Everything Everywhere discussed (with religion and philosophy thrown in)

I went and saw the well reviewed movie Everything Everywhere All at Once on the weekend, and as it happens, this is the second Hollywood (or TV) prompt to talk yet again about Buddhism, as I recently (finally) finished watching the last season of The Good Place, and the final few episodes incorporated Buddhist ideas too.

First, the movie as an experience:   I enjoyed it and thought it well worth seeing, and it's definitely the type of movie that is  great to see with someone who wants to talk about its merits and problems afterwards.  It isn't perfect, and I reckon has been somewhat too highly praised for what it is - a relatively low budget science fictiony jumble of mixed philosophic messages and emotional themes that drown a bit in the somewhat sophomoric urge to rely on extreme silliness for laughs.   (I share broadly the sentiment in this Washington Post review.) I mean, I did laugh, but if I were a movie producer, I would have encouraged dropping some of the silliest bits, and the movie would be better shortened by about 10 or 15 minutes anyway.   On the upside, it is surprisingly well acted by all, and hearing "Short Round" as an excitable adult was particularly pleasing.  I did find it touching, too.   Yet I wish it dealt with the issues of the meaning of life in a somewhat clearer fashion.   Still, it is great to see original content of this type in the cinema again.

NOW FOR THE SPOILER WARNING

First, I want to talk about the nature of the multiverse in this movie.  Maybe I am mistaken, it seems early in the movie that the "splitting" is reliant mainly on individual choices; but then again, in one sequence it's explained that most universes end up without the conditions suitable for life, which would indicate that it is the "Many Worlds" of quantum mechanics.   Does the Many Worlds theory allow for individual life choices to be a form of "measurement" that cause a split?   I'm not entirely sure.   [And, to get technical, a video I watched this morning explains how Many Worlds works by removing the measurement problem.  But I still think you have to have something that is like a measurement for a split to happen.]  I guess it doesn't matter much, except that the idea of a (near?) infinite number of lifeless multiverses tends to point one more strongly to the "nothing matters" nihilism that is one of the suggestions of the movie.  

The clearest Buddhist vibe I got from it was the all knowing version of the daughter wanting to achieve annihilation by entering the black hole-ish bagel of doom.   It strongly suggested the idea of nirvana and a full dissolution of the idea of the self as an end to suffering.    There is a short thread on Reddit in which a few people comment on the Buddhist aspects, although none specifically mention nirvana.

The movie does raise the ambiguity of Buddhist thought which seems on one level to suggest "nothing matters", but on the other, that it is important to respond to the universe's meaninglessness with kindness (or compassion, being the favoured Buddhist term) to others.

If I Google "Buddhism and nihilism" there is lots of discussion of the topic - with Buddhists arguing that the "no self" and their view of the world is not really nihilistic at all.   Some also raise the connection with existentialism - it's pretty obvious.

There is always the argument, I guess, that if you can recognise that compassion has purpose and "meaning", it's not really a meaningless universe already.   CS Lewis used to argue this, and while I don't think it's a perfect argument, it still has an intuitive appeal.

There are two ways of thinking about how meaning in the universe could be derived:  one from the top down (the Gods set the rules, or may be subject to the rules themselves);  the other is from the bottom up (existentialism, or the Tiplerian idea that sociobiology and economic games theory means that altruism and love are the natural order of the universe.)   I still like Tipler's idea that it's really all a circle (annoyingly, that bland earworm song from Lost Horizon frequently pops into head when I think about this) - so that the future superintelligence that becomes God has to incorporate love and altruism, and at the end of time also kicks off the whole Big Bang.   Unfortunately, since his prediction of the mass of the Higgs boson did not work out, I don't know whether he is depressed now or has come up with a work around.  

There's also the Tolstoy (and I suppose, Kierkegaard) approach of just saying this is beyond the reach of rationality, and you take it on a leap of faith.   From Toltstoy, working out a solution to his depression caused by peaking relatively young, and thinking too much:

Philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but only replies that the question cannot be solved by it — that for it the solution remains indefinite.

Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible to seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite is included in the question. And I understood that, however irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no solution.

So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live humanity has another irrational knowledge — faith which makes it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible.

Perhaps someone in the Reddit thread summarises the movie well enough:

The overarching theme of the movie is "nothing matters". I believe that a central question in Buddhism is "if nothing matters, then what is the point of life?"

When the daughter sees the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, she embraces chaos takes a path of destruction. In particular, she shuns happy moments since she sees they always come to an end.The father sees this chaos and dedicates his live(s) to fighting it.

The father says something along the lines of "I choose to fight with love", and even pleads with everyone to stop fighting in the finale.

When the mother discovers the multiverse, she sees that there's no point of chasing "what ifs" and regrets. Instead, she learns to live in whatever universe she happens to be in and embrace the few moments of meaning and joy, but also the sadness and suffering that comes along with it.

I believe that these three behaviors reflect the unenlightened and enlightened perspectives -- embracing chaos or chasing the good moments of life are both fruitless efforts. Ultimately, the path to living life without suffering requires being unattached to the highs and lows while still accepting and living in them as they come.

It still gives the impression of Buddhism as a sort of emotionally deadening religion/philosophy, though:  as if the ideal is not to feel too strongly about anything.   And it still raises the question of whether something has to matter in order to be concerned that "nothing matters"?   Also, the Dalai Lama seems pretty happy (and his branch of Buddhism is not even my favourite.)   That suggests that embracing happiness is fine.

This is something I still need to read more about....

Oh, and I suppose I should discuss briefly the ending of The Good Place, too.  The afterlife underwent a re-organisation that allowed for "re-testing" - essentially it was a universal salvation scheme combined with reincarnation to learn lessons to become a better person who really does deserve "the Good Place".   But the eternal heaven started to bore the saved, so "meaning" was reincorporated by allowing voluntary annihilation.  And three of the four main characters did, in the final episode, decide to take that option.   Not because of unhappiness, as in Everything Everywhere, but because a sense of satisfaction that everything to be done and achieved had been done.   We see what happens when the last one (Eleanor) walks though the gate, and her soul dissipates into sparks of light that are seen having a positive influence on someone still on earth - sort of a diffuse bit of karma sprinkles to influence the world.  More than a tad Buddhist, I'm sure you'll agree.  (And the show mentions Buddhism specifically, too.)

The problem I have always had with such musings is that it's pressing rationality too far:  none of us can imagine infinity as an experiential thing.  It's a very dubious exercise to talk about Heaven as an infinite extension of what a good life on Earth is like, and thereby to assume that boredom with experiencing things in a temporal realm would be reflected in "life" that is outside of time.   

I drawn more to the idea that individual souls can be absorbed into the Godhead:

The third view is that of the Vishishtadvaita Vedanta school. Here, liberation occurs when the soul enters into the oneness of God, rather as a drop of water merges into the ocean, while paradoxically maintaining its individual identity.

...with perhaps the possibility that the individual re-appears as needed.   But this is really something that we can't get properly imagine, and it is a bit silly to build stories on it that are too detailed. 

Is the nuthouse Right that claims Biden is demented paying attention to how their culture war hero is looking?

I don't know about Stross's musing, but yeah, the continual gripping of the table, and general posture, looked bad.

The fine print (on the Disney wars)

I see this in the Washington Post report on the DeSantis dummy spit over Disney not supporting his moral panic "don't say gay" legislation: 

DeSantis started feuding with the Walt Disney Company nearly a month ago, when chief executive Bob Chapek issued a statement criticizing a parental rights law that prohibits discussions of gender issues in public school classes up to third grade and potentially through high school. Since then, DeSantis has lambasted what he described as a “woke ideology” at the company.

Earlier this week, the governor issued a proclamation calling for the repeal of a 1967 deal that allowed the company to become its own local government on the 40-square-mile property that Walt Disney bought earlier that decade. The Reedy Creek Improvement District allows Disney to bypass local building ordinances and some other rules, and also made it responsible for public services such as fire and rescue, sewage treatment, and road maintenance.

The bill to unravel the special district would not take effect until June 2023, giving Disney and lawmakers an off-ramp. “This is a repealable bill,” Roach said. “It doesn’t take more than the stroke of a pen to undo it. We’ll see what happens next.”

Disney has not commented on the legislation. The company, which has donated millions of dollars to politicians in Florida, mostly Republicans, paused donations in the state after the parental rights bill passed.

I doubt the bill will ever go into effect, and that DeSantis will come out the loser.  

Update:  of bigger interest to democracy, and the crazy way the American system lets it be undermined, is this:

After months of back and forth, lawmakers in Florida have passed Gov. Ron DeSantis' controversial congressional district voting map — and have pushed forward his last-minute plan to scrap Disney World's special regulatory status in the state...

The map will give Republicans a 20-8 seat advantage in a state where registered Democratic and Republican voters are nearly equal in number. It will also eliminate two congressional districts held by African American Democrats: Rep. Al Lawson of Tallahassee and Rep. Val Demings of Orlando.

And we're supposed to believe he told Putin he'd be nuked if he made a move on Ukraine?

 

A worry

An interesting observation

 

Rich man with dubious taste (or perhaps, no sense of smell)

 The responses following are often very funny.  Here are some:

Damn bacteria

In research of interest to all men of my age:

Scientists have discovered bacteria linked to aggressive prostate cancer in work hailed as a potential revolution for the prevention and treatment of the most deadly form of the disease.

Researchers led by the University of East Anglia performed sophisticated genetic analyses on the urine and prostate tissue of more than 600 men with and without prostate cancer and found five species of bacteria linked to rapid progression of the disease.

The study does not prove that the bacteria drive or exacerbate prostate cancer, but if work now under way confirms their role, researchers can develop tests to identify men most at risk and potentially find antibiotics to prevent the cancer from claiming thousands of lives each year.

Transgender in sports discussed

I ended up watching last night's episode of Insight on SBS, about the topic of transgender people in sport.

I was, of course, expecting a heavily pro-transgender slant; and certainly, there were a few transgender folk participating, but they were looking pained during most of the show because, to my surprise, it was really completely dominated by experts and (female) sports people who said yes, there is a real issue with fairness if you let transgender women who grew up as men dominate women's sport.   It was all very rationally discussed, and no shouting match about "transphobia" broke out at all.  It probably helped that it had two transgender women who were on the side of "yes, this is a problem."

I don't support unnecessarily inflammatory language on the transgender issue, but at the same time, those on the pro-transgender side of this debate are not going to win on this in the culture wars.

Long weekend report

I did very little, actually.  Good Friday, in particular, is always like the laziest public holiday on the calendar.   

It may not be a very seasonally appropriate thing, but I did finally finish reading Karen Armstrong's "biography" of Buddha.   I didn't realise that there was a (sort of) Judas figure in the story, getting upset about leadership succession plans, although this guy was more into direct action, trying to kill Buddha with a boulder and a drunk, aggressive elephant. (Road Runner cartoons came to mind when I read this.)  Anyway, the Wiki version of the longer story goes like this:

Shortly thereafter, Devadatta asked the Buddha to retire and let him take over the running of the Sangha. The Buddha retorted that he did not even let his trusted disciples Sāriputta or Moggallāna run the Sangha, much less one like him, who should be vomited like spittle, and he gave a special act of publicity about him, warning the monks that he had changed for the worse.^[10]

Seeing the danger in this, Devadatta approached Prince Ajātasattu and encouraged him to kill his Father, the good King Bimbisāra, and meanwhile he would kill the Buddha. The King found out about his plan and gave over the Kingdom into the Prince's control.

Ajātasattu then gave mercenaries to Devadatta who ordered them to kill the Buddha, and in an elaborate plan to cover his tracks he ordered other men to kill the killers, and more to kill them and so on, but when they approached the Buddha they were unable to carry out their orders, and were converted instead.

Devadatta then tried to kill the Buddha himself by throwing a rock at him from on high, while the Buddha was walking on the slopes of a mountain. As this also failed he decided to have the elephant Nāḷāgiri intoxicated and let him loose on the Buddha while he was on almsround. However, the power of the Buddha's loving-kindness overcame the elephant.

Devadatta then decided to create a schism in the order, and collected a few monk friends and demanded that the Buddha accede to the following rules for the monks: they should dwell all their lives in the forest, live entirely on alms obtained by begging, wear only robes made of discarded rags, dwell at the foot of a tree and abstain completely from fish and flesh.

The Buddha refused to make any of these compulsory, however, and Devadatta went round blaming him, saying that he was living in abundance and luxury. Devadatta then decided to create a schism and recite the training rules (pātimokkha) apart from the Buddha and his followers, with 500 newly ordained monks.

The Buddha sent his two Chief Disciples Sāriputta and Moggallāna to bring back the erring young monks. Devadatta thought they had come to join his Sangha and, asking Sāriputta to give a talk, fell asleep. Then the Chief Disciples persuaded the young monks to return to the Buddha.^[11]

The Buddha did not show any hatred or deceive, even after what Devadatta had done. Soon after, Devadatta got sick and realized that what he had done was wrong. He tried to go to the Buddha's place to apologize for what he did, but it was too late. On the way to see the Buddha, the earth sucked him into the Niraya Hell for his deeds.

 Huh.

In new recipe news:   I tried a chermoula chicken recipe pretty successfully.   Followed a version from a guy on Youtube but can't find it now.  From memory:  the marinade is about 15 g of parsley and corriander finely chopped, the flesh of a couple of small preserved lemons, four cloves of garlic minced, a couple of tablespoons (or maybe a bit more) of harissa paste, some olive oil, a teaspoon of ground cumin and ground ginger, supposed to be some saffron liquid but didn't have any, just a bit of water instead, a teaspoon or so of salt and some pepper.  Marinate the chicken.   Finely chop a coupe of onion and start cooking them in the tagine, with a bit more ginger powder.   Chicken and all marinade goes on top and cook for maybe 45 or 50 mins on low.  Add a handful of olives and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  Cook covered for another 10 min, then take lid off and let the liquid reduce to a sauce.  Very nice.

There is also movement domestically, but I will post about that separately.

 

Philosophically amusing

This tweet, the humour of which you have to be old enough to be familiar with Columbo to get

OK, I have to expand the pics I guess:

Some in comments are disputing Kant made a mistake:

And more:

This is annoying

 

The Left and common sense, generally speaking

Allahpundit at Hot Air posts about Bill Maher and Josh Rogan (ugh) agreeing that Democrats have a "common sense" problem.   The things Maher cites are:   too much spending on the pandemic; "defund the police"; pregnant "men"; and looting is "not illegal".   

On the other hand, pro-Left people I like a lot on Twitter, like David Roberts, are continually complaining about how terrible the "two-sides" takes of mainstream media are, and yesterday he criticised the Republicans for being the ones who are obsessing about taking action to stop the tiny number of top trans sports competitors from competing.   Also, I have noticed Twitter commentary about how low Biden's approval rating is with young (under 35) Democrats, with people arguing on the one side that this proves the party needs to move Left and away from what oldies in the Party want, and others pointing out that the young don't vote much anyway, so what's the point of that.

Unfortunately, I think both sides have a point, but I do wish that the American Left could just acknowledge a few things as common sense, or "centrist" positions:

a.    allowing homeless people to camp on streets is bad for them, bad for other citizens, and should not be allowed.   Laws (and court decisions) saying otherwise and preventing them being moved on and streets cleaned, need to be changed.

b.    all theft is bad and needs to be prosecuted.

c.    the police do not need "defunding".  They need proper training.

d.    a guy with a penis and a man's build and man's voice who went through puberty and built a man's body before deciding he was really a woman, and then wants to compete and wipe the floor against all women in the sport they've been training at for years, is being a jerk.   He can call himself a woman, but if he had any decency, he wouldn't compete against them.   [And as for complaints that this happens in a tiny, tiny number of cases - yeah, that might be an argument against wasting legislative time on it, but it's not an argument against the basic breach of fairness that these cases entail.  It's like the significance of one fake tear at the end of Broadcast News - Holly Hunter was right to find that it mattered.]

I'll probably think of more things as the day progresses.

And, the usual rider:  I get annoyed with things that I think the Left are nutty about, but they pale into insignificance in comparison to the utterly globally dangerous anti-democratic and anti-science nonsense the American Right currently is unwilling to rid itself of.    This is why people like Rogan and Maher annoy me - if they had any sense of perspective, they would say something like "culture war  issues about racism and gender and sexuality and policing shouldn't be as important to voters as they are - I mean, let's face the reality, there is a large anti-democratic movement afoot in this country, dominated by conspiracy nonsense promoted by a poisonous circle jerk between Right wing media and Right wing politicians, and they're using culture war issues to their ends.   People shouldn't let them get away with that."

But no, their line is to give succour to the Christofascists by essentially arguing "well, those Lefties, they deserve to lose." 

 Update:   Actually, I thought Ross Douthat's lengthy column "How to Make Sense of the New LGBTQ Culture War" is pretty good.  Here is one section:

The concerns of some same-sex marriage advocates, meanwhile, are lucidly expressed by Jonathan Rauch in a recent essay for The American Purpose. Rauch argues that the push for gay marriage represented a triumph of moderation over radicalism within the gay community itself and worries that today’s transgender-rights activists are taking a different path.

Where the gay rights movement emphasized biological realities (“born this way,” etc.) and bourgeois aspirations (to monogamy and marriage), today’s gender-identity advocates promote “wild claims” about the social-constructedness of sex differences and dismiss any contravening evidence as “violence.” This risks backlash, it endangers all the accommodations to transgender rights that America is ready to offer — and it also arguably hurts many gay and lesbian young people, Rauch writes, since a system that encourages “tomboyish girls or effeminate boys” to “identify as the opposite sex” ends up confirming “all the hoary gender stereotypes that made generations of gay and lesbian people (and many straight people) miserable.”

And Rauch’s anxiety about gay youth here connects to the feminist concerns as well — specifically, the worry that normal anxieties of puberty, the particular challenges of girls’ mental health, are being addressed by the new theories not through a reconciliation with one’s body and biology but through an alienation from femaleness itself.

And, of course, I would put myself in the second category of possible reactions he describes to those surveys that show young people are enthusiastically now prepared to put themselves into the LGBTQ categories (although, mostly, the bi category):

The second interpretation: We shouldn’t read too much into it. This trend is probably mostly just young people being young people, exploring and experimenting and differentiating themselves from their elders. Most of the Generation Zers identifying as L.G.B.T. are calling themselves bisexual and will probably end up in straight relationships, if they aren’t in them already. Some of the young adults describing themselves as transgender or nonbinary may drift back to cisgender identities as they grow older.

So we shouldn’t freak out over their self-identification — but neither should we treat it as a definitive revelation about human nature or try to build new curriculums or impose certain rules atop a fluid and uncertain situation. Tolerance is essential; ideological enthusiasm is unnecessary.

Update 2:   I forgot to criticise Maher's criticism of the government reaction to Covid - I have argued from the start that the complexity of that event (and the ambiguity of conflicting medical evidence) should mean a great deal of charity is given to the range of government responses, within reason.  

More trans cautionary content

Just noticed this at Hot Air:

Today the LA Times published a story about transgender clinical psychologist Erica Anderson. Anderson is not only trans herself, she’s helped hundreds of teens who wanted to transition but now she’s publicly questioned whether or not some of the surge of teens announcing they are trans is in fact the result of influence by other teens.

She sounds quite sensible in her commentary.

As millions of teenagers across the U.S. went into quarantine in 2020, Anderson found herself meeting more and more parents who were startled when their children came out as trans. The UC San Francisco adolescent gender center where she worked saw a total of 373 new patients last year — up from 162 in 2019.

The teens tended to tell similar stories: They were in online school, had a lot of time on their hands and were spending more time on social media. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and even video games, allowed teens to craft virtual identities that they could then try out in the real world.

Online, a stream of transgender influencers and activists told teens that if they felt uncomfortable with their bodies, or didn’t fit in, maybe they were trans. Some coached kids on how to bind their breasts, how to change their name and pronouns at school, how to push their parents for testosterone.

“To flatly say there couldn’t be any social influence in formation of gender identity flies in the face of reality,” Anderson said. “Teenagers influence each other.”

The big question of the day

The New York Times asks:

Is Nose Hair Essential to Fighting Off Colds and Other Viral Illnesses?

Expert advice on whether trimming or waxing your nose hairs might increase the risk of respiratory infections.

Short answer:  no one knows.   

A better take than that held by conservative Catholics

 

George's comment translates to "will she return the money now", as I gather she has been seen as very Putin friendly before.

Yet it's still tragic to see more moral clarity from this dubious character than that coming from the likes of Dover Beach and his New Catallaxy blog.   The common theme there is akin to the "leave Britney alone" meme:  his version is "But won't anyone think of poor Russia?".

He's an utter disgrace.   Monty used to think he could be reasoned with.

A modest trans suggestion

Oddly, I haven't noticed any Twitter meltdown over a trans cautionary opinion piece in Washington Post - but the article has attracted 2,669 comments so far.  Maybe the twitter reaction is there and I just haven't noticed it.

There was a Twitter trans meltdown over what I thought was a carefully argued opinion piece in The Age last week by Julie Szego.   It was, according to most people tweeting about it, another "anti-trans" piece.

Anyway, the Washington Post article in particular, about a guy who now thinks he probably transitioned prematurely at age 19, and was under the influence of trans people who "affirmed" his decision in on line chat rooms, made me wonder whether it would be worthwhile getting the new world of psychedelic psychotherapy involved for people with gender dysphoria.   

I mean, the apparent benefit of psychedelic psychotherapies is supposed to be along the lines of allowing the mind to re-set itself - to see things from a new perspective from that ingrained by past experience and ways of thinking.   Sounds to me like something which may cause re-assessment of anxiety over the nature of the body one finds oneself living in.

In fact, someone wrote an article about the potential use of this in 2019, which I have read before (and maybe I have already referred to it in a post, but I can't find it right now.)    The author only talks about it in a "gender affirming" context - in other words, it's in no way suggesting that it would done in a context of dissuading someone from transitioning.  But the second paragraph here does seem a tad ambiguous:

Psychedelic therapy can reduce identity threat and decrease its negative impact by allowing the client to heal and release internalized transphobia. MDMA is thought to support clients in working through traumatic content by increasing one’s ability to process using the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that produces higher level reasoning. Simultaneously, MDMA suppresses activity in the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, which is overly activated in people suffering from PTSD. Psychologically, the Model of Gender Affirmation is a framework for conceptualizing transgender people’s experiences of this healing process and its psychological and behavioral consequences (Sevelius, 2013). According to the theory, we can improve health outcomes for transgender people by increasing access to gender affirmation and/or reducing the need for gender affirmation from others, thereby decreasing identity threat. Psychedelic therapy has the potential to do both.  

With psychedelic therapy, we can increase access to gender affirmation in multiple ways. Ideally, the client experiences connection and affirmation from the therapists. The client may experience affirmation of themselves, as MDMA is known to increase one’s self-compassion and unconditional self-love. Psychedelic therapy that results in a mystical or unity experience can result in a sense of “divine blessing”, described as the experience of having God or one’s higher power communicate affirmation of the highest order (Eichenbaum, 2018). Overall, MDMA-assisted therapy can increase one’s sense of trust and connection, and for trans and gender diverse people who describe experiences of feeling like an outsider, these medicines may provide a pathway for reconnecting with oneself and others. In addition to increasing access to gender affirmation, psychedelic therapy may also reduce the need for gender affirmation from others. As a client experiences renewed connection with their body and self-compassion, they often come away with a visceral understanding that true affirmation must first come from within.

Why shouldn't some psychedelic form of "gender affirmation" end up working in favour of affirming the original gender?   At least sometimes.  

So yeah, seems to me that making this form of psychotherapy available to those who think all their problems are due to gender issues might be useful -  before they make the transition.   

Update:  Reading some more articles on pro-psychedelic sites, such as this one, it would seem that the general expectation is that tripping will usual affirm their "true", other gender identity, rather than making them realise that their body is not the "wrong" one.   And maybe that's right - I mean, it's a given that people who think they are transgender already think their real identity is buried inside them, so giving them a therapy that is (supposedly) going to given them better insight into their inner mind might just be a more usually a case of confirming what they are already primed to believe.   

I guess you would have to conduct the research to see if that's the case, or not.

 

 

A question for the future historians

One thing that keeps striking me as really odd is the way the USA and China both went basically nuts at pretty much the same time:

What I don't get is the degree to which China's inwards turn was a response to Trumpian "America First" policies, and how much was probably going to happen anyway.   

I mean, 6 or so years ago and I would have been happy to take one of the cheap package holidays Qantas had at that time, split between Shanghai and Beijing.

Now, it's hard to envisage the place becoming sane enough again within the next 6 years so as to make it a promising tourist destination.         

A good analogy, or not?

An interesting thread noticed on Twitter:

The best photos

I don't know where the photos might have first appeared, but I saw them on this tweet, and they are causing much amusement across the land, I'm sure:

Appalling

I'm feeling a bit guilty about saying Disney probably deserves some "woke" pushback, because, as with everything in the culture wars, the violent minded conspiracy world of the Right is a much, much bigger and more serious problem:

 

Phil has few fans

 

Wondering about anti-abortion laws

Is it just me, or does it seem to others too that the various US state's efforts to make abortion illegal (or at least, extremely restricted) is having less national pushback than might have been expected?   I mean, as someone who was around when Roe V Wade made it a big issue, I seem to recall that there was a really concerted cultural effort towards legalisation, with the topic frequently covered in liberal-sympathetic TV shows and movies as well as current affairs programs.  I am a bit surprised that we are not witnessing anything similar in scale in  response to the current situation. 

I suspect, but have never seen discussed, that a large part of the reason for this might be the "abortion pill"  and the ease with which it can be provided, possibly across State lines.   Maybe it is partly due to better use of contraception too, as well as teenagers delaying the start of a sex life?   

Or is it that we are just waiting to see some bad medical outcomes as a result of lack of abortion services, and then we will see media stories in which blame for deaths will be able to be directly related to these laws?   

It's a curious situation...