Homeless in America

I thought this opinion piece in the Washington Post, criticising advocates for the homeless as often letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, was well worth reading.  Los Angeles is about to try to end one particular encampment by offering them "tiny homes", but that doesn't keep everyone happy:

Despite the obvious benefits of getting people out of the cold (or heat), some homeless advocates want to hold out. This temporary housing, they say, distracts attention and funds away from long-term solutions. The city shouldn’t take apart encampments, some argue, but do more to make them sanitary. Critics also fear the portable homes will turn into slum-like housing, a modular twist on single-room occupancy units that once dotted urban skid rows, temporary in name only.

Several advocates have interrupted events such as mayoral forums and civic ribbon-cutting ceremonies in recent weeks, sometimes even cursing and hurling insults. Some have claimed — ridiculously — that because the temporary shelters enforce curfews and other rules, they amount to “carceral” conditions.

 The scale of the problem:

More than 40,000 people live on the streets of Los Angeles, according to data from January 2020, with another 25,000 or so in Los Angeles County as a whole. They are a sizable chunk of California’s more than 160,000 homeless people, a segment of the population whose struggles became more visible with the pandemic. Most desperately need some kind of help. A 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis of county data found that two-thirds suffered from mental illness or addiction. Others, such as Ramirez, are unable to keep up with L.A.’s soaring housing costs.

Yes, how you are supposed to deal with homeless folk while they are in the grip of chronic drug addiction/mental illness does seem quite the challenge: but surely just letting them live on the street in shanty encampments, whether or not they have a toilet to poop in, is wildly unlikely to be the solution.

Someone in comments makes the point that that is has long been the problem with homelessness in the US:

A 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis of county data found that two-thirds suffered from mental illness or addiction. Others, such as Ramirez, are unable to keep up with L.A.’s soaring housing costs.

It has pretty much always been thus. In the 1970s, those studying the issue of homelessness found that (roughly) a third of the homeless were mentally ill, about a third were operating with chronic drug/alcohol impairment, and and about a third were folks who were basically stable but something had come up that knocked them out of balance.

Obviously there's some cross-over among the groups, but that last group is by far the easiest to deal with. With some targeted assistance, they can generally get themselves back onto a fairly even keel. The first two groups need MUCH more active support systems.

How culture warriors cope when christo-fascists don't seem nice after all

This sad sack of a culture war conservative has been running "be wary of anti-Russian propaganda" for the whole of the Ukraine invasion:

Of course, there is pro-Ukraine propaganda around, there's no denying that; but the odds of dead civilians on the street being due to other Ukrainians would have to rank pretty low.

Overall, the sense of disappointment about the increasing difficulty of looking up to Putin as a culture war hero has been palpable.    

Low islands

This video from CNA about how the Maldives are dealing with sea level rise was quite interesting. I was  surprised at how heavily built on some islands are, despite their "barely above sea level" status.  I was also amused by the activist at the end who thought part of the answer was to learn to love the ocean, not fear it.   I guess if that's all that you will be living on in 100 years, that might be a tactic.  

Stupid watch

 

No Power movie

I had grave doubts I would like it, but I watched The Power of the Dog on the weekend anyway.

It confirmed my suspicions that Jane Campion is probably the most over-rated director of my lifetime - as far as I can tell, she wins awards for making dark, feminist, "outsider" stories (featuring sexual tension) that don't shy away from male nudity.   It's a very specific genre.   [Insert eye-roll emoji here.]

There are several problematic things about the film, all of which are covered well on any site which allows public comments.  I think my main objection is the lack of subtlety - the "problem" with the main character is telegraphed from early on, and it's then dealt with in increasingly obvious (and actually laughably unsubtle) ways in both dialogue and action.  And, to be honest, we don't really understand any other character at all well.  Why the new wife freaks out so early about her new household arrangements is never really made clear.  

It does have "liberal Hollywood award bait" written all over it, though.   It's just that I reckon there's no way it will have legs in cinematic history.

Update:  she is not without her high profile critics.  Philip Adams hates The Piano, for example.  And when an ABC breakfast host (Michael Rowland) says he couldn't stick with the Power movie, you know it's not just some Adam's personal grudge - her liberal credentials are just not enough for some even in ABC land. 

Update 2:  as I have said, there are plenty of people who don't like the film; mainly audience members, not professional critics.  But one critic did write, in a spoiler full review:

This is a serious movie for serious people, but it leans so hard into its seriousness that it almost emerges out the other side as camp.

The Earth seems kinda lucky

There's a really good article in Science talking about the Earth's inner core which starts:

Earth’s magnetic field, nearly as old as the planet itself, protects life from damaging space radiation. But 565 million years ago, the field was sputtering, dropping to 10% of today’s strength, according to a recent discovery. Then, almost miraculously, over the course of just a few tens of millions of years, it regained its strength—just in time for the sudden profusion of complex multicellular life known as the Cambrian explosion.

What could have caused the rapid revival? Increasingly, scientists believe it was the birth of Earth’s inner core, a sphere of solid iron that sits within the molten outer core, where churning metal generates the planet’s magnetic field. Once the inner core was born, possibly 4 billion years after the planet itself, its treelike growth—accreting a few millimeters per year at its surface—would have turbocharged motions in the outer core, reviving the faltering magnetic field and renewing the protective shield for life. “The inner core regenerated Earth’s magnetic field at a really interesting time in evolution,” says John Tarduno, a geophysicist at the University of Rochester. “What would have happened if it didn’t form?”

Indeed.  Is it possible that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that, while there may be plenty of planets rolling around the universe, few of them get or keep the type of protective magnetic field that Earth developed, pretty much at the right time?  

Other snippets from the article:

The ancients thought Earth’s center was hollow: the home of Hades or hellfire, or a realm of tunnels that heated ocean waters. Later, following erroneous density estimates of the Moon and Earth by Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley suggested in 1686 that Earth was a series of nested shells surrounding a spinning sphere that drove the magnetism witnessed at the surface.

Edmond was a bit ahead of his time.

Here's an illustration from it:

And more about the lucky timing of the revival of the magnetic field, due to the inner core forming:

All this complexity appears to be geologically recent. Scientists once placed the inner core’s birth back near the planet’s formation. But a decade ago, researchers found, using diamond anvils at outer core conditions, that iron conducts heat at least twice as fast as previously thought. Cooling drives the growth of the inner core, so the rapid heat loss combined with the inner core’s current size meant it was unlikely to have formed more than 1 billion years ago, and more than likely came even later. “There’s no way around a relatively recent appearance of the inner core,” says Bruce Buffett, a geodynamicist at UC Berkeley.

Tarduno realized rocks from the time might record the dramatic magnetic field changes expected at the inner core’s birth. Until recently, the paleomagnetic data from 600 million to 1 billion years ago were sparse. So Tarduno went searching for rocks of the right age containing tiny, needle-shaped crystals of the mineral titanomagnetite, which record the magnetic field’s strength at the time of their crystallization. In a 565-million-year-old volcanic formation on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, his team found the crystals—and convincing evidence that the magnetic field of the time was one-tenth the present day strength, they reported in 2019. The fragility of the field at the time has since been confirmed by multiple studies.

It was probably a sign that rapid heat loss from the outer core was weakening the convective motions that generate the magnetic field, says Peter Driscoll, a geodynamicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “The dynamo could have been close to dying,” he says. Its death could have left Earth’s developing life—which mostly lived in the ocean as microbes and protojellyfish—exposed to far more radiation from solar flares. In Earth’s atmosphere, where oxygen levels were rising, the increased radiation could have ionized some of this oxygen, allowing it to escape to space and depleting a valuable resource for life, Tarduno says. “The potential for loss was gaining.”

Just 30 million years later, the tide had turned in favor of life. Tarduno’s team went to quarries and roadcuts in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma and harvested 532-million-year-old volcanic rocks. After analyzing the field strength frozen in the tiny magnetic needles, they found that its intensity had already jumped to 70% of present values, they reported at the AGU meeting. “That kind of nails it now,” Tarduno says. He credits the growth of the inner core for the field jump, which he says is “the true signature of inner core nucleation.”

Around the same time, life experienced its own revolution: the Cambrian explosion, the rapid diversification of life that gave rise to most animal groups and eventually led to the first land animals, protomillipedes that ventured onto land some 425 million years ago.

It just may be that the clement world they found owes much to the inner iron planet we’ll never see, 5000 kilometers below.

Huh.

About the Oscars more generally...

I didn't watch all of the Oscars this year, and I'm actually rather tired of the (annual) "why the show doesn't work anymore" analysis.   But I will add my two cents worth:

*    the redesign to have the nominees sitting at tables instead of rows of seats made it look cheaper and riper for trouble - even if the guests were not being served drinks and food, like at the Golden Globes or the (ugh) Logies.   Ironically, it was the ease with which this made getting to the stage which probably contributed to Will Smith doing his slap - if he had to get past a few sets of knees while sitting in a row he might not have bothered.

*   it really did seem very, um, black, this year, even apart from the Smith incident.   The "diversity is good and needs to be celebrated" theme - which has run for many years, I guess - does now seem to me to be getting a tad OTT.   

*   stars and celebrities have always been not necessarily the sharpest, and its true that social media now means we can now learn directly about some of their dumber views and sometimes sordid personal lives.  But before social media, there were gossip and movie magazines which gave us some insight.   A good performance in a movie remains a good performance, regardless of dumb or nutty personal views.

*   basically, the world is in a funk due to a multitude of issues and I guess we shouldn't be surprised if this spills over into everything.  

On a related Hollywood note:  lots of people this week are feeling sorry for Bruce Willis, and sure, it's sad to hear of anyone getting that type of disease.  But I thought his career followed a really remarkable trajectory of downwards likeability in the roles he chose.  He seemed a particularly embittered man after breaking up with Demi Moore - I still remember an interview show he did with Bob Geldorf as another guest, in which he basically said all relationships end in pain and unhappiness, so he was never going to have another, or something like that.

 

Recurring dream analysis needed

Years ago (gosh - 2006!), I posted about having recurring "I can levitate and I can prove it" dreams, in which I was not only thrilled that I could levitate, but I was also taking steps to prove to people it wasn't just a dream, only to wake up to the obvious disappointment.

This morning, it occurred to me that over the last year or so, I seem to be having a lot of spooky, dark, possibly haunted, house dreams.   Last night, I was in one in which a new family was living, and I was staying with them, after having sold the mansion to them because it was huge and creepy and empty at night, and I felt sure it was probably haunted.   As it turned out, they were travelling somewhere and it looked like I was being left alone in the house again, with considerable misgivings.  

I haven't even been watching any ghost or haunted house movies for a long time.   I do like the genre, when well done, but it sometimes feels that it's sort of got to the point where it's all been done as well as it can.   Although it's a few years ago that I watched it, I still think the best spooky movie I have seen - possibly ever - might be The Orphanage.  

Incidentally, I have often mentioned to my daughter, when we are looking at some huge mansion style residence either in real life or on Youtube, that I don't know I would want to live in a house so big that it could be being broken into at one end, and you would never know it from the other, because of the sheer distance involved.   (I know that common thieves will walk into even modest sized houses with unwisely unlocked doors and quietly take keys and stuff - I have an acquaintance to whom that happened recently, as it happens.  But I don't like the idea that something really bad could happen in one end of a house, and barely be heard from the other.)

Anyway, I don't know why haunted house dreams seem a popular feature in my sleeping brain lately.  

A tad over the top?

Given my attitude to sport, and cricket in particular, the death of Shane Warne was never going to affect me.   But I'm still surprised at the degree of the outpouring of grief over a bloke whose claim to fame all revolved around (as far as I can tell) a particular wrist motion.

It's a funny world:

In a stage show of tears and laughter, Shane Warne's immortality was confirmed

OK, OK, he did charitable things and was nice to people, generally speaking, it seems.   But it still comes down to fame over a wrist motion.   It's a bit like, I don't know, someone becoming incredibly famous as a pub dart champion.

Murdochs protecting Morrison - but why?

I thought it was clear from the post budget Murdoch press headlines that the word had passed around - Rupert wants Morrison returned.  And now I see the message was probably being conveyed by Lachlan:

But why?  Why is this clear dud of a PM having Murdoch protection??

 

Global warming and everyone's favourite fish

It's been a long time since I posted about ocean warming (and acidification) and it's very uncertain effects on the food chain.

This Washington Post article talks about the worrying effect on salmon fisheries.

Do I have to have an opinion on the Smith/Rock incident?

I find it hard to care about, really.

It did remind me, though, that many years ago, I got really, really annoyed at the Catallaxy/right wing reaction to the video of kid who was being bullied and took revenge by up-ending the bully and (more or less) dropping him on his head.   I was furious that adults would endorse this as an admirable reaction to bullying which did not look particularly dangerous to the victim.   The reason:  it was obviously an incredibly dangerous response - people are permanently paralysed all the time from bad neck/spinal injuries, and dropping someone in a way that may cause such an injury is just never going to be good idea.  It was ridiculous to praise such a disproportionate response.

I haven't changed my opinion on that at all.  

This current incident doesn't have that same circumstance at all.   It was more a slap, and Will Smith is a bit nutty, I thought everyone accepted.  It's funny how a lot of the pushback has come from (mainly) left wing comedians who think it sets a bad example to audiences at stand up gigs.

I can understand the "don't encourage 'you hurt my honour' violence" line, but really, I don't know that violence inclined people would consider Smith someone to model themselves on anyway.

So there - my opinion is I don't have an opinion. 

Profound

Any freak out about Biden's "regime change" comment should always be in the context that we know, with certainty, that a re-elected President Trump would have said 100 stupider things about Ukraine and Russia by now.   I mean, honestly, the man's an idiot.

Fan fiction

Quite a few people like this idea, inspired no doubt by "Short Round" actor Ke Huy Quan appearing in Everything Everywhere All at Once.   (Which seems to have received an enthusiastic early audience reaction.)

This seems an appropriate opportunity to repeat my fan fic wish:   that Harrison Ford's final appearance in an Indiana Jones movie be him added to the people getting into the Mother Ship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Yes, Coorey now plays the LNP tunes

Phil Coorey used to play a straight bat, more or less, but for whatever reason, he now reads like a permanent apologist of the LNP.  

Today's column, trying to keep the Kitching issue going, is very pathetic:

More broadly, Labor’s inability to shut this down has starved it of oxygen for 10 days in a row, exposing an alarming lack of capacity for damage control.

Where's the self awareness that it's the media that has kept giving it oxygen?   Bernard Keane has been vicious in his tweets about the press gallery on this, and I reckon he's right.

And this is real "jump the shark" whataboutism:

And why is it okay for Labor supporters to “victim shame” Kitching on the basis of her husband’s alleged misdeeds 17 years ago, when it was definitely not okay – and remains not okay – to allegedly background against Brittany Higgins’ partner and impute some motive on his behalf when questioning the timing of her going public with her alleged rape?

Um, one explains some of the background to major Victorian factional fights which was behind the pre-selection stress - it genuinely enlightens the reader as to why she was a controversial figure within the party;  the other is malicious rumour mongering to influence the view of a rape complaint yet to go to court.     

Chalk and cheese, Phil.

What was I saying about de-populating the rural areas?

They're just not good for your health:

Study finds methamphetamine the most consumed illicit drug nationwide – and the problem is worse outside the cities...

According to the latest report from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s (ACIC) Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program released this week, people living in regional areas are more likely to experience the harms related to substance use.

Using wastewater data collected by the Universities of Queensland and South Australia across 58 sites nationally – covering over half the population – the report seeks to understand local drug markets across all capitals and a range of regional cities and towns up to August 2021.

It draws on five years of data collected since the program began, and found consumption of most drugs has generally been higher per capita in regional Australia.

The exception is in cocaine and heroin use, where consumption is higher in the cities, and the report notes these two drugs are exclusively imported, without any domestic production.

 My "reverse Pol Pot" policy is looking better than ever...

Compare and contrast

A few days ago...

And today, off the cuff comments from Biden:

 

 

The supposedly "he's suffering serious cognitive decline" one is about twice as cogent as the previous President on this, and any other issue, in speeches, press conferences, and off the cuff comments like this.

 

 

Sodium ion batteries go boom (and fusion goes bust)

 That bloke who runs the Youtube channel "Just Have a Think" has had a couple of particularly interesting videos recently related to energy.  The first is about apparent advances in using sodium ion for batteries instead of lithium (which seems great news if it pans out, unless you've bought stock in lithium mining companies):

 

 There have been quite a few other videos floating around in my recommendations about this, but I haven't watched them.

 The second one is a sceptical look at fusion, building on the information Sabine Hossenfelder put out in a video he references: 

 

I am a little surprised, actually, that Sabine still says that its technology worth looking into - I would say it is, within certain economic limits, which must be just about reached with ITER.

Niki Savva on some Kitching background

Niki Savva explains why Kitching "had trust issues" within her own party:

Kitching lost the trust of many on her own side. She was suspected of leaking and undermining colleagues, not only by briefing media – so far Chris Uhlmann and Andrew Bolt have publicly revealed Kitching told them she was concerned Wong would be weak on China – but Coalition MPs, former Liberal Party officials and even senior staff in the Prime Minister’s office.

Politicians leak. And they do have friends across the aisle. But the breadth and depth of hers fed the distrust. The crunch came in June last year when then defence minister Linda Reynolds said in Senate estimates she had been forewarned by a Labor senator she would face questioning over the alleged rape of former staffer Brittany Higgins.

In private meetings later, to prove she was not making it up, Reynolds went so far as to produce for Wong, Gallagher and Keneally, video footage from the Senate chamber showing Kitching approaching her months before in early February before prayers. Reynolds told them this was when Kitching first told her the tactics committee had discussed it and planned to weaponise the alleged rape.

Reynolds also showed them subsequent text messages she had received from Kitching effectively confirming their initial conversation.

The matter had not been discussed in tactics, something Reynolds later accepted, so Kitching’s leak was actually not true. This was a sackable offence in anyone’s language. Kitching was dropped from tactics. Fearing ongoing leaks to their opponents or media, it was no wonder they restricted her access and contact with her.

In an earlier part of the article:

As well as being smart and ambitious, Kitching was a tough player who revelled in political intrigue, making enemies as easily as she made friends. She loved the nickname “Mata Hari” bestowed on her by a Labor MP, a mate, who admired her for not toeing the line, who also warned her to be careful she did not cross that line.

He reckons she never complained to him about her treatment, except that she wanted to be restored to Labor’s Senate tactics committee, from which she had been dismissed. “She was tough, she didn’t want people holding her hand,” he said. “She didn’t ask anyone to feel sorry for her.”

I would trust Savva's commentary on this much more than James Morrow, hey Jason?

 

 

 

Ha ha

 I do wonder at times about what it's like to be a complete dud of a PM.   I mean, there is no way in the world that history is going to give good marks to Morrison, or Abbott, as well performing or well regarded PMs;  and if it was me, and had been lucky enough to get the job, I think that would I look back and prefer not to have risen to my level of incompetency if I had my time over.

But I'm guessing that the type of ego necessary to want the top job means that ex-PM's never think that way?