Hoping for a save

It would appear that the screen testing rumours for Indiana Jones 5 (people hated the ending) are probably true?  John Williams said there is a new ending being filmed.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think some famous films (or at least a couple) have been "saved" by a late change to the ending?   

And it still means that I get to hope this happens:

END INDIANA JONES BY SHOWING HIM GOING ON BOARD THE MOTHERSHIP AT THE END OF CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

 

Pretty good reason to believe this means we'll never hear from him again

RMIT really seems to operate as a sheltered workshop for IPA types.  I was amused to read this on Crikey a day or two ago, in an article about what some recent ex-politicians are doing now:

Tim Wilson

Following his loss in Goldstein to Zoe Daniel, Wilson did the only appropriate thing for someone who occupies his place in public life combining trendy finance and debatable climate change action. He’s doing a PhD at RMIT University’s Blockchain Innovation Hub, studying “alternative models for carbon markets through tokenisation and the development of derivatives markets”. Well, indeed.

Extremism on both sides is pretty depressing

While it's still early days in knowing fully what happened in the ambush of police in (what I think I can call) outback Queensland, it does seem already established that the perpetrators were all Right wing, anti-government conspiracy believers, who (perhaps most bizarrely of all) had each worked in significant roles in the government education system, despite that workplace having (pretty fairly, I would say) a reputation as being the home of Left leaning staff.   This was the type of murder that is more expected from the backwoods of rural America than Australia, but it does show the harm that the internet causes in easing the spread of conspiracy belief, and the reinforcement effect of people finding forums on line where others listen to them, and offer support (or at least, fail to condemn.)

I'm also feeling somewhat depressed about the state of Twitter, and in particular, damaged-manboy-who- just-wants-to-be-liked, it-doesn't-matter-by-who Elon Musk giving endorsement to Right wing conspiracy and extremism, and ruining people's lives.   It is absolutely appalling, in my books, that Right wing commentary in the US and here ignores the matter of death threats that are guaranteed to be made on the basis of Right wing conspiracy - the election workers who get harassed for just doing their job; anyone caught up in the "maybe he's a pedo" moral panic which is deployed freely by Musk personally.

On the other side of politics, there is also an extremism that is bothering me, and even though it is not as patently dangerous as Right wing conspiracy, it is annoying me that it is not being called out.   Take this as an example:

Kilroy is a bit of a lawyer celebrity:  she did time in jail for drug dealing as a young woman, got herself educated, and went from social work to a law degree and finally got admitted as a lawyer in Queensland despite her troubled past.   She is well known as an advocate for improving conditions for women in prison.   She has featured on "Australian Story" on the ABC.

Yet this comment, which I suspect she was inspired to make because a Victorian commission into child protection has been full of claims that it's just obvious that too many aboriginal children are being removed from families, is just patently extreme and silly.   It's of a class of the increasingly radical young aboriginal activist line that Australia just needs to be handed over to First Nations people and that will fix all of history's wrongs.  

It seems to be, reading the Tweets of First Nations academia (which I have been doing via one particular person always coming to my attention there), that the women in that field (as it is mostly women) live in an intellectual space that allows them to repeat to each other statements of escalating extremism, and they simply have no incentive to talk each other down.

This is bad in its own way, and I wish that the mainstream of politics - and reporting - would stop letting this happen with no pushback.  

If someone says something on line that is ridiculous and extreme, whether it is from the Left or Right, and they are being interviewed on the ABC or where ever, they should be challenged about it.  

I don't see that any good comes from pretending that the extremism doesn't exist, on either side.   

Update:  another couple of recent tweets from Ms Kilroy:

  

The fine print (that's continually overlooked)

Obviously, while she is getting quite well known, not enough people have seen Sabine Hosenfelder's video from last year about the huge amounts of energy that are needed to drive the systems needed to get "net energy gain" in experimental fusion.  Here's a link to it again.

Oh, and look, the Washington Post story about the "big breakthrough" at one facility, has this fine print, which really, honestly, should be reflected more in the headlines:

“If it’s what we’re expecting, it’s like the Kitty Hawk moment for the Wright brothers,” said Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist and the CEO of Fusion Energy Insights. “It’s like the plane taking off.”

Does this mean fusion energy is ready for prime time?

No. Scientists refer to the current breakthrough as “scientific net energy gain” — meaning that more energy has come out of the reaction than was inputted by the laser. That’s a huge milestone that has never before been achieved.

But it’s only a net energy gain at the micro level. The lasers used at the Livermore lab are only about 1 percent efficient, according to Troy Carter, a plasma physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. That means that it takes about 100 times more energy to run the lasers than they are ultimately able to deliver to the hydrogen atoms.

So researchers will still have to reach “engineering net energy gain,” or the point at which the entire process takes less energy than is outputted by the reaction. They will also have to figure out how to turn the outputted energy — currently in the form of kinetic energy from the helium nucleus and the neutron — into a form that is usable for electricity. They could do that by converting it to heat, then heating steam to turn a turbine and run a generator. That process also has efficiency limitations.

All that means that the energy gain will probably need to be pushed much, much higher for fusion to actually be commercially viable.

At the moment, researchers can also only do the fusion reaction about once a day. In between, they have to allow the lasers to cool down and replace the fusion fuel target. A commercially viable plant would need to be able to do it several times per second, says Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT. “Once you’ve got scientific viability,” he said, “you’ve got to figure out engineering viability.”

And yet the article still ends on a rather misleading note:

Current fusion experts argue that it’s not a matter of time, but a matter of will — if governments and private donors finance fusion aggressively, they say, a prototype fusion power plant could be available in the 2030s.

“The timeline is not really a question of time,” Carter said. “It’s a question of innovating and putting the effort in.”

The article didn't even mention the other well known problems of practical fusion power:  how to deal with the physical container getting radioactive from neutrons (or at least, at a slow enough rate that it doesn't become prohibitively expensive), the supply of tritium issue, and other matters which are detailed at links in my post of 2019.

It just seems that people are having a hard time believing that scientists involved in this type of research are prone to exaggerated optimism.  Why are there so few articles exploring this in depth in the mainstream media?? 

 

 

 

 

Fantasy world noted

I'm wondering what happens if a very rich man with a Messiah complex gets a brain implant that allows external control by others, only to have the input to it hacked by his "woke" critics.

I can imagine some very operatic endings for Musk too - like jumping in a Starship before it's properly certified, and blowing himself up.   

Speaking of the thrill that the conspiracy rattled brains of the planet are getting from Musk's continued descent into inanity:

 

How much longer can liberals keep using Twitter?

There are increasing numbers of the liberal types which I follow on Twitter saying "that's it, if Elon Musk wants this to be a Right wing conspiracy nuthouse, full of abuse, he can have it" and saying they are leaving.

This is, I should add, fully deserved.  His slimy "maybe he's a pedo" innuendo against his former employee, and ridiculous tweet on Fauci are more than enough reason.   It seems he doesn't care if the platform becomes pretty much the same as its Right wing rivals;  and he tweets with the obvious intention of getting attention from everyone, and the approval of the worst of the Right.   

The problem is that the alternatives are still not ready.   Maybe it's hard raising the money on the promise that a substantial chunk of Twitter users will flock to the liberal Twitter alternative?

Anyway, I hope it happens soon.

Lamb recipe noted

I don't know what it is about Irish stew that I don't find appealing, but part of it may be that it is often made with lamb neck chops, and the fact that they make it a little too obvious that you're eating vertebrae chopped up is a bit unattractive.   I don't mind osso bucco and the way it makes it clear you're eating a cross section of leg bone, but vertebrae and that bit of spinal cord in the middle - it's getting more "personal" or something!

Anyway, I still bought some neck chops on the weekend, as they were (relatively) cheap [for future historians reading this - $19.95 a kilo] and I decided that there must be a more interesting way to eat them than boring old Irish stew.

So I tried this recipe:  Italian lamb neck chop stew, and the result was pretty pleasing.  (I fiddled a bit with it - a chopped up fennel bulb went in too, and used chicken stock instead of vegetable, and a bit of red wine.  I also used panko crumbs for the topping [fried with a little bit of chilli flakes in the oil, then add lemon zest and minced garlic right at the end so the garlic doesn't burn.]  Worked well.)   Technically, I'm not sure it's a stew, which I would have thought is normally done on a stove top.  I would think it is more likely a braise, since it's done in the oven.

Somewhat mysteriously, although the recipe says to scoop off some of the oil at the top while its cooking, very little appeared, and it couldn't really be done.  The chops did have a fair bit of unremoveable marbling in them, so I was expecting it to be heavy in the oil department, but somehow it wasn't.  It was eaten with some thick sourdough toast, and microwaved asparagus. 

So, success all round.  

 

"You may now urinate"

I am somewhat amused by the earnestness of this report by Singapore's CNA about an automated urine testing system (for drug offenders who are monitored) which they say is a "world's first": 

 

You just know that any other network on the planet would not have been able to resist a pun or some attempt at humour. But not CNA.

Young fascist, 1950's style, remembered

I think I have one book by Colin Wilson on my shelf - a pretty readable one from perhaps the 1980's about the paranormal, which was a topic that he spent a fair bit of time on in his later career.

I had read that he had hit fame early for writing an angsty British quasi-existential book as a young man - The Outsider.   But I never really looked much into how controversial some of his views were (or had become).   

I see from this essay in Aeon that his controversial status was well deserved.  Here's some background:

Why was The Outsider such a critical hit? In the late 1950s, Britain’s intelligentsia was worried about cultural decline and the lack of postwar movements to rival modernism, or homegrown ideas to rival French existentialism. Here was a 24-year-old working-class autodidact bringing news of the New Thing. And the New Thing turned out to be… recycled modernism. This was reassuring for modernist mandarins in charge of book reviews. His fame was helped by being grouped together with other provincial and working-class writers such as Kingsley Amis and John Osborne, who were dubbed the Angry Young Men. As with existentialism and punk, having a group of people doing more or less the same thing made it easier to write about. Wilson, though a one-off, was part of the zeitgeist.

In addition, Wilson was catnip for the popular press. He told one newspaper he’d written The Outsider while sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath, and obligingly recreated the scene for their photographer. He helped to model the image of the young bohemian, in his polo neck and horn-rimmed glasses.

And then, just as suddenly, the London intelligentsia decided the provincial outsider should stay outside, that his fame was a bubble, that he was a ridiculous and even dangerous figure. His constant declarations of his own genius didn’t help – he was ‘the most important writer of the 20th century’, he said, a ‘turning point in culture’. Nor did his denigration of more established writers – he said Shakespeare was ‘a thoroughly second-rate mind’.

And his worst views:

It’s true that Wilson was a big fan of Friedrich Nietzsche. He believed that humans could ascend the evolutionary ladder and become supermen through sheer will. In practice, only a tiny minority could do this – the ‘dominant 5 per cent’ – and of them, only 0.05 per cent actually would. Like Nietzsche, he had little time for everyone else. Human beings, he wrote in his journal, ‘are pretty trivial insects … No wonder most of them are so mediocre.’

Growing up surrounded by ‘morons’, Wilson felt different and better: ‘I would sit on a bus with the Bhagavad Gita on my lap, and look at the other people, and think: my life is totally different from yours … I know that man can become a superman or God if he makes a hard enough effort.’ He wrote a short story when he was 18, in which Jesus decides ‘these miserable idiots were really not worth dying for, and it had been a mistake to be taken in by pity when they needed a good kicking.’ Like Nietzsche, Wilson thought it would really be a mercy if some of these lesser humans didn’t exist. He wrote in his journal in 1961:

‘the little people’ have sunk so deep into pettiness that it would be an agony for them to cure themselves; like invalids crouching over a fire, the outside world makes them cringe. Without knowing it, they want to die.

This sort of Nietzschean supercilious elitism is typical of modernism, one can find similar passages in H G Wells, George Bernard Shaw, W B Yeats or D H Lawrence. The difference is, Wilson was coming out with it after the Second World War, in 1950s Britain, when spirituality was out of fashion and the cult of the Nietzschean superman even more so.

Wilson’s friend Hopkins, with whom he lived in Notting Hill Gate in the late 1950s, confirmed critics’ fears that the Wilson clique embodied what Allsop called ‘a new mystical absolutism of the extreme Right wing’. Hopkins’s first novel, The Divine and the Decay (1957), was about a fascist leader who murders an opponent. It was clear that Hopkins admired his hero, and in 1958 he started his own far-Right political movement called the Spartacans. They had only one meeting, according to Holroyd, at which Wilson gave a speech insisting that ‘effective political power ought to be in the hands of the 5 per cent minority who were equipped to use it.’

To make matters worse, the British fascist and Nazi apologist Oswald Mosley, seeking to rehabilitate his reputation after the war, wooed the Wilson group, and wrote a glowing 15-page review of The Outsider in his magazine, The European. Flattered, Wilson called him ‘far and away the most intelligent politician I have ever met’ (he was the only politician he had ever met). When Mosley attended the opening night of Holroyd’s first play at the Royal Court, Left-wing critics stormed out, and Wilson was involved in a fracas with them in the pub next door.

It's funny, but I don't recall detecting any problematic politics or philosophy in the book I read.    But yeah, he was, generally speaking, a much more unreliable guide to life than I knew.

 

Oh, a stand up show I liked

One of my recurring themes here is how I don't like stand up comedy much as an art form, even if it is by someone who I find funny and likeable in other formats.

So, I was not at all sure that I would like the Wil Anderson stage show on the ABC last night - Wilogical.  I think I have seen bits of some of his previous shows and not liked it much.

But I actually sat through all of this one, and thought it was pretty good.   The reason has a lot to do with the fact that a major theme was his adventures as a science believer living during Covid on the New South Wales North Coast in one of the nation's biggest anti-vaccination, alternative medicine regions.   

His jokes were therefore often about people who "do their own research" and believing ridiculous things.   This is a rich source of material on which I could feel I was definitely on his ideological side (not something that is all that common for me with stand up material, especially if it is "edgy".)    

Not only that, though, but Anderson comes across as not spiteful in his humour - there was actually a genuine plea at the end that we need people who believe nonsense to come back into the fold of reason, not be cast out forever.    Again, this is not the sort of theme you seem to get in stand up very often.

So, yeah, good on you Wil.

Just too dumb to argue with

This absolute feeble joke of a blogger has not mentioned the "terminate the constitution" tweet of Trump:

And at the post Catallaxy blog of dumbos, reactionaries and wannabe fascists, it's a conspiracy that needs to be corrected by a military takeover:

 

One disappointing aspect

The last line:

 

Did I just win an argument with ChatGPT?

Please explain why so many young people now think that they are transexual

The issue of gender identity and transgenderism is complex and multifaceted, and there are many reasons why a person may identify as transgender. In recent years, there has been increased awareness and acceptance of transgender people, which may have led more young people to feel comfortable expressing their gender identity and coming out as transgender. Additionally, advances in medical technology have made it possible for transgender people to access hormone therapy and other treatments that can help them transition and live more authentically as their true gender.

 

Is there any scientific evidence that "true gender" is fixed by the brain?

There is some scientific evidence that suggests that a person's gender identity may be determined by the structure and function of their brain. Research has shown that there are differences in the brain structure and function of transgender individuals compared to cisgender individuals (people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth). For example, studies have found that the brain structures of transgender individuals are more similar to those of their gender identity than to those of their assigned gender at birth. However, it is important to note that this research is still in its early stages, and more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between brain structure and gender identity.

 

But how different are male and female brains?

The differences between male and female brains are not as great as many people think. While there are some structural and functional differences between the brains of men and women, the vast majority of these differences are very small and have little or no impact on an individual's behavior or abilities. In fact, research has shown that most people have a mix of "male" and "female" brain characteristics, and that there is a great deal of overlap between the brains of men and women. This means that it is not accurate to say that men and women have "different" brains, and that any attempt to make generalizations about the abilities or characteristics of men and women based on their brain structure is likely to be misguided.

 

Hey, doesn't this last answer you gave suggest that "true gender" is not fixed in the brain, after all?

The issue of gender identity and transgenderism is complex and multifaceted, and there is still much that we do not understand about the factors that influence a person's gender identity. While there is some scientific evidence that suggests that a person's gender identity may be influenced by the structure and function of their brain, it is important to note that this research is still in its early stages, and more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between brain structure and gender identity. Additionally, it is important to recognize that gender identity is a deeply personal and individual experience, and that each person's gender identity is unique to them. As such, it is not accurate to say that there is one "true" gender that is fixed in the brain, and that any attempt to make generalizations about gender identity based on limited scientific evidence is likely to be misguided.

 

Things I find very, very easy to ignore (and can't understand why other people cannot do the same)

1.   Harry and Meghan

2.   Drag queens

3.   So-called "reality TV"

Speaking of drag queens, and the ridiculous spectacle in the culture war riven USA of armed men turning up at libraries to dissuade drag queen story hours which, in turn, are pretty silly in that it seems a good bet that few 4 or 5 year olds have ever begged their parent to be taken to such a show:  the question did occur to me yesterday - has any gay or trans adult ever claim to have been inspired to become gay due to seeing a drag performance?   I mean, men in drag has been a Christmas pantomime thing in England for a long time, so the possibility is out there.  But I can't say that I can ever recall any gay person claim that early viewing of a man as a caricature of a woman set them on the path of gay or trans identity.   And if that's true as a general rule, what exactly do the armed men fear from a relatively few liberal parents' kids being dragged (ha) to a show?

But to be clear, I don't get the point of drag at all - so I Googled the topic yesterday, and found this paper from 2017 makes an argument about them from an evolutionary psychology perspective.  Here's the abstract:

The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlandish and hyperbolic womanhood and taunting and formidable behavior at the core of drag queens’ public persona has still to be fully accounted for. We argue that these aspects of the drag queen’s public appearance could best be understood in a signaling framework. Publicly donning extravagant woman’s costumes attracts harassment and brings financial, mating, and opportunity costs, generating the conditions for the transmission of honest signals. By successfully withstanding those odds, drag queen impersonators signal strategic qualities to members of the gay community. Data collected among gay and straight participants support a costly signaling reading of the drag queen cultural phenomenon. Participants generally agree that successful drag queens typically incur costs, while gaining specific social benefits.

And a bit more in the introduction:

In a landmark publication on the life of drag queens, Newton (1972) emphasized the conspicuous, confrontational, territorial, and effeminate behavior of drag queens and the discrimination, harassment, and stigmatization that impersonators regularly had to face from both gay community members and outsiders. Most people, including the impersonators themselves, seemed to view the drag queen attitude as extreme and particular (Newton, 1972, p. 6). Despite this stigmatization, participation in the drag subculture appeared to have afforded jobless, young, and poor gays some opportunity to distinguish themselves from lower status individuals such as hustlers or “freaks,” and, for the most successful drag queens, a chance to develop celebrity-like status and social might in the gay community (Newton, 1972, p. 6).

Signaling theory has provided a theoretical framework for better explaining evolutionarily puzzling human behaviors (Bird, Smith, & Bird, 2001; Sosis & Bressler, 2003). We propose to analyze the phenomenon of drag queen behavior in light of signaling theory. Despite the costs involved in publicly endorsing a drag queen persona, marginalized individuals might find it attractive, given the benefits they stand to gain such as an enhanced reputation and increased social capital (e.g., Newton, 1972; Hopkins, 2004). The drag queen phenomenon provides an interesting case study where particular behavioral signals enhance individuals’ reputation and welfare, while being entirely decoupled from any reproductive payoff. The phenomenon can be understood as the partial output of universal cognitive mechanisms for status seeking and partner seeking. Typical organizational features of the gay community also play a role in the emergence of the drag queen cultural practice.

 Sounds kind of plausible?   

Trump took advice from this man

 

By the way, Trump is finished, I reckon.  His candidacy has been strangled by his own hands.   Even before the legal cases have their effect.

Former President Donald Trump on Monday denied he wanted to “‘terminate’ the Constitution,” two days after suggesting “the termination of all rules ... even those found in the Constitution.”

“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES,” Trump said on Monday on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

The post seemed to be a complete denial of his post from Saturday, which remained online as of Monday afternoon: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote over the weekend, once again falsely asserting that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Several of Trump’s fellow Republicans were critical of the post, but few condemned Trump himself or said it would be disqualifying for him to earn their vote — a lack of repudiation that has drawn criticism from Democrats. The post came less than a month after Trump officially declared his plans to run for president again in 2024, and he remains the only major Republican candidate to announce a campaign.

Once again, witness the stunning cowardice of many Republicans, too scared to take on a cult because they benefit from it too. 

Update:   When Marc Thiessen, one of the suckiest of suck ups to Trump, writes a column like this one in the Washington Post, you know he's gone.

 

Lightning rods for park shelters?

As it happens, a couple of weeks ago I was taking cover under a recently built, metal roofed (but otherwise open) dog park shelter from heavy rain, which I feared might include a bit of lightning.  (Fortunately, it didn't, as I hate being outside during storms.)

So it's of interest to note in this article about lightning at The Conversation ends with this:

A lightning rod invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1752 is basically a thick fencing wire attached to the top of a building and connected to the ground. It is designed to attract lightning and earth the electric charge. By directing the flow through the wire, it saves the building from being damaged.

These Franklin rods are required for tall buildings and churches today, but the uncertain factor is how many are needed on each structure.

Furthermore, hundreds of structures are not protected, including shelter sheds in parks. These structures are often made from highly conductive galvanized iron, which itself attracts lightning, and supported by wooden posts.

The new version of Standards Australia for lightning protection recommends such shelters be earthed.

Next weekend, I shall check to see if I can tell if "my" new shelter incorporates this.  

Pithy

This is also why I had to remove the words "conservative leaning" from my blog title quite a few years ago.   It's a shame it went nuts.

Such a deliberately blind, or dumb, or both, take

Monty, it is impossible to reason with someone who completely ignores screeds of evidence compiled by bipartisan political committee.  Either that or he's just dumb behind his veil of arrogance.  Who can tell?

Musk in the service of stupid right wing talking points

 It seems clear that the Musk promised bombshell of the "Twitter files" regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story is a big fizzer:

But we know what hyperbolic and disconnected from reality reactions we will get from the right:

Why kill or threaten someone when they are busy shooting themselves in the foot?

More generally:

Update:  more summary - 

And this:

The "hard times" meme for the ages

I reckon I must have been a teenager when I first saw some current affairs show or other featuring a pensioner opening a can of dog food to chow down on because he couldn't afford "real" food.  And here we are, 40 years later with this crap again:

It's always annoyed me, because it's so obviously a case of either:

a.    pure media stunt; or

b.    a really stupid person who refuses to buy cheaper human food if their first preference is (usually temporarily) more expensive.