The problem of the Right (continued)

The thing that constantly astounds me is the lack of responsible leadership from anyone in the Republican Party.

I mean, I really doubt - perhaps this is my mistake - that they are all so universally stupid as to reject medical expertise.   But it would seem that no one in any significant position of power will tell their "base" to stop culture warring on it - they need to accept mainstream expertise, even if experts adjust their advice from time to time.  

I mean, does no one in the entire national leadership of the GOP think this is irresponsible??:

Update:  here's Allahpundit explaining the politics:

Each party is gambling that its stance on mandates will be a winner with swing voters, especially the sort of suburban parents who heavily influenced the outcome of the last election. The GOP approach, a la Ron DeSantis, is to oppose mandates of any kind. No to requiring vaccines and an emphatic no to requiring masks in schools. Dems are reprising their “safety first” pitch from last year, claiming they’re doing everything possible to keep kids safe amid a scary new Delta wave by requiring precautions while Republicans obsess about getting back to normal. Which way will voters go on that?

He doesn't seem to be interested in my point:  in a politically healthy country, the parties shouldn't be playing such intense politics over health! 

Some crypto commentary of note

At Axios:

Bitcoin is becoming part of the dollar-based financial system it once sought to displace.

Why it matters: Cryptocurrency is beloved by people who want to transact outside the reach of any government. But it's gotten mainstream enough that politicians and regulators want to co-opt it and bring it squarely within their own fields of influence — even using it to help pay for an infrastructure bill.

The big picture: As crypto assets have grown to be worth well over $1 trillion, investors and financiers have increasingly wanted to get involved in the space — without taking any kind of legal risk. 

• They've been aggressively pushing for regulatory clarity, and often see their expensive compliance departments as a comparative advantage, differentiating them from the early true believers.
• Regulation, however, would defeat much of the original purpose behind the desire to create cryptocurrency in the first place — the dream of being able to create a store of value that's untouched by government interference.

Context: When bitcoin first arrived on the scene, there was a chance governments would crush it, prosecuting anyone who used it.

• Bitcoiners dreamed instead that it would thrive under the benign neglect of the government. While egregious fraud might be prosecuted, they mostly just wanted to be left alone.
• They got their way, in some form or another, for many years. But those days are coming to an end, and we're now clearly at the beginning of the end of cryptocurrency as an anarcho-libertarian Utopia.
• Cryptocurrency's future may be as an integral part of the existing financial system, regulated just as much as any other financial product.

Driving the news: SEC chair Gary Gensler — who previously taught a course on cryptocurrencies at MIT — gave an important speech last week laying out a maximalist vision for the degree to which his agency can and should regulate the asset class.

 I'm pretty sure I can hear Sinclair Davidson sobbing somewhere in the distance...

 

It's taking its time, but this is probably right

A good article at the Washington Post about the Mike Lindell election fraud fiasco, which is happening as I write this:  The Con is Winding Down.

This is how all cons end. Things stretch and stretch and stretch until: snap. So instead of presenting your data, you encode it and obfuscate it and promise that there’s actually something there, but wait, hmm, that is weird, let me see what’s happening. Instead you say things like that there was a medical emergency that slowed things down and just ask everyone to stick with you for a moment. It’s just buying time — like Trump calling senators on Jan. 6 — hoping that if another hour or so passes, you can somehow regain control.

The writer, Philip Bump, also quotes with approval a twitter thread argument made by Julian Sanchez about how conspiracy promotion works.   I'll copy that:

On Monday, Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez offered an insightful chain of thoughts about the overlap between those who believe false claims about the election being stolen and those who reject the coronavirus vaccine as dangerous.

In both cases, Sanchez wrote, the conspiracy theories “have the superficial trappings of real science. Links to journal articles on the one hand, or on the other, impressively hackery looking hex dumps & spreadsheets full of IP addresses” — a reference to Lindell’s information.

“[I]n both cases, this evidence is absolutely useless to the target audience,” he continued. “They have neither the training nor the context to evaluate the quality or relevance of technical articles in medical journals — or even to understand what the article is claiming in many cases. … They are, however, being flattered by the INVITATION to assess the evidence for themselves — do your own research, make up your own mind!”

Instead of offering their trust on experts in their fields to explain complicated subjects, the audience is convinced that it needs only to trust itself — though, of course, they’re actually simply trusting the hustlers presenting incomplete or misleading information. What the hustlers offer the audience, Sanchez says, “is the illusion of not trusting an authority — unlike all those sheep who trust the mainstream authorities.”

Data from YouGov shows that the overlap of those who don’t want to get the vaccine and those who think that Biden is an illegitimate president is nearly complete. About three-quarters of Republicans hold the latter position and 3 in 10 the former, but a quarter both reject the vaccine and Biden’s election. 

Yes, the appeal to the vanity of the "independent thinker" who is a climate change sceptic has been extraordinarily clear at Catallaxy for many, many years.   They don't recognise the con that is being put over them.

Mind you, if you go to Twitter at the moment, there are still thousands watching Lindell who think he is "killing it" - actually proving something significant.   So it's going to be a while yet before the conspiracy burns up.

Mystery song by singer I didn't know I had heard before

So, I saw reference to this on Twitter, when Phillip Adams asked the twitterverse last weekend to tell him the meaning of life.  (I think he was looking for column fodder.)   Someone in response suggested he look up a song Let the Mystery Be by Iris DeMent.  So I did, and I don't think I had heard it before.  It's pretty likeable:

 

Even though it was new to me, I see that it has been covered at least a couple of times, and look!, there's a version which has David Byrne participating in it (and Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs):

  

It's a pretty nice cover!

I realised I would have heard Iris Dement before, as she sang Our Town, which was used in the final episode of Northern Exposure: 

 

 I think I probably assumed it was a song by some early to mid 20th century country singer, but Iris wrote it when she was 25 (in 1986.) 

Her Wikipedia page indicates she has put out 6 albums, which isn't a huge amount. Seems her politics are very Left-ish as well: perhaps that puts a limit on country singer success in the US.

It lived up to expectations

OK, so I was feeling like looking up something odd to post, and clicked on the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.   What are the chances, I thought, that it would feature something about moose or flying squirrels or some other odd animal?   Actually, pretty high:

Assessing Bear/Cub/Otter identity and history of cardiovascular disease among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in Metro Vancouver 

Otter identity?    

I am curious about the last line in the abstract:

Interventions should target all gbMSM with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and clinicians should be mindful of culturally sensitive prevention and care for gbMSM who identify as a BCO.

What exactly does being culturally sensitive to a gay bear/cub/otter (still ?? about otter) who is looking good for a heart attack entail?   Do they think it's harder to tell a "bear" to lose weight because it's at the core of their sexual identity?  I hope that's not their point. 

Anyway, enough silliness today...

Domestication considered

While I work out which takes on the IPCC report I want to highlight here (there are a lot to choose from), you can do worse than read an article at BBC Future about how animals hanging around humans changes them.

Maybe I should print this out and have it in my pocket every day for the next month...

Treatment of rare cases of blood clotting in brain following COVID-19 vaccination

In other anti vaxxer madness

Pakistan has for years been a hotbed of anti-vax conspiracy belief against even the simplest vaccine available - the oral one for polio.   The government has made a push to get numbers of kids vaccinated:

The most incredible thing in the video is the police person saying that over the last 16  years, 1700 police have been killed in the course of trying to support the health workers administering the vaccine!

It is mentioned in the video that Pakistanis remember how the CIA used a fake vaccination campaign as cover to help track down Bin Laden - but  the conspiracy rumours that vaccines were actually harmful (and a plot by the West against Islam) long predated that.   Look at this quote from a Bloomberg report:

Mehrab Ali, a fruit merchant in Karachi, is one of many across the Islamic republic who won’t step forward after Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday launched the nation’s vaccination drive. The father of six, who also refused to vaccinate his children against polio, argued that Covid-19 is a foreign plot against Muslims.

“Coronavirus is nothing but a conspiracy,” said the 43-year-old, sitting by his pushcart on a road leading to Karachi’s port. “I don’t believe the coronavirus exists nor does polio. I am not ready to accept that Jews and Christians sitting abroad are worried about the health of our children -- no way.”

Just terrible.    

Cause for pessimism?

According to Axios, Republicans are actually feeling very positive about big gains in their coming mid term election, based on a few issues they are able to sell as purely Democrat problems (inflation, illegal immigration, and crime.)

All this at a time when the Republicans are busy ensuring as many of their voters as possible are catching COVID, and an IPCC report about the biggest future danger to the planet is about to drop, no doubt to Republican pooh-poohing. 

What a time we live in - because the Right has gone nuts.  

 

Tongue

My daughter took this pic while the dog had snuck upstairs and got on her bed.  This is unauthorised behaviour. Still, the photo amuses me.

Weed surprise

That Washington Post reports:

The most sought after marijuana being trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border is now the weed entering Mexico, not the weed leaving it.

Cannabis sold legally in California is heading south illegally, dominating a booming boutique market across Mexico, where buying and selling the drug is still outlawed. Mexican dealers flaunt their U.S. products, noting them in bold lettering on menus sent to select clients: “IMPORTADO.”

Traffickers from California load their suitcases with U.S.-grown marijuana before hopping on planes to Mexico, or walking across the pedestrian border crossing into Tijuana. One car was recently stopped entering Tijuana with 5,600 jars of gummies infused with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But relatively few of the southbound traffickers are caught — even as their contraband doubles or triples in value as soon as it enters Mexico.

Oddly, it seems to have status symbol appeal:

“Nobody is going to grow cannabis better than California probably ever,” Bubeck said.

Back in Mexico, he said, especially for younger smokers, the appeal is clear: “You’re showing ‘This is what I’m about. I’m a bad ass. I got this from America.’”

I still have a suspicion that the US is eventually going to regret, or pull back from, its current style of entrepreneurial legalisation.

 

Oh, diddums

In more Creightonism:

In the news:

On Saturday, according to the Centers for Disease Control, Florida reported 23,903 new cases of COVID-19 for the previous day, Friday, August 6, bringing the state's total number of cases to 2,725,450. The Florida Hospital Association reported that 13,348 patients were hospitalized as of Saturday, which is also a record high for the state. 

Florida also reported an additional 93 people have died due to the virus, bringing the state's total COVID-19 deaths to 39,695, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In yet more rodent news...

It's a big week for rats and mice here.

First, a cute article at the ABC about how lab researchers are tickling rats to keep them happy.

Secondly, a while ago I noted with surprise that mouse sperm can be freeze dried, and still work.   That gets another mention with this twist:

 Scientists no longer have to worry about their bottles of mouse sperm breaking in transit. Researchers in Japan have developed a way to freeze dry sperm on a plastic sheet in weighing paper so that samples can withstand being mailed via postcard. This method allows for mouse sperm to be transported easily, inexpensively, and without the risk of glass cases breaking. The paper appears August 5th in the journal iScience.

And for a final story, rats like to pick their own friends:

Rats choose carefully who they spend time with, according to a new study published today. Published by researchers from the Universities of Portsmouth and Lincoln, the study found that male rats have preferred partners in their groups and they decide who to avoid, too.  

Previous research found that female rats didn't form friendships with other females, so this paper's findings are surprising.

Dr. Leanne Proops, from the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology, said that "discovering that male rats don't associate with other rats randomly, but seek out their preferred cage mates and actively avoid others, shows that rats are similar in this respect to other species like birds, primates and bats."

Dr. Teresa Romero, from the University of Lincoln's School of Life Sciences, added that "what's particularly interesting about this work is that it contrasts to the limited evidence available on social behavior in rats and therefore has important implications for the management and welfare of captive rat populations."

24 hours after

So I am about 24 hours since my first AstraZeneca jab.  

The effects are very minor.   I didn't feel sick at all last night, not even a sore arm.   My upper arm is a little bit sore now, and my stomach feels a little bit crampy, but it's nothing much.  I probably would enjoy a nap this afternoon, but I can say that on most days now!   (Even on a weekend, though, I am not good at actually sleeping during the day.)

Not sure why the GOP just don't go with a "Mexicans are like disease ridden rats" visual

 

About the Disney + series (and Mr Robot)

Due the generosity of my daughter, I now have access to Disney +, and have started watching The Mandalorian and Loki.

Unfortunately, my prior knowledge of the innovative soundstage they used to make these is partly interfering with my enjoyment of both.   

It's not exactly ruining them, but I keep looking at scenes and thinking I can tell where the studio floor ends and the massive screen begins.   It is not at all clear in some scenes, but seems to be in others.    

Oh wait - I am WRONG.   Loki didn't use "the Volume" at all - I was presuming something I shouldn't have.

In any case, I keep saying to my son (watching it with me) that I really do not care for the murky, sepia/brownish tint to all of cinematography in Loki.   It looks, I don't know, underlit, or filtered, or something; but for no clear aesthetic reason.    I mean, dramatic lighting works well in some shows - Mr Robot in particular is worth watching almost for its lighting decisions alone - but it seems out of place to me in Loki.

I am also somewhat bothered that the series' version of the Time Police should have such silly, short range weaponry - like magic wands you have to be close enough to touch someone with for them to work.   What sort of logic does that make?    

I will keep watching it, but I am not yet convinced it is all that good.

To be honest, I think it suffers badly in comparison to the second season of Umbrella Academy, which I thought was just great.  (And much better than its first season.)   As a "time police" themed series, I think UA did it much, much better.  And I loved its look.

As for The Mandalorian:  it's faster paced, looks better, and I am enjoying it enough.  I did point out to my son the derivative aspect of it from the gory Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub movies - which I would sometimes look at on SBS when they were shown there late on a Saturday in (what?) the 1980s.  When I showed him a Youtube compilation clip of gore from them, he was very surprised I had watched them at all, since I complain about movie violence quite a lot.   I explained that I could never stick it out with them, though, for that very reason.

Back to Mr Robot - after a lengthy break between seasons (which is not great - I had forgotten some of the backstory), my son and I are watching the last season now.    It is surprisingly good - so cinematic in feel, and some really dense dramatic writing.   It's kind of gut wrenching in the suspense a lot of the time, but gee, it was some achievement.

I am worried that the big secret of what White Rose is building is going to turn out to be silly, but who knows.   I am enjoying it a lot for now.   It seems to have attracted next to no attention in Australia (probably because you have to buy it on Google to watch it), but it is very good if you are into well made paranoia stories.

    

 

 

 

Mental health stories

Gulf News reports:

Abu Dhabi: Malaysian police rescued a 28-year-old Malaysian man after he attempted to swim the nearly 7,000km from Malaysia to Mecca.

He was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation, local media reported.

Video footage and photographs of the incident have gone viral on social media in Malaysia. 

Police said the young man was detained before taken to the hospital, as he said he had intended to swim to Mecca.

In his second attempt in three weeks, it was not immediately known why the man wished to swim to the holy city in Saudi Arabia.

Dealing with a relative with mental illness must be a nightmare at the best of times, but restraining one with an obsession to go on 7,000 km ocean swims must be a particular problem, if you live near the sea, anyway.

Earlier this year, on You Can't Ask That, one young woman explained how, while having schizophrenia, she developed the idea that her leg had been possessed by the devil, so she went into her father's shed and cut it off with a saw.  Electric or conventional, I don't recall.  Oddly, she said it didn't involve much pain, and gave her a sense of relief!   I thought this was a particularly memorable story of the disasters that can happen due to mental illness.   She's fine now though, which is pretty remarkable in its own way too.

In a more conventional (so to speak, don't get upset, mental health advocates) story about a mentally ill person, Gulf News also notes:

A young Moroccan man was arrested for allegedly beheading his mother and walking with her head through the alleys of the Attasi neighbourhood in Casablanca.

Local media reported that the perpetrator, who suffers from serious psychological disorders, spent 10 years in prison for a terrorist crime.

 

 

Still enjoying M as H

Last night's Mad as Hell really had some particularly sharp and funny writing in it, I thought.   It's really such a credit to the writers and performers.   (I think the most consistently funny segment is always with  Draymella Burt, spokesperson for the Liberal Party.)  

Giving in

I strongly suspect that Jason Soon, and perhaps some other readers, may have thought I was being part of the problem, so to speak, by saying last week that I was resisting getting AstraZeneca.  I did say that I felt I could justify it by the fact that COVID was not spreading in Brisbane in any substantial way.

Well, as we know, that has changed, even though the numbers remain very, very modest by international standards.   But the outbreak has largely been on the side of town where I live, and when shopping centres I sometimes visit are the places where positive cases have been, it does feel it is creeping worryingly close to my door.  (Not only that, I do know of people who have had colds or virus - and indeed I thought I was getting one one a couple of weeks ago, but I became pretty sure it was just a bout of wattle related hayfever - but being around anyone with an illness that might be COVID is a worry.)

Not only that,  hearing of young, apparently healthy people dying abruptly of the virus helps put the risk in perspective.  (Also, Peter Doherty on Radio National this morning explaining what a bugger of a virus COVID 19 really is, and how it can get in every organ and cause damage we're really still learning about, has made me reconsider.)

So, later today I am off to get my first AZ jab.

Look, if I die from it, I would like it to be used in election material that I personally blame Scott Morrison for not having alternative vaccines available.  :)   

Update:   done.  Booked it in this morning, had to drive a couple of suburbs over.  Good explanations of risk and benefit given.  Given I have just read that a few people in their 60's died of it in NSW yesterday, its seems the right move.

In rodent news..

Over at Science Daily there are some rodent studies of interest:

Rats prefer to help their own kind; Humans may be similarly wired

The findings, published today, Tuesday, July 13, in the journal eLife, suggest that altruism, whether in rodents or humans, is motivated by social bonding and familiarity rather than sympathy or guilt.

"We have found that the group identity of the distressed rat dramatically influences the neural response and decision to help, revealing the biological mechanism of ingroup bias," said study senior author Daniela Kaufer, a professor of neuroscience and integrative biology at UC Berkeley.

With nativism and conflicts between religious, ethnic and racial groups on the rise globally, the results suggest that social integration, rather than segregation, may boost cooperation among humans.

"Priming a common group membership may be a more powerful driver for inducing pro-social motivation than increasing empathy," said study lead author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, an assistant professor of psychobiology at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.

I wonder - can this be cited as a reason urbanisation is more "civilising" than other ways humans can live?    Of course, as against that idea, I suppose that 20th fascism didn't exactly spring from the rural areas.   Maybe I am just trying too hard to find reasons why American wingnuttery is so centred in rural areas.

In another rodent article:

Researchers have discovered that spontaneous impulses of dopamine, the neurological messenger known as the brain's 'feel good' chemical, occur in the brain of mice. The study found that mice can willfully manipulate these random dopamine pulses for reward. 

This is all a bit confusing:

 Rather than only occurring when presented with pleasurable, or reward-based expectations, UC San Diego graduate student Conrad Foo led research that found that the neocortex in mice is flooded with unpredictable impulses of dopamine that occur approximately once per minute.

Working with colleagues at UC San Diego (Department of Physics and Section of Neurobiology) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, Foo investigated whether mice are in fact aware that these impulses -- documented in the lab through molecular and optical imaging techniques -- are actually occurring. The researchers devised a feedback scheme in which mice on a treadmill received a reward if they showed they were able to control the impromptu dopamine signals. Not only were mice aware of these dopamine impulses, the data revealed, but the results confirmed that they learned to anticipate and volitionally act upon a portion of them.

"Critically, mice learned to reliably elicit (dopamine) impulses prior to receiving a reward," the researchers note in the paper. "These effects reversed when the reward was removed. We posit that spontaneous dopamine impulses may serve as a salient cognitive event in behavioral planning."

 And finally, mouse eyes are sort of primed to know what to expect.  Makes sense, I guess:

A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.

Writing in the July 23 issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.

This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.

"At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior," said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale." But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form."