A good answer from Biden

Have a look at this short clip.   As someone on Twitter says about his answer:

Trump campaign taking on water

I get the impression there is probably panic developing inside the Trump campaign for the following reasons:

*  sufficient polling seems to be coming out now to conclude that the GOP convention did not lead to any substantial improvement for Trump;

*  Trump's popularity within what you would normally consider the natural ally of any "law and order" President - the military - seems to have taken a substantial hit from which it is unlikely to recover.

Remember I said when the RussianS paying for hits on American troops story came out that I thought it was going to important?   Although it did quickly disappear off the news radar, I still reckon it may have been important for hurting the military's regard for him, as was shown by the recent polling indicating that he had lost popularity there.  Now that credible reporting is out that he privately has the most ridiculously selfish view of military service [confirmed by a Fox News correspondent, no less!], I can't see his popularity with those who he was probably hoping would back him in a post election crisis over disputed election results will ever be returning.

Truth be told, the upper reaches of the Pentagon would have been privately grinding their teeth from day one about what a complete ignoramus he is, but it has taken some time for the dismissive view of him to filter down to lower ranks.  

Even the kerfuffle about whether Stars and Stripes would close looks bad for Trump.  He has said it will not close, but the timing of the suggestion it would close within weeks looks very peculiar.  

*  The Trump open encouragement for his supporters to vote twice smells of desperation. 

*  Trump's judgement in what to say about real or virtual dictators who kill their political enemies remains as "off" as ever.   I know it won't matter to his cult followers, who are blind and dumb, but surely Trump's campaigners don't think this is a useful line to be running in a week when another Russian poisoning of an opposition politician is confirmed:

At a small campaign rally in Latrobe, Pa., President Trump on Thursday praised himself for wanting to “get along” with Russia and said that when he hears people talking about Russia in the news he “turns it off.”

“They always say, ‘Trump is radical, he is off the — he is too radical, he will get us in wars,’” Mr. Trump said. “I kept you out of wars. What happened in North Korea? I got along with Kim Jong-un. They said that’s terrible. It’s good that I get along. If I get along with Russia, is that a good thing or bad thing? I think it’s a good thing.”

*  That said, it is a worry that the electoral college seems so skewed now that Biden may have to win the popular view by a really substantial margin to be sure of getting enough electoral college votes.

Family performance

Given that I lack any ability at all with musical instruments, and even the simplest sheet music may as well be hieroglyphics to me, I find it particularly remarkable that I have a daughter (rapidly approaching the end of Year 12) who can now play pieces like this on her violin (no visuals, just the audio):



There is one other piece she played recently that I might upload too.   

Otters as pets

Apparently, Youtube channels devoted to pet otters have become a thing in the last year or so.   They are very cute to watch, if this one is anything to go by:



A 2019 article in Nature Conservation discussed the trend:

In response to growing reports of otters in the pet trade, and suggestions that the popularity of pet otters on social media may be driving demand, we collated YouTube videos of pet otters to test for trends in the number of videos published, their exposure (number of views) and popularity. We used English-language search terms to provide a global overview, as well as local language search terms for four South East Asian countries identified as being of potential importance in the pet otter trade (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam), and Japan. We found that not only had the number of videos depicting pet otters increased in the last two to three years (2016–2018), but that their popularity and/or engagement had also increased. Notwithstanding some country-level differences in the details of effects observed, the greatest increases in both the number of videos produced and their popularity occurred in Indonesia and Japan. At a global-level, commercial “viral” video sites appeared to be influential in terms of posting highly popular pet otter videos. At a national level, potentially influential videos tended to be produced by four or five individual otter owners....

Our results show an increase in social media activity that may not only be driving the apparent increase in popularity, but also amplifying awareness of the availability of these animals as pets, as well as creating and perpetuating the (erroneous) perception of otters as a suitable companion animal. At a global level, there are welfare concerns associated with otters in the pet trade, and, in South East Asia specifically, there are serious conservation concerns.

 As cute as Aty the otter is in the video above, I would have thought the cost of feeding an otter fish would be enough disincentive from trying to have one as a pet.   (But then again, we know the huge cost of feeding lions and tigers hasn't stopped people keeping them as "pets" in all sorts of countries.) 

Worst Attorney General

Greg Sargent at Washington Post on why Barr is such a dangerous jerk (short version - he buys into the Right's decades' long, culture war inspired, escalation of anything to the left of them as the absolute evil enemy of everything good in the world) :

Barr gave a shocking interview to CNN late Wednesday that left zero doubt about his intentions. Barr refused to denounce Trump’s suggestion that people should try to illegally vote twice (by mail and in person), supposedly to test vote-by-mail’s validity. Trump brazenly repeated this on Thursday.

Barr also repeated his frequent claims that vote-by-mail elections have been riddled with fraud and that a foreign power could fabricate thousands of mail ballots. Both are utter nonsense. But in saying them, Barr is telegraphing his willingness to legitimize Trump’s eventual effort to try to invalidate untold numbers of mail ballots, which Trump has already told us is coming.

Meanwhile, Barr is party to another extraordinary move: Trump just approved a memo declaring the intention to restrict federal funding to Democratic-led cities designated as “anarchist jurisdictions.” Barr will determine which cities earn this label.

This is being widely denounced as illegal, and it may go nowhere. But let’s focus on its stated rationale: A city will be designated as such if it has “permitted violence and the destruction of property” and “forbids the police force from intervening to restore order.”

The idea that these officials have deliberately allowed violence and restrained police from restoring order is crucial. In reality, officials are working amid extremely complex, fast-moving conditions to balance the restoration of order and public safety with respect for civil liberties and peaceful assembly, while (ideally) avoiding abuse of the awesome powers of state violence....

Here's the more general point:

Trump’s reelection case is premised on not just on the idea that Joe Biden and Democrats are too weak to control leftist violence. It’s also that they are willingly allowing those forces to run rampant, in the full knowledge that they are out to destroy the very possibility of civil society itself.

Both Trump and Barr have delivered major speeches spelling out this worldview. Commemorating Independence Day, Trump likened his own struggle against “the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists” to the struggle to defeat fascism in World War II.

Trump is at war with the left, to rescue civil society itself. He recently declared: “We’re saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country.”

For his part, Barr, speaking to the Federalist Society last November, infamously declared that “it is the left” that poses the true threat to the “rule of law,” through a “scorched earth, no-holds barred” war against Trump.

Barr also voiced support for a strong executive, unshackled by oversight and legal nitpicking, declaring that it has delivered glory at moments of great national struggle against fascism, communism and “Islamic fascism,” which elevates the war on terror into an epic civilizational showdown. As Laura Field details, Barr belongs to a movement of “reocons,” or authoritarian reactionary conservatives.

Indeed, Barr is drawing on a long tradition of “anti-liberalism,” which is hostile to liberal democracy in part precisely because it doesn’t cast politics as a perpetual emergency struggle against an overarching enemy, and instead values proceduralism and compromise, which sap the moral will and decisiveness of the polity.

Barr did not explicitly declare the war against the left akin to the war with fascism. But Trump has. And by labeling the left an existential threat to the rule of law alongside a paean to the glory of the executive unfettered at times of crisis, he creeps right up to the precipice of this claim....

 Barr’s grotesque exaggerations of the leftist threat help give Trump justification for urging right-wing vigilantes to take matters into their own hands, lawlessly.

Good analysis.

Some COVID thoughts

*  the Victorian lockdown certainly seems to show, again, that strict lockdowns work;

*  there seems to be surprisingly infrequent polling on whether Dan Andrews and his government are suffering in popularity over this.   Polling back on 11 August indicated 70-something percent support for the current lockdown;  perhaps it has eroded a bit since then?  On the other hand, as case numbers come down, and it seems to work, I wouldn't be surprised if support is still pretty high.   We need to know, so (if public support is still high) we can gloat at the tiny fists being waved about in anger at Catallaxy about this is the worst civil rights crisis ever.  Sinclair just loves to go all civil/property rights on matters which kill and sicken people (in favour of the thing that will sicken them), just as he did with tobacco plain packaging. 

*  news about the possible long term effects of COVID infection on the heart is pretty worrying; except to the likes of Adam Creighton, for whom there is no hill high enough to die on over this.

*  Fauci is never coming back into Trump's (or his cult's) "good books".  No one sensible would ever want to be there, anyway.

The French method

I followed a link to an article in The Economist about a big new university in France, and read this  explanation as to rather different way they do tertiary education:

A HUGE MODERNIST university campus is emerging amid farmland on a plateau south of the French capital. The University of Paris-Saclay, officially launched this year, merges some 20 higher-education and research institutions. It has a teaching and research staff of 9,000, catering to 48,000 students—more than Harvard or Stanford. Specialised in science, it is France’s attempt to create, in President Emmanuel Macron’s words, an “MIT à la française”. Such ambition once seemed fanciful. Yet in August Paris-Saclay stormed into the Shanghai world university ranking, grabbing 14th place overall and 3rd in Europe after Cambridge and Oxford. It took the top international spot in maths.

France’s two-tier higher-education system baffles outsiders. Three-fifths of its 2.7m students are enrolled in universities. These are public. Until recently they did not select undergraduates at entry; they charge no tuition bar a small enrolment fee, and are often sneered at as second-rate. An elite minority, meanwhile, attend selective grandes écoles, for which entrance exams require at least two years of post-secondary-school cramming. To confuse matters further, research is traditionally not carried out in universities or grande ecoles but in specialised public institutions.

Over the years, this unusual structure has led to much French frustration about foreign perceptions. The country has world-class engineering schools, economics departments and mathematicians. After America, France has more Fields medal-winners for maths than any other country. Yet its fragmented system—partly down to the deliberate splitting of big universities after the 1968 student protests—has left it under-performing in world rankings and lacking global star appeal.

I had no idea the French were so into maths.   [At this point, I'm tempted to make a reference to menage a trois, but will leave that to actual comedians.]

Anyway, it looks like a successful merger.

 

Public service announcement from the Republican Party

(There's a near 100% chance that someone else has already done this on Twitter, but I haven't seen it yet.)

A small Hollywood story

One of the few entertainment industry persons I follow on Twitter is Ed Solomon, who wrote Men in Black, amongst other movies.  (He did the Bill & Ted adventure movies too - the third of which has just been released to mostly favourable reviews.)

He reminisces about the MIB movie quite a bit, and how it changed from his initial ideas after discussion with director Barry Sonnenfeld (whose taste in comedy has also appealed to me across quite a few movies).  Anyway, this tweet amused me:

 
I have to say, I remember when I first saw MIB at the cinema, this reveal really did strike a particular note of pleasure because of the way it reminded me of science fiction-y fantasies I sometimes imagined as a child.   I am sure it is a key part of the reason why the movie has been regarded with deep affection by so many people.  

Pop culture notes

Well, I can only welcome this news:

You see, to annoy my son, who feared the Youtube app on the TV would be flooded with K Pop recommendations, I watched the Dynamite clip twice in the last week.  (I wanted to see it anyway, to see why it became the fastest instant hit in Youtube viewing history.)

Ignoring the aspect of the deliberately androgynous styling of some (or all?) in the group (and also ignoring the terrible, exploitative conditions that apparently most K Pop group members have to work under), I think the song is pleasant enough pop, and sounds to my ear rather Bruno Mars-ish.   (My daughter agreed when I pointed this out.)  It is, at the very least, harmless.

Which is more than I can say for the that WAP song, which I could have ignored if it weren't for noticing the ill advised entry of annoying twerp Ben Shapiro into criticism of it.

Apart from what whiny conservative male voices (and in the case of Shapiro, I mean that very literally) have had to say about it, there has been a broader discussion of the dubious merits of "feminist empowerment" by trash talking and acting as badly as men.  See this thread in Reddit for example:

It's had 1,600 or so comments, which is good. (Mind you, a lot are trying to change her mind.)

Anyway, it's good to see that happy, all ages friendly K Pop should have knocked ultra sleazy, surely- you-do-not-want-your-daughter-(or-son)-thinking-of-sex-like-this WAP off the top position.   (No sexual pun intended, either.)

Going back to K Pop:  while I think I made some comment here a few years ago that it seemed that K Pop was really upping the androgynous style, I see that the topic of why this is a thing has been discussed on line for years.

Someone speaking in an article in 2013 suggested this, and it sounds more-or-less plausible:

I think that, according to Western expectations of gender, the overwhelming majority of male K-pop idols would be considered androgynous. But I don’t know that that has to do with K-pop challenging the gender binary. I think this has a lot to do with the “objectifiability” of K-pop idols, as is the fetishization of cuteness. Part of femininity as a social construct in nearly every culture are passivity, perceived weakness, harmlessness, and allure based on the preferences of the observer. And, of course, with cuteness, you have a performance of childishness, a major feature of which is a lack of agency. K-pop idols are someone else’s moneymaker whose worth is based on the ability to be non-threatening fantasy fodder for their audience, which translates into money spent. No wonder nearly EVERYONE in K-pop is what the West would consider hyper-feminized (women, too). This isn’t unique to K-pop. Teen heartthrobs in the West tend to be more feminine, as they have to appear innocuous and available for objectification too.

An article in 2018 notes:

That wasn't always the case. In the 1980s and 90s the salaryman was the prevailing male aesthetic. Suits, luxury watches and a traditional strong male look were the norm. Korea has mandatory national service and that moulded and defined what men thought would look appealing.

"In the 80s and 90s, men in Korean pop content were largely portrayed as tough guys in gangster and detective films, and rebellious young men in some TV dramas," says Sun Jung, the author of Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption.

But all that changed in the mid-1990s when music group Seo Taeji and The Boys came onto the scene, says Prof Elfving-Hwang. They used rap, rock and techno influences and incorporated English language into their music.

They kick-started fan culture which has now become a major force in the music industry, she says.

Then followed the big entertainment companies churning out K-pop girl bands and boy bands, and their influence has been like nothing before it.

Yes, well, it is interesting to wonder how much of this is driven by the entertainment companies dictating taste.  More from that last article:

"Compared to the 80s and 90s, now there are a lot more soft masculinities - pretty boy images and gentle male images - represented in media, and consumers welcome and widely consume them," says Dr Sun Jung.

They came to be known as Khonminam - combining the words for flower and a beautiful man. She says it takes inspiration from similar concepts in Japan of bishonen or beautiful boys and Shojo manga - girls comics.
 1
But it's not feminine.

"I think the phenomenon should rather be explained through the notion of hybrid or versatile masculinity - soft yet manly at the same time - which is different from effeminised," says Dr Jung.

She cites Song Joong-ki, the star of hugely popular Korean drama "Descendants of the Sun" as the embodiment of this. He may be a khonminam in his look, but as a special forces captain in the military he is also a tough guy.

It goes on to discuss beauty products aimed at young men too, and God knows that there are a lot more of that on the shelves of Japan than Australia.

Anyway, I still think it is all pretty peculiar - a culture specific fashion trend that has been around for longer than I would have expected; even though, as noted above, Western acts aiming at a teen female audience have long de-emphasised masculine features too.   But it's as if something of dubious fashion merit, like 70's glam rock, perhaps, lasted 20 years instead of (what?) 10?   

Up, through the at-mos-phere, up, where the air is clear...

Gawd, you would have felt sick to the stomach if you saw this live, but it all has a happy ending:

Tweets noted

Actually, I am less pessimistic than the last tweeter, but I could be proved wrong....

A useful summary

My only quibble - 5 decades seems a tad longer than I thought:

Particularly apt illustration for how the Bird brain, such that it is, works

Poor reviews

My impression from Twitter is that not only did all liberals think that the Trump speech was flat and way too long, but so did the frequent Trump apologist Brit Hume on Fox.   I assume that it really was flat, then.  (I saw bits and pieces, and it is no surprise to me that it is getting this sort of comment.)

Yet look at the headline on the Washington Post on line headline:

which gives the impression that it was an energetic speech.

I am very much on side with those media critics who are getting ropeable again that the mainstream press is not doing more caning of Trump for his abuse of his position, but are "two sides-ing" the parties again.

What have they got to lose by calling out a wannabe dictator as a wannabe dictator?  He already tells his followers they are the "enemy of the people" - itself an extraordinary undemocratic and dangerous attitude that should never have been normalised by resigned acceptance of its repetition.

To be clear:  the Washington Post routinely carries pages of strong Trump criticism, including of this speech.   But it shouldn't be giving a false impression in its main headline choice.  

Unsubtle symbolism

So, not only did a President use the White House and the Presidential seal for a party political convention, he also got to use a huge amount of (I assume) public land to launch a 4th July worthy fireworks display around the most obviously phallic monument in America.   

(Look, I don't normally think of the Washington Monument as phallic, but in the context of a narcissistic, trash talking, thinks-he's-real-masculine-but-probably-needs-Viagra President, I don't think this is an unwarranted take on the symbolism.)  

Update:  Heh -

Encouraging violence for political purposes

Good article at WAPO about how it is 100% clear that Republicans have no incentive to hope that community violence calms down rapidly, as it suits them politically:

At the Republican convention, one speaker after another claimed America’s cities have descended into chaos, which is not the fault of the current president but shows how much worse things will get under Biden, who is a supposed captive of radical forces unleashed inside the Democratic Party.

Some on the right are so convinced this will be effective that they haven’t shied away from cozying up to vigilante violence. Speaking about 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, a Trump supporter who traveled to Kenosha with his AR-15 and has been charged with killing two protesters, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

That’s extraordinary, not only for its seemingly understanding tone toward the alleged vigilante murder of protesters but also in its depiction of a country in total civil collapse.  And while the Trump campaign distanced itself from the killings, this points to an extraordinary level of confidence (or feigned confidence) on the right in the power of all this imagery to help Trump.

Apparently, Biden has been making the point about the cynicism of this, but not enough are hearing it:

For instance, on MSNBC Thursday, Biden responded directly to Vice President Pence’s claim at the convention that “the hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” Biden said: “The problem we have right now is, we’re in Donald Trump’s America.” Biden added that Trump is “rooting for more violence, not less.”

The “Donald Trump’s America” formulation makes the simple point that Trump is the problem. Trump promises only more violence and searing divisions because he thinks those things are good for him and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

But he has to push harder as being the one capable of bringing calmer times:

Biden has repeatedly condemned the violence, of course, despite all the lies to the contrary. And the Biden bet is that he’s intuitively understood as a creature of the center, giving him more leeway to speak frankly to the country about how systemic racism and police brutality unleash rage and grief that is understandable and calls for serious reform — and that voters are sophisticated enough to hear this.

Central to that bet, though, is the idea that Trump is widely seen as a uniformly destructive, instigating, malevolent force. This provides an opening for Biden and Harris to argue that their offer of balance — taking the protesters’ grievances seriously while condemning violence — holds out the promise of peace, where Trump only offers more chaos and devastation. And Conway just helped Democrats build that case.

 

Presenting live from the White Palace, King Trump, watched on by Prince Don, Prince Eric and Princess Ivanka

Update:

Come on, Biden

I've been saying this for a while, but with the latest escalation in violence related to a police shooting, why isn't Biden doing a speech for national TV calling for calm and addressing specifically how the situation should be addressed.

A federal government cannot solve all of the problems, but he can make sensible proposals and call for national unity to de-escalate the situation.     All Trump and his supporters are doing is telling people there is no significant problem with policing and race, and encouraging more rednecks to join in.   Biden ought to be able to make political gain as being the one who can help calm the nation.

Military event noted

I've read some tweets about Melania Trump's robotic, look at the audience as little as possible, speech in the newly de-flowered and de-tree'd Rose Garden, and still haven't seen anyone saying how her dress looked a lot to me like a version of a khaki military coat.  Surely someone else has noticed:

I would say it suited the whole Our Glorious Leader is Endorsed by the Military vibe of the proceedings, which many are noting is inappropriate if not actually illegal.

Steve Kates would be drolling in his porridge in excitement, though, I bet.