The departure of PJ O'Rourke

I wasn't his biggest fan, but PJ O'Rourke could be amusing in his contrarianism, and I had wondered what he thought of Trump, as I hadn't noticed him writing much in recent years.

So, Googling it up now, I am pleased to see that he had anti-Trump and anti-Brexit views, meaning he was more sensible than most conservative/libertarians in his own country (and those in Australia, like Tim Blair).  From an article in New Statesman in 2020:

O’Rourke sprang back into the national spotlight during the 2016 presidential election by announcing that he was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.

He puts the decision down to his natural conservatism. “Politics is a matter of least worst,” he told me when I recently stayed at his farm. “She was the devil I knew – she was going to be another eight years of Obama, which we had endured. Donald Trump? I knew people who knew him. Nobody liked him. I just thought he was unstable…dangerous. I still do.”...

he hasn’t changed his mind about Trump. “In fairness, his administration has not been as bad as I thought it might be,” he reflected. “But there have been moments when one has gone: ‘Whoah!’” What he described as Trump’s “group hug” with the North Koreans, and “stirring things up with Iran” are just two examples.

O’Rourke believes that the Founding Fathers made the presidency too powerful by giving it control of foreign policy – something he recently discovered Benjamin Franklin had opposed. “He thought it should have been a committee,” he said.

“Trump certainly is not a conservative in the sense of conserving the status quo. Arguably Clinton was more so. He is a radical, a populist one, and I don’t like populism anyway. Populism is, like, ‘The government should give me things I like or get rid of the things I don’t like’… The Nazis were populist, Mussolini was populist.”

For similar reasons, the perennial sceptic says he would have taken the Remain side in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. “I would have been against Brexit strictly on practical grounds – Britain and Europe had become too thoroughly integrated to do something as radical as Brexit.”

Though sympathetic to the Leave cause over European meddling, and happy to give Europe “a kick up the pants”, it was his conservatism that said “stay”.

 

 

 

So if Global Times said Trump was a pathetic dumb narcissist, that wouldn't be true?

First, the opinion piece (with its highly accurate summary of Morrison) is by Bruce Haigh, who (AFAIK) hardly counts as the official spokesperson of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Secondly:  as many in tweets following have said, isn't it rather more "Awks" that the coalition signed off on the long term lease of the Darwin port to a Chinese company barely 7 years ago, and is now wringing its hands as to whether it was a good idea after all.?

Thirdly:   I reckon the only way a hypocritical China scare campaign can "work" for Morrison, would be if there is an actual invasion of Taiwan before the election.   So let's send out positive vibes to Xi to calm down and not even think about that until next year, at least.  
 

Social media is strangling democracy

I agree entirely with Max Boot's Washington Post column "Social media is destroying democracy".  Some bits:

Freedom House reports that democracy has been on the decline around the world for the past 15 years — the same period that has seen the rise of social media. In her best-selling new book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” political scientist Barbara F. Walter argues that this is no coincidence. Social media, she writes, has become “the vehicle that launches outsiders with autocratic impulses to power, riding a popular wave of support.” Examples include Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil — and, of course, Donald Trump.

All of these demagogues are masters of a medium whose algorithms are designed to give users the content they crave. “It turns out,” Walter notes, “that what people like the most is fear over calm, falsehood over truth, outrage over empathy.” That explains why Breitbart is more popular on Facebook than the New York Times and why Ben Shapiro’s the Daily Wire is more popular than the BBC.

That, in turn, explains, why so many Americans believe that the FBI masterminded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that Trump won the 2020 election and that coronavirus vaccines are unnecessary or even harmful. That explains, also, why last year a crowd of QAnon believers gathered in Dallas expecting John F. Kennedy Jr. to return from the dead. Social media is full of useful, accurate information, but what most users really respond to is fear, falsehood and flakiness.

It is not clear to me that democracy can survive so much disinformation, and yet Republicans are bashing Big Tech because they are so mad that Trump and a few other political arsonists have been banned from major social media sites. The GOP position seems to be that there should be no gatekeepers at all, aside from those algorithms that feed collective outrage.

This is a deeply destructive and profoundly anti-conservative position.

 Of course, the comments following are mostly "But who are the gatekeepers going to be, you wannabe communist".   It's a good question, but refuse to solve the problem, and you're guaranteeing a worsening society.  

 

 

Speaking of animal death and cruelty...

...Elon Musk's Neuralink brain tinkering project is copping some bad PR:

Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has become the subject of a US federal complaint and lawsuit after “invasive and deadly brain experiments” were reportedly carried out on 23 monkeys – leaving 15 of them dead.

The Tesla billionaire’s firm - which aims to help paralysed individuals “by giving them the ability to control computers and mobile devices directly with their brains” – partnered with the University of California, Davis on the research, with $1.4 million allegedly given to the institution in funding.

However, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) claims the university has violated the Animal Welfare Act and has complained to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And I note that atheist blogger PZ Myers really puts the boot into the whole project in his post "Neuralink is feeling the heat".   I'm no expert, but my sense is that his scepticism is well justified:

The goals of Neuralink are sci-fi nonsense and hype about mundane technological developments. They’ve got a chip with more channels than previous efforts…but that’s not where the questions lie. Just throwing more needles into the brain does nothing if you don’t understand the interactions, or the long term consequences of healing, repair, and response to exogenous signals. It’s really a brute force approach to physically interacting with a mammalian brain, and it’s going to be increasingly disastrous as these people fumble about crudely under the directives of an incompetent narcissist.

I don’t want to hear what paid employees say. This is a case where an independent review is necessary by people who don’t get a paycheck from Elon Musk. I’d still like to know why UC Davis no longer supports Neuralink’s animal research. Is it under an NDA? That wouldn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I bet all those employees have a threatening NDA stapled to their backs.

If you want to see something really sad, though, check out Tanaka’s YouTube channel. Read the comments on this video, for example, but they all sound alike. They’re full of desperate people looking for hope. ‘Please sir, cure my seizures/paraplegia/tinnitis/depression/autism/Parkinson’s/multiple sclerosis/schizophrenia. Will it let me talk to animals?’ That’s where the fervor comes from. Musk is the messiah who will heal everything.

 

Sad but interesting reading

An article at Vice "Do Animals Understand What it Means to Die" is an interesting, if somewhat saddening, read.   It also introduced me to the term "comparative thanatology", and contained this somewhat startling section:

If we are interested in animals’ relationship to death as a topic on its own, and not only in relation to humans, we have to also look way beyond practices that we can identify with. One example is when pets feed on their owners after they die. “This is an extremely common phenomenon, much more common than we want it to be,” Monsó said. Even with dogs, who have strong bonds with their owners, “we’ve seen examples of dogs eating their owners 45 minutes after the owner died and with food in their bowl.” 

Monsó said the pattern of eating is also different than when a dog would be scavenging; when dogs scavenge, they usually eat the abdomen area first, but in these cases dogs focus on the face. “It’s a very disturbing behavior, but I think it's a super interesting one,” Monsó said. “But it's only discussed in forensic science papers. I think one of the reasons may be why it hasn't been deemed relevant until now has to do with the fact that it's not a behavior that we can really relate to.”   

And here's a key section about what animal awareness (or lack of it) means for ethics:

Ben Bradley, a philosopher at Syracuse University, said there have been some philosophers who argue that the concept of death is necessary in order for death to be bad for you. As long as an animal’s life is painless, killing them is no harm since they don’t know what death means. 

“If you can’t conceptualize something, then you can’t care about it, and so it can’t be bad for you,” he explained. “If this is right, then if animals don’t have a concept of death, their deaths aren’t bad for them. This would have important implications for how we treat animals, because it would imply that it is morally permissible to kill them for food, unless it were wrong for some reason other than being bad for the animals.”

Bradley thinks we should reject the claim that nothing can be bad for you unless you care about it. He wrote a book chapter on this called “Death Is Bad for a Cow,” and also a song of the same name, with the lyrics: 

Listen to me and I will tell you how

When you take that cow to the butcher's knife

You deprive the cow of the goods the goods of her future life

Don't need to have a sense of self over time

Or know what it means to reach the end of the line

Death is a serious harm

Even if, even if you live on a farm.

Gonçalves said we shouldn’t wait until the concept of death is proven to try to treat animals in ethical ways. “We should prevent the infliction of unnecessary pain and suffering regardless of them having a concept of death or not,” Gonçalves said.

 

The ultimate Wes Anderson

I'll probably come back to this post to expand upon it, but I watched The French Dispatch on Disney Plus on the weekend, and really enjoyed it.

 I was concerned about the trajectory of recent Wes Anderson movies - I kept finding them underwhelming since Fantastic Mr Fox -  but this one in much, much more consistently funny than those, and the visual style is just so over the top that I found myself pretty much continually gobsmacked at his imagination.  

I wasn't expecting it to be so intensely satirical of French culture, albeit in what I think was an obviously affectionate way, and because there is no racial element in an American making fun of French foibles, it didn't give me the uncomfortable feeling that I got from Isle of Dogs that it was close to the edge of encouraging racist stereotypes.  

That said, I can imagine some people hating it for being all surface and no substance.   But the surface is so spectacularly well thought out, and the humour so eccentric, I found it pretty delightful.   (And, I did kind of get it as a affectionate, funny, imitation of the style of The New Yorker.)  

 

Riccardo making up numbers, amongst other things

I see that conspiracy fantasy man Riccardo Bosi is on Twitter claiming that the police have said that 1.2 million cars entered Canberra, so that means there were probably 2 million plus people protesting (!)

As someone on Twitter says:

As for the speech he gave at the rally, he twice referenced the politicians being "Masonic" slime who are dividing people against each other.  (He is Catholic - and is this a specifically Australian import into his basically American conspiracy mindset?)   He repeated the outright lie that the electoral commission wants to use Dominion vote counting machines.  (That got a lot of boos from the crowd.)

Is there a word for this type of eccentric conspiracy mongering?   The bit about blaming e-vil politicians, corporations or what-not for "dividing us" - religion against religion, black against white, parent against children?    It's kind of weird, I reckon, claiming that everyone is just an unknowing pawn of forces they don't understand,  and they would all join hands and sing kumbaya if only - umm - every single politician is sacked and replaced by a bunch of wingnuts who believe Bosi and who'll re-write the constitution? 

It's so, so stupid.      

Still plugging for 5 million

In other ex SAS news, I just watched military junta cosplayer and all round professional wanker Riccardo Bosi on a video from yesterday claiming that the Australian government has been "unconstitutional" for the last 50 years or so (no detailed reasons provided), and explaining that he's staying camped in Canberra until the Governor General dissolves parliament and appoints a commission to clean up the corrupt electoral system and have the first fair election for decades. (Complete lack of detail as to why past elections have been corrupt.)    He's again calling for "millions" to turn up in Canberra tomorrow.  [Update - I've watched more of it now - absolutely obsessed with alleged "pedophile protection" being covered by 'The Establishment" - including Sky News figures like Peta Credlin and Paul Murry, apparently!  Having watched quite a few clips of him, I think it fair to say he swings wildly between claims of it being a peaceful, unifying movement between ordinary people of all faiths, to geeing up the crowd with promises of lots of people being deserved scared of being executed as part of the process of fixing the country.  In other words, a lunatic whose apparent moments of lucidity and modesty are a fake front for a man with a fantasy prone and violent imagination.]

But, I gather that there is a split between those who think they should welcome existing wingnut politicians who support them on COVID crap, and those (like Bosi) who claim they shouldn't.  

I'm now suspecting that the social media excitement of the "success" of the Ottawa protest will mean quite a high turnout in Canberra tomorrow.   Of course, so much being claimed about Ottawa on Right media is made up bullshit - see this, for example.

I'm starting to pine for a 1920's England style of reaction:

   Or at least water cannon.  

Yet more "winning" by Ben Roberts-Smith

More gob-smacking "yes, this will help my reputation, airing this unnecessarily in public" material coming out of the Ben Roberts-Smith trial:

Person 16 said he heard a radio call that improvised explosive device components were discovered in the vehicle and handed the two detained Afghans to Mr Roberts-Smith's patrol for tactical questioning.

Person 16 said about 15 to 20 minutes later he heard Mr Roberts-Smith make a radio call stating: "Two EKIA (enemy killed in action)".

He said he crossed paths with Mr Roberts-Smith in the barracks a day or two later and asked what happened to "that young fella that was shaking like a leaf".

"He said to me 'I shot that c*** in the head'," Person 16 told the judge.

"And he said, 'Person 15 (another colleague) told me not to kill anyone on the last job, so I pulled out my 9mil, shot the c*** in the side of the head, blew his brains out, and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen'."

The more this trial goes on, the more this seems the perfect metaphor for how it's going for him: 

Not looking desperate, at all

Seriously, doesn't the party think it's worth a shot at changing the leader, even this close to an election?  Or is it fear that Dutton will win the leadership that's putting them off?  

Sharing my fondness for Singapore, again

I reckon if ever there's going to a be city enclosed in a gigantic dome for precise weather control in future, it would have to be Singapore.   I mean it's already got such a green techno future vibe, with the number of high rise buildings featuring plants and gardens, and the extraordinary enclosed gardens at Gardens by the Bay (and now, the airport, although I haven't been there since Jewel opened).  Mind you, it's a pity they haven't sorted out how to do clean energy in future - its small size presents serious problems.   I mean you might say nuclear, but it's too small to have its own nuclear fuel infrastructure, so it's still going to be dependent on overseas supply; and besides, if you do have a serious problem,  there is no where to evacuate to.  So I don't know.   Anyway, this is inspired by this mini tour of a new building there:

 

The other CNA story of note is this one about success in reducing recidivism rates of its prisoners.   I mean, I've seen other videos about the Spartan conditions that prisoners live in (if I recall correctly, they more or less sleep directly on the concrete floor), but it still appears that they care a lot about successful rehabilitation, and talk openly about how it's going in a way few other countries do.   Again, the impression from watching CNA is always that the place is run by pretty talented technocrats who prioritise social order - and given that I like high technology and have the residual Catholic desire to force people to be nice and lead lives of moderation, this is very appealing.

(Yeah, OK, why don't I love China then?   I think the difference is that their interest is in technology supporting the one Party rule, more than social order.)

Bosi watch

Forgot to mention yesterday:  military junta cosplayer Riccardo Bosi is on Twitter clips saying that his nut followers demand is for the Governor General to dismiss the Morrison government by this Saturday, appoint a commission that will have 3 months to "clean up" our corrupt electoral system, and then have new election.  (Which will be followed by lots of hangings of former politicians "if they deserve it" - this comes from some other clips around.)

We know he's a complete nut, who has imported with zero evidence Trumpian conspiracy belief about  elections (and QAnon crap about paedophilia), but it still surprises me that he seems to have no foresight for planning beyond about 72 hours.  

Because if you keep promising you're going to be leading millions to government shattering events in just a few days, and none of that happens, aren't you asking for trouble from within the tiny band of dimwits that do follow you?

 

By way of illustration of my "the Right's loss of contact with reality is much more serious than the Left's loss of contact with reality" theme....

In the Washington Post today:

*  An opinion piece by a famous female swimmer making the case that it's simply unfair for women to compete with women who used to be men (at least if they went through puberty).   The advantages are not reversed by the subsequent lack of testosterone.  An extract:

To be clear, trans women are women. Full stop. We must also be clear that trans women who have gone through male puberty acquire physical advantages female puberty does not provide: More red blood cells store and use oxygen more efficiently. Wider shoulders mean a leverage advantage, and narrower hips make for more efficient movement dynamics. Longer legs and arms, bigger hands and feet, can more easily handle a ball or cover a field.

A transgender woman who has transitioned from a testosterone-driven to an estrogen-driven system loses speed and muscle mass, yes, but puberty’s “legacy advantages” do not change with a new hormonal profile. Simply reaching an authority’s acceptable testosterone level should not qualify a trans woman to compete in the female category as currently designed. The physical disparity remains too great for true equal performance potential.

The comments following contains some of this ilk:

But by far the majority are actually on the author's side (she suggests there probably is no solution other than to have trans compete against trans - or men if they want.).   Many also have a problem with the line "trans women are women.  Full stop."   

So my point is - there is some identity politics nuttniness (no recognition of reality) on display in comments, by people who insist there is no problem.  But there's not that many, and do those who do think this way affect the country much?  No.

*  An article by Philip Bump noting the still extraordinarily high numbers of Republicans who are in the Trump fantasy land that he actually won the last election.  And this is by Pew Research polling, which I think has some credibility:

Pew found that only about 1 in 3 Republicans think Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and only about 14 percent of them say he definitely won, which he did. In other words, six out of every seven Republicans are unwilling to say that Biden definitely won. Instead, a third say Trump probably won — somehow — and almost another third say Trump definitely won. By now, this position is simply an act of faith, a rejection of all available evidence in deference to a feeling. It’s still remarkable in scale.

The polling also found that people whose views were furthest from reality on the results of the 2020 election were also those most eager to downplay what occurred at the Capitol. For example, 7 in 10 Republicans who say Trump probably won in 2020 think that too much attention has been paid to Jan. 6. That position was held by 9 in 10 of those who say Trump definitely won....

To believe that Trump won in 2020 is to reject concrete evidence that he didn’t. It’s to dismiss as unimportant or tainted any objective analysis to the contrary. Even allowing for the fact that members of the Jan. 6 committee would broadly be pleased to be able to implicate Trump more directly in the day’s events, it’s likely that any examination of the day would be treated with skepticism by a group that is defined by its skepticism about observable reality.

But then we factor in that original point: Most of those who think Trump probably won in 2020 also think he bears no responsibility for the violence and destruction on Jan. 6.  

Some of this is probably a function of partisan flag-waving, a rejection of the mainstream media’s (accurate) description of events in a way that casts Trump in a negative light. But some of it is also clearly true belief, a sincere insistence that Trump did win and that the violence wasn’t his fault. Millions of Americans want to believe that’s true, and so some do.

This is a rejection of reality by a very high proportion of the American electorate - and it's obviously serious in a functioning democracy when partisanship leads to fantasy beliefs that justify political violence.

 

 

 

COVID 19 origins discussed in detail

There's a long article in Technology Review (not paywalled) about the Wuhan lab's work and the question of the origin of COVID 19.

I have haven't read it all yet, but I take it from Twitter discussion that it presents a strong case for natural origin, and the Wuhan lab not hiding anything.

The amazing self-own of Ben Roberts-Smith seems to be escalating?

Is it just me, or is this an incredibly bad look?  [I'm sure it's not just me, although we haven't read if the other side admits any of this yet.]

A former soldier scheduled to give evidence against SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith is seeking to pull out, prompting claims in court that Roberts-Smith’s spoke with a senior lawyer who then contacted the secret witness.

In a dramatic turn in the case on Wednesday morning, lawyers for the newspapers defending a defamation claim from Roberts-Smith told the federal court two critical witnesses had been contacted by lawyers, allegedly after Roberts-Smith’s barrister Arthur Moses SC contacted another senior barrister to express concerns the witnesses’ interests were not being properly protected. The witnesses – former soldiers known in court documents as Person 56 and Person 66 – had agreed to give evidence for Nine newspapers.

Person 56 has an application before the court to be excused from a subpoena to give evidence, citing medical grounds.

Nicholas Owens SC, acting for Nine newspapers, on Wednesday said “through means unknown” the two SAS soldiers had been “placed in contact” with new lawyers after Moses contacted another Sydney lawyer.

Owens told the court: “We have become aware that recently Mr Moses has made contact with Mr Phillip Boulten … and we understand that Mr Moses expressed to Mr Boulten concerns that the interests of Person 56 and also 66 may not be being properly protected in relation to [them] being subpoenaed to give evidence in these proceedings.”

Owens raised the issue of how the witnesses’ identities became known to the new lawyers. He told the court “there is, of course, a prohibition on the true identity of Person 56 and Person 66 being made known to anyone” apart from authorised legal representatives. The new lawyers, Owens said, were not authorised representatives.

“There was an agreement by Person 56 to both speak to us and not oppose any application by us to call him to give evidence in the proceedings,” Owens said. But he said after contact from those lawyers “Person 56’s position has changed”.

 

 

The phone

This is very trivial, but after writing last week about using my phone with the Smart Launcher app, I thought I would join the ranks of the incredibly dull who like to share what their fiddled with home page looks like:

I do find this a very pleasing look, and layout. (I have blocked out the location on the weather widget, by the way.)

Update: Actually, I might prefer this configuration, after all:

(Smart search allows a quick search of all other apps, or an web search.)

 

What do you think, Homer?

About the Religious Discrimination Act

I haven't been paying much attention to it, but there are two main reasons why it seems to show weird political judgement:

a.  does the public have any sense at all that it was needed to fix a problem?  I don't.  Is it just because the Prime Minister, whose colleagues consider a liar and general psycho, is a member of Hillsong?

b.  why give it a priority now, in the dying days of an unpopular government?   The far Right conservatives in the electorate who see value in culture warring have already dumped the Liberals for their own stupid reasons - giving up on climate change and COVID mandates.  

Labels

While I can't see that Pinker deserves the label, I would say this, having just watched motor mouth Russell Brand whine about being labelled Right wing on Youtube:   if you're in the business of making excuses for Trump and the Republicans and their brand of proto-fascism, you're a useful idiot for the Right, regardless of what Lefty or moderate policies you claim to actually support. 

Gabbard and Russell are useful idiots.    

Update:  So is Taibbi, who I don't pay attention to, but thought I should after watching Brand praise him.  

Update 2:  I see from an article questioning the labelling in the list -

Rogan himself has never aligned with any political party, criticizing both Democrats and Republicans, though he’s described himself as a “progressive.” He has, however, endorsed and voted for Libertarian and Libertarian-leaning candidates in the past, such as former Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), and former Libertarian Party presidential nominees Gary Johnson and Jo Jorgensen.

OK, that would explain a lot - libertarians are essentially selfish and make terrible decisions because of that all of the time.  So instead of just, you know, not sounding like a racist, ugly sexist, or facilitator of the spread of vaccine scepticism or climate change denial, Rogan and his defenders would prefer to stand up for the "right" of people like him to not be subject to commercial pressure, which is all the fault of the Left, allegedly.

Some articles about Right wingers running amuck in Ottawa

This one in The Guardian links to this one in Politico.  Oh, and here's another piece in The Guardian.  And an explainer piece from the ABC.

Appalling. 

And thanks for explaining, journalists.  

(I see that Tim Blair, whose brain has been eaten by wingnuttery, apparently has no problem with it.  At least according to a header on a blog post, which is as much as I look at of his now.)

Since when did Australian wingnut threats to kill politicians become unremarkable?

Maybe this was covered in Australian media that I haven't read, but it's surprising that I only found out via a Washington Post article on the anti mandate moron protests in Canberra that some of the idiot "sovereign citizen" mob just openly go on social media talking about hanging politicians and bombing buildings, etc:

On Monday, one protest organizer ended a video with an allusion to hanging the prime minister, while in another clip, a protester warned a far-right lawmaker to stay away from Parliament, adding that if he had his way he would call in “bombers” to wipe it out.

In an interview later, the lawmaker, Sen. Malcolm Roberts from the One Nation Party, said the protests had been peaceful and respectful, aside from a small group.

“They were trying to hijack [things], and they had no, no success whatever. They were set aside,” he said. “I don’t see the very violent in the crowd that I addressed yesterday.”