ignoring the fact that the vote was far from completed in California and many other states.

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake correctly argues that we shouldn't get too carried away with how big the win was (which was always my impression too):

....what about Trump’s earlier and related claim — that his and the GOP’s mandate was “unprecedented and powerful?”

Unprecedented: Surely not.

Powerful: That’s more subjective. But it’s evidently not that powerful, historically speaking.

While Trump’s win was larger than many expected and every swing state swung in his favor, his level of support is relatively par for the course for a victor. And Republicans on the whole didn’t do as well as he did.

It’s all worth diving into, given the major questions about whether Trump and the GOP will actually pursue some of the extreme proposals he has pitched on the campaign trail — and given that his and his party’s mandate, both perceived and real, will play a role in what lies ahead.

As things stand, Trump probably will sweep the seven swing states, but he will do so with only marginally more electoral votes (probably 312) than he won in 2016 (304) and President Joe Biden won in 2020 (306).

That 312 total would also outpace both of George W. Bush’s elections, but it’s fewer than in any election involving Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. And the 58 percent of electoral votes Trump probably will win would rank 41st all-time.

The other key measure here is the popular vote, which has no bearing on who is actually elected but does say something about their support nationwide.

Trump is currently taking 50.9 percent of the popular vote and leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 3.3 points. That will shift as the remaining votes are counted, but it seems Trump will actually win the popular vote this time, which he didn’t do when he won the 2016 election.

At the same time, his popular-vote share probably will drop as the remaining (mostly western and largely Californian) votes are counted. It’s likely he’ll win a smaller percentage of the popular vote than any non-Trump president-elect since 2000, when George W. Bush won despite losing the popular vote. A big question is whether he could wind up shy of a popular majority.

The rest is worth reading too - he points out that the Senate and (possible) House majorities are not going to be huge.

OK, with that said, I will comment on some of the early MAGA commentary on Twitter:  a very large number are referring to the culture wars, with "woke ideology" and trans advocacy in particular.   There is no doubt that trans issues played a significant role in the minds of the MAGA crowd (apparently there were a lot of ads about it on their social media, as well as Trump making nonsense statements about kids going to school and arriving home having changed sex - one of his "not literally, but seriously" moments, I guess).  

As I have suggested before, I do consider this a Lefty weakness and blind spot.   Social media has made it dead easy to show that there are (what would appear to be) many older "transwomen" who act as if it is primarily a sexual fetish for them, and it's pretty hard to build public sympathy if that is the motivation for being trans.  Furthermore, the genitally intact male who insists he can compete against women and its fair just doesn't pass "the pub test" as we would say in Australia.   It would pay for Democrats to acknowledge limits on the extent of support for "trans rights", because I reckon the tide has turned and will continue to do so while America spends a few years in lawfare from "de-transitioners", which is the ridiculously clumsy way America chooses so often to revise policy approaches.

That said, it's pretty impossible to assess the degree to which this would be a deciding factor for anyone - it's more likely that a element of a suite of sentiments which is impossible to separate.

As to the other sentiments - another post is coming!

RFK Jr wants people to hallucinate their way through the Trump presidency

This may be a little akin to an Italian under Mussolini saying "at least the trains run on time", but it remains true that it's probably impossible for any Presidency to not oversee at least a few good decisions.  (Even the Washington Post ran an article in 2021 noting some positive things under Trump's first administration.)   

Now, of all the bad/horrendous ideas that have floated around Trump and his appalling plan to put a nutjob Kennedy in charge of public health, there is one idea that, to an non American, sounds positive:  preventing drug companies advertising on TV.   

On the other hand, this apparently is RFK Jr's seriously weird list of interests if he gets control (my bold):

He forecast his plans for the F.D.A. on social media two weeks ago.

“FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

And that's not evening getting to his crank views on vaccines and fluoride.   

As for his interest in "not suppressing" psychedelics, if we learned that Kennedy was a regular recreational user of magic mushrooms, or something, it would explain a lot.

Let me count the very many uncertainties

*   If Trump falls ill (or dies) would Vance make a worse or better President?   Undoubtedly he is smarter, but is that a good or bad thing given the policies he allegedly supports?

*   Mass deportation, if it really happens to the degree Trump has promised (remember the Mexicans paying for the wall, and how much of the wall actually got built), would undoubtedly cause some backlash in some communities, but how much cruelty are Republican voters really willing to watch when it starts to affect the neighbours who they thought were quite nice people?  Or their businesses?  

*   Who exactly put the mad "tariff everything and raise money that way instead of taxes" idea into Trump's head, and who amongst more sane Republican economists and politicians will now start telling him that he can't go too far without starting inflation that will be a direct result of the policy?   

*  It seems some are confident that the Republicans will win control of not only the Senate, but the House as well.   One upside of that - if they have complete control of government, and effectively the judiciary, Republicans and Trump will have to own everything that goes wrong.   

Should I wish for that (as it feels like one side saying "we're not really going to engage in politics for the next few years, just so you can hurt the country and we'll benefit from that"), or should I hope the Democrats maintain House control and (presumably) affect the implementation of some policies?

*  Should I punish the New York Times or the Washington Post by unsubscribing for their sanewashing efforts, or is it more important to see that they are viable for their reporting on the presidency they kinda helped create??    (And I have to acknowledge - given my General Theory of Trump in my previous post, how much did the sanewashing actually matter?   Clearly, the cultist part of Trump support is not reading the MSM media at all - and the other part can tell, just by watching Trump rallies, that he really is a dumb liar who works more as a circus act than a person with serious and well thought out policies.)  

Still tempted to set out the true and correct General Theory of Trump

How is it possible, I've seen it said, that a president ranked near the very bottom of worst presidents by historians be re-elected?

You can make a point about his populist appeal to the less educated, but it's also obvious that he gets support from the well educated.

The key is this:  roughly half of his support is from cultist followers who genuinely think he's smart, moral, shares their fundamentalist Christianity, and a fantastic person.   There is, basically, no reasoning with them.

The others are the better educated half who know full well he's dumb, constantly lies and spouts bullshit, is erratic and easily manipulated by appealing to his narcissism.  But they don't care, because they believe he will be manipulated by other people towards getting something they want, such as tax reductions, breaks for their business, power (especially in the case of many Republicans in the Senate or House) or even just a general culture more favourable to old school masculinity.

In other words, greed and self interest that having a dumb, easily manipulated President is good for them. 

Historians (and economists) don't judge presidencies that way, and hence there is every chance that the second Trump presidency will be ranked by them as at least as bad as the first.   

 

I should add that the second group has helped create the first group - the prime example being Rupert Murdoch, who does not like Trump at a personal level, but is happy to make money by maintaining a network that is pure propaganda during its key broadcast hours towards supporting the cult of Trump and demonising Democrats.   The same can be said for any Republican who Trump has insulted and attacked, but who has swung around to support him due to their recognising that there is no way the cultists can be persuaded to not support Trump.  

Wow - let the madness begin

With Trump having all but won, certainly against my longstanding expectations, there will be billions of words spilt on how it all happened, but at the end of the day, I reckon a few things are obvious, and there is no obvious solution to them:

*    There is no credible way you could say that Trump supporters based their vote on a well considered assessment of his policies, the state of the economy, or the history of the first Trump administration.   It was more a "vibe" election - they prefer to be entertained and affirmed in their grievance mongering and simply don't care about details.

*   The lack of interest in details is largely a factor of the poisonous, self serving information network that the Right has built around itself over the last 30 years with the help of self-interested and greedy billionaires, as well as mini media moguls who find it dead easy to spew propaganda on social media for a living.   There is no plausible way of de-polarising American politics while ever propaganda controlled by billionaires is allowed free reign in the way it is.

*   The biggest issue may well not be Trump himself but those that surround him.   Possibly (as a forlorn hope) there are still some relative Right leaning moderates who see it as their obligation to get close to the administration to stop their most extreme ideas - but even if that doesn't happen, extremists tend not to work well together, and Trump likes to play games of pitting one against another too.  Hence whoever is working around him, we are guaranteed a haphazard and wildly fraught administration the likes of which we have never seen.

*   There is also the question of Trump's health.   Seems a dubious proposition that he will be able to make any sense at all in another few years.   

*   Goodbye Ukraine, been nice knowing you.   I am also greatly concerned that Trump will give away Taiwan - the Right has already been talking about it not being worth the effort.

*   The rest of the world will shake its head at the way the US has let a media and information environment evolve that has poisoned reason and goodwill in politics.

  

Not enjoying the count!

 

Another distraction post while waiting for election results

I'm still ploughing through the abridged version of Journey to the West, and have more thoughts:

*    I really seem to be reading this at just the right point of my life.  For example, I wasn't expecting so much reference (in chapter 11 I think) to the Chinese version of Hell and the kings in charge of it.  But I had a good introduction to this from my visit to Haw Par Villa in Singapore earlier this year, so the names were familiar, as well as the gruesome details.   As another example, I have enough knowledge of Buddhism now to understand the references to Great Vehicle Buddhism (Mahayana Buddhism), the texts of which is actually what the monk Tripitaka is sent to recover.    The book largely assumes knowledge of some of this background, so it's handy to have it!

*   I have been reminded while reading the book that someone I knew in my 20's (not very well, he was more a brief work companion) once told me that his fantasy career would involve bringing a realistic cinematic version of the book to the screen that would show the "true message" of the book.   (He was pretty dismissive of the TV versions that played it more as adventure/comedy.)   I don't know whether he was very religious or not, but I guess I still am not sure that his ambition is in any way possible - and until I get to the end, I'm not sure I understand the true message, anyway.   Well, it's very pro-Buddhist, of course, but I now wish I had engaged him more in that conversation.

*  For a person who has long been interested in comparative religion, it's very interesting.   We have a character dead for 3 days and coming back to life, and as another example, in Chapter 12 the Bodhisattva Guanyin reveals her true form at a "Mass" full of monks, her appearance described as follows:

 

 

OK, sure there are specific Chinese details, and I wasn't expecting a cockatoo!, but still, the description put me much in mind of the Catholic, pale blue robed, standing on a cloud, vision of the Virgin Mary.

More thoughts later....

Update:  Speaking of Bodhisattva Guanyin, here's a good summary of the figure from a website of the British Library.  Some extracts:

As Buddhism spread eastwards from its Indian heartland, Buddhist terminology in Sanskrit was adapted to other languages using either a sense-for-sense translation or a transliteration derived from the original pronunciation. For example, the name of Amitābha Buddha underwent transliteration to become ‘Amituo’ in Chinese. By contrast, Avalokiteśvara’s name was translated into Chinese based on its meaning and certain aspects of the Bodhisattva’s nature. This approach leaves more room for interpretation and, as a result, there are two common versions of the name, Guanshiyin and Guanzizai.

Guanshiyin, also known as Guanyin, is the name for this Boddhisattva that is seen in most sutras, such as the Etiquette of Great Compassion Repentance. This translation comes from the Sanskrit “Avalokita”, which means to observe (觀[guan]), and “svara”, which means sound (音[yin]). In other words, the Bodhisattva is “the sound-perceiver” or the one who hears the sounds (of sentient beings) of the world (世[shi]). This name is also referred to the Universal Gate Chapter of Lotus Sutra, which says: “Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva will instantly perceive the sound of their cries, and they (the suffering) will all be liberated”....

 

While there are a few different names to refer to this Bodhisattva, there are even more different forms that Guanyin can take when appearing to sentient beings in order to guide them away from suffering.

One interesting development of Guanyin’s form is the way in which gender is represented. In general, the gender of deities in Buddhism are neutral and rarely discussed. Early depictions show Guanyin with a more masculine appearance, creating the impression that the original gender of Guanyin was male. However, the female form becomes more popular later in Mahayana Buddhism, particularly in China. The reasons for this are linked to the historical context. Traditionally, China was a very patriarchal society; a system reinforced by Confucian principles which put pressure on women to obey their husbands and give birth to sons (instead of daughters). As a result, women were generally the ones asking for Guanyin’s help in order to achieve these goals. In addition, it was thought that a woman must commit to one man for her whole life (even after his death), therefore it seemed more appropriate for a woman to worship a deity in female form. In this way, Guanyin starts to take on more feminine qualities such as kindness and grace and, in female form, she is seen as more accessible to women.

So far we have discussed the work of Guanyin in isolation, but this Bodhisattva does not go it alone in the rescue business; Guanyin also works with Amitābha Buddha and Mahāsthāmaprāpta Bodhisattva to guide the dead to the Western Pure Land. This trio is known as the Three Noble Ones of the West. When pictured together, it would be easy to recognise the Amitābha Buddha as he is always in the middle but sometimes it can be a bit difficult to work out which attendant is Guanyin since the basic style of Bodhisattvas is the same. One clue would be the plant they hold in their hand; Mahāsthāmaprāpta holds a lotus and Guanyin holds a willow. The other indication is the item on their head; it is a vase containing his parents’ ashes on Mahāsthāmaprāpta’s head and a statue of seated Amitābha Buddha on Guanyin’s. In this case, when a person approaches death, they can call upon not only Amitābha, but also Guanyin to ask for guidance.

Update 2:  And yes, Guanyin is known as Kannon in Japan, a country which has an unusually large number of giant size statues of her.  I'm been in one - the Sendai Daikannon.  I see that one big statue in Japan gives off particular Mary vibes, with her holding a baby:

David Frum on why he's confident there won't be another attack on the Capitol

 

A reminder that history is made in many different ways, on this US election day...

 Here's the actual story.  (And no, it's not about a bereaved billionaire who couldn't bear to live without his pet ferret.)

A curious apologia for Trump

The New York Times has a column that is a kind of apologia for Trump - arguing that even if he loses the election, he has already "won", due to Democrats (and even some economists) moving towards the Trumpian line on free trade and tariffs (because Biden kept his Chinese tariffs) and immigration (pushing a tougher line on it.)

I think this is a case of a small element of truth being wildly exaggerated for partisan purposes. 

One thing I still don't understand is how rapidly relations with China went downhill - I'm sure I've said this before, but it seemed that as soon the US decided to go with a nutty populist leader who nonetheless made his admiration for China's authoritarian leader obvious, said Chinese leader decided to hype up Chinese nationalism and aggression.   But (and this is where I could well be wrong*), they seemed to do it at the same time - not in a clear series of escalations that made sense.

I'm not convinced that the benefit of free trade has been shown up as inherently wrong headed in any way, even if clearly leads sometimes to difficult periods of adjustment.   And lifting people out of poverty at the global level is something we should consider "a good thing" - I mean, even the Catholic Church had that attitude to it.

So populist takes against it are always suspect - and Trump's loony idea of (more or less) universal tariffs is so mad it surely has to erase any apologia for him being "ahead of the experts" on the original decision to put tariffs on China.

On immigration I think there is even less reason to argue that Trump has swayed public opinion (even amongst Democrats) towards him.   His entire political career has been built on nasty, racist fear mongering about illegal immigration, a problem that the country has grappled with for decades, and surges in arrivals are often due to factors beyond American's direct control anyway.  The surge in arrivals in recent years would have pushed mainstream America to demanding a better response anyway - it didn't need Trump's Nazi level vilification of arrivals to reach that position.

 

*  Ok, so this Wiki article on the US/China trade war does show it as a series of escalations started by Trump - but at the same time, the Chinese tariffs on Australia in the same period seemed over the top aggressive.  It just seemed that China started to decide to punish anyone who criticised them with trade retaliation.  And the renewed Chinese aggressive stance to re-taking Taiwan was taking place at the same time.

Far from encouraging news

The Washington Post says that scientists believe they have identified the cause of an upswing in atmospheric methane - microbial production from warmer fields, wetlands (and also cows' stomachs, apparently.)

 How do they know?:

Different sources of methane give off different carbon signatures. Methane produced by microbes — mostly single-celled organisms known as archaea, which live in cow stomachs, wetlands and agricultural fields — tends to be “lighter,” or have fewer C13 atoms. Methane from fossil fuels, on the other hand, is heavier, with more C13 atoms.

As the amount of methane has risen in the atmosphere over the past 15 years, it’s also gotten lighter and lighter. The scientists used a model to analyze those changes and found that only large increases in microbial emissions could explain both the rising methane and its changing weight.

The concern is that it may be a dangerous climate feedback happening all by itself, but they can't say for sure:

Michel says it’s too early to say whether this is the beginning of a vicious cycle. “Are these coming from human-caused changes in freshwater systems, or are they a kind of scary climate feedback?” she said. “I want to be careful about what we can and cannot say with this data.”

Researchers say it doesn’t mean that the world can just keep burning natural gas. If wetlands are releasing methane faster than ever, they argue, there should be an even greater push to curb methane from the sources humans can control, such as cows, agriculture and fossil fuels.

 

A short piece against nihilism

Seems an odd piece for the New York Times to publish when everyone is concentrating on the election.  But a cosmologist argues against nihilism in the face of a mostly empty universe:

Artists and philosophers have long understood the power of the void. The 12th-century Buddhist monk and poet Saigyo reflected on the gaps between falling raindrops, noting that the pauses between their sounds were just as important as the drops themselves, if not more so. The composer John Cage challenged us with “4ʹ33ʺ,” a performance consisting entirely of silence, creating a manifestation of the void that audiences sought to fill with awkward coughs and nervous laughter, which became its own music. The famed Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas celebrated the utility of negative spaces, proclaiming, “Where there is nothing, everything is possible.” For the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the void was a psychological space that we must enter to realize our full potential and forge a new life.

Billions of years from now the sun will engorge and Earth will turn to dust. The cosmic voids, guardians of great nothingness, will remain. That bare fact, at first uncomfortable, gives us the ability to treasure what we’re given.

Tell a joke to your friends. Fight for what you believe in. Call your mother. Create something the cosmos hasn’t seen before. The implacability of the cosmic voids calls us to action. The universe won’t do anything for us except give us the freedom to exist. What we do with that existence is entirely up to us. It is our responsibility to imbue the cosmos with meaning and purpose.

Some days this sounds an attractive approach; other days, not so much.

The problem comes down to the issue that talking about "meaning and purpose" seems to presume  that there is something by which to judge between competing ideas of what makes for a valid meaning and purpose, but the purely materialist universe says there isn't.