And we can't have that, can we?

 

The very definition of precocious

NPR has a story about a 12 year old (black) American boy in college:

Caleb's mother, Claire Anderson, says it didn't take long to see that her son was ahead of the typical baby milestones. When he was just 3 weeks old, she says, he started copying her motions. She got certified in sign language so she could teach it to him.

"Because I thought though that he wanted to communicate, but he didn't have a [means] or a way to do that. Then he started picking up sign language really fast," she says. "When he was about 6 months old, he started reading. And by 9 months old he was already signing over 250 words."

Anderson says Caleb was doing fractions when he was 2. He passed the first grade when he was 3. When time came for middle school, she says, he could have skipped it altogether. "But we still decided to put Caleb into the seventh grade to build social skills and just think about the well-rounded child."

Those years were not easy for Caleb.

"They looked down on me because I was younger than them. And not only that, the curriculum was boring to me because I learn really, really fast. One day I came to my mom and she asked me, 'Are you happy here?' and I said, 'No, I'm really bored. This isn't challenging me,' " he says.

Now Caleb is in a dual program at Chattahoochee Technical College in Marietta working toward an associate degree while getting his high school credits. It gives him a chance to dream of NASA, SpaceX and flying cars.

Gee.  I wonder if there are other brilliant 6 month olds who get handed an iPad and start having their intelligence sucked out of them by the internet.

 

I like this

An advertisement for South Korean tourism caught my eye on Youtube this morning: 

 Cool.

Speaking of nuts

I called out this ex-SAS dude (Riccardo Bosi) as a nutter some years ago, when he used to comment at Catallaxy.  (Many there liked him.)   He now spends his days running pointlessly as an independent (most recently, in the upcoming Queensland elections):

ISIS metastasized

Interesting article at Washington Post arguing that recent ISIS activities in Africa show how the problem has not gone away under Trump, and that Trump's woeful inability to be credible and consistent has make an international response more difficult.

Oh my - someone agreeing with me on the excessive use of "shock value" on TV?

Someone at Wired seems to both sort of like and sort of hate The Boys - a show whose second series has been notable for a number of exploding heads, apparently.  (I saw the first episode of the first season and did not want to watch any more of it.  I explained why at the time.)

Boy oh Boys. It’s easily the best and worst of the bunch. If there’s a way to push superheroes any further than this—full-on rapey murderers whose villainy is covered up by the pharmaceutical giant that not-so-secretly made them—the culture would have to combust. It’s not even postmodern, at this point. Deadpool was postmodern. Guardians and Thor were postmodern. The Boys is some pure metamodernist BS, so committed to sharpening its edge on the whetstone of canon it forgets to cut anything with its trenchant blade.

The show wants you to talk about it, but what more is there to say? There’s a racist supe with a Nazi past who radicalizes sad male fans through memes; there’s a lesbian supe with a drug problem and a redemption arc; there’s a sexually predatious supe who’s involved in a scene with a boat and a whale that—computer-generated though the whale may be—should nonetheless have violated sundry animal rights laws. These social-justice shocks the show seems forced to administer, in an effort to make you feel more alive than you are, sinking into your couch, losing your head. When the evil-Superman Homelander, played with such disgusting magnificence by Anthony Starr that the patriotic suit and cape should be permanently retired, masturbates on the roof of a skyscraper, he is The Boys itself, naked and shameless.

This is the crisis so-called “prestige TV” finds itself in (if it was ever prestige to begin with). There’s not just an expectation of quality but of seeing something new, like a whale-murdering boat, or lightning Nazis. So shows proceed as episodically as ever, but they have to keep getting bigger, badder, uglier, realer, even if there’s no reason for it. One head explodes early in the season, so 10 must explode later on. In this, television mirrors real life. Or real life as it’s been, After Corona: a series of escalations. When you sit down to a new TV show at the end of your day, you’re not distracting yourself or escaping. You’re reinforcing the escalating, episodic tension of your everyday existence. The jolts of recognition might feel nice, but they’re not at all healthy. They’re destructive, and they’re the reason you feel deader after a binge.

It's the sort of thing I have been complaining about recently when re-watching old movies. 

Switching to vaudeville

It's not that I have been seeing much of the recent Trump rallies, but I get the distinct impression that he has, as they say, just "thrown the switch to vaudeville".   The silly dancing to music (the owners of which keep telling his campaign to stop using); the repeated "threats" to not come back to the states which don't vote for him, or even the entire country; the talk of him looking more handsome that JFK (leading, if I heard it right, to chants of "we love you".   (I see now that I Google to check that last point that it has been happening at several rallies.   What more confirmation of this being more a cult than a normal political movement could you get?)

The rambling speeches seem to be as devoid of policy detail as his last campaign - even emptier in fact.   He just lies about what he has accomplished and promises more of the same.  

I think what's going on is that he knows it's looking bad and he's just out to get the last ounce of narcissism enhancing adulation he can get by saying whatever ridiculous thing he wants.

The boasting of his looks and the positive reaction it got strikes me as particularly telling of his audience.  I don't think it's likely something the majority of his audience take all that seriously, but I think many probably do take it as an endorsement of their own way of telling themselves lies about their own appearance:  along the lines of "I'm overweight too but you know, I'm comfortable with my looks just like Donald".   It's the same thing as for their racism, misogyny and conspiracy beliefs - he gives permission for people to be the worst they can be and they "love" him for it.

On re-watching Casino

A couple of months ago I posted about re-watching Goodfellas for the first time since I saw it at the cinema, and finding it more enjoyable than I remembered.

Well, I've now done the same thing with Casino, and once again I can say that virtually nothing of what happened in the movie had stuck in my mind - I could not even get a even a snippet of memory for this one.  

And on re-watching it, I can see why.   It's a flashy movie in search of a story, really.  Unlike Goodfellas, which is all about how someone grows up and tries to make his way in the mobster life, this one starts with the characters already corrupt and sleazy, and the main thing that goes wrong is the de Niro character picking a bad wife.    Sure, Sharon Stone is really good, and there is plenty of music of the era (even more so than in Goodfellas, I suspect), but in retrospect there is so little to it, story wise.   I don't remember being particularly disappointed in it after seeing it in the cinema, so in this case, I think it is worse than how I "remembered" it.

My overall lukewarm assessment of Scorsese feels very justified by this experience.

Yes, he's seriously disgusting

A couple of tweets from this morning: 

Man stuck in the 1950's can't even get events of a few months ago right

In today's edition of "culture war conservatives have become extremely stupid":

Um - first line:  no they did not.  Carlson claimed they were going to do so; they denied it and said that in fact they told him before his show that they were not going to.   

This brainiac, who has always seemed to consider himself a historian, can't even get events of few months ago right.

Second line:  yeah, time passes, and social views change too.

Third line:  sure.  The Western world of my father involved some pretty heavy male drinking and some pretty unhappy marriages.   It must be very hard to measure net happiness in society, but we sure do live in a lot fancier homes, eat better, travel a lot more, and are more tolerant of people different from ourselves than we were 50 years ago.   I'd prefer to be living now than then, thank you very much; even if the nostalgia of a more or less happy childhood makes everyone think fondly of the past from time to time.  

Second paragraph:  people who study the threat of violence in society for a living know the main risk is from dimwitted, propagandarised and heavily armed Right wing which is wetting themselves with excitement at putting down the Deep State/communists in their midst by gunfights in the street.    But let's ignore the experts, as the Right is wont to do on a whole swathe of topics now.

 

The Hunter Biden effect

It's only been a day or so, but my guess about the effect of the New York Post's Hunter Biden's emails is that it will influence barely one voter towards Trump.   Here's a bunch of reasons why:

 *  while I would guess, given the lack of adamant denials from the Hunter Biden camp, that the emails are likely real, the question of how they got to Giuliani and the Post is just weird and, at the very best, so sleazy.   Who honestly thinks it's right that a computer repair guy who doesn't get paid $84 should not only claim it's his, but pass it onto political operatives?   Unless you have the most extreme case of criminality obvious from a cursory examination (say, obvious unhidden folders of porn or snuff videos or something like that), wouldn't you expect the repair man to not read emails and just format the hard drive and re-sell it, or give it away?    That said, it's very weird in itself that a laptop full of work emails would be forgotten about by whoever left it there.  

*  it's also quite on the cards, given apparent intelligence reports, that some of the emails being disclosed are not from the computer at all but from a Russian hack on Burisma itself.  This hack was reported in the NYT in January.    The stink of repeat Russian interference is all over this.

*  The Post's second day of reporting about it is about a bunch of emails to do with Hunter's involvement in Chinese operations.   I read the report and it didn't sound like anything obviously illegal going on.   If that is the best they've got, after only the second day, I don't think it's going anywhere.

*  Trump voters think it's a HUGE deal, but they, after all, the stupidest self gas-lite people on the planet.   They are completely unable (or too stupid) to acknowledge the hypocrisy of Trump going on about nepotism in politics and making money.    Those inclined to the Democrats already openly acknowledged that it was a bad look for Hunter to be have dealing with Burisma and presumed he was there due to political connections, so confirmation of that is not going to sway them away from Biden Snr.

*  Even if it was proved that Joe Biden had met with a Burisma executive, and had lied about it, the alternative is to vote for a character who just lies and makes stuff up as his entire political modus operandi.   Even (I would guess) half of his base knows Trumps bullshits - they just don't care that he does, for reasons we have been over many times.  A democrat suddenly voting for Trump because of this is just not going to happen. [He says, fingers crossed.]

Regional real estate porn considered

Surely I am not the only person who watches the ABC's Escape from the City partly for the perverse enjoyment of finding out at the end that, yet again, the couple that seemed so enthusiastic about moving to the area they were shown, and wildly impressed by at least one of the homes they inspected, nonetheless found a reason to not go live in there?  

It's like the makers of the show may as well send back that box of champagne that's gathering dust in the back of the production office for when a couple actually buys one of the shows' houses (or even moves into the area.)    I'm not sure it has ever happened in the history of the show.

(That said, in reference to last night's episode  - boy, houses at Mission Beach in Far North Queensland seem good value.   But what about the 1980's place you had to reach by boat on what looked like a crocodile infested river?  It was pretty hilariously inconvenient.)  

Of course Pauline Hanson approves

Why doesn't Andrew Bolt join her party and be done with:

Adam Creighton scratches Paris off his holiday list

They are getting very worried about the European second wave:

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday ordered a nighttime curfew for Paris and eight other French cities to contain the spread of Covid-19 after daily new infection rates reached record levels. 

In a televised interview, Macron said residents of those cities – which combined are home to close to a third of the French population – would not be allowed to be outdoors between 9pm (1900 GMT) and 6am (0400 GMT) from Saturday, for a duration of at least four weeks, except for essential reasons.

"We have to act. We need to put a brake on the spread of the virus," Macron said, adding the measure would stop people visiting restaurants and private homes in the late evening and night.

"We are going to have to deal with this virus until at least the summer of 2021," Macron said, saying "all scientists" were in agreement.

Here's the reason why:

Echoing the concern of British doctors, Paris regional health director Aurelian Rousseau said hospital admissions could quickly spiral out of control.

He told BFM TV: “As with tidal waves, it might seem like we have time, but actually, in the end, it’s a race.

“We’re at that point where we’re entering a race against time.”

The 1,539 French Covid patients receiving intensive care is still almost five times lower than an April 8 high of 7,148, but also four times higher than a July 31 low of 371.

And as there are normally more people hospitalised with various illnesses in the autumn than in spring, health experts fear the hospital system could be overwhelmed if nothing is done to contain the second wave.

I wonder how armchair critic and obnoxious know-it-all Adam Creighton would deal with the situation?  He seems never to acknowledge that the COVID problem is complicated, and that death rate is not the only issue.   Has he ever even  mentioned seriously the evidence of some recovered patients having on-going health problems?   

Part of the political problem (continuing from the previous quote):

With countries from Spain to Ukraine posting record increases in recent days, authorities are struggling to devise restrictions that slow the spread while not pushing the economy over the edge and sparking public unrest.

Lower death and hospitalisation rates stoked an impression that the disease has lost its bite, sparking resistance to tougher restrictions.

 

Max Boot on the Republican pseudo scandals

Max Boot's column about the failure of the "unmasking" pseudo scandal is good.  I like how it ends, too:

If Trump, Cornyn, Cruz, Paul, Nunes, Grenell and all the others who shamelessly flogged this faux scandal had a modicum of honesty or decency they would publicly recant and apologize to all of the Obama officials they reviled with no evidence. Dream on. None of the scandalmongers have admitted they were wrong. Many have simply moved on to pushing other phony scandals....

But facts don’t matter in the Hunter Biden conspiracy theories any more than in the “unmasking” story. The strategy is, as former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon once said, to “flood the zone with shit” to distract attention from Trump’s real wrongdoing. The real scandal is that Trump and his cult followers hurl so many insane accusations — and never recant or apologize. While claiming to be a victim of McCarthyism, Trump is, in fact, its foremost modern practitioner. His mentor, Joseph McCarthy’s henchman Roy Cohn, would be proud of him. 

Funnily enough, McCarthy is treated as an unfairly treated hero now by the conservative Right.