Can some journalist point this out to Trump?

One of Trump's back up plans for finding an excuse for [possibly, hopefully, and I think likely] losing the November election is to blame it on Democrats providing for voting by mail:

Yet in California, the Republicans just won back a seat (traditionally theirs anyway, so no one is in a great panic about it) in which it seems likely that perhaps 50% of the votes were by mail:

In 2018, in California as a whole, 43 percent of the votes ultimately cast were not in the morning-after tabulations, and the proportion of mail ballots in this special election (for which all registered voters were sent a mail ballot due to an executive order from Governor Gavin Newsom) could be even higher.

He shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.   Even though he is a moron and there is no way to get him to make sense.

A bit late to the historical Korean zombie party

I like my zombies in small doses, and hence have no interest is something as protracted as The Walking Dead (ten series, seriously?), but I did start watching with my son the 2 series (but short - 6 episodes each) of Kingdom, in which zombies run amuck in ye olde Korea.

It's pretty entertaining, and a significant part of the fun is the odd (to Western eyes) costuming - particularly the hats.  The royal guards' two feathered ones look particularly flamboyant:

As I suspected, the hats have attracted some internet posts about whether they are accurate or not, and it would seem the answer is pretty much "yes".

Cool.

What a disgraceful moron

Isn't it remarkable that Republicans and conservatives support a President who defames a vocal critic by promoting a groundless, nutty conspiracy theory that he's a murderer?   Where's the common decency on the Right gone?  

The modern world

Brisbane's autumn skies are often clear and really good for early evening satellite spotting.

As I left work a couple of nights ago, I looked up to see what I could see with the good view I had to the west, and saw what looked like a pretty bright satellite moving in such a way that I thought there was a good chance it was the International Space station.   I turned on my phone and said "OK Google, ISS sightings for Brisbane Australia", and in a flash, information from a NASA website showed it was indeed the space station.

This is the undeniably cool side of near instantaneous information from the internet.

I am not sure that it makes up for the creation of a self supporting community of idiocy that the internet also enables.  It should, but gee at times I have my doubts.

I was mistaken

At first I thought this might have been Tony Abbott confessing as to what Peta Credlin had forced him to do:

but I was mistaken.

What a suck up

Command of English?   Yeah, "thrown out to sea in a chaff bag" was positively Shakespearean.  As was "nigger in the woodpile".  Such eloquence, the likes of which way never hear again.

I've always thought Adam a dill, but his validation of my judgment lately is so thorough it's still surprising me.

Update:  I know that there is also the odd "Leftist" journo who is making comment about what a "brilliant" broadcaster he is, in terms of effectiveness with his audience, even if you don't agree with his views.   But this is a very stupidly narrow way of judging a broadcaster career performance.   Even without criticising the political content (the anti carbon tax support, for example) what about the (I think) 11 defamation cases he faced?   Isn't a "brilliant" broadcaster one who is careful enough to avoid such a large number of financial losses for his employer?

Wonder drug continues to be no wonder

Results of an observational study published yesterday in JAMA:

In this study, during rapidly expanding hospitalization for COVID-19, 70% of patients received hydroxychloroquine alone or with azithromycin. Patients who received hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin were more likely (relative to patients receiving neither drug) to be male, have preexisting medical conditions, and have impaired respiratory or liver function at presentation. There were no significant differences in in-hospital mortality between patients who received hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin and patients who received neither drug.

The lack of observed benefit of hydroxychloroquine associated with in-hospital mortality, following adjustment for preexisting disease and severity of illness on admission, is consistent with recently reported data from other observational studies.^17,23,24

Some good media news

Alan Jones, veteran Sydney radio host, announces he will retire on health grounds 

I find it a considerable puzzle how he has any substantial following at all.  Even if you ignore the content, I find his style to be so obviously pompous (how long has he been slipping opera into the end of his show?) and arrogant (an over-inflated self regard for his role as political kingmaker),  I don't understand his appeal at all.  

The biggest problem with the internet...

....is that it has put conspiracy minded idiots in instantaneous contact with other idiots, setting up a community and cycle of mutually reinforcing idiocy, all with the ability to be politically exploited. 

Today's example:  Obamagate is still trending on Twitter, with the main concern of many of the posts being that despite the number of mindless tweets on the topic, it's some sort of serious conspiracy that Twitter is repressing the hashtag from being number one on "Trending"!

And all it took is one Fox News "story" that is pure speculation (my bold):

"Sources are telling Watters' World that Attorney General Bill Barr was just given a trove of smoking gun documents that could point directly at former President Barack Obama, revealing his powerful connection to 'Spygate' and the Russia hoax," Watters said on Saturday.

Of course, Trump, an idiot, then just had to tweet "Obamagate", and his cult followers, not to mention the sad sack Qanon followers who find meaning in fantasising about how their Annointed One will (finally!) unleash an attack on the Deep State that has corrupted all that is good and right in the world, resulting in mass arrest and executions of liberal criminals, jump on board and find more evidence of conspiracy because their hashtag is not No 1.

The US is in so much trouble, because this idiocy is exploited and encouraged by the large slab of idiots in the Republican party.

The two best things I have read on the Michael Flynn scandal

David Graham in The Atlantic: he even thinks that the FBI notes about the tactics to use in interviewing Flynn are a worry, but still notes that the outcome is ridiculous:

But as it happened, the notes didn’t have to convince Sullivan, because the Department of Justice withdrew the charges before the judge had to reach a conclusion. (Sullivan could still reject the DOJ’s motion. The long-running prosecutor on the case abruptly withdrew from it today, a likely sign of disagreement, and The New York Times reports that the motion stunned prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office.) Flynn’s defenders argued that the FBI was out to get him, and if the FBI is out to get you, it will find a way. But there’s a corollary: If Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department wants to let you off, it will find a way too.

The whole process is stunning: Flynn was accused of committing several crimes, admitted to one to try to get himself off easy, agreed to cooperate, reneged on the deal, and is now free, having escaped punishment for both the crime to which he confessed and those on which he avoided prosecution.

Yet Flynn’s escape is not merely an isolated outrage. It is also a test case for loyalty to Trump. Since Flynn flipped on Trump, and then flopped back, his fate offers a lesson for others who might find themselves in a bind and tempted to turn on Trump, who continues to engage in the sort of behavior that got him impeached.

And today, at Axios:

Mary McCord, former acting assistant attorney general for national security, claimed in a New York Times op-ed Sunday that the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn "twisted" her words to suggest that the FBI's 2017 interview of Flynn was illegitimate.

Why it matters: The Justice Department's filing relies in part on McCord's July 2017 interview with the FBI to argue that the FBI had no valid counterintelligence reason to interview Flynn, and that the former national security adviser's apparent lies were therefore immaterial....

The bottom line: "In short, the report of my interview does not anywhere suggest that the FBI’s interview of Mr. Flynn was unconstitutional, unlawful or not “tethered” to any legitimate counterintelligence purpose," McCord concludes.

 There has been the suggestion that Sullivan could, before deciding on the motion, ask for some sort of further explanation or investigation as to how the decision to withdraw was made.   It would seem that McCord's piece gives him plenty of reason to believe that the withdrawal of the charges is corrupt, but I don't know how he can get around a corrupt Attorney General...

Update:  a tweet on point -

Update2:   Another good article at The Atlantic: What Judge Sullivan Should Do

The distraction machine

And sure enough, Obamagate is trending on Twitter, and the Wingnut Right and Qanon idiots are beside themselves.

Update:  one thing I have noticed about Qanon on Twitter:  it seems to have unusually large support from women.   Not sure if all accounts are genuine, but this strikes me as odd.  Has anyone looked into this issue? 

Shipwreck story humour

Boy, that Tongan teenagers shipwreck story has gone viral.  It has given us this funny stream of tweets, too:

By the way:  I'm not doubting the story, but all photos I see of the survivors make them look way older than the ages they were when they were shipwrecked (13 to 16, and were on the island for "more than a year".)

About that Biden allegation...

This article at Vox about Tara Reade's allegations, from a reporter who had lengthy discussions with the complainant, is the single best thing I have read about the matter.

It convinces me that her complaint is highly dubious, given that her story has changed very significantly, and she has left raising the "worst" version against him until now, and not at the early stages of his career elevation.  I often don't care for Bill Maher's views, but his take on this matter seems right to me.

I know it's tricky, but Democrats and Democrat sympathisers with any brains should not let the mainstream media keep making this into another "Hilary's emails" situation - where they elevate an ill founded allegation to a significance it does not deserve, all to the benefit of the Wingnut Right.

A shipwreck tale.

It seems lots of people are sharing this article (actually, a book extract) in The Guardian about a 1960's case of 6 shipwrecked Tongan teenage boys in the Pacific who did not go all "Lord of the Rings".  

I note that the story rights were given to Channel 7 in Australia at the time of the rescue, but I don't remember it from my childhood.  (Although I would only have been 6 at the time.) 

Anyway, it's a nice, positive story.

Cooking confessions

*  As it happens, I have never had cause to make up my own dry curry mix before.  Well, I have made dishes that used a mix of these curry base spices, but I don't know that they were called curries, and I never had reason before to look up a simple, base curry mix of spices.   (This makes me feel inadequate as a cook.)

Anyway, I was making a prawn curry (from a Filipino food website) and it just called for "curry powder", but I had only one that said it was a meat curry powder.   I decided to make up from scratch instead, and used this mix from this website, and the quantity was just right for the 4 person meal:

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp ground coriander seeds
• 1 ½ tsp cumin
• 1 tsp turmeric
• ½ tsp ground black pepper
• ½ tsp chili powder
• ½ tsp ground ginger

As the website explains, you can add a wide variety of extra spices, and apparently Indian families have their favourite combinations they like.   I am still surprised I never did this before.

*  The prawn curry I had made once before, apparently on 7 June 2015.   Given that I posted about how it was nice, I'm surprised it took me this long to go back to it.   But looking at my old post, it seems I made a strange mistake:  I said that a "14 oz" can of coconut milk was about half a "normal" can.  But it isn't - 14 fluid oz is 414 ml, which is a "standard" sized can here for vegetables, soup etc.   So it would appear that the first time I made it, I may have used half of the coconut milk.  I didn't this time, and maybe that is why I found it particularly good yesterday.

The original recipe is kind of vague as to how much prawn head "stock" to use.   Yesterday, I boiled up the prawn heads (25 or so) in about 2 - 3 cups of water, but let it boil down until there was about one cup left.   This was added to the two, 400 ml, cans of coconut milk, and it made a lot of sauce.  Enough for 6 meals, I reckon, if I had more prawns to hand.   

I think the key thing in it is seasoning at the end with fish sauce.  Anyway, apart from the painful time of shelling and cleaning 26 raw prawns, this is pretty easy dish that is good to eat.  

*  Tonight, I made another thing for the first time:  a pea puree.   (To go with confit duck leg - bought pre-made by Luv-a-Duck).  I thought it pleasant, but there are million versions of it and perhaps it needed some thing extra - cream or lemon perhaps?   I didn't use mint - I didn't have any and am not sure it is a good match for duck.   All I did was boil 2 cups of frozen peas, fry off in butter a smallish onion, and blitz all of it with two or three teaspoons of parmesan cheese and a bit of the pea cooking water.   Maybe more cheese would have been better?   It looks great on the plate, at least.