I hope this causes the NFT fad to die completely

The online world, and especially the crypto community, is lambasting Madonna upon the release of her and Beeple's new collection of sexually graphic NFTs, which include explicit footage of the singer giving birth to trees, butterflies, and robotic centipedes. The video clips include close-up shots of the singer’s genitalia created using scans of Madonna’s body.

That extract is from Fortune, which at least has the good taste not to link to the site where you can watch the tree grow.  (Yes, I looked at it, and it is so, so stupid and creepy looking: a good comedian could probably do at least a 30 minute stand up set about it.)     Can't she just take up knitting, or something?

Awful people

Yes, Glenn Greenwald actually says that people who make on line death threats are not the people the target of the threat should worry about - because people who really want to kill you don't tell you ahead of time.  It's just an outlet for their anger that, if you take it away, is actually more dangerous. (!)

That Tucker Carlson actually laughs in agreement, when he is one of the biggest pretenders that "Leftists" are threatening his safety, is just ludicrous.

These are ridiculous, awful men:

 

 

Not just at my house

My wife is home with a cough and sore throat, and I have been having (admittedly mild) passing symptoms of a cold too.  Both of us did a RAT yesterday that showed a strong negative...

 

They have built their own fantasy alternative reality, and insist on living in it

 

Update:   Speaking of Republicans/Conservatives always wanting to be the victim, have a read of the ridiculous lines Ted Cruz was mouthing on Hannity, as shown in this Philip Bump column at the Washington Post.

As someone said in the comments following:

Fascists frequently paint themselves as victims.

For goodness sake, don't tell Peter Thiel...

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from young mice can improve memory function in older mice, researchers report today in Nature. A direct brain infusion of young CSF probably improves the conductivity of the neurons in ageing mice, which improves the process of making and recalling memories. The team also suggests that the improvements are largely due to a specific protein in the fluid.

“This is super exciting from the perspective of basic science, but also looking towards therapeutic applications,” says Maria Lehtinen, a neurobiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts.

That's from Nature.

And a reminder about Peter Thiel

Phil fails (to get a grip)

 

The laughable pretence that the Left is being scary by protesting like this

I'll just let a series of tweets tell the story:

 (I initially thought the tweets saying that judge's neighbours were supporting the protesters were probably too "good" to be true, but it seems right.)

Yes, I understand the point that no one in a gun happy nation welcomes a group of protesters outside their door.   Still, if there is one side that has made a deliberate point of protest with the potential of deadly violence from a gun, it's the wingnut Right, not the Left.  

Also, there is no doubt the Right is especially hypocritical in the case of the abortion issue:

That graphic doesn't tell half the story, given the amount of daily harassment abortion clinics - or even suspected abortion clinics - have endured.

And let's not forget the completely conspiracy based harassment that MAGA people have conducted against election officials:

Update:  Slate article After thirty years of turning abortion clinics into war zones, now you want "civility"?

Naive

 

Um...

 

I would assume it's because if voters don't see abortion affecting them personally, they won't change their vote regardless of what they think about its legal status.  

I would guess that it may take some high profile case (or cases) of women dying due to inability to get an abortion under new State laws to change this.    

Update:   I don't know - it's possible I could be wrong, given the enthusiasm with which some Red States are coming up with new ideas in anticipation of Roe going:

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) on Sunday refused to rule out the possibility that his state would ban certain forms of contraception, sidestepping questions about what would happen next if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

 

An encouraging graph

I'm starting to think that even the pro-mining voters of Queensland and NSW can't stop a Labor victory:

Speaking of the pro-miners, there was a 30 minute show on ABC News on the weekend about this - with the usual vibe of "we have to listen to the concerns of the mining towns."

Quite frankly, I don't know why we have to.   

As was shown,  people already know of small towns that have died after the local mine closed.   If you live in a town that expands under mining projects, you should accept that the mining money is not going to last forever, and that governments therefore have every reason to be careful as to how much they invest in infrastructure (hospitals, etc) to support a place that they can confidently know is going to face a dramatic population downturn as soon as its key economic reason reason for existing goes away.

And yeah, climate change means less coal mining.   Live with it.  

I'm thoroughly sick of the pussy footing around the sensitivities of people on this issue.   Sure, they can make their money while the going's good, but don't expect that it's going to last forever.  

About "primitive communism"

Quite a good essay at Aeon here about an idea popularised by Marx that has been influential.  Here's a part near the start:

...the most peculiar project born from Marx’s notes was released a year after his death. Engels titled it The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. I’ll call it The Origin, for short.

The Origin is like Yuval Noah Harari’s blockbuster Sapiens (2014) but written by a 19th-century socialist: a sweeping take on the dawn of property, patriarchy, monogamy and materialism. Like many of its contemporaries, it arranged societies on an evolutionary ladder from savagery to barbarism to civilisation. Although wrong in most ways, The Origin was described by a recent historian as ‘among the more important and politically applicable texts in the Marxist canon’, shaping everything from feminist ideology to the divorce policies of Maoist China.

Of the text’s legacies, the most popular is primitive communism. The idea goes like this. Once upon a time, private property was unknown. Food went to those in need. Everyone was cared for. Then agriculture arose and, with it, ownership over land, labour and wild resources. The organic community splintered under the weight of competition. The story predates Marx and Engels. The patron saint of capitalism, Adam Smith, proposed something similar, as did the 19th-century American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan. Even ancient Buddhist texts described a pre-state society free of property. But The Origin is the idea’s most important codification. It argued for primitive communism, circulated it widely, and welded it to Marxist principles.

The essay goes on to talk about evidence from modern anthropology that goes against the idea.

 

Right wing paranoia watch

 In Australia:

 

Mind you, the evidence from New Catallaxy is that Australian right wingers, who are extraordinarily gullible when it comes to American conspiracy theory about Trump, still find that Aussie-style Qanon garbage is just too much.   Bosi will be lucky to receive a couple of hundred votes.

The New Catallaxy dumb ageing cranks are, however, swayed by "massive voter fraud at the Trump election" conspiracy, as evidenced by them linking to article about that D'Souza "documentary" 2,000 Mules.  

As this article explains, the movie proves precisely nothing, and it's easy to see the misinterpretation (and lack of understanding) of information that has been manipulated by conspiracy theorists who make money by promoting it to the gullible.   

It's once again, as always, a case of Trumpists seeing something they don't understand, saying "Hey, that looks suspicious to me!", and then thinking something has been proved.

 

A case of "grin and bear it", I suppose

A somewhat disturbing picture:

Yes, yes:  pragmatists will argue that this is what politicians do when campaigning - and look at the amount of sucking up Rudd did to News Corp and others to get and try and keep the job.

But, just as it did Rudd no good, what is the point of sucking up to such a has-been who surely can't keep "working" forever.  Mind you, ancient Sydney based radio personalities seem to have found some magic elixir to stay alive enough to keep using a microphone, even if they don't enjoy the best of health.   It's not just confined to Right wing figures either - look at Phillip Adams. And here's a photo of John Laws (86, but he could pass for older) from today:

Can anyone explain why such a rich man can't afford a decent haircut?

A pleasing attack on Rupert by Denis

Denis Muller really puts the boot into the News Corp abandonment of journalism in its coverage of the Australian election.   Good.  [Don't know why I thought it was Michelle Grattan - I was posting in a hurry, of course.  I was a bit surprised if it was Michelle, because I haven't been completely happy with her approach either, this election.]

Asian eating

I've been to a couple of Asian restaurants in the last few weeks, over in the heavily Chinese/Asian part of Brisbane (Sunnybank/Sunnybank Hills/Runcorn).

As I said to my family, there is something very pleasing about the liveliness of the way Asian family and friends gather in groups to eat.  I mean, eating in Western food places just does not have the same communitarian/family vibe as going to Chinese restaurant where the tables have a dozen or more people eating together, often with kids of all ages, and a busy staff running all over the place.  

And you get the impression this is a regular part of their life - good Asian restaurants in predominantly Asian parts of town are very busy.

My son thought I was ignoring things like bar-b-ques at home as a family/communitarian thing that Australians do - but really, we don't hold big ones very often, do we..

  

 

Women I thought had probably died

Over the weekend, I realised that two women who, if I had been asked, I would have guessed incorrectly had already died, came to mind:   Imelda Marcos, and Shirley MacLaine.

I was thinking of Imedla for obvious reasons (her son is probably going to be the next president of her country), but why Shirley came to mind, I don't know.

That is all.

 

Climate change in action

Yes, Andrew Sullivan has become very stupid

Spotted on Twitter:

How old is Sullivan?   58?   He's old enough to know better.

I posted before about a Noah Smith substack post in which he countered the American Right wing myth that America has become some sort of dystopian social nightmare in recent years (all caused by Democrats and "Leftism", of course),  which goes to show that a much younger man (with an eccentric fondness for rabbits) has a much better grasp on history than someone who has been making a living out of political commentary for decades.

Anyway - back to abortion in the US.   I see that Sullivan has joined in with the Creighton  "why are Leftists so scared of democracy dealing with abortion in the US?"  line.  

This is so naive, and so dismissive of the obvious problems with the current operation of democracy in the US, I almost can't be bothered dealing with it.   OK, I will, anyway:

*    of course if the courts have found a constitutional right that was left in place and re-affirmed over 50 years, and then (on what's obviously essentially religious grounds) remove it, the beneficiaries of that right are going to be unhappy;

*  of course the country has enormous problems with how democracy is implemented there - from political interference with gerrymandering, the neverending and politically motivated fiddling with electoral laws, the effort that has to be put in to even get people enrolled and out to vote, to the dubious effect of the Electoral College;   

*  of course, it was via an ethically illegitimate exercise of democracy - the Republican stacking of the Supreme Court, and Republican judges willing to lie and dissemble about the importance they would give Roe as precedent - which is leading to the overthrown of Roe.  It's already an example of the failure of democracy as implemented in the nation right now, writ large! 

*  of course there is a problem with trying to work out a democratic compromise with people who have built themselves into their own belief universe, not just on the question of "when does life begin" but on something as basic as "who won the last Presidential election".   

*  of course it's dismissive of women's interests to take the attitude "pro-abortionists will just have to wait for the inevitable Right wing over-reach" i.e. to wait for the high profile examples of women who have died - or are prosecuted for having an early abortion - rather than relying on the protection of a Court found right.

Roe may not have been perfect, but it was a compromise on an already vexed issue that could have been made to work.   And the likes of Sullivan and Creighton turn a deliberate blind eye to the rise of Christian Nationalism (read "fascism") that has captured a large chunk of the American Right that makes dealing with many issues "democratically" so extremely difficult.

Indications that the Coalition will lose

*  David Koch this morning was extremely dismissive of the answers Peter Dutton was giving regarding the Solomon Islands situation.   He did all but roll his eyes and say "yeah, you're wasting my time"; instead he just seemed to cut the live cross very abruptly.

*  Shortly after that, there was a pretty clear defence of Albanese not being able to list the 6 NDIS policy points without looking at the printed list.  

*  On Twitter, there is a ongoing strong pushback on the "gotcha" style of questions - and although Twitter does not reflect the general public (especially as one tends to follow people already on your own side of politics), I suspect that there is a broad public sentiment that the media is doing a terrible job in this campaign, including with the "gotcha" attempts.

I have trouble taking the Greens seriously

The Guardian notes:

Greens candidate for Brisbane, Stephen Bates, has taken out an advertisement on Grindr, “the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people”.

“You always come first with the Greens,” one reads, and another says: “Spice up Canberra with a third”.

Speaking directly to a specific market – in this case, a younger, LGBTQ+ market – could work, according to Dr Andrew Hughes, a political marketing lecturer at the Australian National University who says for any other party it might come across as “tokenistic”.

I do find this supports my feeling that while the Greens are in the right space on the environment and climate change, and (possibly) economics, they have a sort of air of immaturity about them (when they're not being overly earnest on "culture war" issues - which I also think is a kind of immaturity) on other issues that really puts me off voting for them.    

Just an attention seeking idiot