Singaporean Buddhism (Part 1)

So, I went back to the (not very old, but already pretty famous) Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore this last trip, and this time went upstairs to the museum and rooftop section (as well as the floor that contains the actual Buddha's tooth.   Allegedly.)

The 3rd floor is a museum full of old and new Buddhist artworks, including a row of somewhat unnervingly lit wax models of significant past Buddhist leaders from Singapore and nearby areas.  Like this guy:

 Oh, I just noticed the reflections in that shot. Sorry.  Anyway, I imagined it being a creepy place in which to be accidentally locked in at night.  Not that wax models of deceased monks should be scary, but the lighting is spooky...

A lot of the artwork is impressive (some pieces very old), although many are modern and some seems a little peculiar:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhow, the main temple hall room downstairs, which is very pretty and looks like this:

OK, maybe I took a better pic last time:

I now know features this:

I had posted about Maitreya once before, but guess I didn't realise some temples were devoted to him?   That's the funny thing about Buddhism for the casual Western tourist - it's routinely not at all obvious what version of Buddha, or bodhisattva, which a statue represents, or to which a temple is devoted.  Got to do your research.

One other thing I only recently learnt about Buddhism (or parts of it) was the (shall we say, "fanciful") belief that cremated holy people left behind crystal like beads amongst their cremated remains that were taken as a type of relic that shows their sanctity.  There are many examples shown in the museum section of this temple, and I thought I took a photo, but maybe out of politeness in not wanting to look too sceptical, I didn't.  Anyway, in the very upmarket Buddhist magazine Tricycle, there's a good article about this belief, which comes out of both Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, apparently, and it ends on this note:

There was no doubt that those who had witnessed Geshe Lama Konchog’s cremation believed the relics to be genuine; to them they were precious objects, weighty with meaning. I have decided that the Buddhist world, like the Christian, is divided into two camps: the Protestants, who regard relic worship as superstitious, silly, unintelligent, and to be put firmly into the basket of “idolatrous practice” and avoided at all costs, and the Catholics, for whom the numinous and the mystical are an essential part of their practice. Many thousands of people from around the world, including the United States, have visited relic exhibitions and have testified to finding the experience spiritually uplifting. For them, these small shining sharira encapsulate the hope that transformation of the very physical body is possible–as well as the immaterial mind. Venerating a holy object, be it an image or a relic, is seen by many as an invaluable part of spiritual practice, bestowing countless blessings, opening the heart, and lessening one’s pride.

And I suppose I should mention the Buddha Tooth relic itself, which is up on the 4th floor, behind a glass wall and sitting in a display stupa of around 320kg(!) of gold, and no photos are allowed.   You are not super close, but can make it out (I think! - see further comment below), and like other Buddha's tooth relics I had seen on the internet, it didn't look at all human to me.  It seems too big (although it would seem that the believers' answer to this can be that they have been scientifically shown that these tooth relics continue to grow!).  I thought it looked more like a horse tooth.  And now I read, in the same Tricycle article extracted above, this:

Buddhist relics, like their Christian counterparts, have their own history of fraud.

Skeptics point to Dr. Alois Anton Fuhrer, the German archaeologist who found the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbini. In 1895, Dr. Fuhrer was caught selling horse teeth as relics to Burmese monks. Another tooth purporting to come from the Buddha himself was recently examined by the Natural History Museum in London and found to belong to a pig. I heard tell of sharira that were no more than mites of dust collected on religious pictures, and small gems thrown into the ashes of funeral pyres by conniving clergy to fool the faithful. There is even a story of a temple parrot that left sharira—he’d apparently imbibed the Buddha’s teachings!

 Oh, and here's a sceptical article from Straits Times in 2007:

Mr Yap Kok Feng, a paralegal executive, wrote to Lianhe Zaobao recently claiming that the relic looks nothing like a human tooth.

When contacted, he said that he had shown a picture of it to dentists who believe it to be a herbivore's.

One of them, Dr Pamela Craig, a senior lecturer at the School of Dental Science at the University of Melbourne, told The Sunday Times she had examined photographs and compared the tooth with teeth from various animal skulls in her comparative dental anatomy department.

'There's absolutely no possibility that it is a human tooth,' said Dr Craig, who specialises in human and animal oral anatomy.

'I'm almost certain that it belongs to a member of the Bos species, probably a cow or a water buffalo.'

Dr Craig said human teeth should be rounded with a short crown and a comparatively longer root, but the picture clearly shows a long crown and a shorter root.

'In this case, looking at a photo is clear enough because it's so obvious that it's not a human tooth. It's like comparing a pear and an apple.'

The Sunday Times also showed a picture of the tooth to four other dentists, including two forensic dental experts. All said the tooth could not have come from a human.

'This is an animal 'cheek tooth', that is, a molar at the back of the mouth,' said Professor David K. Whittaker, a forensic dental specialist at Cardiff University in Britain.

And I'm not sure about this last bit about when it can be seen:  I'm pretty sure I could see it:

The tooth relic was supposed to have been discovered by a Myanmar monk, the late Venerable Cakkapala of Bandula Monastery, in 1980 while restoring a collapsed stupa at Bagan Hill in Mrauk-U, Myanmar.

He gave the relic to Venerable Shi Fazhao, the abbot of both the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Golden Pagoda Buddhist Temple in Tampines in 2002.

The public can see the tooth only twice a year - on Vesak Day and the first day of Chinese New Year.

So, there you go.  Lots of member of the public donated a lot of money and gold to build a suitable  resting place for a relic that doesn't even look like what it is meant to be?    Not sure that I would be impressed.

As with the Catholic approach to things like the Shroud of Turin, you can always fall back on the old "does it really matter if a venerated object is genuine or not, as long as it helps the spirituality of the believer" defence.  That Tricycle article ends on that note:

At the end of my search into the meaning of Buddhist relics, I was reminded of an old Tibetan tale. A devout old woman asked her trader son if he would bring her back a tooth from the Buddha when he traveled to India. The son forgot all about his mission until his return home, when in desperation to please his mother he picked up a tooth from a dead dog he found rotting by the wayside. The mother’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude and wonder when he presented it to her, and she promptly put it on her small altar and everyday made obeisance to it. In time the tooth began to emit a strange, beautiful light. Even a dog’s tooth, if revered enough, will glow. 

Anyway, up on the roof of the Temple, they continue the modern Singaporean tradition of having a well maintained entire garden up there, and a prayer wheel in a pagoda:

 

It's lush and peaceful, and although there were couple of young women taking what looked like "influencer" style photos of one of them, we were pretty much alone in the quiet, walking above the floor with a 320 kg gold stupa worth (grabs my calculator and checks today's price) about $26 million. Someone should do a heist movie about it.  

It's well worth visiting.

Catholic conservatives still making excuses for their culture war hero, Putin

Ha!   I've been checking out the post-Catallaxy Catallaxy blogs, the two most "successful" of which are both run by conservative/reactionary Catholics Dover Beach and Currency Lad.   Here's the latest from the latter, after watching Jordan Peterson claiming last night on Piers Morgan's unwatched show that it's ridiculous to suggest Putin could lose the war:

This is worth watching for Peterson’s ‘don’t interrupt me again’ death stare alone. Morgan couldn’t resist less than 20 seconds in. As one of the more thuggish propagandists of mandates and masks (to say nothing of Zelenskyite malarkey about Ukrainian ‘democracy’), the increasingly unwatched Morgan is one to talk about lies and “terrifying his people.” My reading of Joe Biden is that he is an amoral weirdo and far more dangerous to the world than the Russian. 

What a world!   Where "conservative" reactionary Catholics have become so brainwashed in the culture wars, they prefer to support the authoritarian who murders and imprisons his opponents, and mutters about using nuclear weapons in an expansionary territorial war, because he's cosy with the Russian Orthodox and is down on the gays!

Dover Beach is no better - his comments have continually shown a "rah rah Russia" attitude to this war, and like Peterson, he's still holding out hope that the latest Putin move will mean a rapid Russian victory.

The other amusing thing about the Dover Beach blog is how clear it is how much most of the commentators really dislike each other.   The open threads are just never ending wars between characters who live online,  and gradually, the number of participants who go completely nuts increases over the years.  

Currently, it's "Custard" is showing how he has gone completely down the Qanon-ish rabbit hole, and while he is not exactly getting any support, the old timers there simply do not appreciate something I have tried to tell them many, many times:   they are in fact all major "conspiracy theory" believers in their complete denial of climate change - and now, in their "Trump probably really won the elections" belief too.   Once you swallow one or two clear conspiracy theories, really, what is stop you going whole hog?  They feel alone and abandoned in the Australian political landscape* because they are conspiracy theorists who refuse to face up to facts.   Instead, they would prefer to just endless stew in their certainty that they are right and have a true "insider" status.   The internet, Murdoch family and American Republicans are largely to blame, of course, for this epistemic crisis.  

 

* well, save for Pauline Hanson, who actually does have views most of them would support, but I suspect it might be that they consider themselves too smart to identify with someone who appears bogan-ish and less educated than them, they would find it embarrassing to admit she is one of them.

So that's where the Queen went...

Maybe these videos turned up on a lot of people's Youtube recommendations, but it was interesting last week that a British guy who edits a history magazine and runs a Youtube channel had a huge number of hits for his quickly produced video explaining what the Royal crypt under the chapel at Windsor Castle looks like.  (I would like to know more about the mechanism by which the coffin disappears into the floor - like who designed it, and when.)   It's well worth watching anyway, and I didn't know the story about the re-discovery of Henry VIII's coffin - I'm rather surprised they lost track of it:

 

His follow up video about the design of royal coffins was good too:

 

Yet more Singapore snaps

This holiday was more a case of looking around some local areas.  Tanjong Pagar area has some good hotels, and is close to many mid range cafes, but it also has a quite "local" feel, as it has a substantial amount of government built HDB flats; and directly across the road from Amara Hotel, some quite "local" shopping.  (Including a laudromat that does a $5 wash, and about another $5 to dry.  Better than returning home with a bag full of dirty clothes.)  

Here's the local mid Autumn festival party, with lots of families in a park in front of the MRT station:

 

Don't expect much from the local smallish hawker centre, though - it's upstairs and very basic - but there are lots of other options all around it. 

In particular, by happy coincidence, the 100AM shopping centre which actually adjoins the Amara has, since our last visit, turned into pretty much a "little Japan" for Singapore, with an extensive number of Japanese cafes and restaurants, and cheap goods outlets (Don Don Donki) which also do fresh food.   The cost was reasonable, too.  Look, nice looking chicken teriyaki bento boxes for $7.90 (reduced in the evening to $6.32).  

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, my entire impression this trip was that food and drink in Singapore seemed cheaper than last time.   This (very large) meal of stingray, squid, seafood fried rice and some asian veg cost (from memory) $54, with two large bottles of Tiger beer for $7 each.  (From a shop on the footpath, pretty much):

A pint of Tiger at the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre - even apart from the satay, it's one of the best in Singapore:

 

was $9 - very comparable to Australian prices.  There was craft beer for $11, although I didn't try it, but again, that price is fine.  (Wine is still hideously expensive, so don't expect to drink it while there.)   

So yeah, just as in Japan, there are plenty of cheap to moderate priced eating options, and for a country that has an expensive reputation, you can do very well for very modest prices as long as you don't want to eat at high end places.   

 

 

 

 

So, apart from that, we went to Katong area to walk around and look at the famous street of pretty, Peranakan style houses:

These are private homes, and literally is only one short street full of these ultra coloured ones, but the whole area has a nice, somewhat upmarket, relaxed local vibe, and I would have no problem staying there for a night or two:

 

(It has an extraordinary number of pet and pet grooming shops - owning nice dogs is definitely a status thing now in Singapore):

 How's this for a fancy bed, btw:

And how's this for a fancy looking small bar:

Actually, that's back near Chinatown/Tanjong Pagar, where the charming streets look like this:

and this:

And if you keep wondering around, you end up at the Buddha's Tooth Temple, which deserves a post of its own...

A few random things about Singapore

*  Anyone who has been to Japan knows that, despite it being pretty cold in much of it during winter, the country as a whole is mad for isotonic (sports) drinks.  You can barely walk 25 m in any city or town without coming across a vending machine with Pocari Sweat, or Aquarius (or various other brands.)    Yet it occurred to me in Singapore this trip that, despite it being probably the most sweat inducing major city in the world, they don't have a similar obsession with sports drinks, despite my feeling an actual need for them.   There is one brand that is common - 

 and it's not bad.  (Made in Malaysia.  I see you can buy it pretty cheaply here too.)

Anyway, my point is - if ever there is a country where you should consider putting an isotonic drink in your day backpack, instead of mere water, this is it.

* Again, in contrast to Japan, you are not even meant to take a sip of a drink (or, of course, any form of food) while on a subway (MRT) platform, or while in the train itself.   (I know they aren't subways, but Shinkansen or other long distance trains in Japan can feature vending machines for beer.)   Anyway, the end result in Singapore is subway stations that are absolutely spotless.  I just find it hard to believe there could be any cleaner ones anywhere in the world.  But if you are thirsty, better drink your 100 Plus before you enter the subway station.

*  Also speaking of the MRT, you now don't even have to buy a ticket or card, as long as you have a Visa card with a chip in it.  Just use that to tap on and off, and it works fine.  (I also saw people using their phone too, presumably with NFC.)   The charge turned up on our Australian bank account in very short order - within an hour or two I think.   Systems in Singapore just work with great efficiency.  Having to wait more than 4 or 5 minutes for the next MRT train on a main line is a rarity.

And it's extremely cheap to use compared to Brisbane fees in particular.   But the best deal, as a tourist, is still to just buy a Tourist pass card for $20 for 3 days unlimited travel on the MRT and bus network.   (Plus a $10 refundable deposit.)   You can renew it for a further 3 days too, and they don't even bother asking to see a passport anymore to issue this.    This is just extraordinary good value and very convenient.  The only odd feature about is that, while you can buy it at many of the MRT stations, some have peculiar hours that their ticket office is open.   There is no uniformity there, and it pays to check on line as what time the local office will be open.

*  Tourist sim cards are also cheap and convenient too.  $12 for a week with 100 GB of data, the M1 company one can be bought from 7 Eleven.   Easy to register and great value. 

* Mask compliance!   Just before this trip, Singapore relaxed its mask wearing rules, so that they are now only required on public transport, and waiting places for public transport.   I'm not sure what other airlines are doing now, too, but Scoot certainly required masks be worn the entire flight.   

And there was absolutely 100% mask wearing compliance on buses, the MRT and Scoot.   On the street, and in shops, I would guess that the slim majority were now unmasked, but there were a substantial number of people who just have gotten so used to it, they keep masks on everywhere.  

I was stopped getting on board a bus once because I had forgotten to put the mask in my shirt pocket onto my face - and fair enough.   But as a person who thought that Western Right wing endless whinging about whether masks were really effective or not, and elaborate hand wringing about the effects on kids in school, or oxygen levels in the blood, or whatever other dubious reason people could come up with for complaining about what an imposition on liberty it was, I was happy to be in an entire nation state in which they just stoically get on with following rules intended for the common good without complaint.

I would be happy to live in a society like that...  

In further praise of Singapore (Part 1)

As you well may know, I really enjoy visiting Singapore.  In fact, I'm threatening my family with running away to join the Buddhist College of Singapore (the temple complex of which I actually visited) if that's the only way the country would let me live there.  

Oh dear, I see I've actually missed the cut off age by 27 years, and I'm not a devout monk of one year's standing.   But what a bargain this is - a four year degree course for free, by the sounds:

All meals, accommodation and daily necessities will be provided by the college. Students will also receive a monthly allowance during their period of study at BCS.

Oh well, back to reality.

The recent week in Singapore was my first post COVID travel overseas since COVID reared its ugly head, and was in fact pretty much like a Part 2 of the last overseas trip I made with the family in December 2018(!).   This time, it was just with my wife, but the similarities were high:

a.    very cheap flight on the cut price, but pretty reliable, Singapore based airline Scoot out of the Gold Coast (I strongly recommend keeping track of their sales for all destinations in Asia);

b.    flew again on their bendy winged 787 Dreamliner (a comfortable enough aircraft, even though with Scoot there is no such thing as an inflight entertainment centre.  It's a case of load up enough material on your fully charged phone or tablet and entertain yourself for 7 to 8 hours.)

c.   even stayed at the same hotel, Amara Singapore near the Tanjong Pagar MRT station on the edge of Chinatown.   The hotel needed a bit of renovation since we last stayed there:  mould in bathrooms is the perpetual enemy of every hotel in the country, I'm sure, and it did feel a bit understaffed as I think all hospitality businesses in the world currently are.   But despite this, I found it still a comfortable hotel in an excellent location.  (They were also completely understanding when on the second day I asked for a top sheet for the bed, instead of just relying on the extremely annoying but now ubiquitous hotel habit of expecting guests to sleep directly under a covered doona, making temperature regulation during sleep an "all or nothing" affair. I hate that this has become an industry standard, but travel infrequently enough that I always forget about this problem between holidays.  Anyway, as long as on request the hotel gives me a sheet to use, I'm happy.)

So, what did we do and see this time around?    Let a series of photos illustrate:

Of course, the place is just architecture heaven:

This precinct is opposite the Suntec shopping centre, and the impressiveness of that long, louvred roof thing is hard to capture in a photo. Trust me, it's huge in real life. 

 

 Another big awing thing, a short walk from our hotel:
 

This the public area outside Tanjong Pagar MRT station, where if turn around, it looks ridiculously green and luscious:

This is a planted footpath back near Suntec:

It's just the very definition of lush, in so many parts of the city.

Including on the tops (and in the middle) of skyscrapers.  It's a lovely, Green futuristic, trend:

That's a herb and fruit garden on the 51st floor of the new CapitaSpring building, where you get awesome views like this:

And from the middle part of the building, floors 20 to 17, another garden/recreation area like this:

 

Slightly oddly, I thought, while they put high barriers up on the 51st floor that would make jumping from there difficult, they seem to have no concerns at all about putting anything other than normal railings on this 20th floor area.  I know, it's not usual to have apartment buildings of that height with normal balconies, but having this larger, open area still just cordoned off with normal height rails seemed a bit risky to me.   Incidentally, both the roof garden and this area are open to the public from 8 to 10.30, then 2 to 6 pm.  In the middle of the day, it is supposed to be reserved for the workers in the building as a lunch break relaxation place, with charging stations built into the seats, and these amusingly named things:

 

  

 

 

 

 Which, it turned out, was just these birdcage-y sitting spots:

Anyhoo, this is the building from the ground, with the bent metal giving the impression of something large having recently escaped from within:

It's so impressive.  (And there is a cheapish, clean hawker centre on the ground floors too.)

Of course, it's the mix of the old and the new that makes it special, too.  One side of the street is Raffles (now fully opened, and with a heap of high end shops and courtyards you can walk around:

 

And this across the road:

I had photos of Marina Bay Sands, the most iconic building in the city state now, in my last holiday post, so I won't specifically repeat it.  But I did make a trip to Gardens by the Bay again at night to see the very family friendly mid Autumn festival light displays:

 

Young woman with spoilt looking doggie (an increasingly common sight in Singapore) here:

  This was 9.45pm on a Sunday night, and the place was busier than the photos might indicate:

It's just a ridiculously impressive public space.   Like this, the "satay street" at Lau Pa Sat hawker centre:

I've been spending too long on this post, so I must make a part 2 later...

 

The Return of the King

Not me, although I am back from holiday.  But while I was gone, we got a King again, one with unhealthy looking swollen fingers, a hatred of fountain pens, and a somewhat urgent need for a better PR agent (one who is brave enough to tell him that cameras and mics pick up every grimace and complaint.)  

I'm no great fan of the royal family, and ignore most of the news about them.  I do find the (largely Right wing media driven) hatred of Meghan Markle utterly ridiculous, though.   I mean, why do people bother paying attention to her at all?

The most interesting thing about the funeral arrangements to date is how everyone (well, nearly everyone) has resisted the urge to grab the imperial crown and (at least) put it on their own head for a second, before being tackled by 20 coppers.  (Some of those on guard around the coffin have looked rather old for the job, though, and might break a hip in the fracas.)   Alternatively, I would have liked to see a heavy duty drone zoom in on it with a hook while it was being paraded on the street, for it to be dropped off in a villain's lair nearby.  (Maybe an abandoned Underground station, of which there are several.  If it were a Batman movie, that's how it would have gone down.)

Anyway, on a slightly more serious note, my initial thoughts on the death of the Queen was that it felt symbolically like the true end of the 20th century.   I mean, while there are lots of world figures around who have done much of their work in the tail end of that century, including of course Joe Biden, Queen Elizabeth started her "career" so far back in the last century it really felt she was more truly embodied within that period than any other leader still hanging around. 

I haven't noticed anyone else saying this, but in the millions of words spilt on the topic, it might not be an original thought.   

Anyway, the funeral's later today.  I guess I'll watch some of it live, just in case something unexpected happens.

The packing is about to begin

I'm about to do something new - travel overseas for a week with just a carry on bag.  This one:

Total weight allowed is 10kg.  Very manageable, I think, as long as you are going somewhere warm.  

Women find it harder to imagine this working than men. But my wife is doing the same.  I think it will feel liberating, actually.

It must be a bad judgement

Noted on Twitter

 

Noah on the Trump problem

 Update:   I think "a decade" is too long.

A bit busy here....

I'll be going on a short holiday later this week, and have an embarrassingly large pile of paper on my desk to try and move around before then.

So I might not be able to post much for a few days.

But you never know - if really interesting stuff pops up, there's always some time to be found :)

Anyway - some random thoughts:

 *  reading online reaction to the latest Trump rally, I think it's pretty clear that even Trump sympathisers recognise that a 2 hour performance of his greatest "hits" is looking very stale.  Groupies will still go to it, but I have read that even they start to leave before it's finished (I think that has happened before.)  I also noticed someone on Twitter saying how many MAGA characters (especially the dumb and awful Marjorie Taylor Greene) are more about wanting to be a celebrity than anything else.  Just a case of following their leader, I guess.

* Lots of positive twitter reaction to that son of the late Foo Fighter drummer standing in for his Dad.  Only trouble is, I don't understand the appeal of any Foo Fighters song, even though their lead singer seems a nice enough guy.

* Lots of talk on American twitter last week about how school closures under Covid had a very negative measured effect on kid's education level now.  Has the Australian system found the same thing?  I get the impression not, or not as bad as America.   I wonder whether we did a better job at coming up with teaching via the internet than the Americans did.

*  I haven't had time to watch the Biden "we must defend Democracy" speech.  Am surprised that the Washington Post chose to editorialise it somewhat critically (although, of course, just about all of their regular commentary team that I follow praised it.)   The reaction from the Right is pretty much what was always to be expected - if they are stupid enough to still prefer Trump over any Democrat despite Jan 6, there is no hope of convincing them that they are "semi-fascists".   

Update:   Oh, Ross Douthat did a Sunday column arguing that Biden and the Democrats don't really believe democracy in the US is in crisis, otherwise he wouldn't sound so partisan (or something.)   You can read it here, but do read the hundreds of comments following criticising this take, too.

He also went on Twitter to defend the column, but the best rejoinder is this:

There is a simple rule to understand about Trump and pro-lifers like Douthat: they will bend over backwards to excuse him of anything because he facilitated the overturning of Roe, which is in their minds the biggest political issue ever. 

 

Old drawing device

I was somewhat aware of some controversy about the extent to which some famous artists may have worked with the aid of optical devises, but until Youtube popped this into my recommendations, I didn't know the details of how a (relatively well known) optical aid for drawing worked:

 

It's oddly interesting, and makes me wish I had one too.  For my retirement fun, perhaps.:)

Losing a pundit to a subscription service

Oh dear.  The main reason for visiting Hot Air has for a long time been the anti Trump attitude of Allahpundit, but he has left the site and is going to write (under his real name, which it seems is a well guarded secret?) at The Despatch, which I think is a subscription only site.

In his final post he writes that he has been at Hot Air since the beginning, when it was started first by Michelle Malkin, who I hadn't thought about for a long time.  I think she from mainstreamy conservative Right wing to "into the reactionary paranoid nutjob Right" didn't she?  (Yes, I've checked her Wiki entry - she did.)

I don't recall what he was like in his early days, but many who read Hot Air would say he has followed the opposite - all because he cannot stand Donald Trump and condemns him and the influence on the party regularly.

Let's extract some of his last post:

What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.

The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.

I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are.

I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.

Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone.

He also says this, and it's infuriating because I reckon he would know this to be true (my bold):

Lastly, to those who spent the last seven years barking insults at me in the comments for not genuflecting to Trump, I’ll give you this: You’re not phonies. You believe what you say. We have that much in common. I respect honesty and paid you the respect of being honest. It would scandalize you to know how many of your heroes sound like you in public and like me in private. Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill.

I hear Lincoln’s words in my head as I write that: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” Let’s hope. But let’s also be real: To a certain sort of Very Online Trumpist weirdo, having the right enemies is what politics is all about. To any who insist upon having me as one, I’m okay with it. Few badges of honor shine as brightly as the scorn of authoritarians.

Of the other writers there, Jazz Shaw is very interested in UFOs and so he's worth a look.  Ed Morrisey is Catholic conservative but not pro-Trump, I think.  Just doesn't attack him and MAGA as much as he should.   Karen Townsend is the worst - a shrill Right winger verging on Fox News level of personal animosity towards Biden and the Left generally.

Anyway, I will be visiting it less now.

Not sure anyone predicted this when the internet started...

OnlyFans has paid out more than $500m (£433m) to its reclusive owner in the last two years, as the British-based subscriber platform synonymous with pornography reported record profits.

Leonid Radvinsky, the site’s Ukrainian-American 40-year-old owner, is the sole shareholder in a business that has seen its profits boom, as users spent $4.8bn on the site last year.

The financial results mean OnlyFans is one of the most financially successful British tech start-ups in recent years, succeeding where other more mainstream companies have failed. The company’s latest accounts show pre-tax profits rose by 615% to $432m in the 12 months to September 2021.

Here's the article, in The Guardian.

I have to say, I find it a bit puzzling that people who post home made porn don't feel any embarrassment about immediate family stumbling across it.... 

Disappointing personal news

From an article at The Conversation, entitled :

The U-shaped happiness curve is wrong: many people do not get happier as they get older

On average, happiness declines as we approach middle age, bottoming out in our 40s but then picking back up as we head into retirement, according to a number of studies. This so-called U-shaped curve of happiness is reassuring but, unfortunately, probably not true.

My analysis of data from the European Social Survey shows that, for many people, happiness actually decreases during old age as people face age-related difficulties, such as declining health and family bereavement. The U-shaped pattern was not evident for almost half of the 30 countries I investigated.

So why the difference?

My study corrects a misinterpretation of research methods in previous studies. The U-shaped idea comes from statistical analyses that adjust data to compare people of similar wealth and health in middle and old age. That adjustment is intended to isolate the effect of age from other factors that influence happiness.

But given that people often become poorer and less healthy during old age, the adjustment can be misleading. When we omit the adjustment, an age-related decline in happiness becomes evident in many countries...

This decline is steeper in countries with a less effective welfare state. That’s especially true of Turkey, where happiness (measured on a scale from zero to ten) falls on average from 6.4 at retirement age to less than 5.0 among the very old.

For Estonia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, happiness falls steadily, beginning in people’s early 30s.

I wonder what the figures look like in Australia.

I'm amused

 Update:  I had the same thought:

All of Mar-a-Lago looks cringe to me, and certainly wildly out of place in a hot climate, to be honest:

It is a genuinely older building though (nearly 100 years old), and not some Trump invention. Still looks stupid for Florida.

Update 2:

Heh

In "another strange guy goes trad Catholic" news

Slate reports that Shia LaBeouf has said he is converting to Catholicism - and that it is in large part because of attraction to the Latin mass.

The article gives a fair summary of the reputation of the Latin mass for attracting Right wing reactionaries:

The traditional Latin Mass is at the center of an ongoing controversy in the Catholic church: the small, conservative group promoting it claims it is a beautiful and true expression of the faith, while more progressive Catholics—and Pope Francis—see it largely as a breeding ground for reactionary beliefs and conflict in the church. The TLM, as it’s called by those who celebrate it, refers to the “extraordinary form” of the Roman rite that makes up the rituals and prayers of the Mass and which was in use until the 1960s, at which point the Second Vatican Council took place and ushered in the “ordinary form” (Novus Ordo, or NO).

The overwhelming majority of Catholics attend Novus Ordo Masses; indeed, the overwhelming majority of Catholics today have likely never seen anything else. But traditional Latin Masses have a small but highly enthusiastic faction in the church. The main difference between the two rites is in style and not substance: In the extraordinary form, priests recite prayers in Latin instead of the vernacular; they celebrate the Mass facing the altar, with their backs to the congregants; there are no female altar servers. Proponents of the TLM describe it as solemn, beautiful, ancient, mysterious, sacred. Traditionalists believe that the Latin Mass is key to reviving the faith among young Catholics....

There’s certainly nothing wrong with enjoying the Latin Mass. (With the caveat that some traditionalist groups, such as the semi-legitimate Society of Saint Pius X, incorporate fully outdated parts of the pre-Vatican II liturgy into their worship, which can include explicitly anti-Semitic elements.) In the interview, LaBeouf explained that he was drawn to the Latin Mass because it was “immersive” and felt “almost like I’m being let in on something very special.” Fair enough!

But the traditionalists who love the TLM can be deeply toxic. “Trads” embrace traditionalism that goes beyond the language spoken in services. Many of them reject the reforms of Vatican II altogether, and stick to uncompromising positions on gay marriage, divorce, and the dress of women and their role in society. Their extreme counterparts, the radical traditionalists, or “Rad Trads,” often go further, idolizing the crusades, making vile comments about Jews and Muslims, and spreading conspiracy theories that decry the infiltration of the church by evil forces and accuse Pope Francis of being an antipope or even antichrist. The Rad Trad community flourishes on Twitter and Reddit and Discord, trafficking in memes about the saints and feminists and monarchism.

These highly engaged traditionalists may be small in number (most Catholics are blissfully unaware of the “liturgy wars,” as this debate is called). But they are well represented among clergy, including bishops and cardinals. And over the course of Francis’ papacy, their dissent has grown increasingly loud, to the point that many liberal Catholics began to worry that the culture wars in the church would lead to schism. The controversy came to a climax last summer when, in an effort to crack down on the “division” sown by the traditionalists, Pope Francis laid down strict rules for when and where the traditional Latin Mass can be conducted. The outcry that followed was intense. Pope Francis has not backed down from his position; In June, he said that those who “call themselves guardians of traditions, but of dead traditions” were “dangerous” to the church. Traditionalist Catholics have continued to claim to be martyrs.

And here's the biggest danger sign that LaBeouf is going "Rad Trad":

There’s another reason it seems LaBeouf knows exactly what side he’s taking: he told the interviewer that he had sought guidance from Mel Gibson in his conversion process. Gibson is not just an unabashed anti-Semite; he is also someone who speaks at traditionalist Catholic events, builds churches for disaffected orthodox Catholics, and makes friends with radical right-wing priests. (His father, Hutton Gibson, was a leading proponent of the idea that all popes since Vatican II have been antipopes.) In fact, in the interview, LaBeouf said that Gibson was the one who had shown him where to find the illicit Latin Masses.

 

 

When you've lost the Wall Street Journal

So even the Wall Street Journal is putting up videos in which an increase in flash flooding in the USA is noted, and the connection with climate change and increasing temperatures is fully acknowledged:

Huh.

Synthetic milk closer than I realised?

I was only musing recently about the slow progress in making synthetic dairy milk, but here's an article talking about it, and how a company in Melbourne is working on it:

In Australia, start-up company Eden Brew has been developing synthetic milk at Werribee in Victoria. The company is targeting consumers increasingly concerned about climate change and, in particular, the contribution of methane from dairy cows.

CSIRO reportedly developed the technology behind the Eden Brew product. The process starts with yeast and uses "precision fermentation" to produce the same proteins found in cow milk.

CSIRO says these proteins give milk many of its key properties and contribute to its creamy texture and frothing ability. Minerals, sugars, fats, and flavors are added to the protein base to create the final product.

 

Honestly, who would care, especially in France?

An odd story from Rolling Stone:

On the FBI’s list of documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, item 1a is listed solely as “info re: President of France.” For Trump, that has been a subject of intense — and tawdry — interest for years.

Specifically, Trump has bragged to some of his closest associates — both during and after his time in the White House — that he knew illicit details about the love life of French President Emmanuel Macron, two people with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. And the former president even claimed that he learned about some of this dirt through “intelligence” he had seen or been briefed on, these sources say.  ...

In his musing on Macron’s alleged indiscretions, Trump was light on details and specifics, according to the sources. And as a notorious gossip peddler for decades, it’s difficult to know if any of what he says is grounded in reality. “It is often,” one of the sources says, “hard to tell if he’s bullshitting or not.” 

 

Moral philosophising about the future

I haven't read all of this yet, but it is worth coming back to:

The New Moral Mathematics

In his new book, philosopher William MacAskill implies that humanity’s long-term survival matters more than preventing short-term suffering and death. His arguments are shaky.