Just the worst

Greg Sargent goes to town on Trump and his family over their stupidly political decision to refuse to mask up even after he had tested positive:

The operating principle for the Trump family is impunity from rules, laws and accountability at all costs. Indeed, soon after it became known that Trump had covid, the Commission on Presidential Debates complained that his family had violated all protocols by attending the debate maskless.

Needless to say, nothing was done about this at the time, even as they brashly flouted those protocols before a national audience of millions.

In retrospect, now that we know Trump — and likely those around him as well — knew that he’d tested positive for covid, this stands as yet another example of our total underestimation of this clan’s depraved disregard for rules, norms, and any sense of basic decency and responsibility to those around them.

 Quite simply, you have to be stupid, or a jerk, or a combination of those two factors in varying degrees, to defend Trump as a person.   

Update:  Allahpundit notes that Meadows, ridiculously, is now trying to agree with Trump that the mainstream media is reporting "fake news."  Which has lead to one theory:

Did he think he was … doing Trump a favor? Tim Miller has a theory:

The timeline as laid out by Meadows indicates that Trump tested positive for COVID three days before that debate, then followed up with a second negative test, then quit taking tests altogether so that he wouldn’t be prevented from debating.

Trump has kinda sorta disputed this version of events via fax, though it’s unclear why his own former chief of staff, a toadying supplicant, would be peddling fake news. It seems much more likely that Trump is using weasel words and Meadows is such a moron that he thought relaying this story made his old boss look like a Strong Fighting Man for all the poorly endowed super fans in need of a big daddy. Trump is so alpha that he beat Sleepy Joe in a debate while he had COVID!

 

Excellent news

Take him down:

Two Georgia election workers targeted by former U.S. President Donald Trump in a vote-rigging conspiracy theory have sued a far-right website that trumpeted the false story, alleging it incited months of death threats and harassment against them.

The defamation suit against The Gateway Pundit was filed Thursday by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a voter registration officer in the Fulton County elections office, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was a temp worker for the 2020 election. The women were featured in a Reuters report published Wednesday on their ordeal.

As I have said before, it bothers me that it was absolutely obvious, watching social media, that these women would be being insanely harassed and death threatened by Trumpian wingnuts - but the mainstream media seemed to take no strong interest in following their story and doing what it could to counter the insanity as it directly related to them. 

Reuters should not be the only media that was actively pursuing this story, although their belated account is pretty good.

"Metagut"

Over at Science, an article about how hippos crapping prodigiously in their ponds means they share a lot of gut microbiome, as well as creating some fetid, deadly pools of water:

Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) already have a reputation for modifying their environment. At night, they head to shore to fill up on grass, then they return to the water to digest and excrete the leftovers, basically fertilizing the water. Gut bacteria help them digest these meals, and some escape in the dung excreted into the water. “Much of this dung is alive—microbially speaking,” says Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the work.

Suspecting that gut microbes might survive outside the gut, researchers led by Christopher Dutton, an ecologist at the University of Florida, collected water from hippo pools along the Mara River, which flows through the Serengeti in Kenya and Tanzania. During the dry season, some of these pools—which can be up to the size of an ice hockey rink and can support a few to scores of hippos—get cut off from the river’s flow. The team sequenced RNA from hippo dung and the pools, choosing ones with moderate flow, low flow, or no flow to assess the impact of ever-more concentrated dung.

The more stagnant the pool, the more hippo gut microbes survived in the water, the team concludes today in Scientific Reports. The bacteria represented a “metagut,” in which one animal’s microbes could easily infect other hippos, the scientists say, possibly boosting the digestive capabilities and immune defenses of all the hippos in the pond. (There might be more pathogens as well, however).

"Metagut".  Lulz.

 

Very James Bond

Well, this sounds somewhat creepy, and reminds me of the nanobot menace that featured in No Time to Die:

The robots are alive, and now they can reproduce.

That’s not a sequel to “The Terminator.” It’s the result of new research showing that microscopic life-forms made of frogs’ stem cells can self-replicate in a way not seen in other animals or plants.

These xenobots, named for the African frog Xenopus laevis from which they are made, could already move around, display collective behavior and heal themselves. A study released Monday suggests that the cell clumps also can be engineered to sustain themselves for at least five generations.

“There’s nothing theoretical that would stop us from making these out of human cells,” said Sam Kriegman, an author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “They could perform useful work inside of human bodies in places were traditional robots can’t go because our bodies detest even the smallest amount of metal.”

 

Foul Georgians of London

Back to a matter of long standing intrigue - how people before the 20th century put up with the risk of extremely serious venereal disease (most notably, syphilis) and just went about having risky sex anyway.     

I think I had missed this study from 2020:

250 years ago, over one-fifth of Londoners had contracted syphilis by their 35th birthday, historians have calculated.

The same study shows that Georgian Londoners were over twice as likely to be treated for the disease as people living in the much smaller city of Chester at the same time (c.1775), and about 25 times more likely than those living in parts of rural Cheshire and north-east Wales....

The researchers are confident that one-fifth represents a reliable minimum estimate, consistent with the rigorously conservative methodological assumptions they made at every stage. They also point out that a far greater number of Londoners would have contracted gonorrhea (or, indeed, chlamydia) than contracted syphilis in this period.

"Our findings suggest that Boswell's London fully deserves its historical reputation," Szreter said. "The city had an astonishingly high incidence of STIs at that time. It no longer seems unreasonable to suggest that a majority of those living in London while young adults in this period contracted an STI at some point in their lives."

"In an age before prophylaxis or effective treatments, here was a fast-growing city with a continuous influx of young adults, many struggling financially. Georgian London was extremely vulnerable to epidemic STI infection rates on this scale."

Although I knew about the mercury treatment for syphilis, I didn't know this level of detail:

Mercury salivation treatment was considered a reliable and permanent cure for syphilis but it was debilitating and required at least five weeks of residential care. This was provided, for free, by London's largest hospitals, at least two specialist hospitals, and many poor law infirmaries, as well as privately for those who could afford it.

To maximise the accuracy of their estimates, Szreter and Siena drew on large quantities of data from hospital admission registers and inspection reports, and other sources to make numerous conservative estimates including for bed occupancy rates and duration of hospital stays. Along the way, they excluded many patients to avoid counting the false positives that arise from syphilis's notoriously tricky diagnosis.

Of particular value to the researchers were surviving admissions registers from the late 1760s through to the 1780s for St Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals which consistently housed 20-30 per cent of their patients in 'foul' wards reserved for residential treatment for the pox. But the researchers also drew on evidence for St Bartholomew's hospital; workhouse infirmaries; and two subscription hospitals, the Lock and the Misericordia, which also cared for 'Foul' men and women.

Patients in London's foul wards often battled their diseases for six months or more before seeking hospitalization.

Here's a link to the full article, which towards the end, makes some other remarkable comments about sex in the period:

Historians of eighteenth-century sexuality have long relied on birth rates, especially those out of wedlock, as an empirical foundation block on which assertions about sexuality can rest. As is well known, rates of illegitimate births and prenuptial pregnancy rose substantially during the long eighteenth century, such that by the early nineteenth century a quarter of all first births were delivered by unmarried women and almost 40 per cent of brides had conceived before their wedding day.83 Demographic historians view this as mainly a predictable corollary of earlier and more frequent marriage in a more dynamic labour market.84 Others have argued this must signal a changing sexual culture, one that historians like Porter or Dabhoiwalla present as sexual liberation, but which scholars like Trumbach and Hitchcock cast in the darker shades of male predation and assault.85 If there was such a new sexual regime manifest during the second half of the eighteenth century, it is typically presented as developing in London first. Wilson argued that this new sexual culture is borne out by London's illegitimacy ratio, which was considerably higher than the national average. However, Levene has revised Wilson's figures downward from 12 per cent to 7 per cent of London baptisms, from three times to slightly less than twice the national average of 4 per cent, noting that while London's rate was higher, the capital was not a ‘sink of illegitimacy’.8

The article goes on to consider what their STI rate findings might mean in relation to this, but it's too much to post here.  All pretty interesting, though.

Who could have seen this coming?

Thomas Friedman writes in the NYT:

The judges have voted and the results are in: President Donald Trump’s decision to tear up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 — a decision urged on by his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — was one of the dumbest, most poorly thought out and counterproductive U.S. national security decisions of the post-Cold War era.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Moshe Ya’alon was the Israeli defense minister when the nuclear agreement was signed, and he strongly opposed it. But at a conference last week, he said, according to a summary by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “as bad as that deal was, Trump’s decision to withdraw from it — with Netanyahu’s encouragement — was even worse.” Ya’alon called it “the main mistake of the last decade” in Iran policy.

Two days later, Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s top military commander when Trump withdrew from the deal, offered a similar sentiment, which Haaretz reported as “a net negative for Israel: It released Iran from all restrictions, and brought its nuclear program to a much more advanced position.”

It sure has. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently reported that Iran has amassed a stock of enriched uranium hexafluoride that independent nuclear experts calculate is sufficient to produce weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear bomb in as little as three weeks.

 

 

On historical cycles -the Fremen mirage

I saw this on Twitter, in response to a Noah Smith tweet, but haven't had time to read it yet.  Seems good and interesting, though.  

On unique combinations

I must admit, if ever I had heard this before, it did not stick in my mind.  But I'm finding it so remarkable, I'm inclined to think it is new to me:

The chances that anyone has ever shuffled a pack of cards (fairly) in the same way twice in the history of the world, or ever will again, are infinitesimally small. The number of possible ways to order a pack of 52 cards is ’52!’ (“52 factorial”) which means multiplying 52 by 51 by 50… all the way down to 1. The number you get at the end is 8×10^67 (8 with 67 ‘0’s after it), essentially meaning that a randomly shuffled deck has never been seen before and will never be seen again. So next time you shuffle a deck, you should feel pretty special for holding something so unique! Try for yourself – if you make friends with every person on earth and each person shuffles one deck of cards each second, for the age of the Universe, there will be a one in a trillion, trillion, trillion chance of two decks matching.

This came to my attention because all knowing Google, in the form of the Youtube recommendation, wanted me to know it.  Here's the video about it, that makes the pleasing point about the uniqueness of each human, too:

 

Oh - I see now that I search for it on Youtube that this fact turned up on Stephen Fry's QI, too. So maybe I did hear it there, but it just didn't sink in?   Anyway, expanding the point to the uniqueness of each human is a pleasing humanist one that makes it feel more cosmically relevant.

Cinema is starting to look up

So, this Christmas brings me adult science fiction (Dune) and Steven Spielberg directing his first musical (West Side Story) which seems to be getting pretty positive comment from the first screening in New York.  

Speaking of Spielberg, I watched Austin Powers in Goldmember for the first time last weekend.  I had not known of the Spielberg participation - showing that he (and Tom Cruise) are very good sports.  

 

So, how's that Brexit going?

Not very well for pigs, or pig farmers.  (I guess the pigs were going to die anyway, but it is a waste to breed an animal and kill it not for food, but just because you can't afford to keep it living.)

From UK Sky News, which is not nuts, like our Sky News wannabe Fox News outlet:

Every farmers' worst nightmare is coming to pass; the mass culling of healthy animals because there simply aren't enough butchers to process them and get them off farms...

I'm officially out of the Game

Last night, I tried watching the 4th episode of Squid Game, and I'm officially out.  It struck me as a particularly unpleasant episode.

But I just can't get over the fundamentally stupid things about it as a story - even allowing for fictional fantasy.

And the violence is striking me as just too sadistic now - I am disappointed that there are not more people saying that character arc, or meta commentary on rabid capitalism, or whatever, does not justify this level of routine violence. 

Here are some articles that support my condemnation of the show:

Squid Game: 9 Things That Don't Make Sense About The Series

(That article shows me that some of the things I already think are ridiculous about it are not resolved by the show's end.)

Things about Netflix's Squid Games that Make Absolutely No Sense

Same things, really.

There are plenty more links, and I might add some later.

Update:  interesting article at The Conversation about the terrible history of labour fights in modern South Korea.    Yet, haven't I read that South Koreans themselves are not the biggest fans of the show?

Update:  I am pleased to see that Variety and NYT both gave it negative reviews.  I am not alone.

So, nothing much has changed...

Amused to see this on Twitter:

Not all engineers are know-it-all jerks; it's just that if you meet a male know-it-all jerk, betting that he's an engineer would give you decent odds.   (All based on my work experience of some decades past.)

Update: this tweet noticed this morning:

The comment in full:

Are they getting frustrated, yet?

I will have to check on the Cathollaxy blog later, but I trust that the anti-government COVID response protesters are getting frustrated that the media covered last Saturday's protests with a bit of a shrug, with images of the attendees being just outright anti-vaxxer nuts.  

They might be learning that just because social media allows protest organising to be easy as pie amongst a minority, it can still be ineffective in actually achieving anything.

 

Back to the cinema

I can't even remember the last, pre-pandemic, movie I saw at the cinema.  Maybe if I search my movie review posts I could work it out.

But, happily, yesterday I discovered that the new cinemas quite close to home are really well fitted out, and cheap, and I am happy to get back into this movie going thing, as soon as more good movies start coming out.  (I'm in on the new Spiderman, but the way.  The Tom Holland incarnation and Dr Strange:  I can't resist.)

Anyway, yesterday it was No Time to Die, and I was pretty impressed.   In fact, I think it would be a good idea to not make another Bond, the Daniel Craig era was just so good, everything is going to suffer in comparison*.  (I'm even a quasi defender of Quantum of Solace:  although just re-reading my review now, I see it may partly have been because I saw it before I saw Casino Royale, and so the effectiveness of Craig in the role sort of blew me away.)

What to say about it?   The action was really well handled (although tending at times to the "too quickly edited, shaky cam" end of the spectrum in some of the up close fights); I think it could have been trimmed slightly, but I was never bored, and I didn't notice anyone leave the cinema for a toilet break during its long run time;  I tend to agree with most reviewers that Skyfall is a smidge better,  but they both have the sense of gravitas that made Bond feel real.

I do have something to say that I haven't read elsewhere, although it must have occurred to some reviewer, somewhere:   the screenwriters (sort of) lucked out with COVID giving a metaphoric topicality to the evil, world threatening device in this story - a fast spreading, silent infectious agent of sorts, weaponised (as Right wingers love to fantasise is the case with our current pandemic.)

Finally: unfortunately, one of the two big plot surprises was ruined for me by Peter Van Onselen.   I agree with all the hate and douche-calling that followed this on his twitter account, and I hope he lost a thousand followers.  He's a jerk, honestly.

OK, really finally:  given our tough COVID response in Australia, it's a surprise to realise that the rest of the world is back to the cinema - I see that it has made $758 million internationally, although Variety claims that "insiders" say it needs to make $900 million to break even.  (What a joke Hollywood and accounting is.)  Anyway, it looks like it should make that goal.  Congratulations, everyone. 

 *  I can advise, though, that the last thing on the screen at the end of the credits is "James Bond will return".  I then confirmed with the handful of others remaining in the cinema that this was why we were still there.  

My unpopular opinion of the day

I don't care for Sondheim's work, although to be honest, I haven't really paid close enough attention to work out why.  Tentatively, I think I can safely say there's not much sense of fun in anything he's done, is there?   That's the overall impression I get when I think of him..a bit heavy and, um, over-earnest?  Or something.  

Come to think of it, that's probably an odd criticism from someone who recently watched all of the Ring cycle and enjoyed it!  But hey, whatever.  If some facist dictators were Sondheim groupies, I might be more interested in him.

Morrison's done

In the history books, PM Morrison is going down as the shallow, hapless PM who thought he could PR his way to success, while not being bright enough to realise he's not good at PR.   This line of attack yesterday was just so inane:

The Liberal Party seems to really be specialising in giving us living examples of the Peter Principle, this last decade.   Abbott was perhaps the best example of that, as he arguably gave earlier indications of maybe being a good political operator, only to turn out as PM to be a weirdo with a "mummy" thing going on with his chief of staff.    Turnbull's problem was not exactly one I would call a Peter Principle issue;  more just a simple lack of courage against the climate change deniers in his own party.  But the PP definitely applies to PM Smirko.  It's just that it hit very early in his working life, and somehow didn't stop further promotion. Politics can be like that, given it's often a case of "least worst option".

Who's next to take the mantle of "risen to his level of incompetence"?  Seems likely it will be Dutton, the potential PM with the weirdest looking head since Federation.  The only problem is, you can see the media narrative now:  even if he proves the slightest bit effective as a campaigner, journalists will not be able to resist a "surprise! the public is finding him likeable after all" take.  

Guardian click bait review

That's my theory behind this headline (and review):  

The Beatles: Get Back review – eight hours of TV so aimless it threatens your sanity

 Most people tweeting about it seem to strongly disagree - but then, they might have gone the full 8 hours yet.   

(As for my own views - like everyone else, I was pretty stunned at the clarity of the film that was shown on the preview some months ago - as if it was made yesterday (subtle pun) instead of 50 years ago.   And it was very pleasing to see them looking happier than we all had been led to believe.  But I am not the world's biggest Beatle fan, so yeah, 8 hours might be pushing it for me.)

Dumb

You would think she might be smart enough to hold off making this point for a case where it didn't take two months for the white men who shot a black unarmed man on the street (and videoed it) to be arrested.

And for which a white prosecutor is being charged for obstruction of justice.

A depressing read

A really bleak assessment in an opinion piece in the Washington Post:  Republican authoritarianism is here to stay.

A taste:

What has happened in the United States over the past five years is, in many ways, a classic of the autocratic genre. A populist leader rose to power, attacked the press, politicized rule of law, threatened to jail his opponents, demonized minorities, praised dictators abroad, spread conspiracy theories and lies, and then sought to seize power despite losing an election. When such despotic figures emerge in democracies, their political party has two options: push back against the would-be despot while reasserting democratic principles, or remake the party in his image. Republicans have quite clearly chosen the latter path....

What’s left, then, is some distant hope that a profound national crisis could jolt Republicans away from their embrace of authoritarian politics. Just as the tragedy of Sept. 11 brought Democrats and Republicans together, perhaps a major national shock could cause Republicans to rally back toward democracy. But we’ve already had two major crises — Jan. 6 and a once-in-a-century pandemic — and they’ve made the GOP more extreme, not less. If a violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol aimed at overturning an election and more than 770,000 dead Americans in the pandemic aren’t enough of a jolt, what would it take?

The conclusion is depressing, but we must face reality: The battle for the Republican Party is over. The Trumpian authoritarians have won — and they’re not going to be defeated by pro-democracy Republicans anytime soon.

 

Out of Africa

 Waiting for Adam Creighton to laugh at this.