So, Fox News is running interviews now in which the latest White House spokes-liar is throwing out the quasi-deniability line for Trump re QAnon, while running on the split screen the actual beliefs of QAnon:
Is this an attempt by Fox News to message to Trump that, no, it would be best if he did actually disavow QAnon? Or an attempt to gain more Trump base following for QAnon - because, let's face it, brainwashing the disenchanted-with-life-white-elderly is the raison d'etre for the network, and why stop at things like "Russiagate is a hoax"?
What will pathetic Trump Cultists like puzzled dog face Tucker Carlson and smarmlord Sean Hanitty do about this tricky problem? Keep pushing that of course their ticket to riches doesn't know what QAnon is about, despite other parts of the network running stories like the above?
I have a numerically significant birthday looming, and as I was saying to my daughter recently, I'm not happy with current age categories.
I think we can all agree that adolescence virtually extends to 25 now; youth probably covers up to almost 35, maybe 40? "Middle aged" is probably firmly set as 40 (or 45?) to 60.
But here's my key complaint: what do you use for (say) 60 to 75?
"Old" probably starts at 75; maybe 80. But there seems a serious gap in naming categories between 60 to 75.
"Seniors" benefits start being talked about from 55. But the problem is, it extends from there to 115.
I don't know - you would think those so keen on identity politics would spend more time on this issue. :)
Lots of notice being given to Trump's refusal to criticise QAnon, which we all know he will not do any time soon because they fantasise him as a hero of epic proportions.
Disappointing to see the relatively sensible Imre take this Trump forgiving attitude on the matter:
First: Trump always denies knowledge of wrongdoing when he wants to avoid disavowing someone who deserves it. Of course he knows about QAnon. He's re-tweeted them several times - if he doesn't know how ridiculous and dangerous their conspiracy mongering is, that is a disgrace in itself.
Secondly: how utterly ridiculous to criticise a journalist for inviting a President to disavow support for an extreme and dangerous and stupid conspiracy.
Thirdly: no, it is never acceptable to say a violence fantasising conspiracy "has its heart in the right place", which is what Trump was trying to convey. Yes, if you don't condemn such a thing, you are helping validate them.
If Imre can't condemn Trump for his weasel worded endorsement that he will later claim was not an endorsement (probably the next time some nut goes on a QAnon bender with his gun), he wants his head read.
As noted in my previous post, this week's Insight re-ignited my interest in how cultural factors might influence the experience of hearing (and dealing with) voices in the head, a common feature of schziophrenia.
I seem to have missed, or forgotten, the reporting around this study in 2014: an anthropologist who found that it seemed relatively common for people from Indian and Ghana to find the voices "playful" or entertaining; whereas all of the Americans found them nasty and unpleasant.
For the research, Luhrmann and her colleagues interviewed 60 adults
diagnosed with schizophrenia – 20 each in San Mateo, California; Accra,
Ghana; and Chennai, India. Overall, there were 31 women and 29 men with
an average age of 34. They were asked how many voices they heard, how
often, what they thought caused the auditory hallucinations, and what
their voices were like.
"We then asked the participants whether they knew who was speaking,
whether they had conversations with the voices, and what the voices
said. We asked people what they found most distressing about the voices,
whether they had any positive experiences of voices and whether the
voice spoke about sex or God," she said.
The findings revealed that hearing voices was broadly similar across
all three cultures, according to Luhrmann. Many of those interviewed
reported both good and bad voices, and conversations with those voices,
as well as whispering and hissing that they could not quite place
physically. Some spoke of hearing from God while others said they felt
like their voices were an "assault" upon them.
The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian
subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their
voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely
to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick
condition.
The Americans experienced voices as bombardment and as symptoms of a brain disease caused by genes or trauma.
One participant described the voices as "like torturing people, to
take their eye out with a fork, or cut someone's head and drink their
blood, really nasty stuff." Other Americans (five of them) even spoke of
their voices as a call to battle or war – "'the warfare of everyone
just yelling.'"
Moreover, the Americans mostly did not report that they knew who
spoke to them and they seemed to have less personal relationships with
their voices, according to Luhrmann.
Among the Indians in Chennai, more than half (11) heard voices of kin
or family members commanding them to do tasks. "They talk as if elder
people advising younger people," one subject said. That contrasts to the
Americans, only two of whom heard family members. Also, the Indians
heard fewer threatening voices than the Americans – several heard the
voices as playful, as manifesting spirits or magic, and even as
entertaining. Finally, not as many of them described the voices in terms
of a medical or psychiatric problem, as all of the Americans did.
In Accra, Ghana, where the culture accepts that disembodied spirits can
talk, few subjects described voices in brain disease terms. When people
talked about their voices, 10 of them called the experience
predominantly positive; 16 of them reported hearing God audibly.
"'Mostly, the voices are good,'" one participant remarked.
While this doesn't seem all that many subjects, it's still fascinating. Interestingly, though, the anthropologist didn't seem to think that it was religiosity per se which made the difference. (Although by that, does she mean how intensely religious they are in practice and interest? Because as noted above, they seem to be religious in the sense of just accepting a supernatural spirit world):
Why the difference? Luhrmann offered an explanation: Europeans and
Americans tend to see themselves as individuals motivated by a sense of
self identity, whereas outside the West, people imagine the mind and
self interwoven with others and defined through relationships.
"Actual people do not always follow social norms," the scholars
noted. "Nonetheless, the more independent emphasis of what we typically
call the 'West' and the more interdependent emphasis of other societies
has been demonstrated ethnographically and experimentally in many
places."
As a result, hearing voices in a specific context may differ
significantly for the person involved, they wrote. In America, the
voices were an intrusion and a threat to one's private world – the
voices could not be controlled.
However, in India and Africa, the subjects were not as troubled by
the voices – they seemed on one level to make sense in a more relational
world. Still, differences existed between the participants in India and
Africa; the former's voice-hearing experience emphasized playfulness
and sex, whereas the latter more often involved the voice of God.
The religiosity or urban nature of the culture did not seem to be a factor in how the voices were viewed, Luhrmann said.
"Instead, the difference seems to be that the Chennai (India) and
Accra (Ghana) participants were more comfortable interpreting their
voices as relationships and not as the sign of a violated mind," the
researchers wrote.
The research, Luhrmann observed, suggests that the "harsh, violent
voices so common in the West may not be an inevitable feature of
schizophrenia." Cultural shaping of schizophrenia behavior may be even
more profound than previously thought.
The findings may be clinically significant, according to the
researchers. Prior research showed that specific therapies may alter
what patients hear their voices say. One new approach claims it is
possible to improve individuals' relationships with their voices by
teaching them to name their voices and to build relationships with them,
and that doing so diminishes their caustic qualities. "More benign
voices may contribute to more benign course and outcome," they wrote.
The Atlantic had a story about this too, ending with a story of the success (for some people) of not ignoring the voice, but developing a kind of relationship with it:
In an article for the American Scholar,
Luhrmann describes one such patient, a 20-year-0ld Dutch man named
Hans, whose inner voices were urging him to study Buddhism for hours
each day. He cut a deal with his demons, telling them he'd say Buddhist
prayers for one hour per day, no more, no less. And it worked—the voices
subsided and he was able to taper his dose of psychosis medications.
At
one support group for schizophrenic patients, Hans said a new, "nice"
voice he had been hearing recently threatened to get mean.
"This
new voice seemed like it might get nasty," Luhrmann writes. "The group
had told [Hans] that he needed to talk to it. They said that he should
say, 'We have to live with each other and we have to make the best of
it, and we can do it only if we respect each other.' He did that, and
this new voice became nice."
Call me too cautious, perhaps, but I have spoken to both my young adult children about the show, and the key message that if ever they do start hearing voices, don't try to keep it a secret and deal with it alone, but tell others what is happening and seek some assistance.
I strongly recommend last night's Insight episode on SBS, which featured a variety of people who suffered from hearing voices in their head, explaining how it started, how they got help, and whether they are now over the problem. A psychiatrist and psychologist were also there (the latter having made a special study of the field.)
It was terribly interesting, the variety of their experiences. One clear message that came out of it is that they all took quite some time to admit to anyone else what was happening, and the psychologist and psychiatrist both made the point that it is far better to tell someone and get help earlier, as that makes it likelier that treatment will be a success.
Another aspect of interest was the Indian woman who made reference to "cultural practices" in her family's homeland being helpful to deal with the problem. She alluded to the belief in the "spiritual world" but didn't elaborate. Taking an educated guess, I assume that Indians may have less reluctance to seek support from family and friends because they share a belief that the cause probably is an external and "real" spirit attack, not something purely internal which carries a stigma of weakness (and therefore shame) in the West. (I am sure I have read years ago that mental health outcomes are surprisingly good, on average, in India* due I think to cultural factors, and I must look up whether it is for the sort of reason I am speculating about.)
* Yes - here it is - a post from 2007. The link to the journal no longer works, though. I may be able to track it down, and I want to read more on the topic anyway. Will likely update soon...
In Slate reporting on the Senate Intelligence Committee report we read this:
What the report says: Discounting the infamous pee tape
allegation made in the Steele Dossier, the committee said it
investigated and was unable to corroborate “three general sets of
allegations” around “compromising information” Russians were said to
have been collecting about Donald Trump. The report goes into some
fascinating details about claims surrounding Russian kompromat efforts
and about Trump’s previous trips to Russia without providing much in the
way of hard evidence. It notes that Trump’s former attorney Michael
Cohen exchanged texts with a Georgian friend and associate days before
the election about efforts to stop “tapes from Russia” after a “person
in Moscow was bragging had tapes from Russian trip.”
What we already knew: Cohen’s text exchange with his
Georgian friend was actually a footnote from the Mueller report and it
didn’t lead anywhere. Also notably, the Senate Intelligence Committee
reported that it was “aware of a realistic and well-sourced, but fake,
video of someone who looks like Trump portraying him in a situation
consistent with the uncorroborated allegations” of a pee tape from the
Steele Dossier. If you read Ashley Feinberg’s reporting in Slate last
year, though, you would have already been aware of this as well.
Yes, I read that Slate report at the time about the faked "pee tape" - it was quite surprising, the degree of care with which the tape was made; as is the matter of how little attention mainstream media seemed to give it.
In other tweets, I have seen mention of evidence that some hotel worker claiming he overheard conversation about Trump being compromised by a woman he saw during one Moscow trip.
It would not be at all surprising if there was some tape or other taken in Russia with kompromat possibilities.
Oh look: that Smarter Every Day guy has another video up about his visit to a nuclear submarine, and this time he gets to explain how torpedoes get shot out of the tube, which he proceeds to crawl down (while the sub is underwater, no less). Better him than me:
Paul Waldman's column in the Washington Post details the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is controlled by Republicans, and explains the absurdity of Republicans still saying "no collusion":
So here’s
what we’re left with. The person running the Trump campaign had a close
associate who is a Russian intelligence officer, with whom he was
sharing confidential campaign information as Russia mounted its effort
to help Trump get elected.
As
part of that effort, Russia broke into Democratic systems, then passed
damaging information to WikiLeaks for carefully timed release. The
president’s longtime friend had a line into the “leak” part of Russia’s
hack-and-leak, through which he learned the subject and timing of
upcoming leaks and kept Trump personally informed.
If that’s not “collusion,” what is?
Republicans will reject this verdict. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chair of the committee, insisted that “the Committee found absolutely no evidence” that Trump or his campaign “colluded with the Russian government.”
But he was using a torturously narrow definition of “collusion” to exonerate Trump.
That
definition says that only a carefully planned, coordinated and executed
criminal conspiracy counts as “collusion,” and anything short of that
does not. But as we now know — through copious evidence collected by the
special counsel’s team, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and
journalists — the Trump campaign eagerly accepted the help provided by
Moscow.
The
campaign’s efforts were slapdash and chaotic. But to whatever degree
this didn’t rise to an even more serious level, it doesn’t appear to
have been for lack of trying.
Yet to this day, the position of Trump, his attorney general, the conservative media and most of the GOP is that the entire Russia investigation was a hoax, a scam, a ruse. When the FBI learned that the Kremlin was trying to sabotage our
election, they want us to believe, the bureau should not have bothered
to investigate.
Further to recent post about religious eschatology, I see that Nature has a review of a book by an astrophysicist discussing the possible ways the universe could end: Big Crunch, Heat Death, Big Rip, or perhaps the most disconcerting one because it could presumably happen at any time, vacuum decay.
The review notes this:
The latest measurements point to a Heat Death, but a Big Crunch or Big Rip are within their uncertainties.
Yeah, I thought that was still the case, but seems to be underappreciated in pop science writing - a reversal into a Big Crunch, which at least has that satisfying feeling of a dramatic climax (as well as possibly satisfying Hindu and Buddhist belief in a cyclic universe, not to mention a possible Tiplerian Omega Point), is not yet completely written off.
As for vacuum decay:
The final doomsday scenario that Mack describes is extremely unlikely:
vacuum decay. A tiny bubble of ‘true vacuum’ could form, owing to
instability in the field associated with the Higgs boson. That might
happen if, say, a black hole evaporates in just the wrong way. Such a
bubble would expand at the speed of light, destroying everything, until
it cancels the universe. Vacuum decay might already have begun in some
distant place. We won’t see it coming.
The possibility of vacuum decay happening as a result of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider was one reason to fret about the wisdom of operating it, as I used to note in posts which are still on the blog. Fortunately, it would seem that the universe is not constructed in such a way that the LHC could cause much damage.
The figure of Igor Grechushkin
features prominently in the first two links of that hapless chain. A
rough-and-tumble businessman from Khabarovsk in the far east of Russia, Grechushkin was on Thursday confirmed as the Rhosus’s owner by Russian state media.
We all know Trump and the GOP is going to go full throttle on claiming that there is a "tremendous" jobs recovery from the rapid loss caused by GOP confusion and politicisation of the COVID response, but it's also becoming a Right wing meme that the police are going pro-Trump again because they are being killed on the job at a higher rate.
So we get this misleading headline at ABC news (the American one):
Shoop became the 32nd U.S. law enforcement officer shot to death this
year on July 13, marking a 28% jump in felonious officer deaths over the
same period in 2019, according to data from the FBI.
But a Twitter thread about it turns up this graph:
On the weekend, I also finished watching Tiger King, including the "after show" interviews with some of the key figures.
Probably hard to add anything new to what people have already said about it, but there is this - it was hard to tell whether Joe's flamboyant style of gayness ever hurt his business in a conservative state. Was it a a case of American conservatives making toleration exceptions for showbiz gay - like Liberace, or Siegfreid and Roy, perhaps? I thought it a bit funny that the young-ish campaign manager guy (who says in the after show that he also is gay) blamed Oklahoman hatred of gays for Joe's poor electoral performance in the governor race - seemingly discounting the "nutjob" factor a bit too much, I reckon. (The campaign manager seems to be still mentally scarred by the experience - but he had extremely questionable judgement in getting involved in the first place.)
The after show was also good for seeing the "cleaned up" version of John Finlay - the heavily tattooed husband who appeared shirtless and meth-mouthed in every interview. Oddly, he seemed to claim he had no problem with appearing shirtless - I would have guessed it was the documentary directors trying to make him look as bad as possible. I also thought the story the (rather odd) producer guy told in the after show was very telling - about how Joe took in a woman's old horse and promised to give it a good remaining life, only to immediately go and shoot it and feed it to the tigers when she left.
I hope the success of the show does not lead to documentary makers seeking out ever greater collections of bizarre characters to follow, though.
Until this last weekend, I had never caught up with Will Ferrell's 2006 movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I have to say that I found it very funny. It seemed to me to strike something of a sweet spot in terms of its comedic silliness and quasi realism; and while it no doubt did mock some aspects of the South, it didn't paint it as a Redneck nightmare zone. No doubt the co-operation of the NASCAR organisation helped make sure it was (kind of) respectful.
I do worry a bit about Will Ferrell, though: seems to me that he peaked in the decade 2000 - 2010. (I see that Elf, which I think most people would probably regard as his best movie, was in 2003). His movie choices in the last decade, however, seems to have included many more duds than hits.
I did another speed reading quick hit on the University of Queensland library yesterday (I've explained before why I do this), and the book of choice was this:
Eschatology - what a great word. And such an important subject in religion, particularly Christianity.
But the chapter I sped through was on Buddhist eschatology, and it was interesting in its own way.
I guess I hadn't realised that it (naturally, coming from that place) had picked up the Indian idea of cyclical creation and destruction. I hadn't thought much about Hinduism and its obsession with that topic until recently watching both Sacred Games on Netflix (the second series became very messy, a bit ridiculous, and hard to follow, with an unsatisfactory ending) as well as this cartoon summary of key Hindu belief on Youtube:
So getting back to Buddhism: there was a lot of interesting stuff in the chapter on its eschatology, but I was not able to copy it and the book does not seem to be on Scribd, so it is hard to remember it all.
Ideas that I hadn't realised before: that it's long been a Buddhist belief that Buddhism would eventually no longer exist (one of the few religions with a prediction of its own extinction, I would bet); that there can only be one Buddha in a world (universe - I think), hence you have to wait for the next cycle of destruction and creation to get another. Maitreya is the Buddha to come - and as one page I did take a photo of says:
A vast span of time was expected to pass between the death of Sakyamuni Buddha and the coming of Maitreya, who would not appear until just after the next cycle of progress reaches its peak. Once again, scholastic writers have attempted to calculate the time involved, with the most common being a figure of 5.6 billion years.
A long time between drinks, so to speak.
I'm not sure whether any branch of Buddhism, in light of modern understanding of the universe, thinks that it's not only one Buddha per entire universe. Any scope for the equivalent of multiple incarnations of Christ on other, alien inhabited planets, I wonder? (An idea which CS Lewis was sympathetic to.) I'm not sure that Buddhists have ever given much thought to aliens.
The chapter did mention how the Indian sourced religions have taken some heart from modern cosmological theories of the universe cycling between Big Bang and Big Crunch - "see, we sensed that thousands of years ago!" they can say. (And really, the 5.6 billion years figure is at least on the right scale of talking about cosmological time.) But then, as with Christianity, the latest idea of a universe continually expanding into eternal darkness doesn't help much.
There was other interesting stuff - one Buddhist text with the Buddha sounding like a very sexist fellow with very low regard for women stepping out of their place (although as with so much Buddhist source material, how close it is to the words of the actual Buddha is anyone's guess.)
Anyway, all interesting stuff. I see the book is available for around $80. It is Father's Day soon...
Update: I suppose I should state the obvious - the chapter I read was not very long, and tried to give a "big picture" view of eschatology in Buddhist belief, and I may have got some of the details wrong and be contradicted by those who know more about the many complicated variations on Buddhist belief within its branches.
I think the Wikipedia entry on it and eschatology is not very good - it seems to be bits and pieces without trying to give an overview in context. However, the entry on Maitreya is better, and I didn't realise that there had been so many claimants to the title (including stupid old con man L Ron Hubbard):
The following list is just a small selection of those people who
claimed or claim to be the incarnation of Maitreya. Many have either
used the Maitreya incarnation claim to form a new Buddhist sect or have
used the name of Maitreya to form a new religious movement or cult.
In 613 the monk Xiang Haiming claimed himself Maitreya and adopted an imperial title.[24]
In 690 Wu Zetian, empress regnant of the Wu Zhou interregnum (690–705), proclaimed herself an incarnation of the future Buddha Maitreya, and made Luoyang the "holy capital." In 693 she temporarily replaced the compulsory Dao De Jing in the curriculum with her own Rules for Officials.[25]
Gung Ye, a Korean warlord and king of the short-lived state of Taebong
during the 10th century, claimed himself as the living incarnation of
Maitreya and ordered his subjects to worship him. His claim was widely
rejected by most Buddhist monks and later he was dethroned and killed by
his own servants.
Lu Zhongyi (1849-1925), the 17th patriarch of Yiguandao, claimed to be an incarnation of Maitreya.
L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the belief systems Dianetics and Scientology, suggested he was "Metteya" (Maitreya) in the 1955 poem Hymn of Asia.
Numerous editors and followers of Hubbard claim that in the book's
preface, specific physical characteristics said to be outlined—in
unnamed Sanskrit sources—as properties of the coming Maitreya were properties with which Hubbard's appearance supposedly aligned.
So, just as Christianity has had its problems with wannabe leaders claiming to be a new version of (or related to) Christ, so has Buddhism. Not sure any of them caused as much trouble as Hong Xiuquan, though - 10 million deaths by the self proclaimed brother of Christ!
Yes, it annoys me that journalists who work outside of the Murdoch workplace still treat their politically moderate mates who work inside of Murdoch as if there is nothing disgraceful about the fact they still work there.
It's gone on for too long. The absolute tipping point for me was, I reckon, this cartoon that appeared with a Bolt column a couple of years ago:
Did any Murdoch journalist resign over that cartoon more suited (as I said in my post) to something like the Bulletin circa 1920? Not that I heard.
Journalists: I don't care if your mate still manages to fit in some moderate commentary in the Murdoch press. It should be socially unacceptable for anyone to accept a dollar by working for an outright racist, anti-democratic outfit (which is what the Murdoch American network is in its enabling of Trump and his cronies.)
Is it just Australia, or do lots of other countries look at the American system of allowing individual states and parties to completely and maliciously stuff up fairness and national uniformity in voting in their Federal elections and think "this is absolutely nuts"?
I mean, we now have a President who votes by mail, encourages the elderly residents of one state that he needs to win that it's OK for them to vote by mail, while also admitting that he will not support funding the Postal service because he doesn't want them to be able to cope with mail in voting. And the fat faced corrupt Attorney General was saying the other week that it was "obvious" that mail in voting would allow for fraud.
This is tinpot dictatorship in a nominal democracy territory.
The anti-establishment Left may be causing local trouble on the streets of (some) American cities, but the American establishment Right is far more determined to do the most harm to democracy as a whole.
The iconic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico was damaged early on
10 August when a snapped steel cable smashed into one of its antennas
and tore a 30-meter gash in its 307-meter-wide dish. Observations have
been halted for at least 2 weeks while investigations are carried out
Are the laws about getting your hands on dangerously powerful lasers looser in America than here? Or does being a "backyard scientist" means you can order them from China and not attract attention?
Anyway, this is interesting and entertaining:
and it ends on this note which keeps me away from home experiments:
This fermenting business needs an intrepid spirit and a sense of humour.
As the Noma team put it: “There is a thin line between rot and
fermentation.”
Consider this recipe for example:
“In the typical southern Tunisian home,” she wrote, “the cook will slice
around seventy pounds of fresh onions, toss them with salt and
turmeric, pack them in earthen jugs, and leave them for three months to
become soft and wet.”
Wolfert’s version of hrous was simplified and shortened for convenience.
But the long Tunisian path proved irresistible to me. When I finally
popped open the lid on the onion jar, stashed in a cupboard, the ripe
pong was admittedly something best kept away from anyone you might be
hoping to feed. But the finished paste was sensational.
But the most horrifying idea is this:
There is nothing more highly prized at Noma than the grasshopper
garum. This long, sophisticated, chocolatey potion is so versatile and
so good they had to stop it popping up in too many of their dishes.
Noma
suggests using live grasshoppers as well as wax worm larvae, little
cream-coloured wrigglers that definitely look better as moths. Sourcing
initially looked simple but, in the required quantities, it turned out
to be a Google-defying mission (one example from my search history: “Are
pet shop grasshoppers safe for human consumption?”).
I didn’t
relish seeing the little critters jumping around in my food processor
either. My squeamish compromise was cricket flour, a high-protein
powder, which I am told makes a mean chocolate brownie and is catching
on fast among insect eaters.
I won’t go into the details of my encounter with 300 grams of wax worms,
but let me just say that, when working in bulk, the sawdust is hard to
separate from the larvae.
So, the basic point is - if fermented foods are going to smell bad anyway, how does one tell if it's a "don't eat this, it'll make you sick" sort of bad smell, instead of "it's fine, it's meant to smell like that" kind of bad odour.
Reader Tim, who seems unduly interested in fermentation, but I assume has not gone so far as putting live grasshoppers in his blender, may care to explain...
That choice of Kamala Harris for Biden's VP seems pretty good to me. Helps deal with the Republican law and order panic campaign; she seems smart, basically likeable, and ticks the "should appeal to people of colour and immigrants" box as well.
I read some tweets by Stephen McIntyre criticising this study due to some alleged massive mistake on (I think) Antarctic proxy temperatures. However, when I go back to his twitter feed now, it seems he has become massively obsessed with proving a scandalous and earth shattering injustice was caused to Trump and his team regarding the Russia interference investigation. Honestly, he has 60 tweet threads on the topic, and comes back to it again and again. He seems, in short, a complete Right wing nut now. I can't even find the climate related tweets I read only (I think) last week, they are so swamped with political, conspiracy like, guff.
And, I should point out, as with his previous criticisms of Mann and the hockey stick, the key point should be "what difference does it make? Do your own reconstruction the way you think it should be done and let us know what it looks like." But as far as I know, he never does.
Yesterday, an important co-worker in the office wanted her GP to give her antibiotics for what was almost certainly a sinus infection that had started with an earache and moved into post-nasal drip affecting her throat. She rang him for a telephone consultation. He insisted on her getting a COVID 19 test, and self isolating at home until the result was in. He emailed the form to her at work.
She went and had the test at about 11 am yesterday. This morning she got the result emailed to her - negative, as expected. She is back at work at 9 this morning.
The GP had said the tests were only taking about 24 hours in Brisbane now, although at the pathology place they said 2 to 3 days, but they would mark this one "urgent". Came back in way less than 24 hours.
Pretty impressive.
Anyway, I am still in a ridiculously busy patch at work.
Also - the continual flurry of pathetic and unhelpful commentary on COVID 19 from the Right is pretty depressing. Who would have thought the harm to democracy and good government that would come from political commentary being monetarised in the way it has been (and primarily from the Right).
Yesterday, though, I made some very nice blueberry pancakes for breakfast (with ice cream and maple syrup); a big plate of char kway teow for lunch from a cafe at Sunnybank, where lots of Asian eating abounds; and my wife made Hiroshima style okonomiyaki for dinner (which has noodles in a layered fry up which is, I have decided, nicer than the more flour batter based Tokyo style. It is a fiddly thing to cook, though.)
Back to char kway teow: it was a disappointment when in Singapore (and Malaysia) 19 months ago that this dish did not seem as ubiquitous as I hoped it would be. Mind you, we only spent time in Malacca in Malaysia, so maybe it is slightly regional in popularity? Anyway, I have always liked it a lot as a fried noodle dish, and it is not always easy to find a cafe in Brisbane that does it justice. Yesterday's was pretty good.
The sequel to The Shining has turned up on Netflix, and I can see why it was a box office flop.
I have read that the book of The Shining had much more of what I think could be called magical realism, and it was Kubrick who turned it into a more ambiguous and realistic psychological study, well capable of different interpretations. And King didn't like it.
So I presume this sequel follows his book closely, as the magical realism abounds. No ambiguity here - the ghosts from The Overlook have followed Danny all of his life, and ancient quasi gypsies tour the world looking for kiddies with psychic power to suck it, or their souls, out of them. Danny finds himself in contact with one such potential victim and decides to help her.
I think it's an idea that could work, and for much of the first hour (which is about as long as the first act takes to unfold - it's a very leisurely told story) it kept reminding me of Ray Bradbury - in particular Something Wicked This Way Comes, which happens to be my favourite novel of his. While the movie never bored me, it was more a case that I kept expecting it to develop into something with genuine suspense, dread or scares: but they simply never come.
I think it became clear that was from a writer devoid of good ideas when many of the supernatural villains were taken out in a very typically American way [I say so as not to be accused of too much as spoiler]. This is probably about 3/4 of the way in, and the movie from there just kept getting less and less convincing.
I also had a problem with the lead villain actress - it's hard to put my finger on it, but there was just something sort of smug about her performance and physicality that carried no menace at all.
So yeah, not a great movie, and I blame Stephen King totally for a bad story.
I mean, who doesn't want to micro manage their own city state?:
I hope they have done something about lycra wearing cyclists. Or perhaps it's completely unnecessary, given the climate?
Update: one problem that Singapore seems surprisingly incapable of adequately fixing is the amount of dengue fever - which is running at some sort of recent record high at the moment:
SINGAPORE -- Singapore has been hit by an outbreak of dengue fever on
pace to shatter records, adding to the burden on its health care
infrastructure already taxed by growing coronavirus cases.
The
country reported more than 20,000 dengue cases this year as of late July
-- close to the full-year high of 22,170 in 2013. Infections are rising
at the fastest-ever weekly pace.
The disease is widespread in
Southeast Asia, and there is no effective vaccine or treatment. Some of
the initial symptoms, including fever and body aches are similar to
those of COVID-19, making them difficult to distinguish. And both
diseases often cause no noticeable symptoms in patients, yet can be
fatal in severe cases.
I have seen on CNA and elsewhere that the country is trying out the bio control line of releasing treated mosquitoes which breed with females who then have infertile eggs (which has been trialled in North Queensland too, I think), but it seems it's still under assessment and improvement, and it's hard to breed enough mosquitoes to make it effective.
For months it’s been clear that Disney, the country’s most prominent entertainment company, was facing a financial disaster unlike any in its history.
On Tuesday, it became evident just how deep the carnage has gone.
The company revealed that as a result of the coronavirus
pandemic it took in just $11.8 billion in revenue and $1 billion in
operating income in the three-month period that ended in June, the
height of lockdowns in the country. The numbers are a significant drop
from the same period a year ago, when it generated $20.25 billion in revenue and $4 billion in operating income, among the worst slides of the modern era.
Long time readers will hardly be surprised to know that Graeme is complaining from inside the moderated comments cage I built just for him that I haven't posted about the Beirut explosion disaster, because (of course!) it was actually an atomic strike by some nefarious Jews. He's calling it "the Jewish nuclear attack on Lebanese Christians".
I think we can safely assume that if he stubs his toe on the furniture in the dark on the way to the toilet at night, he immediately starts wondering about the surname of the last tradesman in the apartment because he was probably a Jew who moved the drawers just enough to cause the accident and is now gloating about it at the Synagogue.
[Waves to Graeme inside the moderated comments cage. You nut.]
Update: I'm sure that, according to Graeme, this will be e-vil psy-ops:
I may, or may not, let you know what he says while shaking the cage.
Among Landemare’s regular clients in the mid-1930s were Winston and
Clementine Churchill. Churchill was not at the time a minister, but he
understood the political power of food. ‘He treated the dining room as a
stage, and dinner as a performance.’ Happier as host than as a guest,
he and Clementine gave dinners twice a week and frequent lunches. As
lunch remained a less formal occasion the balance of the sexes didn’t
matter. Winston and Clementine each held their own parties and she
particularly enjoyed her ‘hen luncheons’.
Although the Churchills always lived beyond their means, by the end of
the 1930s Landemare’s prices had exceeded the Churchills’ reach. The
outbreak of war, however, altered domestic economics once again. The
demand for grand dinners declined and Landemare decided a permanent post
would be desirable. The Churchills took on ‘Mrs Mar’ in February 1940,
less than a month after rationing started. Clementine was ‘enchanted...
I knew she would make the best out of rations, and that everyone in the
household would be happy.’ In May, Churchill became prime minister and
Landemare moved into 10 Downing Street the following month. Here, at
last, she becomes visible in history as a person described by others: ‘a
round body’, according to one of the Churchill secretaries, ‘who could
tell one in detail the intricacies of marriage and divorce among the
aristocracy’. A woman who was ‘open and generous-spirited’ and ‘very
calm indeed, whenever there was a mini-crisis’. She was quite often to
be found sitting in the kitchen ‘half an hour or so before a big dinner... with everything under control, reading the Sporting Life’.
In October 1940 this sangfroid nearly cost her her life. Churchill ran
into the kitchen during an air raid and told her to get into the
shelter, but Landemare, who was making a delicate pudding, refused: ‘If
I’d’ve turned it out it’d’ve been no more – it was so light you see.’
Churchill insisted, and moments later the 25-foot plate-glass window at
the back of the kitchen exploded into shards. ‘Ooh the rubble,
terrible,’ she recalled.‘He saved my life, I’m sure.’
Throughout the war she cooked at Downing Street, Chequers and
occasionally in the tiny kitchen under the Cabinet War Rooms. Churchill
was an enthusiast for chain eating, which was his interpretation of the
medical advice he had been given before the war. He liked soup last
thing at night and insisted, even at Yalta, on operating on ‘tummy
time’. He was not a glutton but, as Gray puts it, ‘he was used to good
food and plenty of it.’....
The Churchills were famously terrible employers. Many a cook and kitchen
maid had left in tears and one had reputedly gone mad. Mrs Mar,
however, did more than stay the course. She became a trusted ally and a
friend to Mary, the Churchills’ daughter. She took a practical view of
Winston’s peculiarities. If, as sometimes occurred, he ‘absent-mindedly
wandered around stark naked’, she told him off and he would apologise.
His roast beef ‘always had to be underdone’, but since he was often late
for meals this could be difficult to achieve. Landemare’s method was to
‘watch till I knew he was in, then he’d have to have his bath and then I
knew to put the meat in’.
Via Arts & Letters Daily, a short article from the US edition of the Spectator talks about the peculiar things we know about Mozart and his family from his letters.
First - execution as exciting public entertainment for the kiddies:
It’s 1771, you’re in Milan, and your 14-year-old genius son has just
premiered his new opera. How do you reward him? What would be a fun
family excursion in an era before multiplexes or theme parks? Leopold
Mozart knew just the ticket. ‘I saw four rascals hanged here on the
Piazza del Duomo,’ wrote young Wolfgang back to his sister Maria Anna
(‘Nannerl’), excitedly. ‘They hang them just as they do in Lyons.’ He
was already something of a connoisseur of public executions. The Mozarts
had spent four weeks in Lyons in 1766, and, as the music historian
Stanley Sadie points out, Leopold had clearly taken his son (10) and
daughter (15) along to a hanging ‘for a jolly treat one free afternoon’.
And dinner table conversation with the whole family must have been, um, fun:
That’s probably the most notorious aspect of Mozart’s letters: the
filth. Quite how gamey they get varies with the translation. The classic
English version — some 616 letters covering the period 1762 to 1791 —
comes in three fat volumes, translated by Emily Anderson in 1938 in the
best possible taste. More recent paperback selections by Robert
Spaethling and Stewart Spencer are less reserved: ‘I’ll shit on your
nose so it runs down your chin,’ writes the 21-year-old Wolfgang to his
cousin Maria in Augsburg, and if you’ve seen Amadeus, you’ll
know that there’s plenty more where that came from. (Mrs Thatcher
famously disapproved of the scatology.) One advantage of Anderson’s
edition (and Spencer’s 2006 translation) is that it includes letters
from the rest of the Mozart family, and it’s clear that they were all at
it — mother, father, daughter and son, all cheerfully potty-mouthing
away. ‘Stick your tongue up your crack,’ Nannerl urges her brother.
Some interesting talk here of the size of lava tubes on the Moon and Mars, and their likely safety for a base:
The international journal Earth-Science Reviews published a paper
offering an overview of lava tubes (pyroducts) on Earth, eventually
providing an estimate of the (greater) size of their lunar and Martian
counterparts....
"We measured the size and gathered the morphology of lunar and
Martian collapse chains (collapsed lava tubes), using digital terrain
models (DTMs), which we obtained through satellite stereoscopic images
and laser altimetry taken by interplanetary probes," reminds Riccardo
Pozzobon. "We then compared these data to topographic studies about
similar collapse chains on the Earth's surface and to laser scans of the
inside of lava tubes in Lanzarote and the Galapagos. These data allowed
to establish a restriction to the relationship between collapse chains
and subsurface cavities that are still intact."
Researchers found that Martian and lunar tubes are respectively 100
and 1,000 times wider than those on Earth, which typically have a
diameter of 10 to 30 meters. Lower gravity and its effect on volcanism
explain these outstanding dimensions (with total volumes exceeding 1
billion of cubic meters on the Moon).
Riccardo Pozzobon adds: "Tubes as wide as these can be longer than 40
kilometers, making the Moon an extraordinary target for subsurface
exploration and potential settlement in the wide protected and stable
environments of lava tubes. The latter are so big they can contain
Padua's entire city center."
"What is most important is that, despite the impressive dimension of
the lunar tubes, they remain well within the roof stability threshold
because of a lower gravitational attraction," explains Matteo Massironi,
who is professor of Structural and Planetary Geology at the Department
of Geosciences of the University of Padua. "This means that the majority
of lava tubes underneath the maria smooth plains are intact. The
collapse chains we observed might have been caused by asteroids piercing
the tube walls. This is what the collapse chains in Marius Hills seem
to suggest. From the latter, we can get access to these huge underground
cavities."
Francesco Sauro concludes: "Lava tubes could provide stable shields
from cosmic and solar radiation and micrometeorite impacts which are
often happening on the surfaces of planetary bodies. Moreover, they have
great potential for providing an environment in which temperatures do
not vary from day- to night-time.
Despite my reservations about Swan, it should go without saying that Trump's interview with him was a terrible performance highlighting all of his gargantuan inadequacies not just as a President, but as a person.
The worst look for his character was surely the response to the invitation to say something good about John Lewis, in which he made it clear that he views personal relationships in a purely transactional way.
We already knew this, really: all a mad dictator has to do is praise Trump to his face, and Trump will transactionally sing the praises of said dictator forever more. But don't turn up to his inauguration, and no way will Trump say anything good about you.
How can his cult members find such a deeply cynical, "what's in it for me" attitude appealing?
Yeah, I saw the viral video of "Uncle Roger" watching the fried rice video and was amused.
I see that this character by Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng has a new video out, and I have to say, while it starts slow, his interactions with (real or fake, I'm not 100% sure) customers often made me laugh out loud.
I think Nigel, who seems to have been around for a while (with what appears to have been moderate success - he has toured as a support act in Britain, for example) may have a major hit on his hands with this character:
This is not going to be a popular take on the matter, but nevertheless....
I watched all of the Jonathan Swan interview with Trump on Youtube last night, and I can understand the praise for an interviewer actually doing follow up questions, and looking openly sceptical and aghast at some of Trump's comments.
But you know, it still made me uncomfortable, or at least suspicious, as I kept thinking "why isn't Trump losing his cool with Swan? Has Swan pre-endeared himself to Trump somehow such that Trump will tolerate anything he says, or any face he pulls?"
I saw on Twitter afterwards someone asking more-or-less that same question, and one person claimed that Swan is buddies with Jarod Kushner. But I see that he did an interview with Jarod last year that lots of people think did not go well for the son-in-law. So how true could this be?
When Swan started at Axios, I noted quite a few tweets which made me suspicious of his politics - I actually thought he should be sacked, as he was looking to me to be much like a Chris Uhlmann character - positioning himself as a moderate or objective middle man, but in fact conceding too much to the Right to really fit that picture.
I must be a bit weird, because I usually enjoy airline food. Perhaps it's because I find flying per se a wondrous thing, and the added bonus of being able to eat food prepared for me while simultaneously hurtling around the planet at 40,000 feet just makes the total experience even more awesome. [The only downside, apart from the leg room issue and the occasional unpleasant co-passenger, is trying to suppress flatulence until in a place it is "safe". Sorry. :)]
The Right white commentators are high five-ing themselves over leaked footage showing more of George Floyd being arrested and acting as if he may well have been high at the time. This includes the "I'll turn my opinion on a dime if I can find a way to excuse a white guy in any confrontation with a black guy" CL at Catallaxy:
Next:
The video shows Floyd was handcuffed as soon as he got out of the car (at gun point). And, I would guess, was probably patted down for weapons, but you can't tell from the video. [Update - yes you can, I just hadn't watched it long enough. They checked his pockets before trying to get him to sit inside the police car, and before he was on the ground with a knee on his neck.]
So supposedly, huge, drug affected, hand cuffed people have been well known as dangerous killers for years, according to policing expert CL.
Finally, the deep regret at ever thinking that a white police officer was acting dangerously while kneeing a black guy's neck for 9 minutes:
Basically, no person who is an active commenter at Catallaxy should ever be allowed near jury service, especially if it involves an accused of colour (or, for that matter, a Muslim.) It's like the veneer of "not racist, just being reasonable" is about a micron deep.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Monday that the
Chinese-owned social media app TikTok poses a threat to privacy and
national security, telling the Axios Re:Cap podcast,
"Let's not downplay the threat here: the mothers of America have to
worry about whether the Chinese Communist Party knows where their
children are."
I dunno: if someone from the CCP could give the mothers a call and let them know, most of them would probably think it's a useful service.
Everyone knows the average user of Tik Tok is really young; young people don't tend to do anything that is of national security importance. Who cares if the CCP in theory might be able to ask the company to hand over data that could tell them that Johnny is probably skipping high school (or his college class) today?
Given the incredible depths of information that Google and Facebook collect on nearly every single adult in the West, and (one would have to suspect) the ease with which China could get some internal company spy to leak some of that information, worrying about Tik Tok just seems wildly disproportionate to me.
Despite my feeling that economics is having something of a crisis in understanding what is happening in the world at the moment, I still sense that Joseph Stiglitz is credible and well worth listening to.
Here he is in The Guardian warning of a looming debt crisis, and what should be done about it:
While the Covid-19 pandemic rages, more than 100 low- and middle-income countries will still have to pay a combined $130bn in debt service
this year – around half of which is owed to private creditors. With
much economic activity suspended and fiscal revenues in free fall, many
countries will be forced to default. Others will cobble together scarce
resources to pay creditors, cutting back on much-needed health and
social expenditures. Still others will resort to additional borrowing,
kicking the proverbial can down the road, seemingly easier now because
of the flood of liquidity from central banks around the world.
From Latin America’s lost decade in the 1980s to the more recent
Greek crisis, there are plenty of painful reminders of what happens when
countries cannot service their debts. A global debt crisis today will
push millions of people into unemployment and fuel instability and
violence around the world. Many will seek jobs abroad, potentially
overwhelming border-control and immigration systems in Europe and North
America. Another costly migration crisis will divert attention away from
the urgent need to address climate change. Such humanitarian
emergencies are becoming the new norm.
This nightmare scenario is avoidable if we act now. The origins of
today’s looming debt crisis are easy to understand. Owing to
quantitative easing, the public debt (mostly sovereign bonds) of low-
and middle-income countries has more than tripled since the 2008 global
financial crisis. Sovereign bonds are riskier than “official” debt from
multilateral institutions and developed-country aid agencies because
creditors can dump them on a whim, triggering a sharp currency
depreciation and other far-reaching economic disruptions.
Back in June 2013, we worried
that “shortsighted financial markets, working with shortsighted
governments,” were “laying the groundwork for the world’s next debt
crisis.” Now, the day of reckoning has come. This past March, the United
Nations called for debt relief for the world’s least-developed
countries. Several G20 countries and the International Monetary Fund
have suspended debt service for the year, and have called upon private
creditors to follow suit.
Unsurprisingly, these calls have fallen on deaf ears. The newly
formed Africa Private Creditor Working Group, for example, has already rejected
the idea of modest but broad-based debt relief for poor countries. As a
result, much, if not most, of the benefits of debt relief from official
creditors will accrue to the private creditors who are unwilling to
provide any debt relief.
The upshot is that taxpayers in creditor countries will once again
end up bailing out excessive risk taking and imprudent lending by
private actors. The only way to avoid this is to have a comprehensive
debt standstill that includes private creditors. But without strong
action from the countries in which debt contracts are written, private
creditors are unlikely to accept such an arrangement. These governments
therefore must invoke the doctrines of necessity and force majeure to
enforce comprehensive standstills on debt service.
....Graeme is going on and on about how upset he is that I am have stopped letting his pro-HCQ and other "how to avoid COVID-19" nostrums through anymore.
Graeme, it's a great pity your anti-Semitism conspiracy theories prevent you participating at Catallaxy, as your wildly disproportionate certainty in your own expertise and conclusions means you are a natural "fit" for all of the armchair experts-in-everything that inhabit that awful place.
You've had more than a fair run in comments here about your solutions to COVID-19, and it's become boring and repetitious. Even though all sensible people reading this blog should know I don't endorse your views on nearly anything, I'm calling a halt to your publication of dubious amateur hour medical advice via my comments.
If I was one to use the meme, I would be saying this quote has me reaching for my revolver:
In her foundational 1977 essay,“Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” the
Black feminist writer Audre Lorde argued that the art form transcends
the constraints of the written word. Poetry doesn’t just reflect the
world as it exists, she insisted; rather, it ushers in a new one. “It
forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and
dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into
idea, then into more tangible action,” Lorde wrote. Later, she added
that “there are no new ideas … only new ways of making them felt.”
Look, we know he has to bloviate for a living, but I still find it remarkable that he would write in defence of a demon seed believing doctor's opinion on COVID 19:
Immanuel said in her speech that the supposed potency of
hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks
aren’t necessary, claiming that she and her staff had avoided
contracting COVID-19 despite wearing medical masks instead of the more
secure N95 masks.
“Hello, you don’t need a mask. There is a cure,” Immanuel said.
Update: I've now watched the video of his editorial - he knows she said masks don't matter; he knows she believes demon seed causes some illnesses. He just shrugs and says on HCQ, she may be right, she may be wrong. (Exactly the same open minded attitude he brings to climate science - Ha!) But he's sure the motive for taking her video off social media is because she supports Trump. Just another grand Bolt conspiracy theory, in other words.
He cares more about defending Trump from an imagined political attack than the spread of crank disinformation that would further bolster the crank anti-mask refuseniks in America and Australia. More interested in politics than public health. A disgrace.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the official residence of
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday and thronged the streets
of central Jerusalem, as weeks of protests against the Israeli leader
appeared to be gaining steam.
The demonstration in central Jerusalem, along with smaller gatherings in Tel Aviv, near Netanyahu's beach house in central Israel and at dozens of busy intersections nationwide, was one of the largest turnouts in weeks of protests.
Throughout
the summer, thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets, calling
for Netanyahu to resign, protesting his handling of the country's
coronavirus crisis and saying he should not remain in office while on
trial for corruption charges. Though Netanyahu has tried to play down
the protests, the twice-a-week gatherings show no signs of slowing.
Israeli
media estimated at least 10,000 people demonstrated near the official
residence in central Jerusalem. Late Saturday, thousands marched through
the streets in a noisy but orderly rally. Demonstrators hoisted Israeli
flags and blew loud horns as they marched. Many held posters that said
“Crime Minister" and “Bibi Go Home” or accused Netanyahu of being out of
touch with the public.
I have seen a couple of recent articles about the dangerous rise of Qanon within Republican circles. There's one in The Guardian, and one in WAPO. Both articles show that the Trump campaign is courting these nutters.
I don't understand why there isn't a stronger Democrat pushback on this. If I were Biden, or his advisers, I would be on the front foot in the media pointing out often that this is a nutty and dangerous conspiracy that only one party is condemning.
Update: And in an article we can be safely assume Adam would not read, or at least, let influence him, Science magazine notes the vexed issue of lingering effects of infection:
“Everybody talks about a binary situation, you either get it mild and
recover quickly, or you get really sick and wind up in the ICU,” says
Akrami, who falls into neither category. Thousands echo her story in
online COVID-19 support groups. Outpatient clinics for survivors are
springing up, and some are already overburdened. Akrami has been waiting
more than 4 weeks to be seen at one of them, despite a referral from
her general practitioner.
The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more
varied than most doctors could have imagined. Ongoing problems include
fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy
thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart,
lungs, kidneys, and brain.
The likelihood of a patient developing persistent symptoms is hard to
pin down because different studies track different outcomes and follow
survivors for different lengths of time. One group in Italy found that
87% of a patient cohort hospitalized for acute COVID-19 was still struggling 2 months later. Data from the COVID Symptom Study,
which uses an app into which millions of people in the United States,
United Kingdom, and Sweden have tapped their symptoms, suggest 10% to
15% of people—including some “mild” cases—don’t quickly recover. But
with the crisis just months old, no one knows how far into the future
symptoms will endure, and whether COVID-19 will prompt the onset of
chronic diseases....
For Götz Martin Richter, a radiologist at the Klinikum Stuttgart in
Germany, what’s especially striking is that just as the illness’ acute
symptoms vary unpredictably, so, too, do those that linger. Richter
thinks of two patients he has treated: a middle-aged man who experienced
mild pneumonia from COVID-19, and an elderly woman already suffering
from chronic leukemia and arterial disease, who almost died from the
virus and had to be resuscitated. Three months later, the man with the
mild case “falls asleep all day long and cannot work,” Richter says. The
woman has minimal lung damage and feels fine.
In one respect, the article reports something that's not as bad as it could be: it seems that COVID 19 causes less lung lesions than SARS did. Seems like the range of other effects outweigh that, though.
