So far from normal as to be virtually inexplicable

Of the many photos of bizarrely inappropriate smiling and thumbs up from Trump and his equally strange wife during the hospital visits this week, this one just takes the cake:

How can we be sure that those two are not aliens wearing human skin suits, as in Men in Black?   It strikes me as just about the only plausible explanation.

As for the reaction on Twitter, Mediaite explains it well:

Twitter Recoils at White House Photo Op of Trump and First Lady Smiling With Baby Orphaned in El Paso Massacre: ‘Act Like a Human Being’

 The baby was brought back to the hospital for this photo op at White House request.

Killed for the avocado trade??

In The Guardian's report of a gruesome scene in a Mexican city:

The merciless dogfight between Mexican drug cartels has produced its latest macabre spectacle with the discovery of 19 mutilated corpses – nine of them hung semi-naked from a bridge – in a city to the west of the capital.

it goes on to note that the cartels fight is not just over drugs, but more importantly, over avocados (!):

Falko Ernst, an International Crisis Group researcher who studies Mexico’s cartels, said this week’s slaughter was clearly intended to intimidate rival criminal groups, the families of their members, as well as Mexican authorities.

Ernst said the bloodbath was partly about the struggle for control of Uruapan’s local drug trade. But a more important motivation was the fight for the region’s billion-dollar avocado industry. “The big magnet here is avocados,” he said.
 

What a sad, strange country - which I would like to visit if only it didn't have such appalling problems.

Fear of invading cultural supremacy

William Saletan writes at Slate that he has read three of the recent white supremacist killers' "manifestos" and finds that all of them actually indicate fear of the cultural supremacy of the "invaders" that they go on to kill.  

Which is kind of odd - it's a bit like self hatred of their own group leads to rationalisations for attacking the other.    Interesting, as Saletan usually is.   Here are his last paragraphs:

These reflections on the assets of immigrant communities—spiritual strength, cultural strength, economic and educational ambition—have led some white nationalists to recalculate their propaganda. Breivik, for instance, rejected “supremacist arguments” and portrayed white Europeans instead as an oppressed native tribe, like “Aborigines in Australia and Native Americans in the US.” “Rhetoric related to ‘indigenous rights’ is an untapped goldmine,” he wrote. “Playing the victim card is the most potent strategy of our times.” He concluded with this message: “Preserving your tribe, cultural and demographical, is a basic human right and has nothing to do with ‘white supremacy.’ ” 

Tarrant offered a similar pitch, based on the idea of “diversity.” His massacre of Muslims, he argued, “was not an attack on diversity, but an attack in the name of diversity.” How? According to his manifesto, the goal was “to ensure diverse peoples remain diverse, separate, unique, undiluted.” “A rainbow is only beautiful due to its variety of colours,” he wrote. “Mix the colours together and you destroy them all.” 

What’s happening among these extremists, in short, is a shift from white supremacy to white nationalism. That’s no consolation to the hundreds of people they’ve killed or wounded, or to the millions they’ve terrified. But it does undercut a core premise of their ideology. Even racist mass murderers are being forced to admit, in their own manifestos, that whites are losing their economic and cultural dominance based on merit. The dogma of white supremacy is collapsing.

Quality editing

I get the feeling that quality control at Quillette is not much of a thing, as long as the politics are "right":  it looks like an essay that immediately sounded fake to many readers has been pulled after a short appearance on the site.   Tweets about it here.

Quillette's Andy Ngo, meanwhile, has been busy tweeting support for the the proposition that the Dayton killer is the "first antifa mass killer".   (The guy had apparently even turned up at an antifa rally - in support of them - with his rifle.)

The problem for Ngo and his New York Post ilk is that the actual target of the killings has no connection with antifa rhetoric:   I haven't noticed them spending time whipping up criticism of people who go out to an entertainment district on a Saturday night.  (And it would also seem, given his sibling was one killed, that he may have had family issues that led to the spree.)

There's no doubt that young male killers with emotional and social issues can follow either side of politics:  the problem comes when you can see a clear connection between the targets of the killings and the political rhetoric they endorse and follow.   

Is that too much for Andy to grasp?      

He has no idea

Have you seen the nauseating video the White House put out of Trump's hospital visit to Dayton, Ohio?  See it at this Tweet, which puts it context:

It is genuinely bizarre - a pure PR exercise by Trump that looks exactly like a campaign commercial.

(And a sign that celebrity culture has completely corrupted the way people think they should act around anyone famous - regardless of how appropriate it really is that smiley, happy images should be appearing around a tragic event.)

The comments reactions on Twitter are good. For example:

Now for something really important - more thoughts on fast food

I'm sick of being appalled at Fox News and its terrible, terrible propaganda pandering to the Trump base (and Trump himself).   That Tucker Carlson clip where he says "white nationalism?  it's a problem about as real as Russian interference" just makes me sick for its reality denial. 

So instead of dwelling on that, let's deal with a burning issue closer to home:   what's going on at Dominos pizza?

*  I am deeply suspicious that the Dom Pizza Checker - the alleged scanner that is supposed to check the quality of each pizza - does anything useful (or perhaps, anything at all?)  Maybe it's there to take a pic of each pizza so as to help the shop owner defend any claim of contamination?    Has any employee spilled the beans as to its true point and utility yet? 

*  We noticed recently that the regular pizza size has become smaller - and now there is a large size that is below the ridiculous "New York Pizza" size.  The New York Pizzas are a pathetic range in their toppings, by the way.

*  Something was different about the taste of the pizza last night.   A sourer taste that was not inedible, but different.  I think it was in the taste of the tomato sauce, but I might be wrong.   Was it a temporary aberration, or have they change their sauce supplier?  (I wouldn't be surprised if its from some far flung corner of the world as a cost savings measure.)

My main point is - why does fast food keep changing so much?   They seem to never get to a point where things can stay more or less the same for more than 12 months.   The same with McDonalds - they used to have much more stable menu with just one special menu item that might come and go in a month.   Now (although I really don't go there much anymore), it just seems that the entire menu is in a state of constant flux.  

I don't really understand this - I get the benefit of having some menu variation (the burger or pizza of the month, for example) to keep customers coming back to try something new, but surely too much variation starts to annoy customers, like me?

I get the feeling that the fast food industry has succumbed to something equivalent to the managerial wankerism of the 1980s, where "experts" with MBAs thought the most important thing was for organisations to spent a month of meetings on drafting a mission statement.  Are there fast food business consultants having a similar rein over the fast food industry at the moment?

How they do politics in Uganda

A Ugandan court on Tuesday charged pop star turned leading opposition figure Bobi Wine with "annoying" President Yoweri Museveni, his lawyer told AFP.

Here is a link.

Signs of a lobby group having passed through Canberra recently?

What's behind the sudden talk of small, modular nuclear power for Australia?   Angus Taylor on Radio National Breakfast one morning, talking them up; then Ziggy Switkowski the next - both speculating that this type of nuclear could be a good way to go.  See this article at the ABC website about it.

Given that the concept of this type of nuclear power being deployed has been around for a long time now, yet still appears to be no where near actually being sold as a commercial product, there is something more than a bit suspicious about why it is on the minds of Coalition politicians suddenly.   I would guess some lobbying from some industry group from the US?

John Quiggin explained back in 2014 why this nuclear option was dubious at best - and re-reading that post, it seems little has happened to change his assessment.  Indeed, JQ has posted recently that it is really an "entire exercise...founded in fantasy".

I used to think there was promise in small, modular nuclear - but the fact that it has languished in development suggests that it just doesn't add up.   (One thing I have always had my doubts about was the oft repeated idea that they could just be buried on site - which might be a good containment idea as far as the atmosphere is concerned if one blows up, but isn't such a great idea for the water table.)

If making small nuclear work would take a lot of government directed research and investment, then it now appears to me it may well be more beneficial to put the effort into new, large scale storage instead.   There are some ideas there which seem to warrant support.

No, not deplorable at all [sarc]

I don't remember seeing this video during the Trump campaign, but someone recently put it up on a  Reddit thread in light of the discussion of racism after the recent mass shootings.   It gives a good idea of the kind of stuff that goes on in a Trump rally audience:



I think it would be an extremely useful thing if this type of video was put up with respect to his recent rallies.  People need to know what his base really thinks.

Where is the spending?

Last Saturday I had a couple of hours to spare and went for a walk around Fortitude Valley, the inner city area which has had a lot of urban development in the last 10 to 20 years.  It was a beautiful Brisbane late winter's day for being outside.

I went down to the Emporium shopping and restaurant area, which is surrounded by new to new-ish apartments, a pretty upmarket hotel, and used to be very popular for mid range restaurants:  

 

 This is what one of the large, outdoor eating areas look like now:

It also used to have an upmarket deli (many years ago, when it first opened.)  That has been replaced by a Chemists Warehouse.

The place still has one upmarket restaurant (an Italian one which we ate at last year - it was OK, but I didn't think particularly good value for money).   But the other eating places left are decidedly more downmarket - a Guzman & Gomez, a Grill'd hamburger joint (and a second burger joint), as well as (I think) a teppanyaki place that is somehow still surviving.

I then walked further down the road to a shopping centre that contains a Harvey Norman and a furniture store.  They were extremely quiet in terms of the number of shoppers.

This area has had huge development in the last 20 years - Teneriffe is a very nice, riverside suburb within walking distance of these shopping and eating areas, too, that has had many large highrise apartments blocks opening continuously in recent years - but it seems that the increase in residential living in this part of Brisbane just has not been enough to sustain the commercial centres opening within it.

And don't get me started on the nearby Chinatown mall - it was attempted to be revived by a re-design about 10 years ago too, and it is nearly completely dead.  A mere handful of restaurants left now, it seems.

This obvious lack of spending in an area of town that used to looked to be doing well only a few years ago seems a very bad sign to me as to what is going on economically in Australia.

It certainly gives a sense that discretionary spending is way, way down, and that funds that have invested in commercial retail developments must be doing much, much worse than they ever expected only 5 years ago.

I do not think there is much confidence in most aspects of the economy.

Update:  I forgot to mention, across the road from Emporium there was a yum cha restaurant that opened a couple of years ago in a pretty new building.  It was large, seemed busy on the couple of times we ate there, and had parking beneath the building.   I liked it.   It has closed, and the landlord is trying to lease it again as a retail/display space - not even as restaurant or food outlet.   (What must have been a pretty extensive kitchen has been completely removed - I could see inside the building.)  

The de facto police state the Right desires

Trump adviser Sean Hannity is being rightly ridiculed for his solution to mass shootings in the US:

I'd like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police -- which you are -- retired Secret Service -- which you are -- military, and I want guys to donate 15 hours. I think we could cover every school, every hour, every day.

Add a metal detector, and I think we're going to have safer schools. Have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter, and inside every hall of every mall. Now, that gives us an instant response opportunity that we normally wouldn't have.

 I can't see Trump buying it.  I get the impression that Trump is a purely politically opportunistic pro-gun figure - he doesn't have any private history of enthusiasm for gun ownership or hunting, does he?  Certainly not for using one on the battlefield!   And he did support the bump stock ban.  

But his need for approval means he won't cross guns rights activists too far.

Cultural issues

On Gulf News:

Dubai: Sometimes words fail to express human compassion towards a mother who has lost her child. Saudi Arabia's Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Abdul Latif Al Asheikh, was seen on video embracing and kissing the forehead of a woman, who was grieving the loss of her son. He was killed in the New Zealand Christchurch mosque shooting.

The footage, which is currently circulating on social media, shows the Saudi minister trying to calm the woman pilgrim crying in Makkah.....

Sheikh Abdul Latif said on Sunday that bringing the Christchurch pilgrims over to Makkah, was part of the Kingdoms efforts to “confront and defeat terrorism.”

Generally the laws of Islam prevent females and males from embracing, if they are not direct family members, especially when they are performing Haj. Many took to Twitter to criticize Sheikh Abdul Latif for coming into contact with the woman.

Twitter user @AlodidanSalwa tweeted that the Minister owes the public an apology for his behaviour.

“The minister owes an apology to the public for his behavior, even if it was spontaneous and in the moment. What is considered haram is forbidden. He embraced a non-muharam woman. We are waiting for his apology.”

"Is this the Minister of Islamic Affairs of the Unification State?! How has he legalised something for himself that is prohibited in Islam. To hug a woman, when she is someone who should not be hugged by him?" tweeted @1s2s3n4h

While another user, @Jawahir61 tweeted “You can express your feelings without the use of arms to hug.”

"It is not permissible to even look at a women, let alone touch her. God counted on you, God showed us the correct way," tweeted @ar_coffee1.

Others praised and supported Sheikh Abdul Latif for being kind and warm to a crying grieving woman.

What an over prescriptive religious/cultural tradition, based on antiquated ideas about the meaning of physical contact. 

A very Guardian article

‘I don’t smell!’ Meet the people who have stopped washing

Many years ago, there was a dermatologist on The Science Show who argued that soap was being overused and caused dry skin conditions.  He personally showered using just neutral stuff (like plain sorbolene, I think) to provide some sort of dirt lifting effect if he felt it was needed on part of his body.

I remember the forever host Robyn Williams (the ABC seems to think his talking head will need to be pickled to allow the show to continue after his body gives up, such is their reluctance to tell him to retire and bring new blood onto the show) saying that his guest didn't smell, despite the soapless washing.

So, it is an idea that has been around for a while, but given that even using the wrong brand of deodorant causes me to regret it when ironing a washed shirt the next time, those of use who know we can smell strong are reluctant to give up something that works and has not caused us to turn into a shrivelled crisp.

And yes, some people are lucky that they have never developed the skin microbiome that causes body odour (my father was one of them, and reader Jason has often shared on line that he is one too), but I am not prepared to go the period of stinking to see if I can adjust my skin bacteria that way.

Counter productive

I have never seen the point of commuter disrupting protests, ever since they were taking place in the days of Joh Bjelke Petersen.  I mean, people have to get to work, come home, go to hospital, do other good and normal things that make the world run, and there is a high chance that a significant percent of them stuck in their cars already agree with the protesters in principle.

So what is the freaking point of disrupting those who agree with you, and setting those who don't agree more vigorously against you?  

This post brought to you in light of news of more "Extinction Rebellion" traffic disrupting protests in Brisbane this morning.

Their cause is not silly in the broad sense (against the Adani mine and pro climate change action), but their tactics are just stupid.

We're dealing with paranoid idiots

What a cast of idiots on the American Right:

*  Glenn Reynolds, annoyed that Cloudflare is withdrawing services from 8Chan, the online community of choice for white supremacist killers to post their plans and justifications for mass murder, and to high five each other after they happen.  Why?  Because maybe "woke" folk will convince the company to stop protecting other sites that he likes.  Oh boo hoo.   This is all part of the Right's paranoia about tech companies not being supportive enough of the Right promoting their (frequently stupid and dangerous) ideas on the net - and getting upset when their own free speech enterprises don't take off.

You stupid culture war losers - before the Right went nuts, it would have been calling for the actual banning of hate sites for inciting violence, even if constitutionally difficult to do so.  Now that your priority is winning a culture war, deaths don't matter.

And here is Reynolds again, apparently thinking that Trump has already done enough and suggesting the answer to blind hatred against immigrants is for "institutions" to promote more patriotism (!):

GOOD: Trump offers condolences in wake of dual mass shootings: ‘Hate has no place in our country.’
As he said in his inaugural address, when your heart is filled with patriotism, there’s no room for hate. Which is why we should demand that our institutions promote patriotism. Basically, if they don’t, people will die.

Yeah, good one.  I would have thought that an inflated, paranoid version of patriotism is pretty much at the heart of this sort of killing.   You know, of the kind Trump has drummed up.

*  American Thinker (ha!) notes that it will have none of this "blame game" against Trump (and guns) because:

What's also obnoxious is their claim that Trump, who condemned the maniac and sent comfort to the victims, was somehow responsible. Trump has never advocated mass shooting or justified anyone who has. That won't stop the left.

Yeah, I see.  The same justification used by some nutters about Hitler and the Holocaust, spruced up for the orange one  - "he never said publicly that they were to be killed - just moved out of the country." 

And look at the readership of that site - here is a comment following the article:

*  For a non-idiotic discussion of the "white replacement theory", this article at The Guardian seems a good place to start.