An Extraction problem

So it seems that the Indiana Jones movie is not attracting the audience hoped (and the RW culture warriors who want Everything Disney to fail are popping the champagne corks.)  I didn't see it on the weekend, but will soon.

Last weekend's viewing at home was the Netflix sequel to the Chris Hemsworth action movie Extraction (called, with a lack of imagination, Extraction II). 

I quite enjoyed the first movie, as explained in my review comments here.  

The second is, in my opinion, pretty much a complete dud, highlighting (as I hope Dial of Destiny doesn't) the current maladies that seriously detract from most Hollywood action movies:

*  special effects were not especially noticeable in the first movie, if I recall correctly; but they are frequently noticeable in this one.   For some reason, a lot of the gunfire, from all sorts of weaponry and regardless of whether it is day or night, is shown as being heavy with tracers, and while the effects used for them are not terrible terrible, it was still so overdone it brought unnecessary attention to itself.  And as for the chase sequences - a protracted "one shot" car chase in the first movie was really impressive, technically.   In this movie, it is changed to a lengthy, running escape through a maze-like prison set piece, but it became like shaky cam, and a sped up version of playing Wolfenstein 3D.   Or Doom - I dunno, I never played those games, but I've seen them.   And this leads me to the next point...

*  I noted the John Wick-ian similarities in previous review, while spending a lot of time justifying my view that it was better than a John Wick movie.  Well, Extraction II ramps up the John Wick-ness and it becomes very obvious and kind of silly, the number of angry men Hemsworth is meant to be able to keep at bay.   Maybe it's more violent than the first movie - maybe not.  But it is definitely less credible.

*  Going back to effects - you can now often tell that certain things in action films are not real, but clever composite shots.  We've all seen the Youtubes showing how its done, and know that there's no way certain dangerous and close interacts done between things like helicopters and moving trains or cars would not have been done for real.   It's what might be called the Fast and Furious syndrome -  unless it's a Mission Impossible film, you know that actor isn't in any real danger and it must have been faked up.  

*  I would have to go to re-watch the first movie to be sure, but the dialogue in this one seemed much cornier and less convincing than I recall for this character.   

*  Regrettably, it seems to have set itself up for an ongoing series.  They should just let it die.  Yet, oddly enough, there are plenty of reviews saying they liked it, for a silly action movie.   Nah, they are wrong.   I agree with the New York Times dismissive review:

“Extraction 2,” a drab, brawny sequel starring Chris Hemsworth as an Australian mercenary, offers a turgid shadow of the type of crowd-pleasing escapism that action blockbusters used to provide.

 

The subtlety of strangeness

OK, it's been a while since I posted anything about the paranormal, or general "woo", and let's start with a source I rarely link to - the New York Post.

While it seems that the paper publishes plenty of credulous sounding "Republican politician says there's something to this UFO business" stories,  they also have a sceptical wing which explained in this piece in March 2023 that several of the current big names in "the Pentagon knows!" news were tied up with the rather dubious claims made for Skinwalker Ranch.    I didn't know that.

I have said before that I don't find Luis Elizondo a very credible sounding character, and any Youtube clips of the guys at Skinwalker Ranch have never impressed me much.   (I think Mick West recently ridiculed them for mistaking a fly going across a camera's field of vision as a UFO.)  

On the other hand, two different stories I have read about generally "spooky" events illustrate what I think could be called the sometimes odd subtlety of the evidence of paranormal events.   

The first:  actress Heather Mitchell has been doing media talking about a prediction made by a fortune teller which quickly did (most people would say) seem to be fulfilled.   It's a nice story, and you can read about it in the extract from her memoir in The Guardian.    

The second story is in this short Youtube video, about someone who had a door in a room in a historic building slam behind him, with no obvious explanation.   He seems nonetheless quite un-phased by the question of whether or not it was a ghost doing something ghosts are not generally supposed to be able to do.   If it had happened to me, in the way he describes, I'm pretty sure it would have freaked me out for a good few days, at least:

Back to retrocausality, again

 Oh good:  a long essay at Aeon about how retrocausality might be the explanation for quantum entanglement.

It's not the easiest read, it seems - although I have had to just skim through it today...

Not an appealing lifestyle

It's fair to say that pre-colonial indigenous Australia had a PR problem in terms of their lifestyle which modern academia and education departments have spent the last 40 years trying to undo.  Out with the "primitive Stone Age nomadic life" and in with the "spiritual custodians of the land living in harmony with nature and each other for millennia, until Europeans ruined it."

True, there is the "who are we to judge on their quality of life when English kids were being sent to work in cotton mills for 14 hours a day so their little fingers could clean the deadly machinery?" argument.   On the other hand, at the risk of sounding all Pauline Hanson, the good thing about having stuff like writing, laws, national government and improving technology is that living conditions can be improved for everyone pretty quickly, when you put your mind to it.   

So, I've been perusing some anthropology sources lately, to remind me of what used to be noted commonly, even up to the later half of the 20th century, about some aspects of pre-colonial aboriginal life.   Now, Quadrant loves to cite this sort of material, often from the initial observers, but they can carry a question mark as to objectivity, so I've looked for later stuff.

Which led me to this issue - why didn't they have larger families, given the lack of contraception, girls marrying at a young age, etc.   This article "The Determinants of Fertility Among Aborigines" is from 1981, so I presume it is free of some earlier prejudices, and relatively sympathetic.   

All possible explanations are looked at, but these two aspects caught my eye the most:

 

 

Then there is the issue of male practices.  I mean, I knew a little about sub-incision of the penis, but hadn't realised that it was something of a repeat exercise for gaining blood for ritual purposes.  I thought it was supposed to be good to be a man in such societies, but didn't realise that it meant voluntarily cutting into your penis again and again: 

Now that I think of it, there is some irony that we usually associate the modern anti-circumcision movement with Left leaning types, who also are the most sympathetic to Noble Savage-isms, which has as part of its baggage sub-incision.  

As for the infanticide:  do we judge Sparta too harshly for killing the weak at a young age, or other societies which let unwanted babies die?  (It was quite a common practice in Japan in the feudal Edo period too, apparently.)

I would say we accept that different societies had moral systems which were influenced by their physical and intellectual environment - but we don't really dispute, if we are honest, that it's good that certain cultural practices are dropped.   Is it too much to ask that we be allowed to say the same about pre-colonial indigenous society here?

  

When your local police chief goes nuts

This crime story from America is noteworthy just for how improbable it sounds - a former police chief sent to jail for a decade of dealing with people who upset him by setting their cars and houses on fire.  

 

 

That culture war movie

I posted not so long ago about the odd intensity of the culture war around Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and how the "bro" movie reviewers (who despise the active feminisation of franchises like Star Wars under Disney - and producer Kathleen Kennedy in particular) have been trying very, very hard to ensure the movie is not deemed a success.

That campaign has continued apace, with that Critical Drinker guy seemingly betting his entire reputation on the film failing.  (He has now seen it and called it "an embarrassment" - but I'm not going to watch any review until after I have seen it.)

While I am indeed nervous as to whether I will like the movie or not, I am slightly encouraged by the general review score of the movie increasing over the last couple of weeks.  No one is calling it the greatest movie ever, but there are enough saying they think it somewhat better than Crystal Skull, and a more-or-less fitting enough send off, that I am slightly hopeful.

Going into a film with low expectations (especially with sequels) is always a good idea,though.   I remember fondly, for example, how blown away I was by seeing Empire Strikes Back with no real expectations as to quality.   I was busy at university at the time, and had barely read a review (which were only available in magazines and newspapers - so it wasn't as if you could easily read many anyway).  I was therefore completely delighted with how spectacularly good it was - and how it deepened the themes from the original.   It's also an odd aspect of that film that in fact the original reviews were not as strong as you might expect for a film that soon became universally credited as the best in the series. 

It does seem to me obvious that these guys are just trying too hard to will Dial to fail.   But given that the trailer looks decent enough; the amount of press that an uncharacteristically cheerful Harrison Ford has been giving (perhaps recognising that there is a need to counter an internet culture war campaign against the movie); and it not being a professional critic disaster:  I suspect it will in fact be a box office success. 

  

Age issues continue in China

Noted in the New York Times:

When Sean Liang turned 30, he started thinking of the Curse of 35 — the widespread belief in China that white-collar workers like him confront unavoidable job insecurity after they hit that age. In the eyes of employers, the Curse goes, they’re more expensive than new graduates and not as willing to work overtime.

Mr. Liang, now 38, is a technology support professional turned personal trainer. He has been unemployed for much of the past three years, partly because of the pandemic and China’s sagging economy. But he believes the main reason is his age. He’s too old for many employers, including the Chinese government, which caps the hiring age for most civil servant positions at 35. If the Curse of 35 is a legend, it’s one supported by some facts.

“I work out, so I look pretty young for my age,” he said in an interview. “But in the eyes of society, people like me are obsolete.”

China’s postpandemic economic rebound has hit a wall, and the Curse of 35 has become the talk of the Chinese internet. It’s not clear how the phenomenon started, and it’s hard to know how much truth there is to it. But there’s no doubt that the job market is weak and that age discrimination, which is not against the law in China, is prevalent. That is a double whammy for workers in their mid-30s who are making big decisions about career, marriage and children.

“Too old to work at 35 and too young to retire at 60,” said a viral online post — meaning that people of prime working age lack prospects and older people may need to keep working as the government is considering raising the retirement age. The post goes on: “Stay away from homeownership, marriage, children, car ownership, traffic and drugs, and you’ll own happiness, freedom and time.”

 

 

Not exactly the Gettysburg address

I wonder - how many people have bothered reading the "Uluru Statement from the Heart", which is the basis for the whole Voice referendum.  I mean, lots of "Yes" vote advocacy refers to its importance and the number of aboriginal groups who backed it.  

The link to it is here.

It is very short.

And - to be frank - I am pretty surprised at its low quality as rhetoric.  

What's more, I kind of suspect that the "Yes" advocates don't really want it widely read, because it goes on about indigenous sovereignty, "that co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown".   And how the Voice is only the start of a process, as they also want treaties and "truth telling".   

While it is true that I have heard some "Yes" politicians talk about the need for the Voice before the treaty process can begin, the larger impression I think the "Yes" side wants to give is that the Voice is a small change that will more or less "settle things down" in terms of aboriginal activism.  "They just want this modest change" type of message.   The statement undercuts that.

The statement also spends a lot of time on the issue of incarceration:

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately
criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This
cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the
torment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own
country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

Hmmm.   At a time when we want indigenous youth to respect property law, and find more meaning in life than via joy riding stolen cars or following their parent's abusive use of alcohol or other drugs, I'm not at all convinced that the messaging that the entire community are powerless is the right one to be promoting.   

Having said that, I don't doubt that historic institutional disadvantage has long term consequences.   So it's not like I am against (relatively) generous funding for aboriginal support.  (Subject to the proviso that I wish aboriginal leadership would accept that communities - black or white - with no connection to economic activity in their region are ever likely to be thriving.)

But at the end of the day, for the leadership to be messaging to their own communities all the time that they are still "powerless" is not helpful.  

Flash floods and infrastructure

I've been saying for years and years - the costs of dealing with the increase in intensity of rainfall under climate change is likely to be one of the largest under-rated costs of AGW for urban areas over the next few decades. 

Here's some vindication for that hunch in the New York Times:   

Intensifying Rains Pose Hidden Flood Risks Across the U.S.

In some of the nation’s most populous areas, hazardous storms can dump significantly more water than previously believed, new calculations show.

That's a gift link, but here is some more "that's exactly what I've been saying" from the body of the article:

The calculations suggest that one in nine residents of the lower 48 states, largely in populous regions including the Mid-Atlantic and the Texas Gulf Coast, is at significant risk of downpours that deliver at least 50 percent more rain per hour than local pipes, channels and culverts might be designed to drain.

“The data is startling, and it should be a wake-up call,” said Chad Berginnis, the executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, a nonprofit organization focused on flood risk....

The nation is set to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into new and improved roads, bridges and ports in the coming years under the bipartisan infrastructure plan that President Biden signed into law in 2021. First Street’s calculations suggest that many of these projects are being built to standards that are already out of date.

Matthew Eby, First Street’s executive director, said he hoped the new data could be used to make these investments more future-proof, “so that we don’t spend $1.2 trillion knowing that it’s wrong.”....

NOAA began publishing Atlas 14 in 2004, which means that any drains, culverts and storm-water basins built since then might potentially have been sized according to standards that no longer reflect Earth’s present climate. But plenty of America’s infrastructure was laid down even earlier, meaning it was designed to specifications that are probably even more obsolete, said Daniel B. Wright, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Certainly, updating Atlas 14 is something that needs to be done,” Dr. Wright said. “But the problem is huge, in the sense that there are trillions upon trillions of dollars of things that are based on horribly out-of-date information at this point.”

 

A quick (scientific) reminder of the path to the atomic bomb (and some thoughts about a certain movie coming)

All Knowing Google (Youtube submind) recommended this video to me on the weekend, and in light of the upcoming Oppenheimer movie, I thought it was a really interesting summary of the gradual (and then rapid) development of the science about nuclear fission as it suddenly matured just before the start of World War 2:

 

 

I didn't know that the "dangerous science" thing was such a continuing Curie family business.  

As for Oppenheimer:  I have found the trailers for it oddly unengaging, and the actor playing the title character has a peculiar, glassy stare which I find off putting.   Suitable for scientific genius, perhaps, but still a worry if you want to be engaged with a character.

While I have enjoyed some Nolan films, his script writing can be terrible (I thought Interstellar was shockingly bad, for example), and apparently this one he wrote (for the first time) in the first person.   So I have concerns about the script, and how it can manage to bring much tension to the question of "will this bomb cause a reaction that will end the world?" when we already know the answer.   Also, Nolan has been saying that he agrees the film is close to horror - and it has an American R rating - but if it is due to depictions of the horror of Hiroshima, for example, I'm not sure if audiences will feel it necessary to go there.

Anyway, I should get around to watching Tenet one day, too.

 

I'm not sure it proves the need at all...

Noticed this tweet this morning:

I again feel I have to apologise for being cynical on this issue - but doesn't the fact that there are 145 apparently successful aboriginal community led health services a strong sign that governments already understand the principle of the importance of aboriginal involvement in services to them?

The latest in conspiracy addled brains

John H - how do you manage to sometimes comment there and resist the urge to tell the host he's become a MAGA moron?   (I would ask the same of monty - if he visits here sometimes?)

Do I, or do I not, wish to be an "AI ghost"?

Part of me - probably the vanity part - thinks it would be cool if my descendants (assuming there are any - grandchildren are never a certainty these days) wanted to see me as an AI ghost.   But, yeah, still a bit creepy, too:

We’re on the cusp of technology that will at last let you live forever. You’ll be more beautiful, too, and stay young. It will make you kinder, if you prefer. And would you like to speak Finnish, as well?

Of course, you won’t be you, really, but an AI version. Sorry, it’ll just be friends and family enjoying those eternal good looks.

Columnist Bina Venkataraman knows this is coming because it’s already here, at least for deepfake performances from long-dead celebrities. But the tech is getting better every day, and soon it will be reanimating Grandpa alongside Elvis.

So, Bina writes, we should prepare: “At a minimum, consider putting your wishes regarding an AI avatar into your will.”

 The first link, by the way, is a gift link.  The one in the quote might be behind the paywall.

Lasers for internet

I think I posted about this once before, but if I did, it is obviously still an idea being advanced:

Optical data communications lasers can transmit several tens of terabits per second, despite a huge amount of disruptive air turbulence. ETH Zurich scientists and their European partners demonstrated this capacity with lasers between the mountain peak, Jungfraujoch, and the city of Bern in Switzerland. This will soon eliminate the necessity of expensive deep-sea cables.  ....

The backbone of the internet is formed by a dense network of fiber-optic cables, each of which transports up to more than 100 terabits of data per second (1 terabit = 10¹² digital 1/0 signals) between the network nodes. The connections between continents take place via deep sea networks—which is an enormous expense: a single cable across the Atlantic requires an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. TeleGeography, a specialized consulting firm, announced that there currently are 530 active undersea cables—and that number is on the rise.

Soon, however, this expense may drop substantially. Scientists at ETH Zurich, working together with partners from the space industry, have demonstrated terabit optical data transmission through the air in a European Horizon 2020 project. In the future, this will enable much more cost‑effective and much faster backbone connections via near-earth satellite constellations. Their work is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

The downside:  yet more satellites cluttering up near Earth orbit.

Things improved a lot over 100 years

From a brief book note on the Nature website:

Ending Epidemics

Richard Conniff MIT Press (2023)

In 1900, one in three people died before the age of five. By 2000, this death rate was down to one in 27, and one in 100 in wealthy countries. This astonishing revolution has attracted surprisingly little attention, notes Richard Conniff. Instead, there is a “stubborn, stupid sense that we have somehow become invulnerable” — epitomized by opposition to vaccines. Conniff’s highly readable history of epidemic diseases and vaccinologists, from the first description of bacteria in 1676 to the eradication of smallpox in 1978, combats this worrying vulnerability.

 

On the collaborative nature of film making

An interesting article here from NYT about the guy who has worked for years with Wes Anderson as his key grip (responsible for making the camera move.)

It's a bit of a lesson in how behind the scenes collaboration is so important in getting any distinctive looking film made.

   

The role of trust in society

With the issue of organised (or disorganised) lawlessness gaining more and more publicity in places as diverse as San Francisco and Alice Springs - and a common realisation that if it is too widespread, you can't easily arrest your way out of the problem of a large scale civil disobedience of laws we used to assume everyone people would value - I have been waiting for some serious voices to be raised about the matter of trust (and justice) in society.   

But it seems no one wants to talk about it.

And given that there is a large component of race politics involved, I would think we need the involvement of multicultural leadership on the issue.   

This is what worries me about the rhetoric around the Voice to Parliament referendum.  Some on the "pro" side (and the more radical indigenous side which says "no" because it is not empowering enough) are setting up for a very corrosive message against trust in this society if the referendum fails.   This seems to me to be exactly the wrong messaging needed right now.

 

 

Schiff does well

From one report about failed investigator Durham's appearance before committee yesterday:

In a subsequent exchange with Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Durham misled the committee about another key element of the Trump-Russia scandal. McClintock observed that the “central charge in the Russia collusion hoax was that Trump campaign operatives were in contact with Russian intelligence sources.”

Replying to that remark, Durham said, “There was no such evidence.”

But when Schiff got to question him, this is how it went:

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Mr. Durham, just so people remember what this is all about, let me ask you. The Mueller investigation revealed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a sweeping and systemic fashion, correct?

SPECIAL COUNSEL JOHN DURHAM: That is correct.

SCHIFF: And Russia did so through a social media campaign that favored Donald Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton, correct?

DURHAM: The report says yes.

SCHIFF: Mueller found that a Russian intelligence service hacked computers associated with the Clinton campaign and then released the stolen documents publicly. Is that right?

DURHAM: That report speaks for itself as well.

SCHIFF: Mueller also reported that though he could not establish the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, he also said, quote, "a statement that the investigation did not establish certain facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts," and also appears in the report, doesn’t it?

DURHAM: There is language to that effect, yes.

SCHIFF: In fact, you cited that very statement in your own report, did you not, as a way of distinguishing between proof beyond a reasonable doubt and evidence that falls short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt?

DURHAM: Correct.

SCHIFF: As an illustration of this, both Mueller and congressional investigations found that Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort was secretly meeting with an operative linked to Russian intelligence named Konstantin Kilimnik, correct?

DURHAM: That is my understanding, yes.

SCHIFF: And that Manafort, well, chairman of the Trump campaign, gave that Russian intelligence operative the campaign's internal polling data. Correct?

DURHAM: That's what I’ve read in the news. Yes.

SCHIFF: And that Manafort provided this information to Russian intelligence while Russian intelligence was engaged in that social media campaign and the release of stolen documents to help the Trump campaign, correct?

DURHAM: You may be getting beyond the depth of my knowledge, but.

SCHIFF: Well, let me say very simply. While Manafort, the campaign chairman for Donald Trump, was giving this Russian intelligence officer internal campaign polling data, Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign, weren’t they?

DURHAM: I don’t know that.

SCHIFF: You really don’t know those very basic facts of the investigation?

DURHAM: I know the general facts, yes. Do I know that particular fact myself? No. I mean, I know that I’ve read that in the media.

SCHIFF: Anywhere, Mr. Durham, that Mueller and congressional investigations also revealed that Don Jr. was informed that a Russian official was offering the Trump campaign, quote, "very high level and sensitive information," unquote, "that would be incriminating of Hillary Clinton was part of," quote, "Russia and its government support of Mr. Trump." Are you aware of that?

DURHAM: Sure, people get phone calls all the time from individuals who claim to have information like that.

SCHIFF: Really? The son of a presidential candidate gets calls all the time from a foreign government offering dirt on their important opponent. Is that what you’re saying?

DURHAM: I don't think that’s so unique in your experience.

SCHIFF: So you have other instances of the Russian government offering dirt on a presidential candidate to the presidential candidate's son, si that what you’re saying?

DURHAM: Would you repeat the question?

SCHIFF: You said that it’s not uncommon to get offers of help from a hostile foreign government to a presidential campaign directed at the president's son. You really stand by that, Mr. Durham?

DURHAM: I'm saying that people make phone calls making claims all the time, that you may have experienced.

SCHIFF: Are you really trying to diminish the significance of what happened here and the secret meeting that the president's son set up in Trump Tower to receive that incriminating information and trying to diminish the significant significance of that, Mr. Durham?

DURHAM: I'm not trying to diminish it at all, but I think the more complete story is that they met and it was a ruse and they didn’t talk about Mrs. Clinton.

SCHIFF: And you think it's insignificant that he had a secret meeting with a Russian delegation for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton? And the only disappointment expressed in the meeting was that the dirt they got wasn't better. You don’t think that’s significant?

DURHAM: I don’t think that that was a well-advised thing to do.

SCHIFF: Oh, not well advised. All right. Well, that’s the understatement of the year. So you think it’s perfectly appropriate or maybe just ill-advised for a presidential campaign to secretly meet with a Russian delegation to get dirt on their opponent? You would merely say that’s inadvisable?

DURHAM: If you’re asking me what I'd do and I hope I wouldn’t do it, but it was not illegal, was it? It was stupid, foolish, ill advised.

SCHIFF: Well, it is illegal to conspire to get incriminating opposition research from a hostile government that is of financial value to a campaign. Wouldn’t that violate campaign laws?

DURHAM: I don’t know. I don’t know all those facts to be true.

SCHIFF: Well, your report. Mr. Durham doesn’t dispute anything Mueller found. Did it?

DURHAM: No. Our object. Our aim was not to dispute Director Mahler. I have the greatest regard, high regard for Director Mueller. He's a patriot.

SCHIFF: We only distinguish between his investigation and yours is he refused to bring charges where he couldn’t prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And you did? I yield back.

Runs in the family

Well, when I say "runs in the family", at least his uncles.  (I haven't bothered Googling yet whether his Dad is known to have had affairs.  It would hardly be surprising if there is at least one or two - I more or less assume it for any politician on any side in the 1960's.)   

Anyhow, isn't it funny that the Right wing Murdoch used to be happy to run this stuff against him 10 years ago, but now that he's seen as a conspiracy sprouting "spoiler" asset to the MAGA crowd, are they giving him better coverage?:

RFK’s sex diary: His secret journal of affairs

Can safely predict this is one way I'm not going to die

Surely I can't be alone in not knowing (or forgetting?) that tourist trips to more than 3 km under the Atlantic were available?  

Actually, looking at the company's website, it seems they don't exactly sell it as a "tourist trip":

Expeditions will be conducted respectfully and in accordance with NOAA Guidelines for Research Exploration and Salvage of RMS Titanic [Docket No. 000526158–1016–02], and comply with UNESCO guidelines for the preservation of underwater world heritage sites.

Qualified explorers have the opportunity to join the expedition as Mission Specialist crewmembers whose Training and Mission Support Fees underwrite the mission, the participation of the science team, and their own training. Each team of 6 Mission Specialists will join the expedition for a 10-day mission (8 Days at Sea). The entire expedition is comprised of 5 mission legs.

Or is there another tourist venture apart from that?

Anyway, I can't imagine anything worse than being in a tiny, potentially malfunctioning sub at the bottom of the ocean.   Somehow, suffocating in space seems a more attractive option, although I'm not entirely sure why...

A pretty stunning examination of oddball psychology

As it happens, I heard this Background Briefing radio documentary yesterday about a stunningly unprofessional approach taken by a psychologist doing "family therapy".   I was appalled at what it revealed.

What's worse, she is one of the scores of psychologists around Australia who write key reports for the Family Court in child disputes. 

I can safely predict that there will be scores of lawyers, too, who will feel that their doubts about the whole system being so swayed by (allegedly) objective psychologists now has some well publicised  vindication.  (Not that all psychologists are as bad as this one, of course; and really, it is hard to say what alternative system could be implemented.   Perhaps a panel of "experts", with a broader range of life experience than  psychologists?)

On rabbits and morals

I quite like Noah Smith's essay on rabbits and how he's worked out that his fondness for them fits in with his general view of morality.  Here's a key part:

A number of my blog readers have been asking me to lay out my broad moral framework. Usually I resist this impulse. As David Hume wrote, humans decide on right and wrong based on a confusing and often mutually contradictory jumble of moral instincts, and attempts to fit those instincts into a rigid, internally consistent moral code are generally an exercise in futility. But if I do have one consistent, bedrock principle about the way the world ought to work, it’s this — the strong should protect and uplift the weak.

Nature endows some people with strength — sharp claws, size and musculature, resistance to disease. Human society endows us with other forms of strength that are often far more potent — guns, money, social status, police forces and armies at our backs. Everywhere there is the temptation for those with power to crush those without it, to enslave them, to extract labor and fealty and fawning flattery. “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” wrote Thucydides; this is as concise a statement as you’ll ever find of the law of the jungle, both the real jungle and the artificial jungles humans create for ourselves. A hierarchy of power and brutality is a high-entropy state, an easy equilibrium toward which social interactions naturally flow. 

I believe that it is incumbent upon us as thinking, feeling beings — it is our moral purpose and our mission in this world — to resist this natural flow, to stand against it, to reverse it where possible. In addition to our natural endowments of power, we must gather to ourselves what additional power we can, and use it to protect and uplift those who have less of it. To some, that means helping the poor; to others, fighting for democracy or civil rights; to others, it simply means taking good care of their kids, or of a pet rabbit. But always, it means rolling the stone uphill, opposing the natural hierarchies of the world, fighting to reify an imaginary world where the strong exercise no dominion over the weak.

We will never fully realize that world, of course. And my morality is easier to declare than to put into practice; on the way we will make many missteps. We will make mistakes about who is strong and who is weak, punching down when we self-righteously tell ourselves we’re punching up. Like the communists of the 20th century, we will sometimes invert one unjust hierarchy only to put another in its place. And we will be corrupted by the power we gather, mouthing high principle while exploiting some of those we claim to protect; we will tell ourselves that we’re knights while acting like barbarians (just as actually existing knights often did). 

All these things will happen, and yet it is incumbent upon us to do the best we can, to keep fighting the good fight for a gentler, more equal world.

 

 

Fusion scepticism, too

Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed to an article in Scientific American about the huge cost overruns, technical manufacturing issues, and delays in start up, in the ITER fusion project.

My hunches about fusion never being a practical source of energy seem to be getting more justified.

Oh, and there was another story that has now come to my attention about some sillier fusion deal:

Private U.S. nuclear fusion company Helion Energy will provide Microsoft (MSFT.O) with electricity in about five years, the companies said on Wednesday, in the first such deal for the power source that fuels the sun but has been elusive on Earth. 

I would bet my house on this being pure PR that means nothing.  In fact, it almost sounds close to fraud to attract investors.

Multiverse scepticism

The Guardian has an article that accurately describes how the current thing of cinematic superhero franchises diving into the idea of multiverses to generate character crossover stories already seems boring and doomed to failure.

I wonder just how quickly the studios will abandon it? 

Owns squillions, can't afford a tailor?

I guess I should apologise for what might be said to be bitchiness, but here goes.

Buying off the rack pants or suits is fine, no matter your wealth:  but really, have a look at George Lucas's pants in this photo from today's US premier of the latest Indiana Jones movie:

 Don't they look both extremely baggy, and way too long?   And the check shirt looks like ones I wear, from Uniqlo.

Lift your game, George.  

 

Doubts all around

Some quick thoughts on Lidia Thorpe's extraordinary use of Parliament to complain of harassment and "sexual assault":

*  her behaviour can frequently be fairly called "attention seeking"; this and her generally aggressive demeanour (actually, obnoxiousness in my opinion) makes me judge her as one of the least likely targets of sexual harassment in Parliament;

*  that said, I don't doubt that there would still be some men in Parliament who show obnoxious attitudes to women, and it seems a little peculiar that a fellow Senator would move office after an unfounded complaint.  (On the other hand, if he thought she was just too nutty to reason with, it might have been a good idea to just keep away from her as far as possible.)  Does Dutton's reaction today indicate there are other, perhaps more serious, complaints from women about Van?  (He did mention "other allegations" - so presumably there is more.   But for all we know, it may be low level stuff.  That's the problem with sexual harassment - it can range from the merely irritatingly inappropriate that should be capable of apology and reform, to the wildly psychologically disturbing, for which people should lose their jobs.) 

* someone on Twitter pointed to an article in the Canberra Times in 2021 in which she talked of harassment.  But really, it's pretty weak tea:

In one example, Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe said a male MP, standing outside her office, had looked her up and down and said "I want to take you out for dinner".

She said the man, who she declined to name, subsequently called her office repeatedly to ask her why she hadn't accepted the invitation. 

Senator Thorpe has not ruled out naming the men under parliamentary privilege, although she admitted the thought of it made her feel sick....

Speaking from inside her office on Tuesday morning, Senator Thorpe revealed she had been harassed by four parliamentarians - two senators and two MPs - since she entered parliament in September.

She said the harassment included "suggestive" remarks, comments about how she dressed or "what she had in her mouth". In one example, a fellow senator had put his arm around her while walking into the chamber for question time. 

There was one senator, she said, who would deliberately walk behind her in the corridors.

Senator Thorpe said she was so afraid of being alone after estimates hearings ended late on Monday night that she phoned her partner back in Melbourne so he could help "walk me to my office".

Describing the various acts as "brazen", Senator Thorpe said some parliamentarians "believe they have so much power that they are above the law and they can do whatever they like".

"It is just about power," she said.

Van, for his part, denies today he has ever touched her.   

 *  Given that she is so reticent to give specific details of the number of "suggestive" remarks she had to put up with, it does sound as if a large proportion might be more in her imagination.   On the other hand, it's also not unknown for some men to play a game of being suggestive in a manner that retains "plausible deniability" that it had a sexual meaning.   (All men should be well and truly past any form of uninvited touching of someone from the workplace though - that's been asking for trouble for the last 40 years.)

*  I still find it implausible that someone like Lidia, who presents so aggressively on so many issues, couldn't deal with unwanted attention by simply telling off the blokes that she considered it harassing.  

*  Labor would be well advised to stay away from this issue, I reckon.   

Update:   Well, maybe I should have kept away from the topic, too!

Look, additional allegations against Van make it sound like he is what you might call an "old school" sex pest - a groper who hopes he might get lucky if he pinches the right woman.  He might do worse, who knows?  

Of course that's completely unacceptable, and the fact that it is only been dealt with now does indeed confirm the Liberal Party's "women problem".

On the other hand, Lidia Thorpe's version of her time in Parliament makes it sound like she felt under continual threat of actual rape or sexual assault.   Apart from the recent high profile litigated allegation of that from within the Liberal Party, and it being pretty much in the category of [alleged] "date rape", there doesn't seem much evidence that any of the other hundreds of women who work there view this workplace the same way.   

Two things can be true:   sexual harassment, and perhaps worse, at the hands of men in Parliament House is (surprisingly) still a serious issue, especially on the Liberal side;  and Lidia Thorpe's perception of how she is a victim of it sounds, well, kind of neurotic.

Yeah, sure

Has there ever been a mind so spectacularly enfeebled by Trumpism?

He is getting a lot of ridicule in the following tweets:

A quantum computer did something (kinda) useful?

There's a pretty readily understandable report in the New York Times about a development in the use of quantum computing.   The most interesting part is how they deliberately introduced "noise" so they work out how to reject it's influence (I think that's right):

On the quantum computer, the calculation took less than a thousandth of a second to complete. Each quantum calculation was unreliable — fluctuations of quantum noise inevitably intrude and induce errors — but each calculation was quick, so it could be performed repeatedly.

Indeed, for many of the calculations, additional noise was deliberately added, making the answers even more unreliable. But by varying the amount of noise, the researchers could tease out the specific characteristics of the noise and its effects at each step of the calculation.

“We can amplify the noise very precisely, and then we can rerun that same circuit,” said Abhinav Kandala, the manager of quantum capabilities and demonstrations at IBM Quantum and an author of the Nature paper. “And once we have results of these different noise levels, we can extrapolate back to what the result would have been in the absence of noise.”

In essence, the researchers were able to subtract the effects of noise from the unreliable quantum calculations, a process they call error mitigation.

“You have to bypass that by inventing very clever ways to mitigate the noise,” Dr. Aharonov said. “And this is what they do.”

Altogether, the computer performed the calculation 600,000 times, converging on an answer for the overall magnetization produced by the 127 bar magnets.

And it seems that the answer they got was better than old "classical" methods:

Certain configurations of the Ising model can be solved exactly, and both the classical and quantum algorithms agreed on the simpler examples. For more complex but solvable instances, the quantum and classical algorithms produced different answers, and it was the quantum one that was correct.

Thus, for other cases where the quantum and classical calculations diverged and no exact solutions are known, “there is reason to believe that the quantum result is more accurate,” said Sajant Anand, a graduate student at Berkeley who did much of the work on the classical approximations.

There is still uncertainty about it all, though, in that error correction added to the classical method in future might mean that there is no long lasting "quantum supremacy".

Still, a cool story.

 

 

How to tell that a man's a gullible fool

I've said it before:  the only useful thing Trump has ever done is made it somewhat easier to understand how the rise of Hitler happened - he shows in a modern setting how (some) people love being told that they are victims (escalated, for self serving purposes, with invented and imagined tropes) and are happy to let any dork who aggressively preaches this message to them become their cult leader.  

CNN, by the way, provides a very lengthy list of the number of false claims made in the speech.

And in a similar vein, there was a column at Wapo reminding us of why Clinton was never prosecuted:

It’s been a long seven years, so let’s review the Clinton case, and tick through the critical differences. I have no brief for Clinton’s behavior in setting up a private, insecure email server to get around the State Department’s clunky, antiquated email system. It was sloppy, and Clinton made matters worse when she had her lawyers unilaterally erase 30,000 emails they deemed personal.

But: Clinton didn’t keep classified documents or transmit them on the server. Rather, the emails sent on the server referred to classified information; they did not, with the exception of three email chains that had a paragraph or two marked “(C),” for confidential — contain other flags that the material was classified.

If anything, there was “evidence of a conscious effort to avoid sending classified information by writing around the most sensitive material,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in a June 2018 report on the Clinton investigation. And to the extent that classified information was discussed on the private system, investigators found, that was done with other government employees, for official purposes.

In addition, prosecutors did not find indications of any intent to obstruct in the Clinton lawyers’ deletion of the emails they decided were personal. They “concluded that there was no evidence that emails intentionally were deleted by former Secretary Clinton’s lawyers to conceal the presence of classified information on former Secretary Clinton’s server,” Horowitz reported.

FBI and Justice Department employees were unanimous in recommending against charges, the report said.

As then-FBI Director James B. Comey put it at the time, “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring such a case. “In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts,” Comey said. “All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.”

But Republicans and their media lackeys have built an alternative fact imaginary universe in which they are the victims, and are determined to live in it.  

The rural health care problem

I've been hearing a few discussions recently on ABC radio about the seemingly never ending problem of getting enough health care workers to practice outside of capital cities and their adjacent areas.  This morning I heard that they can't get anything like the staffing they need even in Shepparton - a town only a couple of hours drive outside of Melbourne.  

One person suggested that the key used to be getting young doctors or nurses to work in remoter areas and hopefully they would find a spouse there - giving them an incentive to settle down in that town or region.   Sounds plausible, except it seems that younger folk are coupling at a slower rate than ever before.

Maybe we need media effort into this:  none of this "Farmer wants a Wife" malarky; more "Country Bumpkin wants a Doctor Spouse".   (Might you, I suppose the doctors might have to be persuaded at gun point to participate.)

One thing seems pretty clear:  increased money and allowances is not really at the heart of the problem.  It seems to be more about convenience, and a preference for living in places with a wide variety of things to do.   Hence, I have other suggestions:

a.    free drone air taxis for doctors and specialists who can't be bothered driving 2 or 3 hours for a day's work, but might put up with a fun 30 minute flight from their local park or footy field;

b.   government commandeering of penthouse apartments in prime holiday locations for free use by medical staff who work any more than 4 hours drive from a city or region with no medical staff shortages.  Sure, that might mean taking every penthouse apartment on the Gold Coast, for example, but times are tough;

c.   while we are talking the Gold Coast:  ban doctors and nurses doing cosmetic surgery.  OK, OK, I'm not totally against the free market - just that for every month they work in a cosmetic surgery practice, they have to work too weeks in a remote area dealing with real problems. 

d.   I suspect that relatively few doctors, or at least young doctors, are not Lefty inclined on most issues, and part of the problem may be that regional Australia remains the main hold out for conservative parties.  (Although, there is the Gold Coast and it's Florida-lite reputation too.)   Not sure how we solve that problem.  Even my  "reverse Pol Pot" policy might not help with that, if the handful of people left to manage the robot farms are still voting National and pining for an Australian version of Donald Trump.  Oh, that's right:  my plan was to have right to vote eliminated if you wanted to stay in the regional areas.  Well, there will be an exception made for medical staff.  Fair's fair.

Sounds like B Ark material to me....

Despite watching a lot of Youtube content on the big TV, I've never watched much of the Youtube star Mr Beast (nor that PewDiePie) - from what little I have seen, their content or personality did not strike me as engaging.   I suspect nearly all of their audience would be under 30, and my general impression is that there is something, shall we say, youthfully shallow?, about both these guys.   Maybe I'm being mean, or just old?  

Anyhoo, I'm writing about someone I'm not interested in because of the lengthy article about Mr Beast at the NYT, talking about why some people have taken to promoting positive dislike and distrust of him, despite much of his channel being about random acts of altruism.   I'll gift the article here.

A few things leaping out at me about it:

a.    how incredibly bad is the American health care system if a poor family can't get their kid a cataract operation without the intervention of charity?  

b.    the explanation of how Mr Beast built a Youtube empire is a bit of a worry:

For most of his teenage years, “I woke up, I studied YouTube, I studied videos, I studied filmmaking, I went to bed and that was my life,” Donaldson once told Bloomberg. “I hardly had any friends because I was so obsessed with YouTube,” he said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” last year. After high school, he hooked up with a gang of similarly obsessed “lunatics” and planned out a program of study. He and his friends “did nothing but just hyperstudy what makes a good video, what makes a good thumbnail, what’s good pacing, how to go viral,” he told Rogan. “We’d do things like take a thousand thumbnails and see if there’s correlation to the brightness of the thumbnail to how many views it got. Videos that got over 10 million views, how often do they cut the camera angles? Things like that.”

 You know what I think of when I read that? - "Straight to the B Ark with you, young man!"   

c.    the article makes a point that is probably is at the core of the older person's reaction to him:

I’ll admit that I agree with some of those critics, at least to the extent that I think it would be nice if a person with Donaldson’s platform and resources (and evident desire to help people) cast a closer eye on structural problems with the American health care system and on the everyday injustices visited on disabled people. But I can also see how this kind of criticism misunderstands what the MrBeast channel is and how it works. Having kicked his flywheel into action, Donaldson from here can only really keep it spinning. Any deviation might threaten the perpetual motion of his growth machine. (Imagine being 12 years old: Do you want to watch an explainer on private-equity roll-ups of primary-care practices?)

Yep:  he may be doing good charitable work (while making many, many millions himself), but it's a bit fiddling around the edges of what really does the most people good.  

 

Robot church

The article linked in the tweet makes it clear that this was a bit of a novelty act, not a serious attempt at a permanent AI led church:

HUNDREDS OF GERMAN Protestants attended a church service in Bavaria that was generated almost entirely by artificial intelligence.

The ChatGPT chatbot led more than 300 people through 40 minutes of prayer, music, sermons and blessings.

“Dear friends, it is an honour for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany,” the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.

The service — including the sermon, prayers and music — was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.

“I conceived this service — but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,” the 29-year-old scholar told The Associated Press....

The reviews were not overwhelmingly good:

The entire service was “led” by four different avatars on the screen, two young women, and two young men.

At times, the AI-generated avatar inadvertently drew laughter when it used platitudes and told the churchgoers with a deadpan expression that in order “to keep our faith, we must pray and go to church regularly”.

Some people enthusiastically videotaped the event with their mobile phones, while others looked on more critically and refused to speak along loudly during The Lord’s Prayer.

Heiderose Schmidt, a 54-year-old who works in IT, said she was excited and curious when the service started but found it increasingly off-putting as it went along.

“There was no heart and no soul,” she said. “The avatars showed no emotions at all, had no body language and were talking so fast and monotonously that it was very hard for me to concentrate on what they said.”

“But maybe it is different for the younger generation who grew up with all of this,” Schmidt added.

I did like this comment following:

 I am also reminded of Futurama:

Noted on the weekend

Ha!

Thought these tweets were funny:

 

Here's the breaking story, as noted in the Washington Post.

I wonder:  at what point are leadership level Republicans going to come out and say - "Look, Trumpists:  it's just not realistic to think a Presidential candidate with these trials hanging over their head has any chance of successful election."

Still with the odd political re-alignment with UFOs

I noted this back in February 2021, but I still find it remarkable how it's mainly the Right which is now showing gullibility on UFO matters.   It's all of a piece with the MAGA Right becoming generally paranoid about the "Deep State", and swallowing whole conspiracies about Big Science on climate change and COVID, when back in the 60's, 70's and (possibly?) 80's, anti-establishment paranoia was mainly a thing of the Left.    

Anyhow, now on Twitter publicity is being give to a curious, month old case of a Las Vegas family appearing to have been scared by (what they thought was) large, bug eyed aliens appearing in their backyard (after a meteor or something appeared in the sky.)

Lots and lots of scepticism is deserved, and being expressed, about the lack of photos or video by the family of what was spooking them in the yard.   But even more than that, the police arrive, go in the backyard, and apparently say nothing else significant about what was there, and what was on their bodycam.  

But the son put up another video from his bedroom, summarising what happened.  Can't find a link to it now.

Why wouldn't there be journalists crawling over glass to get an interview with the parents?   Why wouldn't the family be open to showing others the ring on the ground that the son claims as evidence that something landed there?   Why aren't there more videos of the apparent bright meteor type light over Las Vegas that night??

None of this makes any sense whatsoever.  

That's what makes it sort of intriguing - although chances are, of course, that it will turn out to be a whole set of mis-perceptions running riot within fervid imaginations.   [I'm kind of leaning against outright fraud - because it would be unusual for all four family members to participate in it.  If it was fraud, it would more likely be from just one or two, who managed to draw their parents into panicking without seeing anything.]

Shouldn't this be a bigger story in the American media?

On Tucker Carlson's little rinky dink home made media show, which Right wing types are falling over themselves to call the end of mainstream media (due to dubious view counts), he apparently said this:

 This was widely noted on Twitter, and certainly in some foreign press, such as The Independent:

Tucker Carlson calls Ukraine’s Jewish leader ‘rat-like’ as he launches new Twitter show with pro-Kremlin rant

And Haaretz:

Tucker Carlson Trafficks in Antisemitic Tropes About Ukraine's Zelenskyy on Twitter Show Debut

But when it comes to the New York Times, you have to get 7 paragraphs in to get to this, which seemingly takes the attitude "meh, this is just what he does":

Carlson also called Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish president of Ukraine, “a persecutor of Christians” and described him as “shifty, dead-eyed” and “sweaty and ratlike.” For years, Carlson laundered far-right fringe rhetoric and bigotry on Fox, and there is no sign that, in the anything-goes regime of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the laundry is shutting down.

And the Washington Post?  They seem to have at least 3 pieces on the Twitter show, none of them saying anything in detail about the obvious "let's dogwhistle to anti-Semites" aspect.  (Actually, I reckon it's more than a dog whistle - there is no other way to interpret it.)  All we seem to get is this:

Carlson picked up some of his usual conspiracy-theory-tinged topics and sympathies to the Russian government in the video, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “sweaty and ratlike” and suggesting without evidence that Ukraine was responsible for the destruction of a major dam on its territory. He also accused mainstream media outlets of suppressing a claim from a former military officer that the U.S. government has secret knowledge of alien spacecraft.

To its credit, another piece at WAPO did point this out:

“Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew [the dam] up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline, last fall,” Carlson said. “And in fact, Ukrainians did do that, as we now know.”

Carlson quickly moved on, and for good reason: Despite now saying Ukraine blew up Nord Stream, he spent months on his Fox News show saying something very different. Without any real evidence, he repeatedly claimed it was the United States who blew up Nord Stream.

Anyway, I find it odd that the mainstream American media is not blasting him more directly about this.  

And as for Elon Musk, this tweet sums it up pretty well: