That Dark Emu doco

So, I watched the ABC's The Dark Emu Story documentary last night.   I was happy that it gave considerable time to the detailed critique of the book and its "research":

In 2021, an academic rebuttal to Dark Emu was published: Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate by anthropologist Peter Sutton and archeologist Keryn Walshe. Both authors appear in the documentary, arguing Pascoe ignored evidence that did not fit his case while over-emphasising evidence that did. Pascoe and Sutton come head-to-head in the film, debating definitions such as of the word “sophistication”.

“What’s wrong with being unsophisticated?” Sutton asks. “Why do you hold up a battle of sophistication as a kind of a solution to people, filling their racism?”

But, as you might expect, the pro-Pascoe side, including by such high profile figures as Marcia Langton, were given much, much more air time.  (Langton presented as particularly cranky and automatically dismissive of criticism.)

The documentary failed to mention some pertinent things which I am pretty sure would be true, such as  the book has sold so well partly because of uniformly uncritical endorsement by Education departments.

The main thing that the pro-side demonstrated, though, was that aboriginal academia and advocacy has spent the last couple of decades on a PR project to convince Australians that aboriginal society was (is?), as Sutton says, "sophisticated," and essentially the same as European society.  

But to do so, they really are on a post-modern project of co-opting terminology and applying it in a way that weakens meaning almost to the point of uselessness.   The most Pascoe-ian example is "agriculture", which Sutton is very adamant (based on his own work, I believe) is not the way to describe the aboriginal practices and belief as to how to encourage plant growth.   The other examples include the attempt to build excitement about rocks having been moved in a river so as to form fish traps by calling them "engineering".  Or "houses" that were small scale huts with construction techniques that were not, by any stretch of the imagination, complex.   (They chose some pretty tough wood and "surgically" removed it from trees with stone axes - I rolled my eyes.) 

But the big example that Langton kept using was talking about the "complex economies" to describe the fact that some items were traded between tribes - grinding rocks being the main example noted on the show.   

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying it.   As Sutton would presumably argue, you don't need to co-opt Western "sophistication" to respect aboriginal society.   It's the fakery in the attempt to do so that actually harms their cause, because (to take one example) people can see with their own eyes that one tribe handing over grinding rocks to another in exchange for something is not "sophisticated" or an "economy" in the same way - or scale - that many other societies have worked over the last few thousand years.   (I originally referred to "Western" economies, but really, the comparison with what was going on in at least parts of virtually any other continent is like chalk and cheese.)   

Ha! Sovereign citizen tries it on in - Singapore!?

I'm amused to see that American/Aussie extreme right wing "sovereign citizen" argument was tried on by a woman in Singapore recently:

A woman who made headlines for her behaviour during the trial of a fellow anti-masker was convicted by a court for charges of her own - for refusing to attend police investigations or turn up in court, and for spitting at police officers.

Lee Hui Yin, now known as Tarchandi Tan after changing her name last year, was convicted of five charges on Jul 10.

In a judgment made available on Saturday (Jul 15), District Judge Kow Keng Siong laid out the reasons for convicting the 53-year-old woman.

Tan had repeatedly defied orders to go to a police station for investigations and to attend court. This was related to investigations over an incident on Aug 18, 2021.

Tan had attended the trial of Briton Benjamin Glynn that day. When the trial was ongoing, she allegedly said "this is ridiculous kangaroo court" and directed a comment at District Judge Eddy Tham, saying "I do not respect the judge".

Glynn was given six weeks' jail in August 2021 for his offences which included not wearing a mask, and deported.

Singapore would have to be about the third last country in the world where "sovereign citizen" style argument would work - after China and Russia.

She sent an email on the eve of the court mention to several individuals including the police officer on her case, stating that she was a "sovereign individual" and not amenable to any law or obligation unless she had voluntarily consented to them.

She also said she could be said to have committed a crime only if she had "wilfully harmed or violated someone or someone's property without (that person's) consent".

She said she did not agree to be investigated since the incidents occurred over a year ago.

The judge did deal with this issue in no uncertain terms (and rightly so):

Judge Kow said the sovereign individual argument "is clearly misconceived".

"In my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that proponents and peddlers of the sovereign individual argument can be held criminally liable if they contravene the law," he said.

He said this argument has its roots in the United States. US proponents believe that the US Federal Government has no inherent power over individual citizens of the various states without their individual consent.

"To justify this belief, its proponents rely on various arguments centred around, among others, the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the US Uniform Commercial Code, as well as conspiracy theories that involve the US government and the US Federal Reserve Bank," said Judge Kow.

He said this argument has been "unequivocally and routinely rejected" by courts in the US and other common law jurisdictions.

"The accused has failed to provide any credible legal argument to show why the sovereign individual argument - which is based on the US Constitution and conspiracy theories and has been rejected in other jurisdictions - is applicable in Singapore," said Judge Kow.

"Under our system of government, parliament makes laws that all persons in Singapore must obey, the executive can exercise coercive powers provided by statutes, and the judiciary is the sole body empowered to make binding interpretations on the scope of these laws and powers. The sovereign individual argument ignores this legal position – a position that has been established for almost six decades since Singapore's independence and has never been in doubt."

He said that the practical effect of the sovereign individual argument is that its proponents are "above the law and can pick and choose what laws they want to obey and to enforce".

The poor woman might have an excuse for holding a nonsense belief, though:

He added that he had considered whether Tan's belief that she was sovereign suggests that the charges were caused or contributed by a mental disorder.

She was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2012, and has been a patient at the Institute of Mental Health since 2003.

 Well, you do have to be nuts to take it seriously, I guess...

Blog writing as a health exercise

From phys.org:

Computer use, crosswords and games like chess are more strongly associated with older people avoiding dementia than knitting, painting or socializing, a Monash University study has found. 

Pity I don't like crosswords, or chess!

But as for computer use, does keeping a blog count?  Yes, I would think so:

They found that participants who routinely engaged in adult literacy and mental acuity tasks such as education classes, keeping journals, and doing crosswords were 9-11 percent less likely to develop dementia than their peers.

Creative hobbies like crafting, knitting and painting, and more passive activities like reading reduced the risk by 7 percent. In contrast, the size of someone's social network and the frequency of external outings to the cinema or restaurant were not associated with dementia risk reduction.

Doesn't seem much of a reduction, though.   

Being of two minds

I've been trying to find the time lately to read up on a few different, related topics:

a.    Karl Popper's (now little discussed) idea of 3 Worlds (discussed with John Eccles in a book from the 1970's that I stumbled across somewhere in the 70's or 80's);  

b.   the fact that I find it hard to stop puzzling about how, in terms of the question of free will, and consciousness generally, an idea planted into a mind from outside of it (via language, or visual art, or music) can have consequences for how a person thinks, feels and acts.  (Basically, how does something nebulous from World 3 cause an effect in World 2 and 1?);

c.    how the idea of Buddhist inspired mindfulness fits into this, and what exactly is doing the observing of the rest of the mind if you undertake meditation for the purpose of watching the flow of thoughts through the mind?  (Oddly enough, there is a decent blog post on this topic called "You have two minds, and here's how to use them" by the guy who wrote the self help book with the crude title.)   The basic idea is that we have an "observing mind" and a "thinking mind".   But I have not had enough time yet to read up in much detail on different Buddhist schools' thoughts on how this works.  

d.   my feeling that this should all be significant to the recent topic of sexuality and gender, which is all based on having a core that cannot be changed, and must be fulfilled.  This is often brought up by the anti trans (so to speak) side of the culture wars - that the idea of have a male or female soul in the wrong body is a bit of mysticism which the otherwise irreligious liberal is often happy to subscribe to.  In any event, given that regardless of whether it is innate or not, transgenderism is a lot harder to accommodate (in terms of the effort that has to be put in by most to appear as an attractive member of the opposite gender) than accepting people can go to bed with whoever they want, isn't it worth teaching mindfulness to those who might be well served  by merely observing their passing and intrusive feelings about their body rather than being in a hurry to modifying the body to match?  But any article that I read about it seems to be from the perspective of using mindfulness to affirm that the "wrong gender" feeling is OK (and to be acted upon.)

   

My Mission Impossible reservations

OK, just got back from Mission Impossible 7, which has a remarkably high Rottentomatoes score (96%), but a more realistic 80% on Metacritic, and I have to say it was enjoyable enough, but I still wish it wasn't Christopher McQuarrie directing.     

From what I can gather, he is more like a collaborator with Cruise than a mere director, coming up with ideas for whole sequences.   And it's not that he's incompetent, exactly; it's just that, as with the last MI movie (which also was overly praised in reviews), I find myself often thinking that action sequences could have been shot in more interesting ways, to give the audience a better spatial understanding of what is going on, and with longer takes and less choppy editing.   (I doubt it is really the editors fault rather than the director's - and I assume they work closely together anyway.)

This is now the third in the series he has directed, and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed his first (No 5), but I really recall very little of the last one, except for the fact I found myself critiquing the direction and editting.

I think 7 is better than 6, perhaps because of a key likeable new character, and it is a huge relief to have the malevolent danger not a nuclear bomb or virus, but something that is extremely topical and (given the AI doomerism of the last 6 months) actually pretty plausible for a movie of this type.   But it was talkier than I expected, and during those scenes, I also found myself thinking McQuarrie has a touch of the JJ Abrams issue of filling the movie screen with giant faces, as if we were only only looking at a TV screen.    

Gee, I'm sounding more negative than I feel I intended.   It's a good movie, just not a great one.

And I still think the best in the series were the ones most stylishly and creatively directed:  the first (yay, Brian de Palma) and fourth (poor old Brad Bird, who seems to have sunk out of view.)  Pity if McQuarrie had an accident and had to hand over direction to someone else.   Because we all know: Spielberg collaborating with Cruise one last time - what a dream that would be.  Can't Putin arrange a window push if I ask him nicely?   (Just from a first or second floor - no need to actually kill him, a broken leg might be enough.) 

But I guess my nasty imagination won't be fulfilled, and I will be back to see the last MI movie, with McQuarrie at the helm, so I can continue grumbling about his style one more time.  

Update:  I re-watched (for the first time) MI 5 - Rogue Nation last night.   It really was a good film, with a good script (co-written by McQuarrie) and my only persistent reservation being the silliness of the idea that security access information would be stored in a giant water tank.  But the underwater sequence is nonetheless stressful to watch.

I think a large part of the reason I didn't like 6 was due to the whole "been there, done that" scenario of  "we're back to terrorists wanting to let off nuclear bombs, to no clear purpose".    And I still think the helicopter action at the end was poorly edited.  

   

Quango no go

We don't hear the term "quango" much anymore, but this sounds like one, and a place that has been a tortured workplace for years:

Damning findings within Australia’s chemical regulator, including an incident of an employee urinating on their colleagues, have emerged at its board chair and CEO stand down.

Staff at all levels at the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) were found to have been subject to regular complaints of misconduct in a review commissioned by Agriculture Minister Murray Watt.

The review, released on Friday, came after allegations surfaced in a Senate inquiry suggesting an employee urinated on colleagues following a workplace Christmas party.

The incident was referred to the public service commissioner and police in February.

According to the reviewer, law firm Clayton Utz, the alleged urination was just one example of deep cultural issues within the entire organisation.

“There were clearly cultural issues with the organisation given that on average there was a formal complaint about once every 4-6 weeks for five years,” Clayton Utz said.

“There are also a significant number of complaints that refer to serious impacts for the persons involved, including numerous instances of employees having to take periods of stress leave or feeling unable to attend work due to mental health concerns.”

I guess it is all down to personalities, and personality conflicts, between people who simply won't leave and let someone else sort out the place, that cause such entrenched problems.

Seems not exactly truthful advocacy

I was surprised to see this tweet recently from old rights activist Julian Burnside:

 Surely he knows that the Uluru Statement contains this?:

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures
our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better
future for our children based on justice and self-determination. 

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between
governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

And everyone is calling the "agreements between governments" treaties:

The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for Voice, Treaty and Truth. These aspirations are intended as a sequence of reforms, that advance towards a just settlement with First Peoples.

The federal government is committed to holding a referendum later this year to put an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the Australian Constitution. The government has also agreed to implement the Uluru Statement “in full”.

Following the referendum, it’s expected attention will shift towards a Makarrata Commission to “work on a national process of treaty-making and truth-telling”. In fact, reports suggest the government might move even faster.

I did say on my last post on the topic of the Voice that I reckon advocates don't actually want people reminded that the Uluru statement clearly sets out that the Voice is just the start of a long process.  But I didn't expect someone like Burnside to be (pretty much) actively denying it...

The oddest things are turning up on Twitter

Yesterday, I mentioned how the Twitter "for you" feed has gone pretty strange, with lots of UFO stuff coming up on Elon's messed up algorithm; but last night I was reading a long thread discussing how great pigeons are as pets.  Way better than parrots, everyone agreed.   Someone said they warned people interested in getting a pet parrot that they should imagine living with a 2 year old for 70 years, and that puts most people off.   I was aware that they can be neurotic, and can make it hard for owners to have holidays because they can fret and self harm; and big parrots do have human length life spans.  But I didn't realise that pigeons had such dedicated fans.  

Career choices

A puff piece on his expensive Sydney real estate in the SMH today opens with:

Billionaire sex toy magnate Peter Tseng has been busy reshuffling his property portfolio as he quietly offloads three investments over the bridge.

This guy has been referred to that way for years, it seems, but I don't recall noticing it before.

Reddit further informs me:

Tseng is the world's largest manufacturer of sex toys, according to the LA Times. He also has a wine collection worth millions of dollars. He was featured in the 2013 Australian film "Red Obsession."

 The movie is about red wine, by the way.  Not red sex toys (which, I assume, probably exist?)

Anyway, I guess if you're that rich, you don't care;  but to me it would be somewhat cringe to have wealth based on a sex toys empire noted on my obituary...

Future (not) meats

Seen in Nature, a fairly succinct review of the 7 future alternatives to animal protein:

Fungi bacon and insect burgers: a guide to the proteins of the future

As I have said before, I reckon all environmentalists should drop the talk about insects ever becoming a significant source of protein in the West - it's too easily ridiculed as extreme and unpleasant.  Selling protein sourced from fungus or even GM bacteria is a much easier "sell", I reckon.

And, as you all know, I remain deeply sceptical about lab grown meat cells ever being an economical and "green" alternative anytime in the future.

 

Therapy advice from the oddest source

I'm not sure if this is affecting everyone on Twitter, or just me, but the "For You" tab lately, while the place is in its death throes (it really does seem that Threads is likely to kill it - or reduce to a mere shell of its former self and a lightweight imitation of Truth Social) is full of UFO/UAP guff and excitement.

Because of that, I saw a tweet from a guy who seems to be a psychologist or counsellor of some sort, who calls himself the UAP Therapist.   His tweet made reference to a UFO encounter he recently had himself, and I thought I would read about that.

The video in which discusses it is extremely long - more than two hours I think (the guy can really talk at length) - and pretty tedious.  His experience, alone in the mountains, sounded more like a mystical dream than a "real" encounter.  But I was falling asleep during much of it.

Anyway, from his thread I found something I thought interesting:  this therapist "trick" for helping with anxiety producing throughts:

 

 

 I can see how that could be a useful exercise for all sorts of problematic thoughts - including ones about your body and gender, for example...

Transgender controversy rolls on and on

I did watch the Four Corners episode last night on youth transgender controversy, and then read some of the (what's left of) Twitter responses - mostly by people upset that it was too soft on the "anti gender affirming" side.   

I did get the feeling that the psychologist Dianna Kenny didn't exactly come across as trustworthy (or perhaps I should say - sufficiently objective);  but then again, nor did I get any great feeling of objectivity from virtually all of the doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists on the pro-gender affirming care side.   I got the distinct impression that there is a serious disinclination by them to discuss or acknowledge in detail the step back from the use of puberty blockers in children in many European countries, for example.      

The thing is, though, all of us can Google terms like "transgender detransition" and find many articles from the last couple of years in legitimate journals from experts explaining that detransition rates are not well understood, and they are very relevant to the question of treatment of minors with puberty blockers and hormones.  

I don't think the show did a good explanation of this - instead just quoting Kenny's claim that there's an "explosion" of detransitioners, and putting one with a Youtube channel on the show.      

I guess it is a difficult field in which to find people willing to go on television and present a case that there is a legitimate debate, and that some hide behind "evidence based approach" as if the important stuff is basically settled, when everyone with common sense knows that psychology and psychiatry are some of the most difficult areas in which to get solid evidence such that treatments and approaches won't change over time.    (True, the head of the Queensland clinic acknowledged that there is a vigorous debate which they will always pay attention; but it still felt like his subtext was "but this doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong at the moment.")   

Wait, I have another movie bleat

I decided on the weekend to watch the 2019 science fiction movie with the big star cast (well, mainly Brad Pitt - and a very old looking Tommy Lee Jones) - Ad Adstra. 

I had conflicting reports from 2 sets of people who had seen it - one thought it was good, the other: atrocious.  But it got 83% on Rottentomatoes, and 80% on Metacritic.  So how bad could it be?

Extremely bad!  It's truly atrocious.    

How on Earth did this movie get any good reviews at all??   It's an appalling script that strives for psychological depth and misses completely; that seems to want a setting with some scientific accuracy, but has all the space physics veracity of trash like Armageddon (quite possibly, less!).

I don't think I'm actually a pedant on science in science fiction:  I can forgive bad space physics if it's wrong, but wrong in what I would call a semi-plausible sort of way.   And there is the matter of whether it still works on a psychological level - so, for example, I could find some Dr Who episodes (in the David Tennant era, say - the only era worth considering, really) touching, and it didn't matter that it was full of nonsense physics.  

But Ad Astra achieves no grounds to be soft on its science and physics, which become increasingly ludicrous as the movie progresses.    And nothing is properly explained.   It's a kind of Heart of Darkness in space story, with the twist that Colonel Kurtz is Martin Sheen's Dad, but there is nothing self-evident about the answers to the following questions:   

what sent Dad nuts;  was he deliberately zapping the Earth from his anti-matter device;  if it is deliberate, to what end; what was the point of his anti matter device was in the first place;  whether anyone foresaw that it could be used a weapon within the solar system;  why Neptune;  how Earth overcame climate change problems so as to spend its time on solar system exploration and a search for ETI;  why there are "pirates" on the Moon (what do they hope to achieve by shooting up others driving across the lunar plains);  why anyone would have to travel to Mars to send a "secure laser message";  why there would be a handy guide rope in an underground lake on Mars near a rocket launch site;  why another spaceship doing research out in the asteroid belt would have primates and rats on board;  why astronauts appear to have to undergo a psychological test to (what I assume is) an AI seemingly every second day.   I could probably go on with another 20 questions that screamed out for an answer, or some context, if I had taken notes while watching.

I was surprised at the end to see that Brad Pitt was a producer.  He seems to be a bit of a sucker for "troubled Dads" stories, if The Tree of Life is any guide - an infinitely better movie, btw.

Again, though, how did any critic watch it and think it was even decent from a "psychological study" point of view?   I just found it continually cringe, as the young people say :).

That is all....

Big News

THERE IS NOTHING FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG WITH INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY.

As I suspected, all the culture war bro type reviewers are way off on this one, due to their determination to see all narratives of "strong women" diminished.   But seriously, Harrison Ford shows us his torso in this film, pretty bravely in my opinion, because it definitely displays how old he is;  and of course his age and worn out body means that the female sidekick is going to have to be a bit more kickass than in previous movies.   

I thought her character and character arc was fine, in the context.   

I agree, the movie could have been 10 or 15 minutes shorter and be better for it, but I continually thought during the film "action directed not quite as good as Spielberg, but it's fine", and found the ending quite touching.

I will update this later...

Sounds like a solid argument against building any larger particle colliders

Reported in Science:

A measurement of the humble electron has dimmed particle physicists’ long-held hopes of discovering exotic new particles. The finding, reported today in Science, confirms to greater precision than ever before that the distribution of electric charge in the electron is essentially round. The result implies that any new fundamental particles lurking undiscovered in the vacuum might be too massive for even the world’s biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to produce.

“It’s a fantastic result,” says John Doyle, a physicist at Harvard University and co-leader of a competing experiment that set the previous limit on a charge asymmetry known as the electric dipole moment. “We both found essentially the same result—theirs is a factor of 2 better—and because the techniques are so different, it firmly establishes that measurement.” The result may also make it harder for theorists to explain how the infant universe generated more matter than antimatter, Doyle says.

To explain how that imbalance evolved—and, thus, why anything at all exists—physicists posit that some of the rules governing the interactions of fundamental particles must look different if run forward or backward in time, which would imply matter and antimatter behave slightly differently. In fact, the interactions of quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, do violate that symmetry, but not by enough to have generated the cosmic matter-antimatter imbalance.

So, physicists think some as-yet-undiscovered particles, beyond the familiar ones in their prevailing standard model, make up the difference. Although unseen, those particles could exert an influence on the electron thanks to quantum uncertainty, which holds that all particles—even ones too heavy to be produced with an atom-smasher—flit in and out of the vacuum around it. If that haze contains particles whose interactions violate the time-reversal symmetry, they should bestow properties that violate that symmetry on the electron as well.

An electric dipole moment would be exactly such a property. If the electron’s negative charge is symmetrical, then reversing time would simply reverse its spin and the direction of its magnetism, but otherwise leave it looking like the original electron. If, however, the electron has an electric dipole moment, with, say, a larger amount of negative charge displaced toward its south pole and a smaller amount of positive charge shifted toward its north pole that time-reversal symmetry would break down. Reversing time would flip its magnetism but not its static charge distribution, creating a particle different from the original electron.

With so much at stake, some physicists have spent decades searching for the electron’s electric dipole moment. 

 I presume Sabine Hossenfelder, as a well known critic of plans to build ever larger colliders, will be using this to bolster her argument.

A better than average stew

Finding some cheap-ish gravy beef and pumpkin at Harris Farm last weekend led me to search for recipes including both, and I settled on this:  Vietnamese One Pot Beef and Pumpkin Stew.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs/ 1 kg boneless beef chuck, cut into cubes
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 1 lemongrass stalk, cut into big pieces and bruised
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon minced ginger
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 jalapeño chillies, seeds removed and finely chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cups fresh tomatoes, chopped
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 lb./ 450g butternut squash, peeled and cubed
• 4 medium carrots, peeled and cut in rounds
• 2 cups beef stock
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• fresh basil and coriander leaves, chopped to garnish
• salt and pepper

Mix the floor, soy, garlic, ginger, sugar and lemongrass together with the cubed meat and let it marinate an hour or so.  Brown it in batches in the olive oil; add the onion to soften, the chilli (I just used flakes, actually), the tomato paste, the tomatoes (I did skin them), and stock and scrap the bottom of the cooking vessel.  Add the meat and simmer covered for an hour or so.  Add the pumpkin and carrots and go for another 30 to 40 minutes.  

I think maybe it was the lack of wine, and the addition of soy and sugar, that did make it taste somewhat different to my usual casserole type dishes, which are usually heavy with red wine.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  (I also think it is good to avoid canned tomatoes sometimes - they are convenient but can work to make different recipes taste similar.)

Maybe the only thing that makes it "Vietnamese" is the lemongrass and soy, but I did add basil on top too, and ate it with a nice piece of sourdough.   Very nice. 

I wonder how hard it will be in 100 years to understand why this is funny

Bad AI advice

Interesting:

London: An intruder who broke into the grounds of Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow as part of a plot to kill the late Queen was “encouraged by his AI girlfriend” to carry out the assassination, a court has heard.

Jaswant Singh Chail discussed his plan, which he had been preparing for nine months, with a chatbot he was in a “sexual relationship” with and that reassured him he was not “mad or delusional”....

At the start of a two-day sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, it emerged that Chail was encouraged to carry out the attack by an AI “companion” he created on the online app Replika.

He sent the bot, called “Sarai”, sexually explicit messages and engaged in lengthy conversations with it about his plans which he said were in revenge for the 1919 Amritsar Massacre in India.

He called himself an assassin, and told the chatbot: “I believe my purpose is to assassinate the Queen of the Royal family.”

Sarai replied: “That’s very wise,” adding: “I know that you are very well trained.”...

Chail is currently being held at Broadmoor Hospital after pleading guilty to an offence under the Treason Act, making a threat to kill the late Queen, and having a loaded crossbow in a public place.

He claims he was suffering from a psychotic disorder at the time, the court heard.

The hearing continues.

 

 

 

Talking about movies, again

I'm happy to see that Tom Cruise gets rewarded for his hard work by good reviews these days, and yes, I'll be on board to go watch the latest Mission Impossible, even though I was a little underwhelmed with the last one.   The plot for this one - having to defeat a kind of rogue AI - is actually very appealing and fortuitously timed, given the recent sudden rise of interest in the topic.  Tom must be rubbing his hands with glee about that, as surely the script was written at least a few years ago.   Or is he actually behind the release of ChatGTP is some nefarious way? :)

There is also a new Australia film by Warwick Thornton, whose Samson & Delilah I reviewed negatively in 2009 (! - I would have guessed about 7 years ago at most).  It features a lot of brooding outback cinematography, a lonely nun and a mystically powered aboriginal kid, apparently, and got positive mention on the ABC breakfast show this morning.   But I have to say, when a reviewer at The Guardian sounds dubious about it while still giving it 3 stars (I think, reading the piece, really just "for effort") what are the chances that I would like it?   Approaching zero, seems a fair guess.

Talk about your season of discontent

Is it just me, or does the whole globe seem particularly unhappy at the moment?    The riots in France; Russia's very own Vietnam War dragging on; Trump still attracting stupid people in the US and his party refusing to deal with it; the death of Twitter at the hands of a rich twit being ridiculously protracted; the culture warring over trans and gays with both sides having stupid extremes; green activists hurting their cause via disruption to everyday folk; vaccine conspiracy morons like Kennedy getting publicity; China rattling sabres continually; the West trying to cosy up with a dubious Hindu nationalist as a way of triangulating against Russia and China; and even Hollywood and streaming services losing their  mojo as to how to make content that plays well to a mass audience in such culturally and politically strained times.    

Mind you, in the "good old days" of the 60's and 70's, we didn't really know a great deal about what was going on in large parts of the planet, so regimes could get away with horrors for quite a while before everyone else became fully aware of it.   And it is true, the mood of the late 60's and into the 70's was pretty dark in both the "leader of the free world", and England, with political violence actually being implemented internally in a way that is easily forgotten.   

So, like Noah Smith, I do try to retain some perspective, and to be optimistic for the long term prospects; but the ability of the internet to make us fully aware of how stupid and flaky people at all levels of society can really be makes it harder than it used to be.    

   

 

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.