Conservative Catholics yearning for the days of complete control (of women)

A couple of enlightening comments at dover-beach's Catholics for Fascism (and Complete State Control of Women) blog:

 

Baguette war

A French supermarket has upset (some) Parisians by selling 30c baguettes for a few months.

(Also, have a look at the range of baguette style bread for sale in the supermarket featured - there's a lot):

 

Bill Maher and the nuttiness on the Left (an old theme here, but bears repeating)

Allahpundit notes how Bill Maher has quickly fallen out of Left wing favour (and risen in Fox News esteem) due to his recent "I'm over COVID" complaints (which included, I believe, the nonsense position that he was not going to get a booster because - well, they used to say that two was enough, so how dare medical science change its mind during an evolving pandemic?)   Maher has apparently gone on to complain about the Left going nuts in a more general sense.  (I haven't watched the clip, but I see the screenshot features the "pregnant man" emoji which my daughter told me - with amusement - that Apple had just released.)

I've always been leery of Maher as a reliable political friend - too many libertarian instincts in him are probably at the heart of it.   

And Allahpundit (and Maher) note that the problem is similar on the Right - a part of it goes nuts, and the "mainstream" stands around and fails to call it out.   It's cowardice.

But it's somewhat galling that they don't (well, at least Allahpundit doesn't) explicitly say what is clear:   the nuttiness of the Right is on topics that make it far, far more dangerous than the identity politics nuttiness on the Left. 

The Leftist extreme, for example, thinks gender is completely a choice and former men who grew up with male bodies should face no discrimination when joining a women's competition.  They get people de-platformed from Twitter and elsewhere for being mean to transgender folk, and vow never to read Harry Potter again.   They virtually beg for social media confirmation that they now look "hot" in their new body.   Academics, and sometimes researchers, do get very unfairly targeted if they are perceived to not be completely supportive of the agenda.    And in Australia, the patently obvious campaign to upgrade old Aboriginal society to the status of "civilisation" and sophistication continues apace, with sceptical and realistic voices rarely raised.  

The nutty Right, on the other hand, makes death threats to election workers, scientists and doctors continually, both on social media and directly, based on bad faith conspiracy promoted for greed by both big and small media outlets.   In America, they have no commitment to democracy and enabling greater participation in it.  They wanted to overturn a fair election, and rallied chanting death to politicians who thwarted their plan.  They do not believe in climate change and would happily burn every last bit of coal because they don't believe scientists and the evidence before their eyes.    They are happy to demonise both immigrants and their political opponents as being inherently evil.

It's clear that the conspiracy belief of the Right is priming material for Right wing terrorist acts:  its seems more by luck than anything else that there hasn't been a major incident for a while.

So yes, I would like more on the Left to speak up about extreme and unrealistic views on identity politics and culture war issues - but let's not pretend there is an equivalence of the seriousness of the problem on both sides.

Update:   I've watched the Maher clip and it is pretty weak stuff. Yes, he's upset with identity politics, but also goes on at greater length with a general libertarian whine that Democrats want to regulate too much. 

 

Appalling social media story

A Gold Coast doctor has been subjected to death threats and abuse and is living in “utter fear” of anti-vaxxers thanks to false reports that two children died in his clinic after being administered the Pfizer vaccine.

The Pacific Pines GP, Dr Wilson Chin, said “widespread panic” swept through his community when false reports spread online that the two children had died in his clinic.

The girls suffered what Chin described as a “normal” fainting episode while under observation at the clinic a fortnight ago and have since recovered.

But a post to a Facebook page purporting to be a “personal eyewitness account” wrongly claimed the girls had suffered “violent convulsions” and later died in the waiting room.

Another Facebook user posted false information describing the girls as “unresponsive when ambos got there” and encouraging others to share the post.

The backlash ultimately forced the clinic to pull out of the vaccine rollout of five to 11-year-olds after Chin and his colleagues received death threats, which have been reported to police.

But Norman Swan, hey Jason?  

Here's a link.

 

Sounds like an internal move to dump Morrison may be afoot

 

The only problem is, I don't really want him replaced by the only candidate with some degree of personal likeability - Frydenberg - because I badly want to see Labor in power again, and don't want to see anything the might make that harder.   (Also - what's the bet that try-hard, newly hatched green energy believer Tim Wilson will be part of a plan too to up his position?   A slimier ego desperate to climb the slippery pole I have rarely seen.)  
 

Top marks for positive thinking

My kids find it odd that I subscribe too, and happily watch, nearly all videos by some (presumably) Japanese guy who has a not very old Youtube channel called "Solo Travel Japan".   His speciality has been catching overnight passenger ferries in Japan, but he also does capsule hotel and other experiences.  Each video is usually about 20 minutes long, often less, so it's not a huge time commitment.

I had no idea that you could do so much travel in that country by some pretty fancy and big ferries - usually they're overnight trips, and the accommodation ranges from some pretty nice private cabins with views, to dormitory style accommodation where the sound of snoring on a crowded trip must be a problem.  They all seem to just have cafeteria style food, and he show his meals on each trip too, despite the food being pretty standard Japanese fare.

He does not appear in his videos, apart from his hand or sometimes legs, and he doesn't talk; nor does he show other people up close.   (Given the pandemic, so many of his overnight ferry trips look like he is virtually the only person on board!).  It's just a Point of View videos of a silent person making a solo short trip in Japan.  (Maybe I like it because I travelled solo, often being silent for quite a long time too, when I was in my 20's?) 

I find there is an almost meditative peacefulness and comfort in watching him following the same routine -  here he is catching the bus to the port;  now boarding and going to his cabin, checking out the amenities; let's see what he is having on his cafeteria meal tonight.  (He sometimes seems to eat huge amounts, too.)   And there is the matter of his relentlessly cheery commentary in English subtitles, the latest example of which is the reason I decided to write this post.

This last trip was on an actually quite old passenger/vehicular ferry; it had some clear rust on decks and was way below the quality of the usual inter-island ferries he has been on.   He stayed this time in a very cheap dormitory style room:

His bunk featured a blanket that was clearly old and daggy.   Yet this was his commentary, which I found such an extreme case of "looking on the bright side" that it made me laugh out loud:

 

 

OK, maybe it wasn't worth a whole post, but that commentary is funny, and a bit delightful too.  

I don't know, but it's also kind of delightful that a person can make money for a time out of really simple, but cheerful and positive, content on Youtube.   I get bored with Youtubers who are too serious and introspective (or who do podcasts that ramble on for hours) - but people who are cheerful in whatever they do, it's pleasing they can make money from being nice.

Big in Portugual

So socialists do well in Portugal...I didn't know that:

Portugal’s ruling Socialists unexpectedly won an outright majority to govern solo after snap elections on Sunday that also saw the far right make huge gains.  

The results pave the way for a stronger government under Prime Minister Antonio Costa as the country tries to boost its tourism-dependent economy, which has been badly hit by the pandemic.

Oddly:

The results bucked the trend of declining fortunes for Socialist parties in other European nations, including in Greece and France where they have been virtually wiped off the map in recent years.

 

Some Roberts tweets to agree with

 

Maybe I should read up on how ballet became ballet...

Seeing this article on Twitter, my first reaction was "yeah, it's an art form I just can't imagine being interested in.  I can understand girls being attracted to the prettiness, or I guess girliness, of the classic ballerina get-up; but how does any man or boy, straight or gay, get attracted to it?"  

And then I realised, I don't have any idea about the history of this artform and how the look of "classic" ballet became solidified into its current state.   I mean, it couldn't have sprung fully formed into that look and style.   

One day, when I've done that long promised household sock audit, I might look into it.

 

Stop panicking everyone....

...my phone with Smart Launcher is operating again.

I tried one other launcher (Niagra) and didn't like it....

First world problem (but a potentially serious one if you're unlucky)

I've used the Smart Launcher app on my phones for perhaps 5 (or more?) years now, and I've been very happy with it.   I've paid for the pro version too, and although it's had the occasional hiccup,  it's been pretty smooth sailing, and I like its features.

This morning, it had a very big problem.  It insisted that the version I was using had to be updated, and this was the first screen on my phone - the Google Play update page for the app - but it wouldn't update.  Nor would it let me return to the home page, meaning the phone couldn't be used for anything.

I could get to the phone settings and did work out soon enough how to revert to the phone's inbuilt launcher, and of course did that.  But as many people on Reddit (which the fastest source of confirmation that there was a problem) pointed out, there would be many people out there (typically, parents or older folk whose kids had set up their phone with the app for them) who would not know how to go back to the phone's default launcher so as to be able to get to the home page again.   Hence, they would have an inoperative phone due to massive error in a Smart Launcher update. 

The company has acknowledged the error and said it should be fixed within hours.  As many on Reddit have noted, this could be a serious legal problem for the company if a user wanted to make an emergency or critical call on their phone, but was prevented by not being able to get to the home page.  (It's been a few hours now - I should go check if it has been fixed.  Wait - no it hasn't.  It's now been 3 hours since I discovered the problem; I don't know at what time it started overnight.)

Like many others (again, Reddit comments are the source of information), I also tried uninstalling the launcher and re-installing, but it didn't work.   This also likely means I have to set up the launcher to my preferred setting again once it again becomes useable.

I'm sure lots of users will consider dumping the app because of this.  Whoever caused the problem will likely be out of a job, I suspect. 

 

Noah needs to meet more Australians

I like Noah Smith, and find his disparaging views of Australians a bit amusing, but also a tad unfair.  (Although I guess it's the unfairness that makes it amusing.)

Is Smith or Roberts mainly right?

There are two American internet pundits that I find myself nearly always agreeing with, or at least enjoying their takes - Noah Smith and David Roberts - but they are pretty much on opposite ends of the optimism/pessimism scale.

Noah is relentlessly optimistic and cheerful, and his free Substack article today is a good example of this:

Do we stand at the precipice of radical change?

Maybe, but perhaps we'll just putter along

The best thing about this piece is how it points out what I've been saying for a few years about Right wing catastrophic takes on the recent state of the US (and the world) - it's just politically motivated scary campfire storytelling, ignoring completely the history of how much worse American society (and the world) were faring in the 60's to the 90's:

Most Americans are now too young to remember, but in the early 1970s domestic terrorist attacks became so commonplace that they were practically ignored — over a year and a half during 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted over 2500 bombings in the U.S. Most of these attacks didn’t kill anyone — they were just bombs that blew up empty buildings. But imagine the hysteria if this was happening multiple times a day in 2022! Two left-wing radicals tried to kill President Gerald Ford within a three-week period in 1976!

And people were dying. In the late 60s and 70s, the murder rate — always much higher in the U.S. than in other rich countries — spiked to levels not seen since the 19th century, and stayed high until the late 90s....

The three decades from the mid-60s to the mid-90s were, simply put, a time of violence and madness. And let’s not forget the economic catastrophe of the late 70s stagflation, the wage stagnation between roughly 1973 and 1993, or the double-digit unemployment rates of the early 80s.

And as for looming catastrophes, eco-dystopias were already starting to appear in the 70s, but the true Sword of Damocles was nuclear war. Tens of thousands of Soviet tanks stood ready to roll into the Fulda Gap at any moment. By the late 80s, the U.S. and USSR were facing each other with over 60,000 nuclear weapons, many on hair-trigger alert.

Obviously, the whole "Flight 93 election" meme was just patent crap from the start - and exaggerating the effects of Trump era Left-ish protest (as if the country had never seen massive and damaging race related protest and riots before) was cynical self-gaslighting, promoted by the poisonous feedback loop of Right wing media and the Republican Party, and the stupid people all over the world who follow them.     

Noah then switches to talking about the genuine crisis of climate change and whether it really is the big issue that means the world has to move towards more socialist settings to see its way through.  But, given his optimism, he thinks we probably will get the problem under some sort of control:

And yet to me, it seems easily possible to imagine a future where we don’t just muddle along with business-as-usual, but in which we do address the threat of climate change with only mild disruptions of our current way of life. The biggest reason is the advance of technology. Renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles, and other green technologies have gotten so good, and so cheap, so quickly, that the economic incentives now favor decarbonization. 

I have to say, I am somewhat inclined to that view myself.  For example, I have stopped posting much about any climate change scepticism, because it is clear that the handful of contrarian scientists and their ideologically motivated supporters have been routed.   There just is no longer any point in engaging with their arguments, and it's kind of pathetic watching the losers cling to their "but I'll be proved right yet!" pleas while they are ignored by serious political leadership, and only give succour by ignorant clowns.  

As to whether we will get sufficient carbon emission reduction to prevent the really bad long term outcomes - my vague optimism extends to that too, even though I am dissatisfied with the current fiddling at the edges.  (See my recent post - The transition to clean energy - time for specifics, isn't it??)

Yet I still feel a bit dissatisfied with Noah's column, because it doesn't address the key issue that is so concerning for the future of American (and really, global) democracy and well being - the Right wing generated "epistemic crisis" that David Roberts discusses so convincingly.    

I mean, David Roberts is right in today's tweet:

It's incredibly bad that things that would have universally been considered appallingly anti-democratic, fascist worthy actions are now treated by half of the elected politicians to America as if they are just unremarkable "it's how we do business now" part of the landscape.  And people will still vote for those politicians!   As someone said in a tweet following:

As many have said, even worse than Trump himself is the cowardice of the Republican Party to stand up to him.   But this is not mattering to voters.   

I posted recently that if Right wing media is at the core of poisonous Right wing politics in America, maybe if Rupert and his son had a change of heart the turnaound in the political atmosphere could, in theory, be pretty quick?    If you had a new owner announce "we will not be the network of demonisation of Democrats and centrists politics anymore - it is harming the country" and sacked all its current evening line up - how long would it take to get politics back to reason?

I know this is wildly unlikey, and perhaps short of key members of the Murdoch family going down in a plane over a volcano (we all have our dreams), it's not going to happen.   Hence, the Robert's concern about the poor prospects for reasonableness in near-future American politics seems warranted, at least for the time being.   

PS:  another scenario for relatively rapid improvement - Trump and certain key supporters going down in civil or criminal trials.   I still strongly suspect that this is what at least a significant proportion of Republican old blood are hoping for - but it remains unclear how long the heart of the party is going to be tainted by making excuses for a wannabe fascist.   And I still see the Right wing media as the more crucial change needed.    

Update:   I have been having some further thoughts about this.  In particular, as to why, when things were pretty bad in those earlier decades, people (including me) did still retain a long term optimism that feels harder to have now.

I think I have worked it out.

Yes, the United States (and the West, generally speaking) did just "putter along" out of the days of radicalism and violence of the decades of the 60's to 90's;  and that does suggest that it will work its way out of the current social turbulence, too.   (Which isn't, in violence terms, actually as bad as the earlier period, as Noah correctly argues.)  

But the reason it feels different this time is that such a large part of the nation cannot even see that it is being radical.  Because, yes, sympathy to a idiot failed President's direct attempts to have an election overturned on false and imaginary claims is a radical position!  Failing to see the fascism in continual calls at rallies to have your political opponent locked up on drummed up charges, and calling all media that doesn't toe your line "the enemy of the people" is radical!    Yet there is a very big part of the American population that cannot see this as so bad - or even think it is warranted. 

The radicalism of Leftist terrorists in the 60's and 70's was something that the country and its media did not doubt.   The Right wing radicalism that led to (say) the Oklahoma bombing was not up for dispute.  The radical element in the country was small and knew it was radical.  Today it is much, much larger, and really doesn't know it.

To take an example of something unique to these times: the absurd Right's vilification of expertise and wholesale belief in conspiracy means that ordinary people doing their job are under threat in a way that is really novel - see the terrible (and badly under-reported) story of election workers who have been terrorised for purely imaginary actions, and the recent report in the Washington Post about the security that Fauci now has to live through due to the perm-haired idiot of a Senator and gormless media figures like Tucker Carlson.   In fact, let's quote that report:

“There is no truth,” Fauci says, for effect. “There is no fact.” People believe hydroxychloroquine works because an Internet charlatan claims it does. People believe the 2020 election was stolen because a former president says so. People believe that Fauci killed millions of people for the good of his stock portfolio because it’s implied by TV pundits, Internet trolls and even elected leaders. Fauci is unnerved by “the almost incomprehensible culture of lies” that has spread among the populace, infected major organs of the government, manifested as ghastly threats against him and his family. His office staff, normally focused on communicating science to the public, has been conscripted into skirmishes over conspiracy theories and misinformation.

“It is very, very upending to live through this,” Fauci says, seated at his kitchen table in the midwinter light. He pauses. “I’m trying to get the right word for it.” He is examining himself now, at 81, in the shadow of the past two years. “It has shaken me a bit.”

The way he can comprehend the situation is in the context of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. There it was, on live TV, an experiment as clear as day: The abandonment of truth has seismic consequences.

Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can’t slide a whole country into an MRI machine.

“There’s no diagnosis for this,” Fauci says. “I don’t know what is going on.”

Exactly.  

This is what gives me pause about the nation "puttering along" out of its current state.   

Which leads me to the "civil war" issue.  I think Noah is sceptical of takes along those lines too, but so is David Roberts.  The culture war and political fractures do tend to run along an educational and urban/rural divide, meaning that there is no realistic way the nation can be divided geographically.   And, happily, because the military is led by well educated people, the danger of Trump was clear to nearly all in the Pentagon, and they were not going to support him in a ridiculous coup.

So no, the epistemic crisis is not going to lead to civil war.  I suppose that is a kind of "optimism".   But on the downside, it's hard to see how it can't continue leaving the country in a political paralysis on certain key issues, and weaken effective democracy.  Until the Right comes to its senses, the "puttering out" of the current problems is going to be very protracted, disheartening, and potentially dangerous.  

Some science talk about "Don't Look Up"

I've seen "Dr Becky" before - she's quite an engaging Youtuber, but I've only just subscribed - and her assessment of the science around Don't Look Up is worth watching, even if she doesn't talk about comets and their mineral content (which I thought was probably the biggest single silly science problem in the whole movie):

The Scots and the Inuit

I stumbled across this short article, talking about how the Scots whalers were not all mad rabble-rousers, as I would have thought they might be.  Didn't know that Arthur Conan Doyle had this experience, either:

The Arctic Bar in Dundee is an unprepossessing pub with a modern frontage, but inside the dusty harpoon guns and photographs of ice bound ships displayed around the walls indicate that this was once the pub where Victorian whaler men would go to collect their pay at the end of a six month voyage.

There are many reminders of Dundee’s whaling past around the city. The new Victoria and Albert museum is built in the shape of a ship, seeming to set out over the Tay, because it stands on the site of what was once the Earl Grey dock where whaling boats berthed over the last two centuries. Next to it at Discovery Point lies the ship RRS Discovery – Scott commissioned this converted whaling ship, with its triple-reinforced hulls, for his Antarctic expedition.

The McManus Museum of Dundee holds many Inuit artefacts brought back by Victorian whaler men, a stunning collection of photographs of Inuit and whaling boats crews, and several diaries written by various ships’ surgeons – usually medical students wanting adventure and funds for the summer.

Arthur Conan Doyle, while serving as a student surgeon on a whaler, wrote a ghost story about an Arctic voyage. From early Victorian times, writers have penned gothic tales about the sublime and savage Arctic wilderness and the journey to man’s darkest heart that six months of darkness can cause....

Here's the most interesting bit:

For my novel A Woman Made of Snow, however, I wanted to evoke the daily lives of the whaler men and the Inuit that they worked and lived with. The Dundee whaling industry lasted longer than in any other whaling port in Scotland and England. With steady work available and a strong church tradition the whaler men of Dundee were by and large sober artisans – though with plenty of the famous ‘wild rough lot’ found in most whaling ports. Conan Doyle found the working class Scots crew he sailed with steady and educated, sober and religious. He enjoyed talking with the crew and relished joining in with hunting expeditions.

 

 

Much amusement to be had in reviews of Rogan and Peterson having a 4 hour chat

In Rolling Stone:

There is a meditative quality to both Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson’s work that sucks you in. For Rogan, it is his voice — a soft, curious, always credulous murmur that lends itself to explaining complicated topics. Watching Rogan deconstruct a mixed martial arts fight can be a genuine pleasure for fans of the sport, like listening to a close friend really nerd out over something they’re passionate about. Peterson is not as blessed sonically — he sounds like Kermit the Frog as a freshman philosophy major — but he too projects the same blithe confidence in his own words that can make almost any topic sound compelling. 

The only problem is, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are two of the dumbest people on earth. The wildly successful podcast host and self-help author’s careers have intersected and built on one another multiple times, as their core audience of disaffected young men is largely the same. Their paths crossed once again this week in a four-hour marathon conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, during which Peterson bizarrely and very proudly wore a tuxedo. Their topics were varied, but almost all of them were intensely stupid, if not incoherent.

....

This sort of credulity is both Rogan’s biggest draw and his worst tendency. Rogan has built his brand around open-mindedness, which he passes off as “free thinking.” But in practice, instead of thinking about what his guests are saying to him, Rogan’s first instinct is to “mmhm” his way through topics that frequently stray into conspiracies, bigotry, or simple stupidity. Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines.

At Gizmodo, the nicely sarcastic headline:

Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan Talking About Climate Change Will Make Your Brain Dissolve

The big boys had a big thinky about climate change.

 

A science fiction idea making progress

In The Guardian:

A frog has regrown a lost leg after being treated with a cocktail of drugs in a significant advance for regenerative medicine.

The African clawed frog, which is naturally unable to regenerate its limbs, was treated with the drugs for just 24 hours and this prompted an 18-month period of regrowth of a functional leg. The demonstration raises the prospect that in the future drugs could be used to switch on similar untapped abilities for regeneration in human patients to restore tissues or organs lost to disease or injury.

“It’s exciting to see that the drugs we selected were helping to create an almost complete limb,” said Nirosha Murugan of Tufts University in Massachusetts and first author of the paper. “The fact that it required only a brief exposure to the drugs to set in motion a months-long regeneration process suggests that frogs and perhaps other animals may have dormant regenerative capabilities that can be triggered into action.”

The ridiculous Peterson

He's getting roasted for a very stupid opening on climate change:

His position: climate is everything, and you can't model everything so climate change is crap.  

Some people have generously explained what he was probably trying to say:

...but as the Tweet says  it's a line of attack which displays both ignorance and arrogance.

And these tweets following sum up the impression both Rogan and Peterson (but more especially Rogan) give me, on any topic:

And for services to the IPA...

Do all American conservatives have brain damage?

It is breathtakingly stupid that American conservatives should rush to play a game of "whataboutism" to try to downplay how Trump talked about the press compared to Biden's very occasional snappiness with reporters.

There is just zero comparison.

How thick and dumb do you have to be to not see the fascist nature of continually, at rallies, and elsewhere, calling all mainstream networks and journalists "the enemy of the people" unless they are bootlickers to the most absurd character ever to hold the Presidency; and outright lying about things like "and look up the back, they're turning the cameras off now."    

And you know what - it's weird, but the absolutely dumbest and most dishonest version of an American conservative seems to be gay conservative commentators - see Gateway Pundit and the awful Glenn Greenwald.   Greenwald's denunciation of Biden's hot mic snark is so weirdly over the top that it seems many assumed he was being sarcastic, but the following tweets just confirm he is an absolute partisan nut with not an iota of a sense of perspective. 

The Murdoch and the Russians questions

Does Murdoch think Putin empowerment by invading Ukraine is a good idea?    If not, why is he relaxed (well, relaxed enough not to be exercising any editorial control) about Fox News gee-ing up the Trumpist conservatives into taking Putin's side?   Is it really worth the money in the US, or does he think  there is money to be made in Russia too?   Is he smart enough to admit that Brexit is a populist failure?  Surely he doesn't think he has successfully "punished" the Europeans, who he complained he cannot control, by forcing Britain out of the EU?   Is he letting Fox's most influential "stars" take Putin's side as a second attempt at punishing Europe for not letting him do whatever he wants?  

So many questions.  Many brought to mind by David Frum:

 

I could come up with a better religion than this..

From a book review in the New York Times, about a young-ish enlightenment seeking trekker (and internet figure) who disappeared in a Himalayan valley knows for its trekker disappearances:

What animates Shetler? We learn that he’s the child of divorce, on the one hand having a father whose own experiences in India heavily influenced Shetler (as did their father-and-teenage-son partaking of hallucinogens) and a mother whose spiritual influence can be attributed to the Hindu-inflected Eckankar religion, birthed in the 1960s by Paul Twitchell, a onetime colleague of L. Ron Hubbard, promoting “soul travel,” the chanting of the word “Hu,” and a belief system said to have begun when an essence known as Gakko came to Earth six million years ago from the city of Retz on Venus.

I have heard of Eckankar, but never bothered reading up on its esoteric beliefs.

He's looking different

Is it just me, or does Newt Gingrich not even look like Newt Gingrich any more?    

He's aged 78 now.

Go home Arabs

We don't hear much about this in the West - but France 24 discusses the rise of anti-Arab sentiment in Turkey, which is such a troubled country now:

Homelessness and meth

So, it seems there is some discussion going on as to whether America's chronic homelessness problem is largely a result of a new form of meth that has been flooding in from Mexico.

A guy who wrote a book about it says:

I don’t know what is causing this very quick descent into psychosis, symptoms of schizophrenia, etc., among people using the meth that’s now on the street nationwide. I said this in the book.

It could indeed be the staggering quantities of the drug nationwide — certainly a byproduct of how P2P meth is made — that leads in turn to far greater consumption. It could indeed be its alarming potency. As I state in the book, there’s no neuroscience on this — no studies of the effects of today’s street meth on rats or mice. I hope the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will fund those studies, using authentic street meth from around the country.

In my book, I’m giving street reporting — just talking with folks who work or have lived in this world — because there are no studies. If there were any, I’d have cited them.

Also, people end up homeless for many reasons. A shredded safety net, release from prison without any family support, registered sex offenders who can’t find housing in the limited areas they’re allowed to live in, massive childhood trauma, etc. The list is probably as long and complex as the people who are homeless. I’m quite sure the high cost of housing is among the reasons for many people.

But people whose problem is a lost job or an expensive surgery with no health insurance forcing them out of housing do not collapse into a tent on the street. They usually have family support, friends on whose couch they can sleep. Not so with folks for whom using meth is the issue.

What’s more, meth’s prevalence is now so complete that once someone is homeless (for whatever reason) it’s quite easy to fall into using the drug. Meth-induced psychosis allows a user to escape the reality of living on the street. Getting out of homelessness then becomes a much more difficult task. My reporting shows that often users do not return to their former state of mental acuity once they stop using this meth. Recovery of brain faculties can take months.

Despite all this, on the list of causes of homelessness, this meth surge and meth-induced psychosis seems to me, after a lot of reporting on it, is the only topic that appears taboo to discuss in many activist/advocate circles. The issue’s narrative is almost entirely about the high cost of housing. Nothing else seems permitted. There’s almost a prohibition, a woke censorship, that prevents meth from being discussed.

Interesting...

 

Take your medicine

As reported in Science: 

Pill derived from human feces treats recurrent gut infections

...The new pill, called SER-109 and made by Seres Therapeutics, is derived from human feces purified to winnow down the resident microbes. Stool from prescreened donors is treated with ethanol, which kills many viruses, fungi, and “vegetative” bacteria—those in a state of growth and reproduction. Left behind are bacteria that can form hearty, thick-walled structures called spores, many of them from the common phylum Firmicutes. Bacteria in this group are valuable because they can compete with C. difficile in the gut, “taking its space and its food and its carbon sources,” says Seres Chief Medical Officer Lisa von Moltke; the Firmicutes also change the composition of bile acids in the intestines, making the environment less hospitable for C. difficile, she notes.

Still, you would want that gel coating to work well...

In glass half full news...

...Paul Waldman in the Washington Post notes what I have read elsewhere - despite Democrat jerks Manchin and Sinema defending the filibuster, what's more remarkable is that every other Democrat in the Senate has turned against it.   Apparently, this was not the uniform opinion even relatively recently.

A recovery story

It's not that I visit the Jezebel website out of habit, but someone on Twitter linked to this article: 

I Got Sober in the Pandemic. It Saved My Life.

and I thought it was a pretty good piece about someone recovering from too much alcohol and drugs, and depression.

Chonky Junkers

More in the series "What Google wanted me to learn about last night."   It was quite interesting, and this guy's channel is full of esoteric historical aircraft information, by the looks: 

Encouraging news

Back to the perennial favourite - the Death of God

Hey, I quite liked this essay at Aeon:  How to Pray to a dead God.  

There are a lot of familiar names in it, and some new-ish stuff I don't recall reading before.   This section, for example:

Challenges to uncomplicated faith – or uncomplicated lack of faith – have always been within religion. It is a dialectic at the heart of spiritual experience. Perhaps the greatest scandal of disenchantment is that the answer of how to pray to a dead God precedes God’s death. Within Christianity there is a tradition known as ‘apophatic theology’, often associated with Greek Orthodoxy. Apophatic theology emphasises that God – the divine, the sacred, the transcendent, the noumenal – can’t be expressed in language. God is not something – God is the very ground of being. Those who practised apophatic theology – 2nd-century Clement of Alexandria, 4th-century Gregory of Nyssa, and 6th-century Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite – promulgated a method that has come to be known as the via negativa. According to this approach, nothing positive can be said about God that is true, not even that He exists. ‘We do not know what God is,’ the 9th-century Irish theologian John Scotus Eriugena wrote. ‘God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not’ [my emphasis].

 How these apophatic theologians approached the transcendent in the centuries before Nietzsche’s infamous theocide was to understand that God is found not in descriptions, dogmas, creeds, theologies or anything else. Even belief in God tells us nothing about God, this abyss, this void, this being beyond all comprehension. Far from being simple atheists, the apophatic theologians had God at the forefront of their thoughts, in a place closer than their hearts even if unutterable. This is the answer of how to pray to a ‘dead God’: by understanding that neither the word ‘dead’ nor ‘God’ means anything at all.

 Well, that's one way to deal with a problem.  

[Update insert:  oddly, it reminds me of the opening lyrics of Birdhouse in Your Soul:

I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am

 

I didn't realise they were summarising mystical/radical theology.]

I've always found the question of religion's response to the scientific changes in the understanding of the age of the planet, the size of the universe, and human nature, to be terribly interesting; and as I have written before, the older you get, the greater perspective you have on how it is not so long ago that these radical changes in understanding happened.   We're still living within the lifetime of people who were young when Einstein revolutionised physics and an understanding of the scale of the universe was found at the end of telescope.  It was only 50 or so years before that that evolution was being hotly debated as a new idea.   Is it any wonder this is still having repercussions on religions going back a couple of thousand years before these changes in understanding?

Yet, it seems to me that quite a lot of people never think of this perspective - that the (seemingly newly invigorated) war within the Churches between conservatives and liberals are connected to this problem that is actually pretty new and still being worked through.

The true death toll of COVID

Two articles I have noticed about this:   one in Nature that starts:

On 1 November, the global death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic passed 5 million, official data suggested. It has now reached 5.5 million. But that figure is a significant underestimate. Records of excess mortality — a metric that involves comparing all deaths recorded with those expected to occur — show many more people than this have died in the pandemic.

Working out how many more is a complex research challenge. It is not as simple as just counting up each country’s excess mortality figures. Some official data in this regard are flawed, scientists have found. And more than 100 countries do not collect reliable statistics on expected or actual deaths at all, or do not release them in a timely manner.

And after explaining the complexities, concludes with this:

Amid the search for ways to count deaths, Andrew Noymer, a demographer at the University of California, Irvine, says the pandemic and the increased demand for real-time mortality figures highlight a demographic shortcoming that goes back decades: many countries simply don’t collect good data on births, deaths and other vital statistics. “Demographers have been part of the problem, because we have helped to put band-aids on this for 60 years. We’ve developed all sorts of techniques to estimate demographic rates in the absence of hard data,” he says.

That means the true death toll of COVID-19 might always be disputed. “We still don’t know how many people died in the 1918 [flu] pandemic, but I always figured we would know pretty well how many people would die in the next one, because we live in the modern world,” Noymer says. “But we don’t actually, and that’s kind of sad for me as a demographer.”

Over at Science, the particular difficulties of counting deaths in India is discussed in detail in a paper.  (I have always said that I would not be surprised if the true death rate effect of heat waves in that country was not clear at all.)   Here's the abstract:

India’s national COVID death totals remain undetermined. Using an independent nationally representative survey of 0.14 million (M) adults, we compared COVID mortality during the 2020 and 2021 viral waves to expected all-cause mortality. COVID constituted 29% (95%CI 28-31%) of deaths from June 2020-July 2021, corresponding to 3.2M (3.1-3.4) deaths, of which 2.7M (2.6-2.9) occurred in April-July 2021 (when COVID doubled all-cause mortality). A sub-survey of 57,000 adults showed similar temporal increases in mortality with COVID and non-COVID deaths peaking similarly. Two government data sources found that, when compared to pre-pandemic periods, all-cause mortality was 27% (23-32%) higher in 0.2M health facilities and 26% (21-31%) higher in civil registration deaths in ten states; both increases occurred mostly in 2021. The analyses find that India’s cumulative COVID deaths by September 2021 were 6-7 times higher than reported officially.

 

This is making "King Kong" island more believable

I'm still really surprised at how long it is taking to get a good idea of the amount of damage in Tonga.   It has reminded me of the start of King Kong, with an island that is unobservable.   If ever we have a significant meteor strike causing tsunamis all over the Pacific, it's obviously going to take ages to learn the full extent of what has happened.

The ABC notes:

Tonga's internet could be down for more than two weeks after a violent volcanic eruption cut the kingdom's only undersea communications cable, isolating the country from contact with the outside world.

Surely Elon Musk ought to be promoting Starlink private internet services as a solution to this problem?  

Another thing that had escaped my attention, until now

I don't have much interest in language as a topic, which probably explains why it had escaped my attention (until Google wanted me to learn it - yes I am talking recommendations on Youtube again) that it is widely held that the Koreans have the easiest writing system (alphabet) ever invented. 

   

Huh.  I just thought it looked weird, but as I say, languages are not my "thing". 

 

The big bang in Tonga

I'm kind of surprised, in this modern day of communications, that Tonga could apparently be so easily cut off from the rest of the world.   What about satellite phones?   Do all governments keep a bunch of them on hand in case cables are cut?   But then, I thought, maybe satellite phones don't do well under a giant cloud of volcanic ash?   Anyway, some communications have taken place, apparently, but using what system?

 It also would not be at all surprising to see some global cooling as a result of this:

 

Further evidence that all smart, likeable people like They Might be Giants

(I don't care for the Pixies, though.)

Steamy, boring personal news

I bought a new steam iron and it's good to be ironing with steam again.  [Oh my.  I just checked  and it would appear that I have been putting up with using a water spray bottle while ironing, instead of using a continuous stream of steam, for just over 5 years!  How did I last so long?]

Gone with Tefal this time - this one:

The company makes a song and dance about having "anti-calc" systems which involve openings into the iron and the ability to remove scale (or bits of it.)   I was thinking of just using distilled water in it (as I happen to have some in the garage), but they actually recommend against using it!   

I am a tad sceptical, but we will see. 

People won't freeze to death in their Tesla

I had been wondering about this:  in frigid climates, if people drive electric cars, how long can the battery keep the interior warm if they are stuck in traffic for a very long time, as was the case recently in Virginia?

It turns out a guy on Youtube ran a test on two Tesla models, at least, and the results were pretty impressive.   Starting at a 90% charge, and keeping the inside at a nice 21 degrees C (70F), and without any human body warmth to help maintain the interior temperature, the test indicated the batteries should last well over a day, perhaps 36 hours.   (And in reality, people might turn the heater down to under 20 degrees if they have concerns about how much power was left.)    This is better than I would have expected, to be honest.

Here's the video:

Biden being punished for things beyond his control

I have no doubt at all that Biden is the one who is getting punished in public opinion polls for things not  within his control:

* the intransigence of two conservative Democrat Senators.   Manchin (who tells lies about the filibuster) and Sinema do appear to be just awful people who, if they had principles, would get out of their party;

* a COVID variant which the behaviour of the Right has made much worse;

* inflation which is thought to be at a temporary high.

I think I have to stop following moron Creighton

 Also:

 It's pretty simple:  it takes a jerk to like a jerk.

Rogan tactics noted

So Joe Rogan, who I have never cared to listen to, got very publicly corrected on a COVID/vaccination risk point, and didn't like it, as explained in these tweets:

 

Filibuster commentary

The COVID messaging wars - shouldn't the message be "the importance of consensus"?

Man, I'm sick of the COVID messaging/expertise wars.   I read the article yesterday in the AFR (which I can't link to now as paywall is up), about the fight between Nick Coatesworth and "Ozsage", which started:

A year ago, when he was Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Nick Coatsworth told colleagues to watch out for a group of doctors and academics who, he felt, were so concerned by SARS-CoV-2 they would advocate for excessive measures against the virus.

Yet Coatesworth himself was partially wrong in his pooh-poohing of 25,000 a day from Omicron:

University of NSW modelling has suggested NSW could have up to 25,000 new cases a day by February - eight times higher than the current number. 

However, Dr Coatsworth slammed that figure as ­not 'accurate', challenging claims by clinical immunologist Dr Dan Suan that the state was 'sleepwalking into an Omicron disaster'.

Sure, you might say he turned out to be right "in the big picture" on his very early guess (because, really, that's all it could have been) that Omicron would result in much lower hospitalisation and might, maybe, be (kind of?) the end of COVID.   (Although, as far as I can tell, it is still completely unknown how much protection an Omicron infection might give against future variants.)  

I've complained from the start of the pandemic, pretty much, that people on all sides seemed to be overconfident of their positions on the basis of very clearly complicated and early information that would be very hard to sort out and take years in some cases to understand well.    

If anything, it has made me think of the importance of consensus in science and policy matters - you will always get a range of opinion even from normally credible experts, and there will always be the influence of personal and social political philosophy on expert's views as to how to respond.  But that doesn't mean that there is no such thing as valid expertise on which to draw reasonable policy responses.

The important thing, I think, should be is to look at a science and policy consensus position, and always have sufficient regard to the uncertainties of novel and evolving events.   

Pyramid scheme that also wastes huge amounts of energy

 

Has Boris Johnson given all Conservatives permission to look ridiculous?

 

Cost of weather and climate disasters in USA

The report by NOAA has some good analysis of the cost of weather/climate disasters in the US over recent years.  I took this screenshot from it:

A reminder:  conservative wingnuts obsess over the cost of BLM rioting - which was widely reported last year as probably ending up costing insurance between $1 to $2 billion.

Personal COVID update

My daughter started feeling over her COVID on Sunday, with no symptoms yesterday and today.  She (and the rest of the family) are supposed to have RAT's today, the 6th day after her positive test was taken, but the problem was - how to get them.   Apparently, there was a fair chance we could get them free if we went to a testing clinic, but as far as I know, people are still lining up for hours (whether in  or out of a car) to get processed.  (Last week, apparently, a friend of my daughter and her Mum went at 3 am to line up in their car for a test - and there were already 30 cars ahead of them.  It took until 9 am!)

So, although the official rules for isolation say that I wasn't supposed to leave the house, as I had taken a negative RAT last Friday, and did not have any symptoms since, yesterday I decided to check 4 or 5 chemists near me, mainly 3 Chemist Warehouse outlets.   No tests were to be found, and I went both in the morning and afternoon.  People were practically stalking delivery vans, asking the guy if his delivery included tests.   (I did ask too, at a smaller chemist.)    People are obviously very happy to use these tests, and pay for them, if only they were available.

But then, behold, Facebook did something useful for once, and I got a text at about 7.30pm from my worker that they were available at Coles nearest me.  They were selling only one pack per customer (or two tests), and so my wife (no symptoms either) came with me.  Success!

About to test my daughter...she will be irate if it's positive!

Update:  I reckon the test came back a clear "invalid".  Ugh.  I don't entirely trust this brand.  My son's test didn't seem to give a clear result either.

Update 2:  my wife and I tested negative, clearly.  That's good, at least.  Meanwhile, the government advice as to coming out of isolation for even the diagnosed is somewhat ambiguous.   Clearly, though, they are changing the rules almost every day to deal with the problem with testing such a large number of people who would like a test, but can't get their hands on one.

 

Richard's nutty obsession

I had to stop following this guy on Twitter, because his scores of oddball tweets every day were just too much to put up with, for the occasional one that I might be of genuine interest.  But someone else has re-tweeted this, and it did remind that I don't think I have posted before about his absolutely nutty obsession with the (alleged) outrageousness of children wearing masks.  Fortunately, some people in tweets are starting to tell him he's ridiculous:

 

Excess deaths and COVID - UK edition

I still don't know why it is that Sky News UK is allowed to be sensible and responsible in terms of its reporting and commentary on things like climate change and COVID, while Rupert wants Sky News Australia (at least at night) to be a wingnutty branch of Fox News in its takes.   

Anyway, this explanation and analysis today of excess deaths in the UK from COVID is well done:

 

It illustrates why I think the correct line to take with wingnuttery in the Australian blogosphere that insists this was never a "serious" pandemic is just "you are too stupid to engage with".  (The only trouble being, they vote!)

The cost of climate change

I think this is quite a balanced take on the matter of the increasing cost of natural disasters to the world, and the relationship with climate change, from DW News: