The odious Carlson

Tucker Carlson is an odious disgrace, selling fear and (as someone in comments to the Washington Post article linked below says) White Grievance to an ageing audience.

Here's his latest appalling take:

The impetus for the segment was a bill proposed by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.). In response to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol this month, which practically coursed with QAnon fervor, Murphy wants to prevent people who subscribe to it and other such conspiracy theories from gaining federal government security clearances.

“If any Americans participated in the Capitol attack, or if they subscribe to these dangerous anti-government views of QAnon, then they have no business being entrusted with our nation’s secrets,” she said.

In Carlson’s estimation, though, this is an attempt at mind control by the federal government....

“We’re watching a profound change taking place in American society that’s happening very fast,” Carlson said. “The stakes could not be higher. There is a clear line between democracy and tyranny, between self-government and dictatorship, and here’s what that line is: That line is your conscience. They cannot cross that.”

Carlson acknowledged that the government can make laws prohibiting certain behaviors such as murder, rape, speeding and jaywalking. But he cast this as a bridge too far.

“But no democratic government can ever tell you what to think. Your mind belongs to you. It is yours and yours alone,” he said. “Once politicians attempt to control what you believe, they are no longer politicians, they are by definition dictators. And if they succeed in controlling what you believe, you are no longer a citizen. You are not a free man. You are a slave.”

As someone in comments writes:

Oh, good grief. The QAnon cult believes in a violent overthrow of the government by Trump. This includes executing high ranking Democratic members of the government. All part of "The Storm", stamped with God's approval, and I am certain lacking any due process for the victims. WHY ON EARTH WOULD IT BE APPROPRIATE TO GIVE THESE PEOPLE ACCESS TO OUR COUNTRY'S SECRETS?
 
FOX "news" demonstrates every day that they don't care about America! 

I also read today that the nutty Qanon sympathising GOP congresswoman is even worse than we already knew:

Why it matters: The freshman Republican from Georgia made a series of bizarre and outlandish remarks before her time in Congress that rival former Rep. Steve King's talk of white supremacy.

What’s happening: The latest round of Greene comments, pulled from archives of her Facebook page, show the congresswoman promoting an outlandish, QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton cutting off and donning the face of a child.

• That comment was reported by the progressive group Media Matters for America, which previously noted her endorsements of claims that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government, and that the Parkland school shooting was staged.
• CNN reported Tuesday that Greene had floated executing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for treason, and “liked” Facebook comments suggesting the execution of FBI agents.

Politics is going to be broken in America for a long, long time if ludicrous political conspiracy theories continue to have influence.   But Carlson is trying to keep Qanon idiots on side - all the better for his and his network's profit.

The long term COVID problem

An article at France 24: The end of offices? New York's business districts face uncertain future details a similar thing to what I assume must be happening all over the world - 

Boarded-up stores, shuttered restaurants and empty office towers: Covid-19 has turned New York's famous business districts into ghost towns, with companies scrambling to come up with ways to entice workers to return post-pandemic.

"If they don't come back, we're sunk," said Kenneth McClure, vice president of Hospitality Holdings, whose Midtown bistro pre-coronavirus would buzz with the sound of financiers striking deals at lunch and sharing cocktails after a hard day at the office.

The group has closed its six restaurants and bars in Manhattan, two of them permanently, due to lockdown restrictions that have paused office culture - a culture as intrinsic to the Big Apple as a Broadway show, a yellow taxi or a slice of cheese pizza.

The problem is, turns out that a lot of people quite like working from home, and businesses have found it isn't as bad as they feared:

Seventy-nine percent of employees questioned in a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey published this month said that working remotely had been a success, but the report also found that offices are not about to be consigned to history.

Some 87 percent of employees said the office was important to them for collaborating with team members and building relationships, aspects of working life they felt was easier and more rewarding in person than over Zoom.

As I have been saying to anyone who would listen for the last 9 months, I reckon the big crunch will be over the next few years as businesses come up for lease renewals of office space, and tell the landlord they really only need half of the space in future, as each day about half of their workforce is at home.

This does not augur well for values of commercial office space, and (probably) our superannuation returns.

Sounds about right

 

Just waiting for the "Control my Brain" app

News from Korea:

A group of KAIST researchers and collaborators have engineered a tiny brain implant that can be wirelessly recharged from outside the body to control brain circuits for long periods of time without battery replacement. The device is constructed of ultra-soft and bio-compliant polymers to help provide long-term compatibility with tissue. Geared with micrometer-sized LEDs (equivalent to the size of a grain of salt) mounted on ultrathin probes (the thickness of a human hair), it can wirelessly manipulate target neurons in the deep brain using light.  ....

Neuroscientists successfully tested these implants in rats and demonstrated their ability to suppress cocaine-induced behavior after the rats were injected with cocaine. This was achieved by precise light stimulation of relevant target neurons in their brains using the smartphone-controlled LEDs. Furthermore, the battery in the implants could be repeatedly recharged while the rats were behaving freely, thus minimizing any physical interruption to the experiments.

"Wireless battery re-charging makes experimental procedures much less complicated," said the co-lead author Min Jeong Ku, a researcher at Yonsei University's College of Medicine.

"The fact that we can control a specific behavior of animals, by delivering light stimulation into the brain just with a simple manipulation of smartphone app, watching freely moving animals nearby, is very interesting and stimulates a lot of imagination," said Jeong-Hoon Kim, a professor of physiology at Yonsei University's College of Medicine. "This technology will facilitate various avenues of brain research."

Water, water everywhere, etc

I was watching CNA on the weekend, and they had a special about Bangladesh's problems with water.

I thought the main issue would be that it's a delta nation that seems to be half under water for 2 months every year (I exaggerate - it's only a third!). And yes, while that is a problem, I didn't know that Dhaka has a major problem with drinking water.

 Then I was looking at Al Jazeera, and saw a story about how up in the hills (which look prettier than I expected), there are streams drying up and causing problems for farmers and residents there. Here's the story about that: 

 

As for the city of Dhaka running out of water (they rely on groundwater from deep wells, apparently - I am guessing the river water is too sludgey and polluted to try to use?), I see that this has been a story for many years. Al Jazeera again, from 8 years ago: 

To top it all off, there is a large arsenic problem in Bangladeshi ground water too. 

This seems to be close to the unluckiest country in the world.

Life in a Northern town

I've recommended Cecilia Blomdhal's youtube channel on her life in Svalsbard before.  It's an incredible environment, and kind of amazing that people happily live there.  

In her latest video, she talks about how a lot of people there actually like the 2 month polar night - finding it sort of relaxing, apparently.   I think the sun doesn't actually rise for 4 months, but for some of that period they get twilight sky, which looks very pretty indeed.  This video is mainly her talking to camera, but with some impressive photos.   Have a watch, if you're interested:

 

 I like all of her videos.  Maybe the dog, which is beautiful and smart, is part of the attraction, too.

Speaking of which - in this video, you get to see her gearing up (including with shotgun on her back) to take her dog for a walk during the polar night:

So interesting...

Mr Bird opines

I haven't been letting Birdian content through in comments - it's been full of "rigged election" conspiracy mongering, and then much abuse of me for not letting comments through.   I've even stopped his other topic comments, because I am trying to get through the message that I would much prefer that he wasn't commenting here at all.  Go start another blog - even anonymously - and stop harassing mine, Graeme.

But here is the most recent one, so you can see his thought processes, and laugh (my bold):

I can't help thinking that there will have to be a military interim government. Trumps not coming back but it appears unlikely that the Biden Presidency can hold. Particularly as it wasn't Biden that was sworn in but some body double. Possibly his younger brother. Perhaps young James got some sort of facial surgery. Anyway whoever the imposter is; I wouldn't put money on guessing. It makes no difference whether it is James Biden or some other clown. But whoever he is, its going to be hard even for the combined power of the moneyed elites to hold this racket together for any length of time. So they had the power to produce this alternative reality. But do they have the power to maintain it as the public gets more and more impoverished and angry?

 

 

Monday observations

*   what with this Margaret Court gets an award for being Margaret Court kerfuffle, time to revisit my 2016 post - why does Australia have so many awards?   Isn't everyone feeling this way now?  Every year seems to be more and more scratching around trying to find enough appropriate award recipients.   Can't some politician bite the bullet and say this out loud?   

*  I thought I was getting more and more into art house foreign films, but on Saturday I watched the very well reviewed Taiwanese move A Sun on Netflix, and I did not care for it at all.   It starts with a startling act of violence, follows the protagonist as he goes to juvenile prison, but then get progressively less interesting the longer it goes on.  And it is pretty long.   The direction is often pretty, and I can see that the actors are good, but the screenplay (to my mind) keeps too many characters' motivations completely opaque.   I felt I didn't understand any of them properly for all of the movie.  

I was tired while watching it, which never helps, but I am pretty sure I am right on this one.  I am puzzled as to why it got such enthusiastic reviews.

*  I endorse this brand of rendang paste mix.  There are some other brands I have tried (from Indonesia actually) and they just aren't so great, particularly the Indofoods one.  But this one from Malaysia is good:

One other observation:  Ayam brand products are often a bit underflavoured, I think.   Although, having said that, I did like the nyonya curry paste of their's recently.

This is her "It's Sunday, isn't it time to go to the dog park yet?" look

Well, this is stupid

Will Wilkinson made what was clearly a sarcastic/sardonic joke tweet (about those Republicans who wanted to lynch Pence) and regretted it:

 but still got sacked from the Niskanen Centre for it:

And those who are doing this: 

 

 are using the same bad faith, pretend it's not a joke, line that I have seen Sinclair Davidson use with me, many years ago.   (Because they don't want to see legitimate calls for violence from their side of the fence punished, in the name of free speech.)  

Update:

 Others disagree that it was even a bad joke (and actually, I am inclined to agree):

Yet more:

One day in and...

*   doomscrolling Twitter is just not the same anymore.   In fact, it has almost ceased to exist, overnight.

*   Yes, this is true, and delightful:

*   The key word used by all of the late night talk show hosts (well, Colbert, Kimmel and Oliver) who I saw last night was the one I used yesterday "relief".   They were all very happy, as they should be.

*   The problem continues:

I have been meaning to make this point again:   Fox News used to make a clear attempt to have a liberal perspective on even its opinion shows.   I know because I used to watch it sometimes on Foxtel back in (I think) the early 2000's.   Even with the then popular Bill O'Reilly used to position conservatism as a "middle American just being sensible" sort of thing.  I don't recall him, at least at that time, being big on positively demonising the Left.   But as with Andrew Bolt, being paid for sprouting opinions every day of the week is bad for the soul - it forces people to become more extreme and certain to please the audience.   Being a "well, I don't really know what to think of this" sort of person doesn't sell well.

At some point we stopped getting Foxtel at home and I don't really know when the network decided to ramp up the demonisation of all thing liberal.   I also see from this article that they still had liberal punching bags on into the 2010's to try to show "balance" (or more likely, appeal to the audience who liked to see the liberal "lose" every panel argument).

But at some point, the network chose to get into full blown demonisation and scaremongering of liberals as its opinion shows' raison d'etre.   

That is why it is an appalling poisonous influence on American politics.

The day of great relief

I am sure I am not alone in saying I have never been happier in my entire life to see a new US President.

Also, funny sarcasm:

Yet more "the problem continues"

I have been meaning to say that there is a lot of renewed talk about the fairness doctrine being re-instated.   Noah Smith talked about it in the context of social media.   But I am not sure I have read anything about how it could apply to cable media.

But honestly, if the likes of Fox News, Newsmax and others are going to be allowed to continuously poison "news" coverage with blatant scare propaganda, it's hard to see a cure for the current schism. 

The problem continues (part something)

 

Not a bad summary

 

An appalling man tries to make things worse

 As someone else notes on Twitter:

Chinese marriage not quite what it used to be

From the Journal of Sex Research (you can get the full article on Sci Hub):

Despite growing concern about the “sexual revolution” in China in the past decades, empirical evidence regarding the national trends in prevalence and patterns of extramarital sex (EMS) remains sparse. This study aimed to fill this gap, using data from a population-based, repeated cross-sectional survey administered at four time points during the period 2000–2015. EMS was assessed by asking whether a person in marriage had engaged in sexual activity with someone else during the relationship with his/her current partner. Our findings showed that among married adults aged 20–59, the occurrence rate of EMS nearly tripled over the period 2000–2015, increasing from 12.9% to 33.4% for men, and from 4.7% to 11.4% for women.

The increase also was present across all socio economic groups.   (If it was mainly amongst the low income factory workers, who travel far from their family to live in a dormitory for most of year, that might account for a lot of it?)  

The study notes that it does rely on self disclosure, so is it partly just that more people are prepared to admit to it now?   

By the way, the comparative figures in the US are given in the article as:

More recent estimates based on nationwide, probability surveys indicated that approximately 20–25% of US men and 10–15% of US women had EMS experience during their married lives (Atkins et al., 2001; Laumann et al., 1994; Wiederman, 1997).

Also is a great example of why I am completely uninterested in it

It's weird, isn't it?   How cricket fans seemingly celebrate the boring aspects of it.  (Which, by my reckoning, is about 98% of the playing time.)
 

OK, back to Trump, treason etc

*  Axios is doing some longer form reporting on the post election White House - basically painting a picture of a "professional" team of advisers who knew he had lost and encouraged him to accept it, or at least to try some "sensible" legal challenges, but they lost out to the "mad" team:

On the day after the election, Nov. 4, top staff including Stepien, Clark, Miller, general counsel Matthew Morgan and Jared Kushner had gathered at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They believed this would be a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges.

Then Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room — literally.

These two groups — the professional staff and the Giuliani cabal — filled in around one long, rectangular table in a conference room walled in by frosted glass. The pattern repeated itself the day after that and the day after that.

A bizarre routine set in. These meetings would begin with official staff raising plausible legal strategies. Then Giuliani and Powell, a lawyer with a history of floating “deep state” conspiracy theories, would take over, spewing wild allegations of a centralized plot by Democrats — and in Powell's view, international communists — to steal the election.

Bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on. One would invariably shuffle out of the room, followed by another a few minutes later. Then another. Then another. The professional staff would reconvene in Stepien's office, about 20 yards down the hall.

Eventually, Giuliani would realize that he and his crew were alone in the conference room. He'd walk down the hall and knock on the glass outside Stepien's office, where about eight aides had squeezed onto a pair of couches. "You guys, where did you go?" Giuliani would say. "This is serious!"

Asked to provide comment on this reporting, which was confirmed by two sources in the room, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: "Your story is materially false, but I'm sure the 'elitist and consultant class' that make millions of dollars lying to the American people are behind it and will push that propaganda." Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials including Clark, Morgan and Bossie, who played a key role in Trump's 2016 victory, spent many hours trying to stop the former New York mayor from running to the press or the president and muddling the campaign's legal approach. But they were outmatched, and Trump was tweeting his own spiraling conspiracies.

 ....

On Nov. 13, Clark was in the Cabinet room of the White House with Stepien, Miller and campaign aide Erin Perrine for a meeting on communications strategy when deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino summoned Clark into the Oval Office to settle a legal question.

Trump had Giuliani on speakerphone, and Giuliani, seemingly unaware of Clark’s arrival, was trashing the campaign staff's legal strategy in Georgia — and floating a debunked conspiracy theory about rigged Dominion voting machines.

"Hey, I've got Justin in here," Trump interrupted. "What do you think, Justin?" Clark laid out the legal process in Georgia and told the packed Oval Office that Georgia state law barred requesting a recount until after an election is certified.

"They're lying to you, sir!" Giuliani erupted.

"We're not lying," Clark shot back. "You're a fucking asshole, Rudy."

The following night — without notifying his campaign staff — Trump tweeted that he was putting Giuliani in charge of his legal challenges, along with pro-Trump lawyers Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Jenna Ellis.

 Trump has never had a clue as to who to take advice from.  If they can pander to his narcissism well enough, they'll be on the inside for a while, until things start to look bad, then they're out in a flash.

* An interesting article at Slate about the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, and what it may, or may not, indicated as lessons for today.

*  Polling shows the terrible problem of conspiracy belief (and Trump's personality cult) in the Republican Party:

The public mostly rejects the baseless conspiracy theory behind the rioting -- that Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to become president: 65% say that he did legitimately win enough votes, but a sizable share (23%) -- and particularly among Republicans (58%) -- believe that conspiracy theory to be true and that there is solid evidence to support it. There is no evidence that the election was illegitimate, nor that there was widespread fraud in the vote count.

 The Washington Post reported very similar figures:

• By 66 percent to 30 percent, Americans overall say Trump acted irresponsibly in his statements and actions since the election. But Republicans say Trump acted responsibly by 66 percent to 29 percent.
• By 62 percent to 31 percent, Americans say there’s no solid evidence of the claims of voter fraud that Trump cited to refuse to accept Joe Biden’s victory. But Republicans say there is solid evidence of fraud by 65 percent to 25 percent.
• 57 percent of Americans say Trump bears a great deal or good amount of responsibility for the assault on the Capitol. But 56 percent of Republicans say Trump bears no responsibility at all, and another 22 percent say he bears just some, totaling 78 percent who largely exonerate him.
• 52 percent of Americans say Republican leaders went too far in supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. But 51 percent of Republicans say GOP leaders didn’t go far enough, while 27 percent say they got it right, a total of 78 percent who are fully on board or wanted more. Only 16 percent of Republicans say they went too far.
  

 I predict some sort of formal denouncing of Trump will need to be made by the establishment GOP to try and get his dumb base back into the fold.

On other topics

I'm sick of how much mental space the departure of Donald Trump, and the problem of how to de-program his "base", is taking up with me, but also 95% of the people I follow on Twitter.   It's the car crash that you just can't stop looking at, and keeps distracting you as you try to do other things.

So, on a more trivial note:

*  Last weekend, I made a pretty nice prawn and chorizo gumbo.  This is one of those dishes with lots of variations in the recipes on the net, so it's worth my future reference to note here that I basically followed this one.  

One thing about gumbo recipes:  those that include making a roux to thicken it (and I think genuine gumbo always does) invariably give wildly unrealistic times to cook the roux.  Like 20 minutes or something.  (Even in the recipe I followed it said 15 minutes.)   I did once (years ago) try cooking the roux over the lowest heat possible for the recommended 20 - 25 minutes, and it just turned into a dark brown/black mess.   I don't understand this - maybe I even posted about it here at the time? - the timing just seems impossibly long.   I think this time I got it to 10 minutes, and just followed the suggestion that it starts turning a light caramel colour.   

*  Finished watching the second series of The Alienist on Netflix.   I thought it was very good - a bit of a clearer narrative than the first series, which I really liked but the resolution in the last episode was handled terribly.   It became a bit more soapy, I suppose, and a strong emphasis on the women in the series making the men look a bit weak and indecisive.   But really, it's a terrific looking show, quite well acted, and I like the formal and somewhat arch manner of the dialogue.   I have probably observed before, but the famous Ken Burns Civil War documentary series, with so many extracts from letters from men of all social status,  made me think that everyone in the 19th century must have spoken in more elegant English (and lengthier sentences - just like in their novels) than is typically used today. 

*  Brisbane has had a short period of heightened COVID restrictions due to that one case of the English variety being found in the city.   

Although it's a bit painful, especially if you wear glasses, to have to wear a mask when outside the house, I have been observing that there was a high degree of compliance in the suburbs I frequent, and it actually makes me grateful that I live in a country (or city?) where the nutcase proportion is low, and people see the value in collective action.   Especially compared to America (or even England, it seems), I like the sense of social cohesion around me that widespread mask wearing indicated.