Explaining 100% support

Jim Geraghty in WAPO makes a decent enough point:  we shouldn't be surprised if polling shows virtually 100% support for Trump from MAGA, because people who stop supporting Trump don't count themselves as part of MAGA :

For most Americans, “Do you identify as MAGA?” and “Do you support the president?” are essentially the same question.

If you’re a Trump supporter who is upset or wary about the Iran war or the resulting impact on gas prices … maybe you’re not as inclined to identify as MAGA to a pollster lately.

When Trump came to power, some voters who always thought of themselves as Republicans found that their party changed dramatically. It became more protectionist and skeptical of free-market economics, more noninterventionist in foreign policy, less focused on traditional values and even libertine in social policies — all under the leadership of a bombastic and erratic casino owner who kept having temper tantrums on social media.

Some of these people stopped describing themselves as Republicans when pollsters called but still held fairly conservative views. Nevertheless, they landed in the “independent” bucket — where many of them remained throughout the Biden years.

Other than a burst of support at the start, independent voters were never that enthusiastic about Joe Biden’s presidency. After beginning with a job approval rating around 60 percent among independents in a Gallup poll, by September 2021 Biden was at 37 percent, and thereafter he rarely exceeded 40 percent. One reason that independents soured on Biden so quickly and irrevocably? A sizable chunk of them were former Republicans.

That’s why we shouldn’t expect to find many MAGA supporters expressing their opposition to Trump’s decisions on Iran or much else. When people in this demographic disagree strongly enough, eventually they just stop calling themselves MAGA. 

 

The very rich, but temporary, city

There's an interesting opinion piece about Dubai in the New York Times, questioning whether (or perhaps, how easily) the city may recover after losing its "luxury safe haven enclave" status abruptly in the current war.

A few extracts:

Nearly nine in 10 Dubai residents are nonnationals — by far the highest percentage of any major city in the world. Across the Emirates as a whole, about 10 million of 11.4 million residents are foreign nationals. Many are from Britain or the United States, but many more are guest workers who do the service jobs on which the city depends and typically come from South Asia, Southeast Asia and the wider Middle East. Even a traffic violation can trigger deportation. Citizenship is based almost entirely on descent; it’s been intentionally made very difficult for even long-term foreign residents or their children to become Emirati, even after decades of living and working there. The system is designed to rely on migrants while keeping them permanently temporary. That makes it extremely hard to be rooted, to belong, to be attached.

And so it is a city of flows — organized around an airport that connects thousands of routes and a free-trade port that channels global shipping. It is a hub focused on attracting people and their money and providing opportunities to make and spend more money.

For a time, that model worked exceedingly well. Dubai grew from about 917,000 residents in 2000 to nearly four million today, roughly quadrupling its population in a quarter-century — one of the fastest growth spurts of any major city on earth. It has climbed into the top ranks of global financial centers, now around 11th in the leading indexes and serving as the main hub for finance across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

It is home to more than 81,000 millionaires (a number that more than doubled between 2014 and 2024), including over 200 centimillionaires and 20 billionaires. In 2025 alone, an estimated 9,800 millionaires were projected to move to the Emirates, bringing some $63 billion in personal wealth — more than any other city in the world. Dubai now sits just behind New York and London and ahead of established global cities like Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, Paris, Frankfurt, Los Angeles and Chicago in its ability to attract global white-collar talent, based on LinkedIn data covering more than a billion knowledge workers worldwide.

And the Dubai model is spreading. Other cities — including Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Istanbul; Miami; and Doha, Qatar — are attempting to adopt some variation on the same basic formula to compete for the same class.

But that duplication also means these cities can be replaceable. If one falters, another steps up to take its place. The elites can flit among them, because any real attachment they feel lies elsewhere...

And this paragraph sums it up:

The Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh argued recently that Dubai would survive the current turmoil precisely because, even if there have been people living there for hundreds of years, “the bit the world tends to see might be the closest thing on earth to a blank slate.” Such a place makes no demands on your identity or your loyalty, echoing the urbanist James Howard Kunstler’s idea of the geography of nowhere. And yet that could be its fatal flaw: The very quality that makes it useful is what makes it ultimately disposable. 

 

 

Strange clerical sex scandals have been around a long time...

This is from a review in the New York Times of a book about a clerical sex scandal from Kant's home town Konigsberg (which happened in the early to mid 19th century, decades after he died, so no chance he was involved in any way!):

As a longhaired, charismatic figure with markedly progressive notions about gender relations, Ebel had become a trusted confidant to his women parishioners, sometimes to the annoyance of the powerful men in their lives. One of these men, the incredibly named Count Finck von Finckenstein, accused Ebel of causing the death of two girls by excessive arousal.

“These are the dangers that threaten all girls who join the Ebel group,” Finckenstein declared. “And this is why only women or male hermaphrodites are interested in joining it.” Diestel, coming to the aid of his friend Ebel, sent a furious letter to Finckenstein, calling him a “miserable lying brat” whose “disgraceful libels can only have been fabricated in the latrine of a disgraceful worldview.”

Soon the two preachers were on trial for sexual misconduct, breach of duty and founding an illegal sect. Clark emphasizes that the accusations of sexual depravity had no grounding in reality. The most fervent of Ebel’s detractors were “men with a reputation for moral waywardness,” as Clark puts it. Finckenstein accused Ebel of instructing him to have sex in Ebel’s presence, which turned out to be a matter of sheer projection: Finckenstein had previously told his wife that he wanted Ebel present when he made love to her. Another anti-Ebelian, a doctor, had a “propensity to press unwanted intimacies upon the women in his care.”

Clark proposes a number of reasons that Ebel became a target, including the “queerness of his persona.” For Ebel’s detractors, his manners and sensitivity were an unacceptable assault on the rigid binaries of the patriarchal order. The gentle Ebel was married with children, but his critics cast him as a fey home-wrecker who plied his lady parishioners with dangerous ideas. Finckenstein described him as a “hermaphrodite.”

 The book is relatively short apparently, as is the review, and the origin of it is given as this:

In the 1990s, he came across some files detailing a sex scandal that rippled through the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) between 1835 and 1842. Two Lutheran priests were brought to trial and sent to prison, though they were exonerated of the most salacious charges. 

In a prefatory note, Clark suggests what drew him so insistently to this particular micro-historical moment was how these priests were victims of scurrilous rumors long before the advent of mass communications and social media. He goes on to emphasize the episode’s “fabular power,” adding coyly, “Resemblances to present-day persons and situations, though not intended, cannot be ruled out.” 

The difference with today, of course, is the speed with which false rumours spread via technology, and (I wonder?) perhaps the difficulty of dislodging a rumour with later truth. 

The LLM and leads to deeper reading

I have to admit, LLMs can be very good at suggesting where to go for deeper reading on a topic.

 For example, this interview in the New York Times with Scottish writer and performer Richard Gadd (who wrote the semi autobiographical Baby Reindeer, which I haven't watched but it sounded interesting) dealt a lot on his self questioning of his masculinity and sexuality.   His sexual assault happened fairly young, and it's summarised here:

When Richard Gadd wrote Monkey See Monkey Do for the Edinburgh fringe in 2016, he says, “it was pre-#MeToo; sexual assault wasn’t really in the public consciousness, and male sexual assault particularly wasn’t”. He was 27 and catastrophically anxious, and his flatmates were worried, asking him: “What are you doing? No, like, really what are you doing?”

The show – you’d struggle to call it standup, though it won the Edinburgh comedy award that year – is a personal and harrowing account of being raped by a manipulative older man he met earlier in his career. It’s extremely painful to watch, as Gadd’s nascent professional hopes and fantasies are traded on and exploited, leaving him isolated and hollowed out. 

In the New York Times interview, he says:

The journey of life is trying to come to terms with yourself. I’ve always been quite confused sexually. Even as I sit here, 36 years old, I still sometimes feel confused. I’ve tried many labels in my life, and the labels never brought me any sort of comfort. Comfort comes from within. No external answer exists to an internal conflict, in my opinion. Inconsistency is the confusing nature of life. Accepting that I might never stand on solid ground is a form of acceptance. Some people just wrestle existentially, and that’s the way it is.

But he also says he didn't feel same sex attraction until after the assault:

I read in an interview that you hadn’t had same-sex attraction until after your assault. Is that right? Yeah, that is true. I know that’s a controversial idea. I’ve never said it’s because of that. I’d never say that. I say that perhaps it forced me to look at myself, to re-examine myself. Maybe I was strutting from A to B, repressing myself in such a way that I never looked before. I’m not sure. All I know is that I went through a period — this is radically honest — of almost feeling asexual and then getting very confused and then exploring that and realizing that I’m fine both ways. Even now, I’m still a little bit lost. I do think that abuse of that nature can leave you uncertain in your body, but I’m not saying that abuse makes you gay. My truth, which nobody can take from me, is that I didn’t question myself until that happened. 

Those two answers sound a tad inconsistent, if you ask me.  He's also reminding me of Hannah Gadsby, who turned her true life assault directly into performance art on Netflix. 

Anyway, the whole question of the (relatively modern, and Western) "turn to the inner self" has long interested me.   It's been somewhat piqued by the transgender culture wars, as well thinking from time to time about Buddhist conceptions of no self, which scientific materialists can readily go alone with, and (one would think) could render a lot of Western reflection on internal states of mind a tad...redundant?.  

I asked Perplexity for some leads on this topic, and here is it's answer:

There is a substantial body of work on exactly this turn toward the inner self, especially the move from a person understood through roles, duties, and social place to a person understood through feelings, authenticity, sexuality, and identity. A good way to frame it is that several modern writers describe a shift from a public, relational self to an inward, self-interpreting self, with sexuality and gender later becoming especially central markers of that inward truth.​

Major authors on the shift

• Charles Taylor is one of the best starting points. In Sources of the Self, he traces the making of modern identity and the rise of authenticity, inner depth, and self-articulation as moral ideals.

• Philip Rieff argued earlier and more sharply that modern culture moved from “religious man” to “psychological man,” with therapy and self-realization replacing older moral frameworks.

  Robert Bellah and co-authors in Habits of the Heart describe expressive individualism, the view that each person has an inner core of feeling that should be expressed rather than disciplined by inherited social forms.
  
  Carl Trueman directly connects this to contemporary sexuality and gender, arguing that the modern self is defined increasingly by inward feelings and desires, and that this sets the stage for identity to be located in sexual and gender experience.
  
  Michel Foucault is essential for a different angle: he shows how confession, psychiatry, and sexual discourse made sex something to be dug out, named, and interpreted as an inner truth.
  

  ......

If you want a reading path

A sensible sequence would be:

1. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self.

2. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic.

3. Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart.

4. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1.

5. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

 Of those authors, I only know of Michel Foucault.   

Perplexity then commented on each of them:

How these writers differ

Taylor is more genealogical and philosophical, trying to reconstruct how modern authenticity became plausible. Rieff is more polemical and cultural-critical, seeing therapy as a civilizational replacement for religion. Foucault is the most radical in method, treating sexuality and confession as products of power/knowledge rather than timeless truths waiting to be found. Trueman is the most directly relevant to your sexuality/gender question, because he explicitly ties modern identity to inward feelings and the plausibility of claims about “being in the wrong body”.

Perplexity suggested possible further questions it could answer, and I chose the one about why expressive individualism became the dominant view in the 1980's.  Here are its comments about that:

By the 1980s, “expressive individualism” had become dominant because it fit hand‑in‑glove with postwar affluence, therapeutic psychology, consumer capitalism, and rights‑based law in a way that traditional religious and philosophical critiques did not, and often could not, match institutionally or imaginatively. Even where churches and philosophers opposed it, they were frequently forced to speak in its language of inner authenticity, psychological wellbeing, and personal choice, which blunted their resistance and helped normalize the very outlook they criticised.

What “expressive individualism” means

Writers following Charles Taylor and Robert Bellah use “expressive individualism” for a view of the self in which identity is discovered in one’s inner depths and must be outwardly expressed to be authentic. On this view the individual, understood as an “atomized self,” is the basic unit of reality, bound mainly by freely chosen commitments that serve their self‑realization. By the late twentieth century, Taylor and others argue, this had become the “default conception of the self” in Western social imaginaries.

Postwar prosperity and social change

Bellah and colleagues explicitly connect the prominence of individualism by the early 1980s to rising prosperity from the 1950s onward, which loosened dependence on family and local community and made self‑fulfilment a plausible life project for many more people. In Habits of the Heart (1985) they argue that “the language of individualism” had become Americans’ primary language of self‑understanding and that this individualism had grown “cancerous,” threatening the social tissues that once moderated it. In such a context, a self that sees its task as realizing interior desires rather than conforming to external roles or sacred orders felt natural rather than ideological.

The triumph of the therapeutic

Philip Rieff’s account is that a “therapeutic” culture displaced a religious one: we increasingly interpret our lives through the lens of psychological health, inner conflict, and self‑acceptance instead of sin, duty, or objective moral order. He describes a cultural revolution in which traditional “controls” weaken and “releases” (permissions) expand, yielding a “psycho‑therapeutic civilization” where the wisdom of society consists in doctrines that permit each person “to live an experimental life.” By the 1960s–70s this therapeutic vocabulary had percolated into counselling, education, and popular media, so that even religious practice was often reinterpreted as a resource for personal wellbeing rather than a binding authority.

 And so on.

OK, maybe one more paragraph:

Why philosophical and religious opposition didn’t stop it

Several lines of critique existed—Rieff’s warning of cultural collapse, MacIntyre’s diagnosis of modern “emotivism,” Taylor’s concern about relativism and isolation, communitarian critiques like Bellah’s—but they were largely diagnostic rather than institution‑building. Their influence was strongest in intellectual and religious circles, while everyday experience in workplaces, schools, media, and courts kept training people to think in individualist and therapeutic terms. Moreover, as one sympathetic critic notes, even theological accounts of salvation and forgiveness were often reframed in therapeutic language, blurring the line between gospel and self‑help and thereby conceding much of Rieff’s point about the “triumph of the therapeutic.”

This gives me plenty of leads.    

I think I mentioned this before, and perhaps not so long ago, but I do remember a pleasant enough priest who took over my childhood Catholic parish but left the priesthood, saying it was not "authentic" enough.  I spoke to him as a young teenager, and he was into some popular psychology books that did exactly what is described in that  Perplexity summary:  framed the Catholic faith as something that would make you understand yourself better - or framed it as a "therapeutic" enterprise.  (I can't remember who wrote them - I'm pretty sure it was an American Catholic, and the books were heavy on graphic design.  I had the impression they may have been popular in Catholic high schools, but I could be wrong.)  As well intentioned as the priest was - I had one or two counselling style discussions with him, and this was in the days (long ago!) when people didn't worry about a priest seeing a teenager alone, at night - I did not feel drawn to that framing of religion at all;  and still don't to this day.   

Anyway, I am impressed with the summaries on topics you can get from LLMs, and how you can direct them to more specifically relevant leads. 

Update:   Gosh, Perplexity just helped me track down the 1970's books the priest recommended:

The books you’re describing sound most like John Powell, SJ—an American Jesuit priest who wrote popular Catholic/self-understanding books in the 1970s, especially Fully Human, Fully Alive (first published in 1976), which was explicitly about negative emotions, self-perception, and becoming fully human. That title is also listed as an illustrated edition, which fits your memory of graphic artwork.

Strongest match

Fully Human, Fully Alive: A New Life Through a New Vision is the best fit because it combines Catholic spirituality with a therapeutic, psychologically oriented view of the self and God, and it dates exactly to the period you remember. The summary description says Powell argues that fears and complexes come from a faulty perception of ourselves and our surroundings.

Other Powell books

Other John Powell titles from roughly the same era also match your description of Catholic self-understanding and relationship with God, including Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? and The Secret of Staying in Love. Powell’s books were widely read in Catholic circles and often framed faith in terms of growth, identity, and emotional healing

I did ask another AI about this a couple of months ago, and it didn't find it.  Maybe I gave better clues this time.

And, what do ya know!  I thought "I hope the author wasn't caught up in sexual abuse cases", Google it, and yes he was:

Powell was accused of abusing of at least seven female students in the 1960s and 1970s. He was first sued in 2003 and again in 2006. Six of his alleged victims settled their litigation with the Jesuits in 2005.^[1] 

Ugh.  Female students, though; so sounds like not a case of suppressed homosexuality, which would be particularly ironic for the author of a book "Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?".    

 Update 2:   This site gives a better idea of the creepiness of John Powell's abuse:

In court documents, interviews, as well as a lightly fictionalized account of the abuse by one of Powell’s survivors, I learned of an incident when Powell told a young victim that he had received direct confirmation from Jesus that their “relationship” was blessed. He said that during private prayer, Jesus had come off the cross in front of him and sanctioned what he was doing with the victim. Drawing on long traditions in the formation of priests, Powell authorized himself with reference to clerics’ special, even mystical bond with Christ. All the leveling and humanizing of his psychological reasoning paled in comparison to the power of this notion of priests’ special access to divine realms of secrecy and mystery. It is interesting to me that the lay people in his orbit did not regret or lament this kind of clerical elevation, but seemed to long for it, embrace it, even need it, just as much as they relished his humanistic language about self-acceptance and authenticity. 

Isn't this ironic!  The parish priest I knew who left the priesthood because he found it "inauthentic" (I think I later heard he married, so perhaps being in love on the quiet was what led to it?)  was likely heavily influenced by a psychologising Jesuit who himself was being "inauthentic"....  

A dragon, adjusted (and the man who painted it)

The reason I say "adjusted" is because I was pleased to find that Claude (free version) was able to improve the original, which had the tricky issue of uneven lighting affecting one side more than the other:

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but that's a pleasing outcome.  

Anyway, by way of further explanation, the painting is by famous Japanese artist Hokusai, and as may guess from the border of the dragon painting, yes he's the guy who made this:

On the recent trip to Japan, I visited not one, but two museums devoted to him.  The first is in a town on the outskirts of Nagano, called Obuse.  (It feels a bit more like a distant suburb, really, and takes about 40 min to get to on a local train.  It's a pleasant area with nice shops and local gardens to visit, apart from the museum.)

The reason it has a museum is because Hokusai used to visit there in his late career, hence the area has some of his artwork, including the dragon painting which is on a panel for a festival float.  

It shows videos about his career, and has displays including his intricately illustrated pages from books, like this:

I must admit, I still don't quite understand how these were made, as the size of the pages and the intricacy of the lines makes them too detailed for woodblock prints, but I think that's what they were.

It's kind of remarkable how he published style books for other people to learn how to draw.  It feels like he created the whole modern Japanese love of manga and drawing.   (Yes, now that I check, he is considered the "godfather" of manga.)  

The museum has a great gift shop, too.  Better than the one in the next museum, in Tokyo.

That one is in the Sumida City area in Tokyo, an area which is, incidentally, good to stay in if you want a more "local" experience.  It's not that far from Tokyo Station, too.  

Sumida has its own Hokusai museum because he used to live around that area, and the local council has signs in different locations showing some of his illustrations.

The museum is fine, and goes a bit more into the wood block technology of the day, but it has strict no photos rules, and a quite small gift shop area.  

So, going to both museums really worked well.  I should read a bit more about his life, as he was ridiculously prolific and so influential...

Strange conspiracy bedmates

I'm not sure I have ever commented on - or if I did, only briefly - the "Trump faked his assassination attempt" conspiracy theory which popped up as soon as anti-Trumpers saw the apparently incompetent way the Secret Service left him exposed and posing instead of dragging him away from danger at great speed, as we had seen in other assassination attempts.   

To be honest, I would go as far as saying I completely understand why people think it looked faked:  it's just that I can't go the next step to believing that such fakery would involve two people being actually killed and others injured.   (It's also true that, at most, his ear took a small graze - probably from shrapnel, as it seems from Googling that Mythbusters did test the question of whether the pressure wave from a close bullet can cause much damage, and the answer is "no".   But I still don't think the bullet itself touched his ear.)  

Anyway - the interesting thing is that with the Iran war and the outbreak of MAGA influencer infighting, the conspiracy has been revived on X with a lot of former Trump supporters now believing it was faked:  a conspiracy they formerly would have called a sign of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Figures include that goose Milo, but I see culture warrior and Trump sympathiser Neil Oliver has joined in too.

Of course, the fact that such people formerly endorsed and defended Trump proves that their judgement and opinion on anything is always likely to be bad - so I'm not suggesting it gives the conspiracy any stronger grounding.   (Probably, quite the opposite in fact!)  Still, it's kind of funny to watch. 

  

As I suspected....

Cannabis is not an effective treatment for common mental health conditions, says review

International researchers find ‘very little evidence’ medical form of the drug can treat anxiety, anorexia and other disorders 

It does sound like one of the psychiatrists involved has a bit of a "culture war" attitude to it, even though I too have always been sceptical of the health benefit claims made by self interested parties:

Sir Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatric research at King’s College London, said: “While people such as me consider that the therapeutic benefits of cannabis are extremely limited, and the side effects common, the world doesn’t believe this.

“Bolstered by the claims of the cannabis industry and the rapidly increasing cannabis clinics in the UK, many people are misled into using cannabis to treat their problems. In my view, the UK cannabis clinics operate as drug dealers for the middle class.” 

Time to whine about Hollywood, again...

I haven't watched the Oscars, but have to say, my interest level (and, I suspect, that of most of the world) regarding nearly all of the nominated movies might just about be at a record low this year.  (I have almost certainly said something similar about previous year's selections, but I can't be bothered checking right now as to which have been the worst.)

I say that having attempted to watch Sinners on whatever streaming service it is on.  I watched it with my son, who is more into dark (/black) movies than me, and we were both completely un-engaged at the 45 minute mark and gave up on it.   Sure, I understand it starts having some good music later, but really, there were no especially sympathetic characters that I can recall, and the friendship between the Chinese family and the black main characters felt a little, um, contrived? for the era.  

And for something that is seen as a black empowerment project, I thought the film seemed to play right into the hands of conservative (and long standing) racist criticism that black people are (shall we say) oversexed and can't help but engage in it at the drop of a hat.

Maybe it all turns around later in the film, but given that I'm not the world's biggest vampire movie fan, one has one's doubts.   All I know is that a dubious mash up of a film should open more engagingly than this one...

As for Marty Supreme:  virtually all reviews said there were no likeable characters, and as soon as I heard it was directed by the same guy who made Uncut Gems - which I complained about here as being un-watchable with its noisy, shouty audio a particular issue, I knew it would not be for me.   (And since then, I was listening to two Brisbane ABC radio hosts just last week who said they both found it completely underwhelming and full of unpleasant people shouting at each other.)   

One Battle After Another might be OK, I guess:  but it's one of those movies which I have heard so little about (for a fairly big budget film with big actors) that I automatically suspect that it doesn't hit the mark, as it's modest box office also suggests.  I feel generally a bit "over" Leonardo DiCaprio too:  an actor who I feel is too often in movies too earnest for his own good.  (Actually, to be clear, I was never really a fan.)

Anyway, I don't think I'm alone in feeling Hollywood seems not to know what people are able to get excited about anymore.  It's like we're waiting for a new genre to be invented to get us engaged again, but no one know what it is...

 

 

Let me help you fall asleep

Like most people, I occasionally have trouble falling asleep, and so I was interested in this story at the Washington Post about a technique that seems relatively new:

If you often find yourself lying awake in the middle of the night worrying, sleep experts say that cognitive shuffling might be worth a try.

Start by thinking of a word — something neutral or positive, like the word “house.” Then, think of as many words as you can that start with the first letter: horse, harmonica, honey. Try to picture each object or idea for 5 to 15 seconds, maybe even imagining a scene with yourself in it. (You’re riding a horse. ... You’re playing the harmonica. ... You’re harvesting honey!)

Beaudoin recommends against finding connections between the words. Just let the images wash over you. Whenever you find yourself having a hard time coming up with another word, move on to the next letter — in this case, o — owls, oasis, ocean and so on. Come up with images for each letter in your original word until you fall asleep. If you run out of letters before you fall asleep, pick a new word.

“It’s hard to think of random material, but this little technique helps people,” Beaudoin said. (He also developed an app called MySleepButton for people who want help with the technique.)

In addition to mimicking the kind of thinking that happens right before sleep, the method also requires a certain amount of brain power — enough to interrupt the worrying or problem-solving that often keeps us awake.

The article notes that it mimics the "micro dreams" that people have when falling asleep.  I'm certainly aware of those happening, and I have long wondered about them when the standard story is that true dreams happen under REM sleep.  (I wouldn't mind betting that some people aren't aware of them, just as some adults say they never remember dreams of any kind.)

So, this technique makes some intuitive sense to me.  

Let them fight, Part 2

People used to say that the biggest haters in politics were Lefties, against other Lefties. 

 Ladies and gentlemen, let me present MAGA influencers...

There's your problem

 Much of it is behind a paywall, but this article at Nature is interesting:

A species of gut bacteria that proliferates as mice get older plays a part in the animals’ cognitive decline, a study finds1. Researchers determined that the bacterium interferes with signalling along sensory nerves connecting the gut to the brain.

Although the experiments were conducted in mice, the gut–brain circuit that the team identified “is likely conserved in humans”, says David Vauzour, a biochemist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. That would need to be confirmed, but if the circuit is present in humans, then this research could reveal a mechanism that explains why people’s memory and ability to learn naturally decreases with age — and offer hope that gut-targeted therapies could reverse the decline.

The effects of the bacteria, which dampens the gut–brain circuit in mice, seem similar to other consequences of ageing. “When we get older, we need things like glasses and hearing aids”, says co-author Christoph Thaiss, an immunologist at Stanford University in California. The study — published today in Nature1 — shows that, just as ageing causes a decline in sensory perception of the external world, it might also be causing a loss of perception of internal signals, too, he says. 

The experiment was done by putting young mice and old mice together: 

After a month of living in the same cage, the young mice began performing in a similar way to the old mice on a maze task and another memory test. In the latter test, mice usually remember objects that they’ve seen before and therefore spend more time exploring new objects. But the younger animals that had been housed with the old ones instead spent equal time investigating both familiar and new objects — just as their older counterparts did. This indicated that they had lost their short-term memory.

“Their deficit was so profound, they were basically undistinguishable from the old mice,” says co-author Timothy Cox, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “It was almost unbelievable.”

What had changed was that the young animals’ microbiomes had become similar to those of the older mice.

The next line is the reason for the title to this post:

By living near and eating each other’s faeces, mice can easily transmit their gut microbes to one another. The researchers suspected that one or more species of bacteria found in the gut of the old mice might be causing cognitive decline. 

In search of good news

I'm told that petrol is selling at $2.50 per litre, the highest price since I can't recall when.  Thanks, Donald.

Oh, so poor widdle Joe Rogan feels "betrayed" by Trump, does he?  Actually, he was betrayed by his own gullibility, given that there was every possible sign from his first term that Trump:

a.    talks BS continuously and no one can believe anything he says; and

b.    was completely in the pocket of Netanyahu.  

I haven't bothered reading in detail what Rogan said, but it would not surprise me at all if he pivoted to the pathetic, "I take no responsibility for my bad judgement - it's all Democrat's fault" line that I have seen surface on X (Kim Dotcom I think).  That is:  "if it weren't for Biden hanging on for so long and then Democrats running such a bad candidate, I wouldn't have voted for Trump, who seemed the better candidate."   It's ludicrous.  

Anyway - give me some good news, someone?   

I've done Google search, and asked Perplexity too - there are positive stories, of course.  But few that are grabbing my attention.  

Well, there is this:  A new study indicates that yo-yo dieting might actually be good for you.     

Oh, my Chinese AI Kimi tells me that the global suicide rate has fallen by 50% since 2000.  The source for that seems to be Our World in Data, but I can't find a graph confirming that.   However, it does seem there has been a big drop in China:

    All the more reason to continue my Chinamaxxing, I guess.  😄 

Anyway, Kimi has pointed me to a New Years article at El Pais (the Spanish newspaper I think) with a list of 44 ways in which the world has improved over the last few decades.  It's pretty impressive.  

There, AI did cheer me up.... 

Market manipulation is obvious

The spectacularly corrupt Trump administration is at it again:

 US official: ‘Not true’ Navy successfully escorted oil tanker through Strait of Hormuz

Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed in a now-deleted social media post that the Navy escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. 

Further down:

In the now-deleted post, which appeared briefly on his official account, Wright said the Navy “successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets.” The post was accompanied by a video of Wright’s remarks in Colorado on Monday, in which he referenced a tanker passing through the Strait but did not mention naval escorts.

Oil prices, which had been falling after President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S.-Israel war with Iran is “very complete,” dropped further on Wright’s announcement. Prices had risen to nearly $120 late Sunday after Iran started striking oil tankers traversing the Hormuz and Iraq and Kuwait started shutting in oil production.  

And:

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, seized on Wright’s post to accuse the U.S. of market manipulation.

“U.S. officials are posting fake news to manipulate markets,” Araghchi wrote on X. “It won’t protect them from inflationary tsunami they’ve imposed on Americans.” 

Lots and lots of people would agree with the Iranian on that issue.... 

One suspects some heated arguments are happening in Washington

Two stories at Axios.  First:

The U.S. and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war, according to four sources with knowledge of the discussions.

Why it matters: Preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon is one of President Trump's stated war objectives. The regime's 450 kilograms of 60%-enriched uranium — convertible to weapons grade within weeks — is one key to that goal.

The big picture: Any operation to seize the material would likely require U.S. or Israeli troops on Iranian soil, navigating heavily fortified underground facilities in the middle of a war.

• It remains unclear whether it would be an American, Israeli or joint mission.
• It would likely only take place after both countries are confident Iran's military can no longer mount a serious threat to the forces involved.

Behind the scenes: At a congressional briefing Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked whether Iran's enriched uranium would be secured. "People are going to have to go and get it," he said, without specifying who.

 Hard to imagine that going all that smoothly!

The other story:

Israel's strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots Saturday went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance, sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began eight days ago, according to a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge.

Why it matters: The U.S. is concerned Israeli strikes on infrastructure that serves ordinary Iranians could backfire strategically, rallying Iranian society to support the regime and driving up oil prices.

It would seem there's a good chance that Trump feels a bit trapped - he presumably doesn't want to be blamed for rising oil prices and Americans in danger in the Middle East, and may be legitimately wary of being able to "sell" to his base the need for boots on the ground in Iran.   However, he has Netanyahu to try to keep happy, too.   

 

Let them fight...

Headline in The Guardian: 

‘You unbelievable coward’: conservative US media in open warfare over Iran

Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin are all trading blows over US involvement – while Sean Hannity says he’s staying out of it 

Of course it's illegal

Here's a New York Times article that didn't seem to hang around getting highlighted for long:  

The Legality, or Illegality, of Killing a Foreign Leader, Explained

We also have Iranian ships being sunk thousands of kilometres away, which makes the "it's not a war, just a combat operation" argument pretty laughable.   

 

What I don't understand is Trumpian supporters not getting that the "good guys" aren't supposed to join in with what the bad guys shouldn't be doing.     

 

Update:  More "of course it's illegal":  Trump administration waging illegal war on Iran, experts say

Chinese New Year pop music perfection

It may be heavy on advertising the corporate sponsors, but still:  this is the most pleasing (and simultaneously touching) pop music video I have seen for years.  The trio is from Malaysia, and I have never heard of them before, but the algorithm knew I would like it:

 

Update:    This song makes me unreasonably happy, and after watching the "making of" video and a question and answer with the band, and watching the song video itself a dozen times this week, I understand better how! 

The song's climax has both a choir and strings joining in to boost it - something that isn't immediately obvious on first listening, when one is distracted by the high energy dancing and editing.   The whole video also features the trio ageing backwards - the first shot is from the point of view of the young kids who are at the table at the end shot.   It's such a nice framing device.

As for the band - they started as street dancers, and formed the band in 2017 and now seem to enjoy reasonable success in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.  Would seem that they are trying to break into Taiwan, but without much success there yet.    They look a bit like a wannabe boy hip-hop-ish band, but without the super manufactured rich "smooth" looks of a Korean or Taiwanese band.  (It also seems they are probably over 30 now, which works against them.)   One of them said that he liked wearing that aged make up in this song because it meant they didn't have to "act handsome", which can be hard work.

Interestingly, they re-worked the song into one for the Malaysian Muslim population - using the same tune but with lyrics that are in Malay language, and referring to Hari Raya, the Muslim festival at the end of Ramadan.   They also dressed in more traditional Malay gear, covering their tattoos.   It seems it was well received:  no issues with "cultural appropriation" it seems!

 

 

   

Some glass

These photos are from the Toyama Glass Art Museum, which is in a lovely new-ish library and gallery building and (oddly) seems to have been created without Toyama having any particular historical connection to glass making.   [Update:  I have since read that it was known for making glass medicinal bottles - which ties in with the cities reputation for old style medicine manufacturing, about which I might one day post.  But still, medicine bottles are not exactly art...] 

Anyway, they were having an exhibition of French art nouveau glassware from around the start of the 20th century, and many pieces were very intricate and lovely.

The photos are the end are actually huge glass installations by an American glass artist.  The photo of the boat full of glass balls lacks anything to scale it by, but it's probably about 7 or 8m long.  

 

The room may be free, but...

So, Dubai has told hotels not to throw out guests who are stranded in the country:

Authorities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have directed hotels to extend stays for guests unable to depart due to current exceptional circumstances, in a coordinated move to protect international visitors affected by travel disruptions. 

The directives require hotels to prioritise guest welfare, ensure accommodation continuity, and avoid asking travellers to vacate rooms if they cannot leave the country or immediately cover extension costs. 

I think the suggestion is that the government will foot the bill for the extended stays, actually.

That's nice of them, but still.  I can imagine having very light sleep if (as is typical) I was in a hotel room there with huge glass windows and no other room (away from the windows) to rest in. 

I would guess, too, that there may be some cheap holidays on offer after this has settled down.   (I'm a little curious to see it, but not at all sure how much I would like it.)  

Watching a man ramble through South East Asia

Have I mentioned before watching the Youtube channel of the Australian travel vlogger who calls himself Fiasco da Gama?  Maybe, but I thought I would mention him again.

It's not like every video is brilliant, and I guess he is sooner or later going to run out of things to talk about, but the simple format of watching a not particularly photogenic Australian man in (I think) his 50's wandering around streets in Asia talking to his camera and the locals is more charming than you might expect.  

I don't think he has ever explained how he has managed to live like this, financially.  He once explained that he worked in Australia until (if I recall correctly) his early 30's, then gave that up to spend the rest of his life wandering through South East Asia (and further a field into Asia) on a shoestring budget.  He has spent most of his time in Bali and Indonesia, it seems, and has explained how he was once engaged to a Balinese woman and lived with her in her village, but gave up on the relationship as he felt somewhat isolated and not able to fully engage in village life.  I suspect that maybe he had an inheritance that was enough to set him off on such a wandering lifestyle?  If so, his economical ways have certainly made the money last.

He has never married or had children, but has made it clear that he is straight.  (He felt prompted to address that as he said some commenters have told him he's gives off a "not very masculine" vibe - which is odd given his bushy beard and general demeanour.  I think, though, that what causes some people to think that may be his high degree of empathy with people, which is generally regarded as a more typically feminine personality trait than masculine.)   He often comments about he loves wandering around where ever he wants, often changing his mind at short notice as to where to go on any particular day,  which means he is happiest travelling without a companion, most of whom would want more certainty.  Yet he has spent so many years doing this, he clearly has a network of friends who he drops in on from time to time. 

This is not the sort of lifestyle I could enjoy long term, I'm sure; but it clearly has suited him and he is generally so positive and respectful of others as a traveller, there is certainly nothing to criticise about his chosen life. 

He speaks some Indonesian, which means he can interact with the locals more than the average vlogger.  

His most recent videos show him making his way via train across Java from its Eastern tip, stopping in towns that are certainly not on the tourist track and just wandering around, looking for somewhere to stay and eat.  And, of course, interacting with locals on the street, who are nearly always happy to talk to him and don't mind being on video.   

Given my short holiday last year in which I caught the train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, the recent videos have reminded of a couple of things that I reckon are underappreciated:

*    the Indonesian train system, at least on Java, is really, really good.   Modern, comfortable trains;  modestly priced; clean and full of nice staff.  (It seems it has been a while since Fiasco did a lot of travel using them, too, since he has commented in these recent videos that the trains and stations are so much nicer than they ever used to be.)

*   the Indonesian people are very friendly and welcoming, and often quite charming and attractive, too.  Given that the country has significant problems, and Jakarta is a high security city that clearly still worries about terrorism, this was something that I wasn't quite expecting until I got there. But you really do feel, when you see how this older Australian is welcomed on the back streets of virtually any Indonesian city or town, there are a lot of good and welcoming people in Indonesia.  (It helps moderate the impression of Islam, too, to a significant degree.)    

So yeah, I think this guy is a pretty good vlogger, and gives off a likeable personality.  Worth watching, for a while, anyway... 

  

I miss the old way of doing wars...

For all of the stupid brinkmanship that led to War World 2 and other conflicts in the past, at least the old fashioned thing of declaring wars and then fighting them had a clarity which the world decided to walk away from in the second part of the 20th century.   Hence we now have to "law of armed conflict" instead of the "law of war", and countries like the US and Israel deciding that going for international assassination is the way to get countries to change course.  

I mean, if this is the standard now, just how upset should MAGA Americans be if an Iranian secret agent did manage to kill Trump?   Their beloved leader, after all, partook in assassination without giving any clear warning, so seems to me the moral upset should be quite diluted.  

Yet, it's also true that Iran has been such an international trouble maker for so many decades that we are now forced to watch somewhat embarrassing endorsements of Trump's actions by Western leaders who, surely, in private, are likely to be regretting having to going along with this.  Albanese has got the burden of AUKUS around his neck, too, giving him all the more motive not to upset the apple cart of US co-operation to get new submarines.   

A couple of academics at the not-so-illustrious University of the Sunshine Coast are right, though:

We should be dismayed by the worrying acceptance of increased brazen illegality by Western leaders, including our own prime minister. Anthony Albanese has supported the strikes as “acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. This places Australia, once again, in open contradiction with basic principles of liberal international order.

They earlier wrote:

Trump said the attacks were intended to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change. Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the goal was to “remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran”.

Forcible regime change violates the foundational principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention under the UN Charter.

The strikes targeted Iran’s supreme leader, president, and military chief of staff, as well as military infrastructure. Deliberately targeting heads of state also crosses a threshold that distinguishes military operations from acts of aggression.

Attacking heads of state is illegal under New York Convention, for obvious reasons of stability. With the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the power vacuum will only increase the hardship on the ground for Iranians.

Now, who knows:  it may be that everything will go relatively well, and we soon see the rapid, relatively bloodless, end of a regime that only Putin is likely to think is a pity to see gone.    

But really, does that seem likely given the history of the region in the last 70 odd years?  I doubt it.    

Update:  there is a good summary at Axios about the lead up to this - although you have to subscribe to a newsletter to get to it.

What's clear is that the attack only makes sense if Trump's previous attack on nuclear facilities was not the success he claimed:

Behind the scenes: Before and during the talks, U.S. officials said intelligence made clear Iran was already rebuilding the nuclear facilities that Trump claimed were "obliterated" in Operation Midnight Hammer last June.

• When Kushner and Witkoff asked for a concrete proposal, the Iranians produced a seven-page document outlining enrichment needs they claimed were for civilian purposes.
• Trump's team checked the numbers with the UN's nuclear watchdog. "This would result in enrichment capability roughly five times more than laid out in the [2015 nuclear deal]," one official said.

Officials also said Iran had been secretly stockpiling enriched material at the Tehran Research Reactor under the guise of medical research.

• "Never once did they use any of the fissionable material there to make even a single medicine," one official said. "It was all designed to deceive."

Reality check: This account is based largely on statements by U.S. and allied officials in the aftermath of the strikes, and could not immediately be verified by independent sources.

It's also clear that he is utterly in Netanyahu's pocket.   (Trump and his family also being financially tied to Arab money is another factor.  The Washington Post in particular has been reporting that Saudi Arabia encouraged the attack.)   

Time for some Kantian thinking and excitement

I've been thinking about Kant again, for a few reasons:

1.    I've been reading a novel The Thing Itself (which I only found via watching an English guy on Youtube who talks about science fiction), and it's explicitly based on an elaboration of one of Kant's key ideas - transcendental idealism.   The brief summary of that is:

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations.  

 How have I found the novel?  Pretty good, actually.  A science fictiony/mild horror intriguing read, but I would say it is not for everyone, in that the author Adam Roberts tries various stylistic things (with some  chapters written in old or futuristic English, for example), and from comments on Reddit, it seems some have found that a bit jarring.

But the basic concept is fine.  And it features AI in a way that seems more relevant now than when it was written a few years ago.

I haven't finished it yet, but I doubt the whole can be ruined in the last quarter. 

2.    I have tried asking a couple of AI services about Kant, and been given some interesting food for thought.

For example, I didn't realise (until reading an article that AI led me to) how much Russia* (including Putin!) likes to claim Kant as their own.   I don't recall reading about this controversy in 2024, the year in which there were a lot of "happy 300th year birthday" conferences on Kant, but here we go:

NEW DELHI: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has openly criticiz ..

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/109561696.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Putin’s war of aggression contradicts all of Kant’s fundamental statements, said the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz in a speech on the occasion of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences' ceremony to mark Kant’s 300th birthday, on April 22.

“Putin doesn’t have the slightest right to quote Kant […] Nevertheless, Putin’s regime remains committed to appropriating Kant and his work at almost any cost,” said Scholz.

 The big problem:

The congress opened with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko reading a message from President Putin, after which all participants rose for the national anthem. In the message Putin said that Kant’s call for using one’s own reason (sapere aude) in Russia’s case meant to be guided by its national interests.

Ha!  Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Kant would know that this is ridiculous.

By the way, look at how many places held events about him - 

Key conferences and events for the 300th Anniversary (2024):

• 14th International Kant Congress (Bonn, Germany): September 8-13, 2024. Theme: "Kant's Project of Enlightenment".
• World Concept of Philosophy (Kaliningrad, Russia): April 2024. Focused on Kant's birthplace and legacy.
• International Conference "Kant 300" (Online/Global): April 22-26, 2024.
• "The Young Kant" (Evanston, USA): May 23-25, 2024, at Northwestern University.
• "Critical Philosophy for Cosmopolitan Justice and Perpetual Peace" (Lisbon, Portugal): September 17-19, 2024.
• Kant 300 (Latvia): International conference by National Library of Latvia and University of Mainz (Feb-Nov 2024).
• Kant 300 (Vietnam): Van Lang University (July 2024).

What a guy!

And why don't more people know a bit more about him?

3.    I also asked an AI (Claude) as to what it thought about an idea I've had for ages (and which I have mentioned here before) that a novel or movie which revealed the secret life of  Kant as a Prussian secret agent (instead of a virginal, overly intellectual, routine obsessed, academic) could be fun.   And of course, being an LLM type AI, designed to keep me happy, Claude thought it a great idea.  It also made many suggestions as to how aspects of his life and times could be used, and proposed a broad outline.

The only problem is (see point 2) - no one in the public knows anything about him.   I suppose that didn't stop Amadeus being a hit, even though most people knew nothing of Mozart's odd life and scatological sense of humour.    

The other thing is that there is apparently extremely little in the way of personal diaries or letters from him that give much of an insight into his character.

But then, AI might also have helped (a different one - Deepseek) in that it has referred me to a 2025 book that I am sure will be a top seller (haha):  "Portraits of Kant: Refletions from 18th and 19th Century Europe":

Yes!  Three volumes!  Only $553....😕

Someone has put online some introductory extracts, including this from the preface:

 Hey, I just mentioned Amadeus, and now I find Kant had a real life "bitter opponent"!   

Maybe I have to re-jig my ideas for a fictional treatment....

Anyway:  I think there's a good chance I'm one of a mere handful of people in my entire country who is (kind of) excited to see Kant is still being talked about in such detail.   (I get the feeling Australian philosophy departments may mainly be more into the modern, less satisfying, stuff.)

Do I dare look into Anna's Archive for this recent book that I can ill afford?  Kant would be very against me doing that, I'm sure.   So I should not...

 

*  His home city Konigsberg was Prussian at the time, but underwent a period of Russian occupation while Kant was alive, only to later be permanently made part of Russia and turning into Kaliningrad.