A recent thread about butter and Europe

I forgot to post these tweets which appeared in a thread last week.  Both somewhat amusing and somewhat educational:

Didn't see that coming

Well, this news seems to have caught everyone by surprise:

OnlyFans, the subscriber-only website synonymous with pornography, has announced it will ban adult material from the site after pressure from its payment processors.

The company will continue to allow some posts containing nudity but “any content containing sexually-explicit conduct” will be banned, with the site instead focusing on more mainstream content.

Not that I have ever used it, but it is pretty remarkable, I think, to watch the way that people have realised there is more than one way to skin a cat (a phrase which, incidentally, feels deserving of replacement in this animal friendly era) when it comes to online porn reduction:

Payment processing companies increasingly control what material pornography sites are able to host. Last December, Visa and Mastercard briefly banned payments to websites owned by online pornography giant MindGeek, following reports it was hosting “revenge porn” uploaded without the consent of those involved. The financial businesses only backtracked when MindGeek deleted tens of millions of unverified videos from its sites such as PornHub.

OnlyFans has enabled tens of thousands of sex workers to earn substantial incomes in return for handing over 20% of their earnings to the company, with many creators saying it has given them financial freedom. Internal figures obtained by Axios suggest about 16,000 creators earn at least $50,000 (£36,000) annually from the site.

However, it has also faced growing political and regulatory scrutiny over its ability to remove illegal and exploitative material. Earlier this month more than a hundred US congressmen and women demanded a department of justice investigation into OnlyFans, relating to the alleged presence of underage material on the site.

Comedy tastes change

I see that relatively well known British comedian Sean Lock has died.   I barely know of his work, as it seems to me he has mostly appeared on panel shows which I have not found amusing, largely because I have an aversion to (the far too ubiquitous) Jimmy Carr.   My general impression is that I used to find him harmless - but not especially funny.  [Update:  I have watched some "best of" compilations of him on Youtube since his passing - and yeah, I just didn't find him particularly funny.]

But, once again I have to observe, there are few British comedians - or at least, few shows featuring them - that I have any time for now.

I still find Would I Lie to You to be by far the best, with consistently likeable and funny performances by the three regulars (David Mitchell, Lee Mack and Rob Brydon).   And I do particularly enjoy episodes with guest appearances by Bob Mortimer.  He was on one last night, as it happens, featuring a wildly improbable story about giving a scotch egg to a formula 1 driver in the 1990's as a sort of good luck charm before a race.   It was hilariously told, and I laughed again during it, even though I think this is the third time I have seen it.  (I saw it on Youtube originally, last year - it is from a quite recent episode.)

But so, so many other British panel shows leave me cold.   I positively dislike so many of their comedians now, and really, I don't quite understand why.   As I have long thought, at some point during my life, I switched from liking a lot of British comedy to feeling that most of it kind of repulsed me.

Speaking of comedy panel shows, last night on the ABC also featured a new one with Wil Anderson and Jan Fran, Question Everything.   Anderson can be very funny, I think, and Fran has a pleasing style of delivery too.  But man, did the panel amuse themselves too much last night, or what?   They seemed to find each other absolutely hilarious - and it really wasn't warranted.  It was like the studio had been filled with laughing gas:  that was what the giggly, excessive laughing at slightly amusing quips reminded me of.

Someone needs to get a grip on this aspect of the show - and get better guest panelists.  I had heard of none of them last night, and none struck me as worthy of exposure. 

 

The cheery world of the Taliban

Back to the pessimistic takes:  the Washington Post has an article on How Life under Taliban rule in Afghanistan has changed.   A taste:

Over two decades of conflict and politicking, Taliban control in Afghanistan has become a patchwork of edicts and codes, with some areas seeing modest reform. But overall, fear and intimidation remain at the heart of the militant group’s command.

In one district, elders successfully lobbied Taliban fighters to open a high school for girls. In other provinces, clinics funded by international aid groups are now allowed to function. But in those same places, harsh, often public punishments remain common. Torture and imprisonment are widely used for infringements as minor as possessing the wrong SIM card....

Public beatings and executions are routine inside the Taliban’s Afghanistan. And women are almost entirely absent from public life, largely denied equal access to education and employment. Access to health care and some education has expanded under the Taliban, but that is largely a result of work by select international aid groups the militants have allowed to operate.

“All their changes are only for their own benefit,” said a 22-year-old university student from Helmand province who has lived in Taliban-controlled territory on and off his entire life. Like others in this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution by the Taliban.

“If you start criticizing the Taliban, you are their enemy,” he said. “Nothing has ever changed with that.”

 And yet, to answer the question "why does anyone support this mob", we get this brief observation:

Other civilians said they prefer the Taliban’s justice system to that of the government. A taxi driver who lives in Mazar-e Sharif said he repeatedly traveled into Taliban territory to obtain a ruling on a family property dispute after government courts proved ineffective.

“The Taliban’s process is faster than the government,” said the driver, Mubaraksha Zafar, 38, “and there is no corruption.”

Huh.

 

Thoughts of a non expert on Islamic terrorism

At the ABC, there's a very pessimistic take on the future course of Islamic terrorism in light of the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan.   A couple of experts in the field are quoted:

There are two main ways the Taliban's control of Afghanistan increases the threat of terrorism, according to experts. 

Firstly, there will be considerable opportunity for Al Qaeda to bring foreigners into Afghanistan to train and equip them as fighters, according to counter-terrorism expert Professor Greg Barton. 

"When we think of Taliban today in control of Afghanistan, there is no evidence the Taliban has changed their view and lots of evidence of close association with Al Qaeda, through marriage, shared leadership and shared world view," he said.   

Secondly, the Taliban's success may prove to be inspirational. 

"The idea that you can win. The idea that the Americans can be pushed back," Professor of International Security and Intelligence John Blaxland said.  

"That is reverberating around the world, that is right across the Middle East, north Africa, South-East Asia, southern Philippines, parts of Indonesia and southern Thailand — that's adding spring to the step of those who are railing against the infidels, the non-Muslim world."

Professor Barton said it was now very hard to counter that narrative because "everything suggests it's right".

Now, I freely admit to no expertise on the subject, so I may be totally wrong.    But my gut feeling is that this take is too pessimistic for the following reasons:

*    It ignores the defeat of Islamic State as a public relations black eye for jihadist rule, generally speaking.   In fact, although the Taliban helped fight against IS (this article usefully tries to explain the differences between the Taliban, IS and Al-Qaeda), is it partly because of the failure of IS that the Taliban is trying to sell itself as the new, improved, don't-be-scared-of-us-we-are-much-less-into-killing-our-citizens-now version of radical Islam rule?

*  Saudi Arabia itself is still on a slow path of social reform in favour of women and being more open to the West.  Isn't it?

*  Where exactly does radical Islam look like an actual success, in terms of running a country or region?    And large scale terrorist acts lead to some pretty fierce push back in countries like France and Sri Lanka - 

On March 13, Sarath Weerasekara, Sri Lanka’s minister of public security, announced that the government will ban wearing of the burqa and close more than 1,000 Islamic schools in the country. The minister was quoted as saying that “the burqa” was a “sign of religious extremism” and has a “direct impact on national security”.

and 

PARIS—President Emmanuel Macron is redrawing the line that separates religion and state, in a battle to force Islamic organizations into the mold of French secularism.

In recent months, his administration has ousted the leadership of a mosque after temporarily closing it and poring over its finances. Another mosque gave up millions in subsidies after the government pressured local officials over the funding. A dozen other mosques have faced orders to close temporarily for safety or fire-code violations.

The government has taken these actions as a precursor to a much broader push to rein in the independence of mosques and other religious organizations across France. Mr. Macron has submitted a bill to Parliament, called the Law Reinforcing Respect of the Principles of the Republic, that would empower the government to permanently close houses of worship and dissolve religious organizations, without court order, if it finds that any of their members are provoking violence or inciting hatred.

*  Indonesia still has a radical Islam problem, but a government pretty actively policing against it, too. 

Sure, Islamic inspired terrorist attacks are  not going to disappear - but isn't the obvious lesson of recent year, even to radical Islamists, that big attacks invite big and long lasting pushback?  The return of the Taliban doesn't do much to change that, it seems to me. 

So, I don't know, but maybe Taliban Rule Mk 2 is less of a terrorism inspiration than the experts think - especially if they become a "success" in governing by courting foreign money by selling themselves as the "no longer really into terrorism" government.   

I hope this completely non-expert, gut feeling assessment has something going for it.

We shall see.

   

Dyson spheres still a thing

Oh, we have scientists still wondering about what super high energy use civilisations might be using, and it might be...wait for it...a Dyson Sphere-y thing around a black hole.  Let Science magazine explain:

But astronomer Tiger Hsiao of National Tsing Hua University says we might be looking for the wrong thing. In a new study, he and colleagues set out to calculate whether it would also be possible to use a Dyson sphere around a black hole. They analyzed black holes of three different sizes: those five, 20, and 4 million times the mass of our Sun. These, respectively, reflect the lower and upper limits of black holes known to have formed from the collapse of massive stars—and the even more enormous mass of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive massive black hole thought to lurk at the center of the Milky Way.

Black holes are typically thought of as consumers rather than producers of energy. Yet their huge gravitational fields can generate power through several theoretical processes. These include the radiation emitted from the accumulation of gas around the hole, the spinning “accretion” disk of matter slowly falling toward the event horizon, the relativistic jets of matter and energy that shoot out along the hole’s axis of rotation, and Hawking radiation—a theoretical way that black holes can lose mass, releasing energy in the process.

From their calculations, Hsiao and colleagues concluded that the accretion disk, surrounding gas, and jets of black holes can all serve as viable energy sources. In fact, the energy from the accretion disk alone of a stellar black hole of 20 solar masses could provide the same amount of power as Dyson spheres around 100,000 stars, the team will report next month in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Were a supermassive black hole harnessed, the energy it could provide might be 1 million times larger still.

If such technology is at work, there may be a way to spot it. According to the researchers, the waste heat signal from a so-called “hot” Dyson sphere—one somehow capable of surviving temperatures in excess of 3000 kelvin, above the melting point of known metals—around a stellar mass black hole in the Milky Way would be detectible at ultraviolet wavelengths. Such signals might be found in the data from various telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Hsiao says.

Meanwhile, a “solid” Dyson sphere—operating below 3000 kelvin—could be picked up in the infrared by, for example, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey or the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The latter is no stranger to looking for the infrared signals of traditional, star-based Dyson spheres. But, like all other such searches, it has yet to find anything conclusive.

Opatrný says using the radiation from accretion disks would be particularly clever, because the disks convert energy more efficiently than the thermonuclear reaction in conventional stars. Aliens concerned with the sustainability of their power supply, he suggests, might be better off encapsulating small stars that burn their fuel slowly. However, he continued, “The fast-living civilizations feeding on black hole accretion disks would be easier to spot from the huge amount of waste heat they produce.”

It is kind of hard imagining what this type of civilisation would even look like, though.  Here's the amusing last paragraph:

As for what the aliens might use this energy for, Opatrný has some thoughts. “Mining cryptocurrency, playing computer games, or just feeding the ever-growing bureaucracy?” he jokingly muses.

 

 

Some Tweets of note

 And I tend to agree with David Roberts:

 

The problem with France

A short column in The Economist points out that French political discourse is often prone to the sort of hyperbole that I really dislike:

VENTURE INTO the chat rooms of French cyberspace or onto the streets of Paris, and the impression this summer is of a country on the brink of totalitarian rule or civil collapse, or both. In July the word dictature (dictatorship) surged tenfold on Google, in anticipation of a new “health pass” introduced on August 9th by President Emmanuel Macron. This makes full vaccination (or a negative covid-19 test) a condition of access to restaurants, bars, trains and other places.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a right-wing deputy, called the new pass sanitaire a “sanitary coup d’état”. Michèle Rivasi, a Green politician, called it “apartheid”. Protesters clutched placards with slogans such as “False pandemic, real dictatorship” and “Pass Nazitaire”, or photos of Mr Macron with a Hitler-style moustache. A few wore yellow stars on which was written “non-vaccinated”, eliciting widespread indignation. Joseph Szwarc, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, called the comparison “odious” and said he shed tears at the sight: “I wore the yellow star; I know what it was.”

In April and May the phrase guerre civile (civil war) spiked on Twitter, after retired right-wing generals wrote an open letter offering to step in to save the country should it slide into chaos. A poll suggested that 58% of the French backed the officers, and nearly half thought the army should step in on its own initiative.

Why is France so often convinced it is on the brink, and so prone to rhetorical hysteria? The country’s disjointed and rebellious history is one answer. “Are we in 1789?” is still a periodic headline in the press. And indeed, the prospect of disorder is not wholly fanciful. A culture of mass protest is deeper-rooted in France than in any other European country, and reasoned debate often gives way to factional theatrics and sabotage. Fifty years after the May ‘68 student uprising, gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) ransacked Paris. In July anti-vaxxers invaded a town hall in Chambéry, in the Alps, and vandalised vaccination centres. 

But their food!  I still want to visit for an extended period. 

A reasonable case

I thought Biden's address today on Afghanistan was very reasonable and struck the right note.

The US may have been able to do some things differently, but when a government just ups and runs away (and doesn't pay its military), there are limits on what can be achieved in orderly fashion. 

Update:  Jennifer Rubin in WAPO thinks so too.

Update 2:  more - 

Message to Monty

So, the ever increasingly nutty Catallaxy blog died, leaving a snall-ish but loud community of Australian wingnuts feeling lost with no where to share their wingnutty (and increasingly paranoid) positions on climate change, COVID and the culture wars.   

Several people rushed to form a replacement blog, with three main contenders.

One is run by monty, a not unreasonable fellow, except when it comes to the idea of the value of giving wingnuttery an outlet.   Because he is re-posting at his blog posts by dover-beach at his attempt at a Catallaxy replacement, and posts at the new Catallaxy site run by Adam.

Now for the message part:  why, monty, would you repeat on a site you control the misinformation and wingnut culture war material of these two other blogs?

You are doing the world a disservice.  You will get no moderates or Lefties trying to engage in debate - because the wingnutty Right of Catallaxy is beyond argument and has been for many years.  You know that.  You know they have been getting worse.

Their messaging on climate change and COVID is now positively dangerous - and it makes no sense for you to be giving them a wider platform than their own. 

Come to your senses, and blog your own wingnut critical material by all means.  But stop trying to help them re-build their own community of wrong, dangerous, paranoid and stupid ideas.

 

Must be China's turn

A decent summary of the situation in Afghanistan seems to be the one in The Economist, which notes:

The Taliban, thought to number no more than 200,000 soldiers, armed mostly with equipment they have seized from their enemies, have taken all of Afghanistan’s urban centres in little more than a week, generally without much resistance (see map). The answer seems to be that what they lacked in brawn, they made up for in brains, determination and political shrewdness. For the past year, diplomats in Doha had hoped that the Taliban could be compelled to negotiate with Mr Ghani’s government to agree to some sort of power-sharing agreement. The insurgents evidently realised it would be more profitable to negotiate with Mr Ghani’s underlings, city-by-city, and thereby simply pull the rug out from underneath him.

Hence in Herat, a jewel of a city near the Iranian border, Ismail Khan, the warlord who took the city back from the Taliban in 2001, after fighting for days, surrendered and was filmed, in captivity, pleading for “a peaceful environment”. In Kandahar, the city at the heart of Afghanistan’s southern breadbasket and the birthplace of the original Taliban, the governor was pictured handing over to his Taliban counterpart. In Jalalabad, in the east, the Taliban marched in without firing a shot, after elders in the city negotiated a surrender. Mazar-i-Sharif, a northern city which once served as a bastion of anti-Taliban resistance in the 1990s, folded in similar fashion.

In each case, the militants have made wide-ranging promises, to “forgive” those who served in the American-backed government, in exchange for surrender. In Kandahar, former soldiers who surrendered have been issued with laisser passer documents that they can show at Taliban checkpoints. There, throughout Friday night the sound of gunfire echoed throughout the city. According to residents, it was mostly fired in the air in celebration.

The Afghan army, for all its apparent strength, seems to have fallen to what might be called Yossarian syndrome, after a character in Joseph Heller’s second-world-war novel, “Catch 22”. Yossarian was asked what would happen if everyone thought as he did that fighting was pointless, and replied he would “be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?” Similarly, the Washington Post quoted one Afghan officer explaining why his soldiers would not stop the Taliban: “Brother, if no one else fights, why should I?” Afghan military morale was not helped by the government's fiscal crisis, which has led to government staff and troops missing pay for months.

What does the Taliban takeover mean? For all their promises to show mercy in victory, few among Afghanistan’s intellectual elite are reassured. After the militants took Spin Boldak, a town on the Pakistani border that was among the first to fall in late July, credible reports emerged quickly afterwards of dozens of government supporters being massacred. In Kandahar in late July, when the militants began to take the outskirts of the city, they kidnapped Nazar Mohammad, a popular comedian, and murdered him. Reports from Kandahar say that armed Taliban have been going door to door seeking out people who worked for Western governments. In recent weeks, thousands of refugees have collected in Kabul’s parks. Hundreds have mobbed visa-processing centres, hoping for a space in the last-minute evacuations being organised by Western powers.

The Taliban’s political arm in Doha has claimed that they are no longer the bloody theocrats who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when accused criminals were publicly executed at Kabul’s football grounds, including women who were stoned to death for adultery....

The big geopolitical question arising from this is what China will do.   It's hardly going to be seen as a friend of Islam, given their massive attempt to end its influence in its own territory;  but on the other hand, minerals and money.  US News wrote:

At stake for Beijing are agreements it has already secured from the Taliban not to harbor inside Afghanistan any Islamic extremists with designs to wage insurgencies in parts of western China, notably the restive Xinjiang province – a promise that far exceeds anything the U.S. has been able to extract with regard to the persistent threats of al-Qaida operatives partnered with the Taliban.

Any sort of stability in Afghanistan would also allow China to reap the benefits of prior economic investments in the region, including mineral rights in Afghanistan. Buried in the latest report from the U.S. inspector general overseeing reconstruction in Afghanistan was a little-noticed observation that China has dramatically increased its economic interests in Afghanistan recently, encouraging the completion of a road in the Wakhan Corridor – the sliver of land connecting the two countries. It cited an Afghan Public Works Ministry spokesperson who said, "China has expressed a huge interest for investment in Afghanistan, particularly in the mining sector, and this road will be good for that, too." The Taliban recently seized wide swaths of that territory as part of an apparent campaign to control Afghanistan's northern border crossings. 

China also seeks stability in Afghanistan for the sake of regional infrastructure projects it's already pursuing in neighboring Pakistan as a part of similar investments globally known as the Belt and Road Initiative. 

I get the impression it will all end in tears.

Finally - I will repeat the observation I have made before:  I don't understand how, in modern times, Islamic fundamentalist inspired leadership which is willing to rule on the basis of terrorising its own population retains any popularity at all.   I don't understand these societies.

 

Jam, curry, Wagner and vampires

That sums up an unusual Saturday:   we had an excess of loquats from our tree in the yard, so for the first time in my life, I tried making a jam.  Result at breakfast this morning:  pretty good.  

After that, moved into making beef rendang - sure I buy the paste (I have recommended the brand before), but chopping up the chunk of beef shin takes a while.   

While doing these time consuming activities, I got through the whole of Das Rheingold (the Opera North recorded version) on YouTube on the TV for the first time, too.  That led to me explaining over dinner that it's clear to me now what Tolkien was missing - a wage dispute by construction workers resolved by kidnapping the client's sister-in-law until they get paid.   Oh, and an ugly, lustful dwarf who, in modern terms, goes all incel after being taunted by three women that he'll never get it on, so to speak, with anyone.    Yes, the sexlessness (dare I say - insipidness) of Tolkien has never been clearer.   Then again, I haven't reached the incest in the Ring cycle yet.  Which, I wonder, was part of the reason Hitler was a Wagner groupie?  

Onto another German thing - watched the popular new Netflix film Blood Red Sky.   Yes, it's Vampires on a Plane, but gee, it's made with a heap of energy.     The movie has a poor review on Roger Ebert.com - I haven't heard of the guy who writes the reviews there, but I now know I can safely ignore him.   It wasn't perfect, but it looks great and there's not a dull moment:  I can understand why it has been popular.  

So, quite the day.

Derivative concerns

I mentioned recently that I was a few episodes into the first season of The Mandalorian and finding it enjoyable enough.

Maybe I was just tired last night (I did fall asleep briefly during it), but I found episode 4 was causing me to reconsider - this show seems to just be Westerns I've seen before set in the Star Wars universe.   Oh, there's a little bit of novel mystical cult thrown into it, and a cutesy baby Yoda, but I'm starting to resent the derivative aspects too much.    

Is this a sign of old age?   I mean, it's not as if the very first Star Wars movie wasn't derivative too - but it did seem that the way different old elements were thrown into the mix (especially, in my opinion,  the non denominational mystical religious bit) had given rise to something novel.  Then Empire Strikes Back deepened the best part of it, and after that the series mostly got stuck in various repetitions on the same narrative theme.  Well, I suppose you could say the prequels tried to do something a bit different - but they were botched in their own special way.

And I still agree thoroughly with this assessment I noted in 2019.   If only Lucas had got the Force right... 

Jeez, talk about getting desperate for talent

Alternative title:   HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*gasp for breath*HAHAHAHAAAAA!

 

 

The conservative authoritarian threat

I seem to have missed this Washington Post article from July:

A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God’s authority, and is central to Donald Trump’s GOP

The particular church it highlights is a particularly nutty sounding one in Texas, but Catallaxy taught me it's not just Protestant evangelicals who are really keen on a revival of religious authoritarianism - the conservative Catholic movement has the hots (so to speak) for any East European country with a leader, no matter if he got there democratically or not, as long as he wants to put the gays in their place and does other culture warring to their liking.   (See Hungary, Russia, Poland.)  

Update:  on the latter point, see this post by conservative Catholic Catallaxy fixture dover-beach, in his new blog which is one of the contenders for a Catallaxy replacement:

There is now a coordinated attempt to stifle any resistance to the new hegemonic order emerging in the post-Cold War era both in Europe and the Anglosphere. Consider the effort being expended on the denigration of PM Orbán in Hungary merely for offering his people a reasonable alternative to liberal globalism that would not have battered an eyelid a generation ago. Do not underestimate the viciousness of this campaign; their will to power is terrible. 

No surprise

Yes, I do recommend reading the Julian Sanchez twitter thread on this.

The only surprise is that it's the nutty Washington Times reporting this.

The problem of the Right (continued)

The thing that constantly astounds me is the lack of responsible leadership from anyone in the Republican Party.

I mean, I really doubt - perhaps this is my mistake - that they are all so universally stupid as to reject medical expertise.   But it would seem that no one in any significant position of power will tell their "base" to stop culture warring on it - they need to accept mainstream expertise, even if experts adjust their advice from time to time.  

I mean, does no one in the entire national leadership of the GOP think this is irresponsible??:

Update:  here's Allahpundit explaining the politics:

Each party is gambling that its stance on mandates will be a winner with swing voters, especially the sort of suburban parents who heavily influenced the outcome of the last election. The GOP approach, a la Ron DeSantis, is to oppose mandates of any kind. No to requiring vaccines and an emphatic no to requiring masks in schools. Dems are reprising their “safety first” pitch from last year, claiming they’re doing everything possible to keep kids safe amid a scary new Delta wave by requiring precautions while Republicans obsess about getting back to normal. Which way will voters go on that?

He doesn't seem to be interested in my point:  in a politically healthy country, the parties shouldn't be playing such intense politics over health! 

Some crypto commentary of note

At Axios:

Bitcoin is becoming part of the dollar-based financial system it once sought to displace.

Why it matters: Cryptocurrency is beloved by people who want to transact outside the reach of any government. But it's gotten mainstream enough that politicians and regulators want to co-opt it and bring it squarely within their own fields of influence — even using it to help pay for an infrastructure bill.

The big picture: As crypto assets have grown to be worth well over $1 trillion, investors and financiers have increasingly wanted to get involved in the space — without taking any kind of legal risk. 

• They've been aggressively pushing for regulatory clarity, and often see their expensive compliance departments as a comparative advantage, differentiating them from the early true believers.
• Regulation, however, would defeat much of the original purpose behind the desire to create cryptocurrency in the first place — the dream of being able to create a store of value that's untouched by government interference.

Context: When bitcoin first arrived on the scene, there was a chance governments would crush it, prosecuting anyone who used it.

• Bitcoiners dreamed instead that it would thrive under the benign neglect of the government. While egregious fraud might be prosecuted, they mostly just wanted to be left alone.
• They got their way, in some form or another, for many years. But those days are coming to an end, and we're now clearly at the beginning of the end of cryptocurrency as an anarcho-libertarian Utopia.
• Cryptocurrency's future may be as an integral part of the existing financial system, regulated just as much as any other financial product.

Driving the news: SEC chair Gary Gensler — who previously taught a course on cryptocurrencies at MIT — gave an important speech last week laying out a maximalist vision for the degree to which his agency can and should regulate the asset class.

 I'm pretty sure I can hear Sinclair Davidson sobbing somewhere in the distance...

 

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.