If there's one thing Trump is good for, it's doomscrolling

Seems to me that the American stock market is actually not taking as seriously as it should the effect of Chinese tariffs.   I guess there is a fair chance that it is because of Trump's constant reversals, or pauses, but it seems to me he is not likely to make a major reversal on several key Chinese exports that are important to American manufacturing and business:

 

The other amazing story going on is Trump pretending it's no problem sending a guy to an El Salvador prison by mistake - in fact, he hopes to be able to do it to American born citizens!

 

The Trump administration insisted Sunday that it has no legal obligation to arrange for the return of a Maryland man illegally deported from the United States, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling last week only requires officials to admit him into the country if he makes it back from a high-security prison in El Salvador.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that they don’t interpret the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling — that the administration “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release — as obligating the administration to do anything more than adjust his immigration status to admit him if El Salvador’s government chooses to release him.

And why exactly is this guy Buekele sucking up to Trump?:

Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the fate of the father of three is now up to El Salvador.

Buekele then said that he does not have the power to return Ábrego García t the US - and that he won't.

Also on the agenda was topics including transgender people in sports, DEI and women, Iran and tariffs and Ukraine and Russia.

Temu Goebbels, as I have seen Stephen Miller called on social media, insists that the deported guy deserved it and it wasn't a mistake, contradicting court filings by the administration.

We're about a centimetre away from being able to declare the US a fascist state.

Mystery religion

I finally got to the end of the abridged version of Journey to the West.  I liked this passage in the last chapter about Buddhism:

It is difficult to comprehend fully how yin and yang pervade Heaven and Earth because the forces themselves are invisible. That images may manifest the minute is a fact that does not perplex even the foolish, whereas forms hidden in what is invisible are what confuses even the learned.

How much more difficult it is, therefore, to understand the way of Buddhism, which exalts the void, uses the dark, and exploits the silent in order to succor the myriad grades of living things and exercise control over the entire world. Its spiritual authority is the highest, and its divine potency has no equal. Its magnitude impregnates the entire cosmos; there is no space so tiny that it does not permeate it. Birthless and deathless, it does not age after a thousand kalpas; half-hidden and half-manifest, it brings a hundred blessings even now. A wondrous way most mysterious, those who follow it cannot know its limit. A law flowing silent and deep, those who draw on it cannot fathom its source. How, therefore, could those benighted ordinary mortals not be perplexed if they tried to plumb its depths?

What I like is the acknowledgement that it's not easy to understand....

Corruption in religious places

Interesting opinion piece seems to be free to read at the Jakarta Post (for now anyway):

Why corruption thrives in a religious society

This article was published in thejakartapost.com with the title "". Click to read: https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2025/03/26/why-corruption-thrives-in-a-religious-society.html.


Download The Jakarta Post app for easier and faster news access:
Android: http://bit.ly/tjp-android
iOS: http://bit.ly/tjp-ios

 Why corruption thrives in a religious society

Here are some bits:

In a widely shared article titled “Religius tapi Gemar Korupsi, Ada Apa?” (Religious but keen to corrupt), Kompas journalist M. Zaid Wahyudi raised a timely question: Why does corruption remain widespread in a nation so openly religious? His article highlights a common assumption, that religion guarantees morality, that belief and ritual naturally lead to ethical behavior. A paradox indeed: Indonesia ranks high in religiosity but low in clean governance. Places of worship are crowded; prayer groups flourish. Yet corruption remains a daily reality. So, if religion is not to blame, what is missing?

....

 WW Howells, in The Heathens: Primitive Man and His Religions, explains that early religion was never primarily moral. It was a response to fear. Faced with death, disease and natural disasters, early humans created rituals to reduce anxiety and restore order. Religion gave comfort, not necessarily ethics.

This primitive function has not disappeared. Today’s religious practices, prayers, fasting, sacred artifacts, still serve psychological and social needs: belonging, identity and comfort.

However, these rituals do not always shape conduct. One can fear God yet cheat the system. One can wear piety as a badge yet abuse office. Religion works well as a symbol. But without inner conviction, it does not restrain wrongdoing. The psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg showed why. His six-stage model of moral development explains that people grow from a basic fear of punishment to principled reasoning. But most never reach the higher stages. Many obey rules to avoid shame or to be accepted by others, not out of justice or compassion.

Public religiosity often reinforces these early stages. One fasts only to be seen, prays to belong, avoids alcohol to gain respect. The moral compass is external. Right and wrong depend on who’s watching. And so corruption thrives, not because people lack belief, but because belief stays stuck at the surface level.

....

Ruth Benedict and Koentjaraningrat both showed that Indonesian society leans more toward a shame culture than a guilt culture. What matters is not whether something is right, but whether it is seen. The wrongdoing itself is tolerated as long as it stays hidden. When exposure comes, the shame is in being caught, not in having done wrong. So the question is not “Why are religious people corrupt?” but “Why has religious life become more about performance than formation?”

Personal stories about tariffs are effective

I was watching a clip from CNN this morning featuring two American women who run small businesses and their concerns about the tariffs.

One in particular had a story which would be happening in thousands of small businesses across the country.   She designs and manufacturers some kind of baby products, and has them manufactured in China.  It's a small business, I think with 5 employees.   She has a loan secured by her house to support the business.

She said she has a shipment of products waiting to leave China, but she knows she cannot afford the massive tariff abuptly imposed on them.  It means the few months of stock she has left might be the end of the business.  She can't figure out a work around (she mentioned shipping them first to Australia and repackaging them before sending on to the US) because of the continuous changes in policy "every 36 hours".  She also said there is no way an American factory can be expected to be geared up to make her particular products in less than (I think) 6 to 12 months.   That's assuming she can find any factory that can take it on.

This all sounded very realistic and with no exaggeration for political spin.

I thought it a very effective and telling story on the turmoil which Trump and his very rich advisers, who don't have a worry in the world about how it will affect them, are causing.

Here's a link to the video.

 

Trump in Oz

Funny the things that can pop into your head while ironing a shirt.  Or am I just remembering something I have already read online?

For some reason, I was thinking about the Wizard of Oz, and the song "If I only had a heart/brain/the nerve", which sums up the deficiencies of each of Dorothy's companions.   Then Trump came to mind, and I realised how remarkable it is that he is like a Trinity of each of these deficiencies in the one man.

No brain - the evidence is overwhelming.

No heart - has no real interest in justice and wants to punish foreigners for all of America's woes.

No nerve - President Heal Spurs who flip flops on policy continuously.

The only way in which the analogy falls apart is in the resolution in the movie, where the characters are taught they always had what they desired within them.   I try to be generous, but I can't see that happening with Trump...

[The other obvious Trump in Oz comparison was in the meme that went around a few months ago that showed Putin as the true Wizard behind the curtain controlling the fake Wizard head in the form of Trump. I liked that too.]    

Bond markets as saviour?

I would guess that like most people, I have the slimmest understanding of bond markets, but as far as I can tell, the changes in the US market may well have been the motivation for Trump to "pause" his tariff plans (on everyone except China). See this article, for example:

U.S. Treasury bonds are being sold off. Here’s why it’s concerning.  

I don't really understand why it seems no one can tell who is selling - there was speculation by some that it was retaliatory selling by China, and denials from other finance types that the pattern indicated that this was the likely explanation.

Here's an opinion column at the NYT about it:

What’s Probably Going On With the Volatile Bond Market 

And how disingenuous is Bessent:  that this was Trump's plan all along.   And he denies the bond market had anything to do with it.   Not to be trusted in the slightest.

Finally:   many, many people suspect a lot of insider trading happened on the Republican side.   Who would be surprised?  No one, given that this administration seems to be the first to think that if you do it (pretty much) in the open, it can't be corruption.

 

Still would have been 10 times better than this president, even if he napped 3 hours each day

I note that the headline on an NPR article about a new book on the last Presidential election has this headline:

Biden's closest advisers were in 'denial' about his decline, 'Uncharted' author says

But in the body of the interview, the author seems to make the case that the decline was in stamina only, and nothing to do with mental ability when sufficiently rested: 

As the 2024 campaign kicked into gear, the president couldn't hide from public scrutiny, Whipple says. He notes that in the days leading up to his disastrous debate with President Trump, Biden "was in a terrible state."

"He was absolutely exhausted. He was unable really to follow what was happening in the campaign. He was tuned out," Whipple says. "Early on, he walked out of a [debate preparation] session in the Aspen Lodge, the president's cabin, went over to the pool, sank into a lounge chair, and just fell sound asleep." 

OK, but then further down:

        On why Biden's staffers believed he could still govern

I think that this is much more interesting and not nearly as simple as the notion of a cover-up. In other words, I am convinced that Joe Biden's inner circle was convinced that Joe Biden was capable of governing, and they believed that he could do it for another four years. And we can't dismiss the fact that Biden on the very last day, July 21st, that Sunday when his aides came to hammer out his abdication statement, Joe Biden was on the phone parsing the details of a complex multi-nation prisoner swap. He was on top of every detail.  

People who visited Biden in the Oval Office to talk about the Middle East said he was on top of every nuance of Middle Eastern policy. ... Joe Biden, behind closed doors, was governing, capably, whether you liked his policies or not. So there's no question that he was a shadow of the campaigner that he once was, and that was true from 2020 all the way to the end. But, you can't dismiss the fact — it's an inconvenient fact for people who say it was a cover-up — that Biden was capable.

In mildly encouraging and distracting news

*  I still think, after viewing the extended sneak peek on Youtube, that the new Superman film does look good.  It's weird, but so many people in comments on Youtube agree that it literally "looks great" - meaning the colours and CGI and cinematography overall.    And there's a dog, of course.  It's funny how some trailers can really still hit the spot and make a film look like it will definitely be a hit - I felt the same about the one for Everything Everywhere All at Once.  

*  I see that Spielberg is now actually directing his first film in years, and it's a science fiction one something to do with UFOs.   Cool.   

*  There is also a new Wes Anderson film coming out.  And again, it is in his highly, highly idiocentric and stylised, um, style, which makes the recent films play more like dryly and ironically amusing comic books than anything reflecting the real world.   In fact, I reckon people now feel that his refusal to back down from this signature style has become something of a meta-joke in itself.   As for me:  I do think his "miss" rate has been getting higher (I didn't think much of Asteroid City, although I was watching on an jet and had interruptions), but I still am happy to try out each new one to see just how amused I am.  I don't know why, but there is something pleasing about his persistent self indulgence, perhaps because you have a sense of how much he likely enjoys creating it?  

*  On politics:   I am encouraged about the Labor policy to subsidise more home battery power.  As I said a while ago - why aren't they (and solar panels, and solar hot water) a requirement on all new house builds under State construction codes?  Maybe not worth it in Tasmania, but definitely for most of the country.

Can you ever really trust rich people?

Sure, there are some around who tread carefully, sound socially responsible and don't go nuts.  

But - Elon Musk, obviously.

And now, I'm wondering about this Scott Bessent, (worth about half a billion, apparently) who I knew nothing about until this tariff meltdown.

I mean, Wikipedia indicates that he used to have decent Democrat supporting credentials (originally worked for Soros, supported by donations Gore, Hilary Clinton and Obama.)  Now he works for Trump.

Despite rumours (JC at New Catallaxy referenced them, but I think I have seen it said online too) that he's privately freaking out about how Trump has dealt with his tariff scheme, there is no indication of that at all in his public appearances - he went on Tucker Carlson to defend the whole scheme, talking about the need for a complete recreation of American trade, etc.   And look at the reference to him in this article from WAPO, about how the MAGA Right has gone all Maoist:

Recently, a viral meme in MAGA circles captured the moment, featuring a cartoon Trump addressing a faceless American: “Your great grandfather worked the mines, your grandfather worked in a steel plant, and you thought you could be a ‘product manager’ ???” It’s a joke, but it’s also a worldview — one where white-collar ambition is seen not as a step forward, but as a fall into decadence. The meme doesn’t just mock digital work; it exalts physical labor as the only authentic form of contribution. 

What we’re seeing is a kind of MAGA Maoism, remixed for the algorithm age. Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology. As one MAGA influencer put it, “Men in America don’t need therapy. Men in America need tariffs and DOGE. The fake email jobs will disappear.”

This style, what some might call online pastoralism, is no longer fringe. It is a governing strategy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently hinted to Tucker Carlson that the administration plans to restock America’s factories with recently fired federal workers. It’s a sharp evolution of the old MAGA line, which claimed elites abandoned the working class by offshoring jobs and hoarding the degrees that powered the new economy. Now, those same college-educated liberals once seen as the future of work are being recast as its obstacle.

This new turn is also punitive: It challenges the idea drilled into millennial and Gen Z brains — especially immigrant families, like my own — that education and meritocracy are the path to the American Dream. It says not only that you were left behind, but that you were wrong to try to get ahead. Populists used to share memes about miners who were condescendingly told to “learn to code” while their towns struggled. The coders, in this updated version, need to be thrown back in the mines.

I don't trust him in the slightest.  

Quite a few stories of note here...

Today's New York Times:

 

A ridiculous situation

More reason to never use Tik Tok

‘Profiting from misery’: how TikTok makes money from child begging livestreams

Exploitation fears as people in extreme poverty perform stunts and beg for virtual gifts

My daughter has said that she is very close to deleting Tik Tok off her phone because she fully recognises the way it saps attention span and wastes time.  I must ask her if she has done it yet...

 

Yay, Krugman talks

Paul Krugman is back in a de facto way at the New York Times, talking to Ezra Klein about tariffs and Trump and national security and all sorts of good things.  

The whole thing is worth reading, but I will extract some of it:

I think most people thought it was going to be some kind of across-the-board tariff — same on everybody. Or maybe two or three different types of tariffs.

Instead, he announced this whole complicated, different tariff for every country, at levels much higher than the smart money — or the money that thought it was smart — was betting. Something like a 23 percent average tariff now, which is huge. It’s higher than U.S. tariffs were after the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was passed. And trade is a much bigger part of the economy now than it was in 1930. So this is the biggest trade shock in history.

And:

There’s a funny thing here, which is that ordinarily I would say that while tariffs are bad, they don’t cause recessions. It makes the economy less efficient. You turn to higher-cost domestic sources for stuff, instead of lower-cost foreign sources, and foreigners turn away from the stuff you can produce cheaply. But that’s a reduction in the economy’s efficiency, not a shortfall in demand.

What’s unique about this situation is that the protectionism is unpredictable and unstable. And it’s that uncertainty that is the recessionary force.

If you were a manufacturing company in the United States and your next investment is going to be, let’s say, a components plant or something — well, should you put that components plant in Mexico, where it’s cheaper? Not if there’s a 25 percent tariff. But should you put it in the United States, where it’s more expensive? What if the tariff comes off?

So either way, you run substantial risk of just having stranded investments. And that’s happening across the board. So this is the instability of policy. The fact that nobody knows what’s coming next makes a recession certainly a whole lot more likely.

And:

If you were asking what a national security oriented industrial policy that tries to keep production of strategically important stuff in the United States looks like, it looks like the CHIPS Act. It looks like what the Biden people were trying to do. Probably bigger than that — in an ideal world, we’d be doing substantially more. But that’s how you do it.

Putting high tariffs on imports of clothing from Bangladesh is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing. That’s the kind of thing that is disruptive, raises the cost of living for American consumers, does nothing to make us more secure.

There is a national security rationale for domestic production, but also for friendshoring and for nearshoring, because the stuff that’s close by is a lot easier to secure. If that’s what we were wanting to do, then we would not be levying tariffs on Vietnam and Bangladesh, and we would certainly not be putting tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

And this bit by Klein makes a lot of sense to me (it's in bold because that is how Klein's voice appears in the transcript):

 When I try to dive into MAGA world’s thinking here, something that I tend to hear is a somewhat contradictory or troubled relationship to American power.

On the one hand, they want America to be stronger, more feared, more dominant. And on the other hand, there’s a broad view that we have overextended ourselves.

Financially, we’ve made the dollar the reserve currency. We’ve allowed all these other countries to buy our assets and buy our money even as our industrial base flowed out.

And then on the military side, we have these bases all over the world, we have all these troops in Europe, we’re part of NATO, we’re spending more as a percentage of gross national product than some of these other countries. But this is part of why we can no longer take care of our people.

And so there’s this feeling: Well, for America to be stronger, it can’t be operating this global umbrella of financial and military protection.

But then you ask: Well, do you want the dollar to not be the reserve currency? And they say: No, no, no, no. We definitely want to keep it the reserve currency.

If you ask: Do you want America’s military to be weak? Do you want people to not be tied to us in the way they are now? They say: No, we actually want more leverage over them.

There’s something here that I think is very strange and very unresolved in this movement that wants both more dominance and somehow, at the same time, to pull back from the actual architecture of that dominance and leverage.

Krugman's reply was something that I was recently saying to an overseas friend who is generally very anti-American: 

We have been a kind of imperial power. Some people say more than kind of — we’ve been an imperial power, in many ways, since the end of World War II.

But it’s not like any previous empire. The Pax Americana starts with the Marshall Plan.

Instead of plundering our defeated enemies, we rebuilt them. And then we built a system of alliances: We have NATO. We have international economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which do actually kind of reflect U.S. interests, but at least on paper, we’re at most first among equals. So we are a polite, low-key, relatively generous imperial power.

That is a very hard role for many people to understand.

I'm sure that Krugman would, if asked, agree that there has also been a lot of awful direct foreign interference in the post war period; but America's role in re-building defeated countries after their destruction is no doubt the explanation for its continuing popularity (until now!) with much of the free world. 

 

Re the "accord"

When I first heard the "Mar a Lago accord" I thought it might be another conspiracy theory, perhaps this time of the Left.   But now I know it is a pet theory of someone in Trump's ear, and it looks like we have to put up with the chaos that happens when you have a dumb narcissist as leader who other people want to manipulate.  

Here are two articles on the idea that are worth reading:

Unpacking the Mar-a-Lago Accord 

After tariff shock, Trump may weaponise finance against allies

As any commentary points out - the idea that countries will trust the US under Trump so much that they will co-operate in devaluing their own currency seems wildly implausible when everything he has done and said indicates that he is completely untrustworthy.

A bit late, but some of the best BlueSky content this week...

Better take more ketamine...

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

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

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

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

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

 

The "authentic self" discussed

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Unhappy with algorithms

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

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

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

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

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

Why have I lost interest in Australian politics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravioli justice for all...

Appropriate

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

Interesting free article up at Science:

How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another busy, busy week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saudi Arabia stays high on my list of countries best avoided

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

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

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

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

 

That's interesting...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The state of US politics, part 2

The depressing summary

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

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

This part:

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

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

The incompetence comes from "common sense".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tide turning

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

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

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

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

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

 

This is good.

 

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

 

 

Brain glass

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe it's still a bit controversial:

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

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

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

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

 

Wet and windy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

Waiting for weather

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

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

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

 

And now, a South East cyclone

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Did COVID or politics kill movie going?

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's all a pity.

 

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

The state of US politics

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

I've been busy, and sorry about the madness

By way of explanation as to slow posting:

*  Work had been very busy and distracting for quite a few months now, and it's not going to get much better for another month.

*  American politics has gone over an edge which makes it feel there's no point in talking about how bad it is - it's just too obvious and leaving (I think) a lot of people like me feeling kind of speechless at the spectacle.

* I have an idea or two for longer posts I want to write about some "big picture" stuff about the state of the world, but am having trouble finding the time to get some older books I want to reference off my bookcase, where they hide, somewhere...

Anyway, I also apologise for being a bit slow to delete the mad anti-Semitic comments made by Graeme Bird in recent posts.   (Tim, I'm surprised you had to ask who it was!)

Is there some sort of competition underway as to how badly people can act regarding Gaza?

 I mean, seriously:

*   Hamas thinks looking like militaristic terrorists while they hand over emaciated hostages, just after they have just suffered a massive and inevitable defeat, is a good look??     

*   Trump thinks that talking about America "owning" Gaza is not like running up and throwing petrol on the fire??    

*  Netanyahu thinks - what?   That further grinding the strip into concrete dust will force the countries adamant that they aren't going to upend their own regimes by taking in a million or two Gazans to change their minds??   And that expanding into the West Bank helps encourage Jordan into co-operating with the closure of Gaza?   

I mean, seriously, listen to Trump being an idiot:

King Abdullah II of Jordan on Tuesday rebuffed President Trump’s proposal for his country to absorb Palestinians living in Gaza, saying that he remained opposed to a plan Mr. Trump has laid out to clear the territory so the United States can seize control of it.

During a “constructive” meeting with the U.S. president at the White House, King Abdullah said, he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“This is the unified Arab position,” he stated in a post on social media after the meeting. “Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.”

His statement came hours after Mr. Trump insisted the United States had the authority to “take” Gaza, part of an effort to pressure the leader of Jordan and other Arab nations to embrace a forced removal, which has drawn widespread condemnation.

“We will have Gaza,” said Mr. Trump, as he sat next to Mr. Abdullah and the Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan. “It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it.”

Who knew a constitutional crisis would be so easy?

All it takes is for the executive to think it doesn't have to obey the courts, and for a craven Congress to shrug its shoulders. 

I wonder at what point someone in the military feels they have to intervene, because it's kinda starting to look like that is what it would take.

Or does it only need something to get to the Supreme Court and for it to say "executive, no, you can't ignore the courts, if you want constitutional government"?

The trouble with that is, if it is a majority statement, with a few of the corrupt MAGA supporters not joining in, Trump and Vance would likely say its an illegitimate, political, decision.

As for the matter of the ease of constitutional crisis, I guess some Australian readers would say "well, the sacking of Whitlam was easy too."   Which is true.   But compared to the possible problems of how to deal with a rogue President in the US, our system at least democratically resolved it quickly and neatly.

Update:  When even the Wall Street Journal is putting out videos asking if the country is in a constitutional crisis, you know it is getting pretty serious...

 

Only the best (outright racist) people

So, as this Reuters story tells us, of Elon Musk's kiddie team of "DOGE" pretend department of cost cutters and ideology enforcers:

*    one had a X account re-post Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate content;

*   one was sacked for leaking a company's proprietary information;

*   one resigned after outright racist content was posted on his X account.

The last example has had more detail supplied in other media, such as this BBC story:

The account connected to Mr Elez - first reported by the Wall Street Journal - posted a variety of inflammatory comments that were verified by the BBC as authentic.

"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," read one post from the pseudonymous account in July.

Another post, in September, said: "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

"Normalize Indian hate," another post that month said.

All of the posts have since been deleted.

JD Vance, with Indian wife, has said people shouldn't be mean to him.  And Elon deals with it by having a X poll of his MAGA app:

On Friday, President Donald Trump, when asked about Mr Elez's resignation from Doge and Vance's support for the employee, said he didn't know about "that particular thing", but agreed with the vice-president on the matter.

Writing on X, Vance said that while he disagreed "with some of Elez's posts... I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life".

Earlier in the day, Musk posted a poll on X inviting users to say whether the staff member should be brought back.

At least 78% voted in favour of his return out of hundreds of thousands who participated, according to results displayed underneath.

What an appalling bunch of people.