It's taking its time, but this is probably right

A good article at the Washington Post about the Mike Lindell election fraud fiasco, which is happening as I write this:  The Con is Winding Down.

This is how all cons end. Things stretch and stretch and stretch until: snap. So instead of presenting your data, you encode it and obfuscate it and promise that there’s actually something there, but wait, hmm, that is weird, let me see what’s happening. Instead you say things like that there was a medical emergency that slowed things down and just ask everyone to stick with you for a moment. It’s just buying time — like Trump calling senators on Jan. 6 — hoping that if another hour or so passes, you can somehow regain control.

The writer, Philip Bump, also quotes with approval a twitter thread argument made by Julian Sanchez about how conspiracy promotion works.   I'll copy that:

On Monday, Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez offered an insightful chain of thoughts about the overlap between those who believe false claims about the election being stolen and those who reject the coronavirus vaccine as dangerous.

In both cases, Sanchez wrote, the conspiracy theories “have the superficial trappings of real science. Links to journal articles on the one hand, or on the other, impressively hackery looking hex dumps & spreadsheets full of IP addresses” — a reference to Lindell’s information.

“[I]n both cases, this evidence is absolutely useless to the target audience,” he continued. “They have neither the training nor the context to evaluate the quality or relevance of technical articles in medical journals — or even to understand what the article is claiming in many cases. … They are, however, being flattered by the INVITATION to assess the evidence for themselves — do your own research, make up your own mind!”

Instead of offering their trust on experts in their fields to explain complicated subjects, the audience is convinced that it needs only to trust itself — though, of course, they’re actually simply trusting the hustlers presenting incomplete or misleading information. What the hustlers offer the audience, Sanchez says, “is the illusion of not trusting an authority — unlike all those sheep who trust the mainstream authorities.”

Data from YouGov shows that the overlap of those who don’t want to get the vaccine and those who think that Biden is an illegitimate president is nearly complete. About three-quarters of Republicans hold the latter position and 3 in 10 the former, but a quarter both reject the vaccine and Biden’s election. 

Yes, the appeal to the vanity of the "independent thinker" who is a climate change sceptic has been extraordinarily clear at Catallaxy for many, many years.   They don't recognise the con that is being put over them.

Mind you, if you go to Twitter at the moment, there are still thousands watching Lindell who think he is "killing it" - actually proving something significant.   So it's going to be a while yet before the conspiracy burns up.

Mystery song by singer I didn't know I had heard before

So, I saw reference to this on Twitter, when Phillip Adams asked the twitterverse last weekend to tell him the meaning of life.  (I think he was looking for column fodder.)   Someone in response suggested he look up a song Let the Mystery Be by Iris DeMent.  So I did, and I don't think I had heard it before.  It's pretty likeable:

 

Even though it was new to me, I see that it has been covered at least a couple of times, and look!, there's a version which has David Byrne participating in it (and Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs):

  

It's a pretty nice cover!

I realised I would have heard Iris Dement before, as she sang Our Town, which was used in the final episode of Northern Exposure: 

 

 I think I probably assumed it was a song by some early to mid 20th century country singer, but Iris wrote it when she was 25 (in 1986.) 

Her Wikipedia page indicates she has put out 6 albums, which isn't a huge amount. Seems her politics are very Left-ish as well: perhaps that puts a limit on country singer success in the US.

It lived up to expectations

OK, so I was feeling like looking up something odd to post, and clicked on the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.   What are the chances, I thought, that it would feature something about moose or flying squirrels or some other odd animal?   Actually, pretty high:

Assessing Bear/Cub/Otter identity and history of cardiovascular disease among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in Metro Vancouver 

Otter identity?    

I am curious about the last line in the abstract:

Interventions should target all gbMSM with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and clinicians should be mindful of culturally sensitive prevention and care for gbMSM who identify as a BCO.

What exactly does being culturally sensitive to a gay bear/cub/otter (still ?? about otter) who is looking good for a heart attack entail?   Do they think it's harder to tell a "bear" to lose weight because it's at the core of their sexual identity?  I hope that's not their point. 

Anyway, enough silliness today...

Domestication considered

While I work out which takes on the IPCC report I want to highlight here (there are a lot to choose from), you can do worse than read an article at BBC Future about how animals hanging around humans changes them.

Maybe I should print this out and have it in my pocket every day for the next month...

Treatment of rare cases of blood clotting in brain following COVID-19 vaccination

In other anti vaxxer madness

Pakistan has for years been a hotbed of anti-vax conspiracy belief against even the simplest vaccine available - the oral one for polio.   The government has made a push to get numbers of kids vaccinated:

The most incredible thing in the video is the police person saying that over the last 16  years, 1700 police have been killed in the course of trying to support the health workers administering the vaccine!

It is mentioned in the video that Pakistanis remember how the CIA used a fake vaccination campaign as cover to help track down Bin Laden - but  the conspiracy rumours that vaccines were actually harmful (and a plot by the West against Islam) long predated that.   Look at this quote from a Bloomberg report:

Mehrab Ali, a fruit merchant in Karachi, is one of many across the Islamic republic who won’t step forward after Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday launched the nation’s vaccination drive. The father of six, who also refused to vaccinate his children against polio, argued that Covid-19 is a foreign plot against Muslims.

“Coronavirus is nothing but a conspiracy,” said the 43-year-old, sitting by his pushcart on a road leading to Karachi’s port. “I don’t believe the coronavirus exists nor does polio. I am not ready to accept that Jews and Christians sitting abroad are worried about the health of our children -- no way.”

Just terrible.    

Cause for pessimism?

According to Axios, Republicans are actually feeling very positive about big gains in their coming mid term election, based on a few issues they are able to sell as purely Democrat problems (inflation, illegal immigration, and crime.)

All this at a time when the Republicans are busy ensuring as many of their voters as possible are catching COVID, and an IPCC report about the biggest future danger to the planet is about to drop, no doubt to Republican pooh-poohing. 

What a time we live in - because the Right has gone nuts.  

 

Tongue

My daughter took this pic while the dog had snuck upstairs and got on her bed.  This is unauthorised behaviour. Still, the photo amuses me.

Weed surprise

That Washington Post reports:

The most sought after marijuana being trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border is now the weed entering Mexico, not the weed leaving it.

Cannabis sold legally in California is heading south illegally, dominating a booming boutique market across Mexico, where buying and selling the drug is still outlawed. Mexican dealers flaunt their U.S. products, noting them in bold lettering on menus sent to select clients: “IMPORTADO.”

Traffickers from California load their suitcases with U.S.-grown marijuana before hopping on planes to Mexico, or walking across the pedestrian border crossing into Tijuana. One car was recently stopped entering Tijuana with 5,600 jars of gummies infused with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But relatively few of the southbound traffickers are caught — even as their contraband doubles or triples in value as soon as it enters Mexico.

Oddly, it seems to have status symbol appeal:

“Nobody is going to grow cannabis better than California probably ever,” Bubeck said.

Back in Mexico, he said, especially for younger smokers, the appeal is clear: “You’re showing ‘This is what I’m about. I’m a bad ass. I got this from America.’”

I still have a suspicion that the US is eventually going to regret, or pull back from, its current style of entrepreneurial legalisation.

 

Oh, diddums

In more Creightonism:

In the news:

On Saturday, according to the Centers for Disease Control, Florida reported 23,903 new cases of COVID-19 for the previous day, Friday, August 6, bringing the state's total number of cases to 2,725,450. The Florida Hospital Association reported that 13,348 patients were hospitalized as of Saturday, which is also a record high for the state. 

Florida also reported an additional 93 people have died due to the virus, bringing the state's total COVID-19 deaths to 39,695, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In yet more rodent news...

It's a big week for rats and mice here.

First, a cute article at the ABC about how lab researchers are tickling rats to keep them happy.

Secondly, a while ago I noted with surprise that mouse sperm can be freeze dried, and still work.   That gets another mention with this twist:

 Scientists no longer have to worry about their bottles of mouse sperm breaking in transit. Researchers in Japan have developed a way to freeze dry sperm on a plastic sheet in weighing paper so that samples can withstand being mailed via postcard. This method allows for mouse sperm to be transported easily, inexpensively, and without the risk of glass cases breaking. The paper appears August 5th in the journal iScience.

And for a final story, rats like to pick their own friends:

Rats choose carefully who they spend time with, according to a new study published today. Published by researchers from the Universities of Portsmouth and Lincoln, the study found that male rats have preferred partners in their groups and they decide who to avoid, too.  

Previous research found that female rats didn't form friendships with other females, so this paper's findings are surprising.

Dr. Leanne Proops, from the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology, said that "discovering that male rats don't associate with other rats randomly, but seek out their preferred cage mates and actively avoid others, shows that rats are similar in this respect to other species like birds, primates and bats."

Dr. Teresa Romero, from the University of Lincoln's School of Life Sciences, added that "what's particularly interesting about this work is that it contrasts to the limited evidence available on social behavior in rats and therefore has important implications for the management and welfare of captive rat populations."

24 hours after

So I am about 24 hours since my first AstraZeneca jab.  

The effects are very minor.   I didn't feel sick at all last night, not even a sore arm.   My upper arm is a little bit sore now, and my stomach feels a little bit crampy, but it's nothing much.  I probably would enjoy a nap this afternoon, but I can say that on most days now!   (Even on a weekend, though, I am not good at actually sleeping during the day.)

Not sure why the GOP just don't go with a "Mexicans are like disease ridden rats" visual

 

About the Disney + series (and Mr Robot)

Due the generosity of my daughter, I now have access to Disney +, and have started watching The Mandalorian and Loki.

Unfortunately, my prior knowledge of the innovative soundstage they used to make these is partly interfering with my enjoyment of both.   

It's not exactly ruining them, but I keep looking at scenes and thinking I can tell where the studio floor ends and the massive screen begins.   It is not at all clear in some scenes, but seems to be in others.    

Oh wait - I am WRONG.   Loki didn't use "the Volume" at all - I was presuming something I shouldn't have.

In any case, I keep saying to my son (watching it with me) that I really do not care for the murky, sepia/brownish tint to all of cinematography in Loki.   It looks, I don't know, underlit, or filtered, or something; but for no clear aesthetic reason.    I mean, dramatic lighting works well in some shows - Mr Robot in particular is worth watching almost for its lighting decisions alone - but it seems out of place to me in Loki.

I am also somewhat bothered that the series' version of the Time Police should have such silly, short range weaponry - like magic wands you have to be close enough to touch someone with for them to work.   What sort of logic does that make?    

I will keep watching it, but I am not yet convinced it is all that good.

To be honest, I think it suffers badly in comparison to the second season of Umbrella Academy, which I thought was just great.  (And much better than its first season.)   As a "time police" themed series, I think UA did it much, much better.  And I loved its look.

As for The Mandalorian:  it's faster paced, looks better, and I am enjoying it enough.  I did point out to my son the derivative aspect of it from the gory Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub movies - which I would sometimes look at on SBS when they were shown there late on a Saturday in (what?) the 1980s.  When I showed him a Youtube compilation clip of gore from them, he was very surprised I had watched them at all, since I complain about movie violence quite a lot.   I explained that I could never stick it out with them, though, for that very reason.

Back to Mr Robot - after a lengthy break between seasons (which is not great - I had forgotten some of the backstory), my son and I are watching the last season now.    It is surprisingly good - so cinematic in feel, and some really dense dramatic writing.   It's kind of gut wrenching in the suspense a lot of the time, but gee, it was some achievement.

I am worried that the big secret of what White Rose is building is going to turn out to be silly, but who knows.   I am enjoying it a lot for now.   It seems to have attracted next to no attention in Australia (probably because you have to buy it on Google to watch it), but it is very good if you are into well made paranoia stories.

    

 

 

 

Mental health stories

Gulf News reports:

Abu Dhabi: Malaysian police rescued a 28-year-old Malaysian man after he attempted to swim the nearly 7,000km from Malaysia to Mecca.

He was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation, local media reported.

Video footage and photographs of the incident have gone viral on social media in Malaysia. 

Police said the young man was detained before taken to the hospital, as he said he had intended to swim to Mecca.

In his second attempt in three weeks, it was not immediately known why the man wished to swim to the holy city in Saudi Arabia.

Dealing with a relative with mental illness must be a nightmare at the best of times, but restraining one with an obsession to go on 7,000 km ocean swims must be a particular problem, if you live near the sea, anyway.

Earlier this year, on You Can't Ask That, one young woman explained how, while having schizophrenia, she developed the idea that her leg had been possessed by the devil, so she went into her father's shed and cut it off with a saw.  Electric or conventional, I don't recall.  Oddly, she said it didn't involve much pain, and gave her a sense of relief!   I thought this was a particularly memorable story of the disasters that can happen due to mental illness.   She's fine now though, which is pretty remarkable in its own way too.

In a more conventional (so to speak, don't get upset, mental health advocates) story about a mentally ill person, Gulf News also notes:

A young Moroccan man was arrested for allegedly beheading his mother and walking with her head through the alleys of the Attasi neighbourhood in Casablanca.

Local media reported that the perpetrator, who suffers from serious psychological disorders, spent 10 years in prison for a terrorist crime.

 

 

Still enjoying M as H

Last night's Mad as Hell really had some particularly sharp and funny writing in it, I thought.   It's really such a credit to the writers and performers.   (I think the most consistently funny segment is always with  Draymella Burt, spokesperson for the Liberal Party.)  

Giving in

I strongly suspect that Jason Soon, and perhaps some other readers, may have thought I was being part of the problem, so to speak, by saying last week that I was resisting getting AstraZeneca.  I did say that I felt I could justify it by the fact that COVID was not spreading in Brisbane in any substantial way.

Well, as we know, that has changed, even though the numbers remain very, very modest by international standards.   But the outbreak has largely been on the side of town where I live, and when shopping centres I sometimes visit are the places where positive cases have been, it does feel it is creeping worryingly close to my door.  (Not only that, I do know of people who have had colds or virus - and indeed I thought I was getting one one a couple of weeks ago, but I became pretty sure it was just a bout of wattle related hayfever - but being around anyone with an illness that might be COVID is a worry.)

Not only that,  hearing of young, apparently healthy people dying abruptly of the virus helps put the risk in perspective.  (Also, Peter Doherty on Radio National this morning explaining what a bugger of a virus COVID 19 really is, and how it can get in every organ and cause damage we're really still learning about, has made me reconsider.)

So, later today I am off to get my first AZ jab.

Look, if I die from it, I would like it to be used in election material that I personally blame Scott Morrison for not having alternative vaccines available.  :)   

Update:   done.  Booked it in this morning, had to drive a couple of suburbs over.  Good explanations of risk and benefit given.  Given I have just read that a few people in their 60's died of it in NSW yesterday, its seems the right move.

In rodent news..

Over at Science Daily there are some rodent studies of interest:

Rats prefer to help their own kind; Humans may be similarly wired

The findings, published today, Tuesday, July 13, in the journal eLife, suggest that altruism, whether in rodents or humans, is motivated by social bonding and familiarity rather than sympathy or guilt.

"We have found that the group identity of the distressed rat dramatically influences the neural response and decision to help, revealing the biological mechanism of ingroup bias," said study senior author Daniela Kaufer, a professor of neuroscience and integrative biology at UC Berkeley.

With nativism and conflicts between religious, ethnic and racial groups on the rise globally, the results suggest that social integration, rather than segregation, may boost cooperation among humans.

"Priming a common group membership may be a more powerful driver for inducing pro-social motivation than increasing empathy," said study lead author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, an assistant professor of psychobiology at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.

I wonder - can this be cited as a reason urbanisation is more "civilising" than other ways humans can live?    Of course, as against that idea, I suppose that 20th fascism didn't exactly spring from the rural areas.   Maybe I am just trying too hard to find reasons why American wingnuttery is so centred in rural areas.

In another rodent article:

Researchers have discovered that spontaneous impulses of dopamine, the neurological messenger known as the brain's 'feel good' chemical, occur in the brain of mice. The study found that mice can willfully manipulate these random dopamine pulses for reward. 

This is all a bit confusing:

 Rather than only occurring when presented with pleasurable, or reward-based expectations, UC San Diego graduate student Conrad Foo led research that found that the neocortex in mice is flooded with unpredictable impulses of dopamine that occur approximately once per minute.

Working with colleagues at UC San Diego (Department of Physics and Section of Neurobiology) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, Foo investigated whether mice are in fact aware that these impulses -- documented in the lab through molecular and optical imaging techniques -- are actually occurring. The researchers devised a feedback scheme in which mice on a treadmill received a reward if they showed they were able to control the impromptu dopamine signals. Not only were mice aware of these dopamine impulses, the data revealed, but the results confirmed that they learned to anticipate and volitionally act upon a portion of them.

"Critically, mice learned to reliably elicit (dopamine) impulses prior to receiving a reward," the researchers note in the paper. "These effects reversed when the reward was removed. We posit that spontaneous dopamine impulses may serve as a salient cognitive event in behavioral planning."

 And finally, mouse eyes are sort of primed to know what to expect.  Makes sense, I guess:

A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.

Writing in the July 23 issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.

This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.

"At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior," said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale." But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form."

 

How Amercian conservatives talk themselves into hating their country (and became a danger to democracy itself)

A good bit of commentary at Vox by Zack Beauchamp:  The Anti-American Right.  I'll copy part of it:

How the right’s hyper-patriotism curdles into anti-Americanism

In the Jewish community, many of us have a suspicion of non-Jews who are a little too outspoken about how much they like Jews. These “philo-Semites” often end up being funhouse mirror anti-Semites, spreading stereotypes in the name of praising us. Trump’s infamous comment about Jewish accountants — “the only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes” — is a perfect example.

Conservative anti-Americanism is a little like this. It’s a hyper-patriotism gone sour: a belief in a fictional ideal of a perfect right-wing America that’s constantly betrayed by reality, leading to disillusionment and even disgust with the country as it actually exists.

Trump’s 2016 address to the Republican National Convention, which promised “a straightforward assessment of the state of our nation,” painted a picture of a country on the verge of collapse. “The attacks on our police and the terrorism in our cities threaten our very way of life,” then-candidate Trump said. “Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third-world condition, and 43 million Americans are on food stamps.”

This dark depiction of the state of the country has become a hallmark of the Trumpified GOP, and Democrats’ 2020 electoral victories only deepened the conservative sense of betrayal at the hands of their countrymen. In late July, Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance warned that “we have lost every single major cultural institution in this country” — and suggested that America “has built its entire civilization” around selfish, miserable people. Earlier that month, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said “I look at Joe Biden’s America, and I don’t recognize the country that I grew up in.”

The Olympics have brought out this sense of alienation from America on the right. When conservatives see American athletes representing values at odds with their vision for the country, they don’t back Team USA in the name of patriotism — they turn on the icons of the nation itself.

Queer female soccer stars demanding equal pay, Black basketball players kneeling to protest police brutality, the world’s best gymnast prioritizing her mental health over upholding the traditional ideal of the “tough” athlete — this is all a manifestation of the ascendancy of liberal cultural values in public life. And an America where these values permeate national symbols, like the Olympic team, is an America where those symbols are worthy of scorn. 

“So much of the self-perception of the American right is about losing the culture war. And that, specifically, is where some of this overt anti-Americanism — especially from the grassroots — is coming from,” says David Walsh, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia who studies the history of the right.

That disdain has also seeped into the right’s recent rhetoric toward an institution that conservatives have typically celebrated: law enforcement.

The other recent Vox piece by Zack is also good:

The biggest threat to democracy isn't coming from China.  It's coming from within.

Here's a little bit:

In countries where democracy is at real risk of collapse or even outright defeated — places like India, Brazil, Hungary, Israel, and, yes, the United States — the real drivers of democratic collapse are domestic. Far-right parties are taking advantage of ethno-religious divides and public distrust in the political establishment to win electorally — and then twist the rules to entrench their own hold on power. Leaders of these factions, like former US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aid and abet each other’s anti-democratic politics.

More traditional authoritarian states, even powerful ones like China or Russia, have thus far played at best marginal roles in this struggle.

“Much of the recent global democratic backsliding has little to do with China,” Thomas Carothers and Frances Brown, two leading experts on democracy, write in a recent Foreign Affairs essay. “An overriding focus on countering China and Russia risks crowding out policies to address the many other factors fueling democracy’s global decline.”

There is, though, no doubt at all that Russia assisted the democracy threatening Trump gain office.

The unexpected dip

I keep saying the pandemic is obviously complicated, and noted last week that the UK drop in COVID cases was a puzzle.   There's an article at Nature confirming this is still the case:

Scientists are scratching their heads over the precipitous decline in daily COVID-19 infections in the United Kingdom following their rapid rise earlier in the year. Officially recorded new cases more than halved in just two weeks: from a high of 54,674 on 17 July to 22,287 on 2 August.

“Nobody really knows what’s going on,” says epidemiologist John Edmunds at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In particular, it’s not clear whether this sudden trend indicates that the peak of the third wave has passed, or whether it is a blip caused by complex social factors.

And no, this is nothing that obnoxious idiots like Creighton should be taking as anything like vindication.

Against the Berg (again)

It's been quite a while since I have complained about Chris Berg and his cloak of affability giving him some undeserved cover for terrible takes for which he should be condemned. Fortunately, the ABC seems to have binned invitations to him. (I wonder why...ha ha.) But anyway:

So says the man who (I recently reminded myself on the weekend) was writing pieces with Sinclair Davidson a decade or so ago for the IPA to sow disbelief in climate change as a serious problem.  

And who then went on to write a book with him recently about how the ABC needs to be defunded  - while (as far as I can tell) spending no time on commenting on the very specifically screaming pile of anti vaxxer bullshit that is Sky News in Australia.   Because private media is always better at stuff like this, hey, Chris?

For what it's worth, I think people are reading too much into Swan's comments.   I would see it more like this:

Oh look, even monty is involved in countering Nick Coatsworth's criticism:

God knows Swan has become a hate figure for the wingnut Right.

As with most medical people commenting on this, I'm prepared to cut him a fair bit of slack.  It is, as I keep saying, an obviously complicated pandemic, and uncertainty is going to be reflected in comments made from time to time.   People should stop sweating on every single comment without taking the broader context.   

As for Coatsworth - I don't know why, but there is something about his media presence that I find off putting.   That TV and twitter ad where he encourages vaccination - it's all a bit head-tilty, robotic and unengaging to my mind.   I wish they hadn't used him for it.

Seems right

The only quibble I have is that the article he refers to as being in "the conservative media" is on a website called "American Greatness" which I have never heard of.  Nor have I heard of the author.

Nonetheless, the sentiment is very popular in wingnut land - and it is true, the current state of the American Right is full of paranoia and conspiracy ideation about the Left, and this has been building up over many years with top Republicans (and all but a handful of right wing commentators) declining to call it out as harmful and wrong.   It gets the base motivated, so why stop it.   Not to mention the money that media people can make out of the devotion of cult conspiracy belief.   

Update:  more from Robert's thread:

Another late movie review no one was waiting for

I caught up with the 2008 film In Bruges.   

I'm not the biggest fan of black, violent, comedies (in fact, I didn't really know that this was the film's category), but as far as they go, this was a very good one.

Colin Farrell was, I suspect, pretty much at his peak in this; and Ralph Fiennes surprised me again with the easy intensity and authenticity he brings to his roles.     

I just had a quick look at Farrell's Wikipedia page - I wasn't sure how much work he had recently, but he's still pretty active, I guess.  But gee, his personal life has been a big mess.  

Some tweets of note

A sporting fad of the 19th century

Well, I've never heard a thing about this before:   a sporting/entertainment fad of "pedestrianism" in the 19th century:

This was no football match, tennis tournament, or basketball game – this was a "pedestrianism" contest, in which the public paid to watch people walk. This particular tournament was the fifth Great Six Days Race, set up by the British politician and sporting baron Sir John Astley.

The rules were simple – essentially, contestants were required to walk in circles for six days in a row, until they had completed laps equivalent to at least 450 miles (724km). They could run, amble, stagger or crawl, but they must not leave the oval-shaped sawdust track until the race was over. Instead they ate, drank and napped (and presumably, performed other bodily functions) in little tents at the side, some of which were elaborately furnished.

Just like sportsmen today, pedestrians were remunerated with eye-watering sums of money. Whoever travelled the furthest in the time available would win $25,000 (around $679,000 or £494,000 today) and a belt of solid silver, engraved with the words "Long Distance Champion of the World".

There are lots of illustrations in the article too at the BBC website.

 

On looking at the old Catallaxy

So there was much wailing and grinding of teeth on the weekend from the wingnut Catallaxy club - I was able to spend quite a few merry hours trolling them.  

The site is now deleted - save for some captures done by the National Library.   (Mind you, they have saved some pages of this blog too - so that's not particularly significant in the scheme of things.)

But there is also still, for some reason, a bit of the old version of Catallaxy hanging around the internet - before it moved to its last hosting arrangement, I think.   It's from 2010, and it's interesting to see what the blog was talking about then.

You can see how it was a hotbed for climate change denial/"scepticism".   Rafe was promoting Monckton articles that appeared in Watts Up With That, Sinclair was giving hat tips to arts graduate Delingpole.   He and Chris Berg were apparently in an article in the IPA Review about "Climategate."   Oh, and "Glaciergate" gets a couple of mentions by Sinclair too - that embarrassing but relatively minor, quickly identified, mistake in an IPCC report which no one sensible ever thought demonstrated that climate change science in totality was wrong. 

Move a decade in the future, and the blog was still heavily devoted, mainly from Rafe's posts, to denying climate change and scaremongering about the cost of changing to clean power.   Sinclair  stopped posting about the topic some time ago - maybe he has modified his views, while nonetheless being happy to have Rafe and Moran crap on weekly about how bad renewable energy is, and Steve Kates (literally) call people idiots for believing in AGW at all, and the Left evil.   Who knows?

It was certainly not as if Sinclair was into admitting error - remember the Monty temporary banning in 2014 for pointing out his stagflation call?   

Speaking of economics more generally, here he is praising this assessment of Keynesian economics:

Ultimately, any economic theory, if it is to survive, must withstand repeated attempts to falsify it, repeated exposure to the predictive test that deductive science imposes on its creations. The Keynesian model (I call it this rather than the model of Keynes since no master should ever be judged by the words of his inadequate disciples) was floored by a sequence of empirical failures: an alleged consumption multiplier that regularly under-performed; an alleged inelasticity of aggregate investment to interest rate changes that was notable by its absence; a liquidity trap that failed to manifest itself; a Phillips curve trade-off between the rate of unemployment and the rate of price inflation that proved to be explosively unstable; a flexible exchange- rate system that eliminated final macroeconomic vestiges of fiscal influence. …
…
Dear reader, the Keynesian model never worked; and never will work. It has been resuscitated by opportunistic economists, not because they believe in its merits as an agent of macroeconomic rehabilitation, but because they recognize its political value as a weapon for moving economies from laissez-faire to state capitalism, or (hopefully) beyond that to fully-fledged socialism.

Now, I'm not qualified to understand a lot of those claims - but thanks to Sinclair's failed stagflation warning made a year or so after that post, I can tell that this was probably a load of exaggerated bollocks.   So, yeah, Catallaxy was good for that!

Oh, and look:  there's a post in which Sinclair is apparently endorsing Nigel Farage "Telling the EU where to get off".   Gee, Brexit has gone so well.   

In the spirit of generosity, and bearing in mind the internet never forgets, if Sinclair would like to appear in comments here and confess his mistakes and errors, he's welcome to.

Heh. 

Update:   someone called Adam has created a clone (in appearance) of the deleted Catallaxy site, and all the people who regularly posted there have migrated to the open thread.  I see Sinclair has turned up with this message:

Ah yes:  that would be the blog where I voluntarily stopped commenting because an old regular could make a comment about how a woman (I forget who) should be "kicked in the slats" and Sinclair wouldn't moderate it.   Or more recently, where a male commenter could call an apparent rape victim in the news "a dud root", and again, the comment remained there.   

Sinclair let it turn into a toilet that he would not moderate to any reasonable standard of civility.  Golf clap for libertarianism, hey.  

As I explained in my comment at monty's post in 2014:

....I can't tolerate the lack of overall moderation of the place any more. I have a theory that Sinclair might consider the blog threads are a sort of "test" of how libertarian communities might self moderate - if someone says something outrageous and offensive, then others might try to pull them in line and a certain natural level of acceptable propriety prevail.

In fact, this happens exceptionally rarely, so that the blog threads have become full of sexist and (for want of a better word) "homophobic" comments which, if I overheard in a pub, would offend me and make me slide away from the group. And when they get onto racism issues it can get exceptionally ugly, and pretty dumb.

As I have said over the years, it particularly annoys me when the women who comment there let offensive comments slide (IT and his twice made comment now that a woman deserves a "kick in the slats", for example.) And that Sinclair, despite his presumed friendship with Tim Wilson, rarely does a thing about the way homosexuality is used for the purpose of ridicule.

Sorry, but blog moderation that extends to "no one uses the 'c' word, and if I notice something I think is a bit OTT I might delete it" has made the place too ugly to be seen in.

So, yeah, it was a "wonderful" place for intense and offensive sexism, homophobia, and racism (although I have not preserved examples of the latter - but even JC would complain about that, so I am far from imagining it.)

It was a toilet that deserved to go, and the world is a better place that it has.

Reality check

Yeah, a depressing reality check for wannabe authors:

Here's the insert from the tweet, so you can read it here:

A good pandemic for some...

As spotted on phys.org:

Samsung Electronics' net profits surged more than 70 percent in the second quarter thanks to higher memory chip prices fuelled by pandemic-led demand, the South Korean tech giant reported Thursday. 

Coronavirus-driven working from home boosted demand for devices and appliances powered by Samsung's memory chips. The company said that "memory shipments exceeded previous guidance and price increases were higher than expected".

The world's biggest smartphone maker saw net profits rise 73.4 percent year-on-year to 9.6 trillion won ($8.4 billion) for April-June, the company said in a regulatory filing.

 

Sinclair Davidson and 10 years of wrong

Yes!!   Today is the 10 year anniversary of this article by Sinclair Davidson, published at the ABC and still available there, I suppose as a public service to show which economists are best ignored:

Stagflation looms for the Australian economy

The photo, by the way, is a screenshot (with a minor but accurate addition) from an appearance on the ABC - I wonder what year they stopped having him on anything, and the relationship between that and his pet hobby of trying to get the wingnut conservative membership of the Liberal Party to force the government to stop funding it.   Is it all a plot to hide this really, really wrong call?  Because this is what inflation actually looked like after 2011:

Looking around the internet, I see that his influence amongst other economists might also have diminished by, you know, sounding like a jerk in interactions with them.  Look at this exchange that still comes up in a search of a Catallaxy thread:

I don't think Peter Whiteford - who strikes me as one of the politest economists around - bothered with engaging further.

There's also this old post by monty about being banned in 2014 for reminding Sinclair that his stagflation call was obviously a dud.   I get a mention in it too (as well making a comment which remains entirely accurate.)  Monty is now back at Catallaxy, pretty much as the one pet troll.  (Sorry, monty, but that's the way it seems.)   Other people who make the occasional appearance to tell the throng of commenters that they are gullible and foolish and part of a self-gaslite cult regarding Trump still get the boot.   It's Sinclair's little club of Australian wingnut commentators and he won't have anyone, except for one participant, be there to tell them they're being idiots, even though that is what the rest spend their time doing (and much, much worse - many share the view that anyone to the Left of them is literally evil) against their perceived political and cultural enemies.   

The comment I made at the last link still has no answer - and if anything, the puzzle has only gotten worse.

The blog, for example, now routinely features posts by CL which dismiss COVID as a serious problem and pooh pooh vaccination.   Steve Kates, a hopeless nut in love with Trump, is similarly forever posting bullshit from Fox News and other Right wing news sources about vaccination dangers.   Yet Sinclair Davidson made a comment in a post that he considers vaccination the only way out of the current cycle of lockdowns.

So why does he let a blog that he can control actually read like a Right wing anti COVID  vax site?   Does he think providing an outlet for people who are hopeless victims of culture war driven Right wing media agendas is that important?    Why does he think he has to be part of an information outlet that promulgates ideas that he thinks are wrong?   

It's weird.   I suspect sometimes it's the same as a lot of wingnut behaviour -  a case of  being happy to hurt himself to own the libs.   He has made occasional reference to some trouble he got into with (I think) RMIT some years ago, but I never heard or read anywhere what it was about.   I thought it would quite possibly be to with something that appeared at Catallaxy, but I could be wrong.  (He has let appallingly racist, homophobic, sexist and defamatory comments stay in the threads for years.)   Anyway, I assume it was some sort of quasi disciplinary action about the appropriateness of stuff he could be associated with as a member of RMIT staff, and he survived.   I would love to know the details.  Anyone with knowledge, you can always tell us anonymously in comments!

So, did that experience make him want to up the ante, so to speak, with what Catallaxy could get away with?   Because it has become nuttier and nuttier, following the path of the terrible state of US Right wing politics, over the years, and he clearly will not use any editorial control even on something like the anti-vax line taken by some of his most popular contributors.   

What a weird way to behave - actually against the public interest and what he believes in.  But congratulations on making the world a stupider place, all in the name of free speech.  

BIG UPDATE:   not long after posting this, I noticed that Sinclair has posted that Catallaxy is closing down.

This is undoubtedly a Good Thing.   A blog that has promulgated ideologically driven climate change denial as one of its core functions for (I don't know) 15 or so years - and refuses to ever concede error on that -  is against the public interest.   And that's not to mention the myriad ways it has been offensive and corruptive of civil discourse on political and cultural matters.   

He could have set rules and at least tried to enforced them, but wouldn't.  It's a wonder he hasn't gotten into legal trouble over thousands of comments.   I don't know why he would let his own reputation be sullied by having control of a blog in which racism, homophobia and really intense sexism can run free.   

So, good riddance to bad rubbish.

Tibet and bones

My recent post about old Tibetan rituals involving skulls, excrement and sex has led to some further self education about odd aspects of Tibetan religious practice.   

But first - let's watch someone who looks like China's very own Henry Ergas explain (by very clearly reading from the script) the importance of Xi Jinping's recent visit to the country.   It's from CGTN, so of course it's 100% unadulterated pro-China propaganda; but I must admit, the country is looking cleaner and more modern than I expected:

 

OK, back to esoteric religious stuff.

I didn't know much about how Tibetan religious practice was so heavily into human skulls and bones.   But look at this image, which comes from what seems to be one guy's pet project - a website with the impressively prosaic name Facts and Details:  

It's captioned "Skull Queen of Heaven", but I don't know where it's originally from.   I suppose I  can do a reverse  image search - well, I just did, and it's still not clear.  It appears on some Himalayan art resources site as if it's in a private collection.  The image has been used by various other people too, presumably without authorisation, so it remains a bit of a mystery.

 

Anyhow,  it's presumably a fancy version of a kapala, which, as Wikipedia explains: 

 A kapala (Sanskrit for "skull") is a skull cup used as a ritual implement (bowl) in both Hindu Tantra and Buddhist Tantra (Vajrayana). Especially in Tibet, they are often carved or elaborately mounted with precious metals and jewels.

 

 

 

 

Googling the topic further, here's an old leaflet from 1923 Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet which goes into plenty of gory detail about the history of this.  Let's see if I can copy some bits:

 

Well, surely the "sky burial" was doubtless real - just the detail of boiling up Dad's head and drinking from it might be the exaggeration?

Anyway, the leaflet actually goes on to record lots of different societies which have used skulls for cups - sometimes from their defeated enemies' heads; sometimes a relative they liked.  Even Australia gets a mention!:

But back to why Tibetan Buddhism does it:

Well, I suppose that is one way of remembering life is temporary and you'd better behave.

The leaflet describes the Tibetan interest in getting just the right type of skull for worship purposes:

 

The leaflet does point out, though, that it is not completely unknown for a Catholic saint's skull to be used for ceremonial drinking on their feast day in Europe, so let's not be too condescending.   

Anyway, to end on a lighter note, I see from Facts and Details that the most common chant used in Tibet is one that is pretty easy to remember, but the English translation seems very long!:

The most common chant is om mani padme hum ("Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus"), which means "I invoke this path to experience the universality, so the jewel-like luminosity of my immortal mind will be unfolded within the depths of the lotus-center of awakened consciousness and I be wafted by ecstacy of breaking through all bonds and horizons."

It is the mantra of Chenresig (Avalokiteshvara), the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

I like the long version. 

The audit's going that well, hey?

From a recent report at Gizmodo about the crank led Arizona audit that has had dumb Trump cultists excited:

The Republican official serving as the Senate’s point man on the audit, former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, recently leaked initial audit results showing the county’s original count was accurate and found himself locked out of the audit facility for days as a result, according to Vice. While Bennett told Vice he was trying to “work things out with [Senate] President Fann” and resume his role, in recent interviews he had also detailed being shut out of Cyber Ninja’s audit processes and admitted he had threatened to resign. He also suggested the firm might “force balance” their report, an accounting term for maliciously cooking the books with fake data. (As Slate noted, Bennett’s last-minute flip after months of promoting misinformation about the Maricopa County vote reeks of distancing himself from the disaster.)

At least two Senate Republicans who are responsible for helping bring the ongoing debacle about are starting to have second thoughts. 

 Scottsdale State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita recently tweeted “it’s become clear that the audit has been botched” thanks to the “incompetence” of Fann, ABC 15 reported. Phoenix-Glendale State Senator Paul Boyer told the network he agreed, but had a disingenuous excuse: Republicans had supported the audit but “just didn’t think it would be done by a firm that didn’t have a clue of what they were doing.”

The faith based cultists will always have the "but they didn't disclose everything" line to take.  "The routers - what about the routers?"

Update:   dover beach, a long time commenter at Catallaxy, found that conservative Catholicism just wasn't enough faith for him, so he signed up to the Trump cult.  In cult world, attempts to limit the spread of invented disinformation is evidence that it must be true:

   

Out of Germany?

According to The Guardian:

A German-based conspiracy group helped to drive a series of anti-lockdown protests across Australia which saw dozens of people arrested and hundreds fined after violent clashes with police.

Police arrested more than 60 people and fined 107 more after a crowd of about 3,000 gathered in Sydney on Saturday to protest against the city’s lockdown.

Coordinated by a loose network of conspiracy-laced groups, including some with links to the far right, rallies took place in cities across Australia and the globe, with violent clashes between demonstrators and police in Sydney.

Protests against Covid restrictions have become common throughout the pandemic. While billed as peaceful protests, police said they were surprised by “the level of violence that people were prepared to use”.

Prior to Saturday, word of the protests was spread through a collection of Telegram, Instagram and Facebook posts, often amplified by large anti-vaccination and conspiracy pages that have amassed followings in the tens of thousands during the pandemic.

The latest rallies have highlighted the role of a German-based group, named Worldwide Demonstration, which has helped to coordinate protests across the globe, including in various Australian cities.

The group has 45,000 Facebook followers and 70,000 Telegram subscribers on its main accounts alone, and even more on dedicated accounts set up for individual countries.

The group appears to be run out of Germany by individuals calling themselves “Freie Bürger Kassel”, or the Free Citizens of Kassel. Its main Facebook page is administered by two Germans and a third individual in the United Kingdom.

 

 

Baby drama

Hey I've never tried to embed something from Reddit before.  Maybe this is old - I don't know - but I haven't seen it before:

 

Go to jail

If the appeal court doesn't increase this sentence, I would be very surprised:   

A Melbourne man who ejaculated on women at music festivals will not spend a moment behind bars or be registered as a sex offender.

Muhammad Bilal Khan, 40, today narrowly avoided jail in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court for crimes which his victims said left them feeling unclean and uncomfortable in their own skin.

Instead, the father of two was given a community-based order and 250 hours of unpaid work, a sentence which prosecutors are already considering appealing.

He pleaded guilty to three sex assault charges and another of indecent assault.

The court heard he was supported by his wife, who said she was proud to describe her husband as "a man of high moral standards, strong values and decency".

But Magistrate Tara Hartnett said that description was contradicted by the offending against his victims.

"It was despicable conduct by you and purely for your own gratification," she said.

That's a nuttily devoted wife there, too.

He did it four separate times over 4 years.   Of course someone who does that, repeatedly, needs to be registered as a sex offender.   And to serve time.

 

The wedding reception's going to be interesting

I think Matthew Gertz is the guy who keeps getting mistaken for Matt Gaetz, so he tweets about him often:

 

 

Keep it away from me

I agree entirely with this sentiment:

 Some amusing Twitter comments follow:

 You really do have to be of a certain age to know the tune to sing the last one to. 

The loathesome Creighton

I cannot be the only person who is just daily appalled by Adam Creighton and his Twitter coverage about  COVID.    His arrogant mocking tone and completely unwarranted, ideologically drive, certainty that he has been right all along is just a journalistic and personal disgrace, and I hope he has (at the very least) lost friends permanently over it.   (He will have more in the wingnut Right - he can have them.)   He's like an Australian version of that utterly obnoxious, can-someone-please-punch-him-in-the-face Paul Joseph Watson. 

His latest piece of triumphalism is gloating over the apparent rapid drop in UK cases, against expectations.  This does appear genuinely puzzling, as this article in The Guardian notes.     But as I have said for a long time - this has just obviously been a really complicated pandemic, with lots of puzzles that are not going to be fully understood for some time, such as why it took off so fast in some places, and slower in some poorer countries where one might have expected an earlier outbreak; the effectiveness of the various policy responses in different countries; and the extent of "long Covid" and whether it is going to lead to an increase in things as diverse as diabetes, dementia and male infertility and erectile dysfunction (!) 

If ever there was a person who deserves to get it, and suffer badly from it, it's Adam.