I recently mentioned how funny I find What We Do in the Shadows (the series made out of the movie), and how it seems under-recognised in Australia. (And elsewhere? I rarely see it mentioned in media.)
But here's a New York Times interview with Matt Berry, who has been nominated for an Emmy, talking about what it's been like working on the show. He surely is the funniest character actor from England working at the moment.
Here's an article from the Washington Post about what remains to be released about the John F Kennedy assassination, noting how Trump had previously promised to release everything, and then was talked out of it when he was president.
By the way, the fact that the CIA was keeping at least some track of what Oswald was up to seems no surprise, given his sucking up to Russia at the time.
As with UFOs, I think it's fair to say that belief in conspiracy about the assassination used to be more a Left wing thing, but then Right wingers (and especially MAGA) started to believe an increasing number of conspiracies and finally got a dumb leader who actually promoted them (climate change, Obama birtherism, "the Deep State is a'gin us" generally, election rigging, etc etc) and they've become the main ones interested in old conspiracy theories too.
I'm talking about the Democratic Convention, where it seems absolutely everything went spectacularly right. (Well, save for the mystery of who started the rumour of Beyonce or Swift turning up at the end to sing the crowd out.)
They talked about it in glowing terms on Planet America's Fireside Chat last night, and to be honest, I haven't personally watched any of the highlight speeches in full length yet. (I'll probably watch Harris and maybe the Obamas later.) But from all of the clips I've seen on news shows or elsewhere, I got the impression it went better than anyone expected: no disruptive riots on the street outside, a picture of optimism and racial inclusiveness inside, and (perhaps?) a swing to the culture war centre where the party often mentioned respect for "diversity", but didn't seem to heavily emphasise the more controversial and polarising side of it (no bald non binary person in a dress who is a secret kleptomaniac featured on stage, for example.)
And it drew out the embarrassing and shameful poison on the MAGA side - I thought it was clear as soon as I saw Walz's son's emotional reaction to his Dad on stage that it looked like he had developmental issues (and I quickly read that he did.) I actually said to my son "I don't think even MAGA idiots would be game to mock this". My son disagreed, and he was right! (My God, there are many tweets by mouthbreathing idiots who now troll on Musk's cesspit that he's probably been sexually abused - or given brain damage by being beaten - by his pedo dad as a child.) The most high profile person who "went there" (although not to that extreme) was Ann Coulter, who then deleted the "weird" tweet when she read about his health issues. (To its ever so slight credit, the Hot Air conservative blog also criticised the attacks, and pointed out that even Ben Shapiro tweeted positively about it.)
Anyhow, I guess I should still say that I'm not the biggest fan of Kamala's intonation when she speaks (but then again, Bill Clinton's accent has always grated a bit too), but this is just a trivial parochialism on my part. Before Obama was elected, I really wasn't confident that he had the experience and qualities to be a good President, but I was happily proved very wrong.
As lots of people are saying everywhere, the amazing thing is how well those in the Kamala campaign team have recognized that under Trump, the Republicans have reached the pinnacle of where decades of bad faith catastrophising about Democrats in power* could take them - to be the party of such insane and overblown pessimism that they are now actually the anti-patriotic party. Patriotism implies optimism, and Republicans have overplayed the "we are on the edge of catastrophe" card so many times, their version of optimism (only We can Make American Great Again) is now playing amongst independents as fake and insincere and anti-American.
Which is great!
One other thing: the success of the convention has given a real boost to the arm of the late night talk shows too - or at least, Colbert's show, which went to Chicago and has been held in a massive theatre to wildly enthusiastic audiences. Have a look at this clip of his talking to very smart and very attractive AOC, to see what I mean:
Of course, there is still time for things to go wrong for a Harris/Walz win: in America, you're always only one bullet away from drama with unpredictable consequences.
But I am feeling pretty confident that, in their heart of hearts, most conservative commentators can tell their side is definitely on a losing path, and might even secretly feel that Harris is performing well. But it's hard to tell - the Right has become expert at self-gaslighting for so long, you never can tell how many are beyond returning to reality and anything approaching a generosity of spirit.
* it will be the end of America - and they're literally evil!
I'm a decade late to getting around to watching Season 1 of True Detective, the show about which I continually read suffered a big decline in quality after the highly praised first season.
As every reader probably knows, season one stars the actor to whom I'm unreasonably allergic - Matthew McConaughey - and Woody Harrelson (who I also have never warmed to.)
Two episodes in and my early verdict - it's pretty pretentious and a case of "trying too hard". Still don't understand the framing device (why the two detectives are being questioned at length about the old case, and why they are spending so much time on their autobiographical details.) I'm finding Woody Harrelson's acting a bit arch and unconvincing. I'm ranking him as worse in the show than McConaughey - although he's still somewhat irritating me.
Sure, the Louisiana setting is interesting if you like watching depictions of the seedy, poor South.
I'll keep watching it for now, but as I said to my son it's got Deep South Twin Peaks vibes but without any of the quirky fun (or a likeable character anywhere to be seen.) So yeah, I really have the feeling it was overrated at the time.
Disappointing to read that RFK Jnr is almost certain to pull out of the Presidential race, since it seemed well confirmed that staying in would only hurt Trump. I don't think his endorsing Trump (as rumoured) will make much difference beyond his withdrawal.
The funniest explanation of his weirdest story (the dead bear in Central Park) was on this Daily Show episode (starting at the 7 min 11 sec mark). I laughed a lot.
I've always been skeptical of Luis Elizondo's claims about the significance of his role in the Pentagon's seemingly on again/off again interest in UFO's (or now, "UAPs"). Now he's put out a book, with a lot of big, dubious claims, and I get the impression the mainstream media is like me - pretty much ignoring him because it all sounds too much - too "good" to be true.
But, here's a pretty non-critical article (not exactly a review) of the book at the New York Times. It notes:
In the book he asserted that a decades-long U.F.O. crash retrieval program has been operating as a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors. Over the years, he wrote, technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin have been retrieved from these crashes.
“Humanity is, in fact, not the only intelligent life in the universe, and not the alpha species,” Elizondo wrote.
More evidence for the big claim, please.
I am interested in this claim, though:
In “Imminent,” Elizondo described his struggle within the program to investigate the phenomena, and his effort, since his resignation in 2017, to push for greater transparency on what is officially known about U.A.P. He also wrote about personal encounters with U.A.P. — green orbs that he said visited his home while he worked for the Department of Defense....
Elizondo also wrote in the memoir of personal encounters with U.A.P., describing green-glowing orbs about the size of a basketball that invaded his home on and off for over seven years. The objects were able to pass through walls, and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, he wrote.
The orbs were also witnessed by his wife, two daughters and their neighbors, he wrote.
As for “our friends from out of town,” they do not appear to be benevolent, he wrote; perhaps they are neutral. Or they could be a threat to humanity.
Curious that, in this day of camera being in the hand of most people for much of the time they are at home, he hasn't shared any video of said orbs.
It's not that these are a novel thing associated with UFOs, though. Stop me if you have heard this before, but there was a bit of a panic about green fireballs in the late 1940's being seen around remote military nuclear sites in the desert in the US. The Wikipedia article about this is not very convincing, though - it gives the impression that it was likely all a case of panic over green meteors, which are not unknown. But when you read the reports of the sightings, the trajectories of many sure don't sound like meteors.
I think I have read somewhere that some sightings were of orbs very close to the ground and looking as if they were centred on nuclear research buildings. But Googling around isn't turning up a good example - I might have to go looking in my collection of UFO books on the shelf at home!
Certainly, it would not be surprising if some of these cases were ball lightning, or the equivalent of the "ground lights" like the Min Min from outback Australia and similar lights in other parts of the world, which turn up so often they do seem a natural electrical phenomena.
I suspect that Luis thought this was a good UFO-ish mystery story to pretend has affected his life - no one outside the house need corroborate. Sure, if his family turn up on interviews appearing genuine and confirming more than one encounter with a green orb with seeming intentional movement, I might be intrigued and start believing him. But I'm not taking it too seriously before then.
Surely the overwhelming reaction that anyone reasonable should get from watching the Democrat Convention is "So, this is what a sane and normal looking bunch of American politicians and supporters looks like. The Republican convention had me thinking American politics was essentially a carny sideshow, complete with ageing freaks and politicians wanting to get into the boxing ring with each other, all with a cosplaying audience."
Many, many years ago, I read online an essay by someone (no one famous, I'm pretty sure) about Eastern philosophy, and (I think) Buddhism, that argued that they were essentially relativistic about morality. I didn't keep a link to it, and in fact I think I may have been reading it on a library computer - it was the very early days of the internet - and even if I am wrong and was reading it at home, I have been through umpteen different computers and laptops since then, and who really keeps bookmarks that consistently? (That's a good reason to blog, actually - it does help me find links to things I read years ago.)
Anyway, it was the type of online content that I am never likely to find again, but Googling around I see that a philosopher David B Wong has been prominent in arguing for (a kind of?) moral relativism as being legitimate, and his work has prompted a book Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy.
Why am I thinking about this? Probably because of the Daoism content on Religion for Breakfast, and some anti-China Tweet I saw the other that ran the argument (usually promoted by American Christians, I think) that the mainland Chinese have become irreligious and purely materialistic and hence ruthlessly immoral (using the terrible example of drivers who make sure the people they run over really are dead, as that way there is little to be claimed in compensation.) (Lots of people tweeted in response that this is ridiculous oversimplification of the state of Chinese society.)
So, this post is just a reminder of things I ought to get around to looking into more deeply one day. I still haven't read more about Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, even though I posted about him 18 months ago. He does sound very "middle way", which seems an appealing approach to everything as I get older.
And speaking of which, Googling turns up this - the Middle Way Society, which seems to have been recently created by people with a secular Buddhist approach:
The Middle Way is the idea that we make better judgements by avoiding fixed beliefs and being open to practical experience. We challenge unhelpful distinctions between facts and values, reason and emotion, religion and secularism or arts and sciences. Though our name is inspired by some of the insights of the Buddha, we are independent of Buddhism or any other religion. We seek to promote and support integrative practice, overcoming conflict of all kinds.
Another page says this:
Moral judgement is an everyday part of our experience, not a remote or ‘queer’ thing requiring extraordinary proof to be justified. There are a variety of types of moral principle that people draw on – for example, religious authority, utilitarianism, Kantian principle, or virtue ethics – and any and all of these can reflect our experience of moral demands. Yet none of these types of moral principle offers the whole story, and our judgements can always gain in objectivity by addressing conditions better, whichever type of principle may be drawn on to help us do this.
Middle Way Philosophy can offer a sceptical perspective on the claims of many ethical systems that are based on metaphysics. It can also offer the grounds of confidence that there is incremental objectivity in ethical judgements. If we keep trying to extend our awareness, and draw on a variety of approaches to ethics rather than only one, we can make moral progress in the judgements we make. This perspective can be asserted with confidence because it takes into account the uncertainty of ethics, not despite it. If we avoid false certainty either of a positive or of a negative type, we have much better grounds of confidence than we had either when we appealed to false certainty or when we merely lamented its loss.
I should read more about it...
Update: Oh, this, a paper from Singapore, sounds interesting too:
This is what I like to see - a specific proposal for the expansion of clean energy. From the Conversation:
Our calculations show Australia has enough unused commercial and industrial rooftop space to supply at least 25% of our annual electricity use – five times as much as currently supplied by gas-fired generators.
Australia is already the world’s top rooftop solar nation, per capita. But our solar is largely on our houses. We have four times as much residential solar as we do on commercial buildings. In Europe, it’s the opposite – there’s 1.5 times as much solar on businesses as on houses. The EU’s new Solar Energy Standard is expected to double rooftop solar capacity in four years.
In our new discussion paper, we make the case for a massive expansion of battery-backed solar photovoltaic power on Australian business premises. Call it “business power”.
There are excellent reasons for policymakers and building owners to look at this. It offers a potentially large new source of cheap, reliable, clean electricity with little downside risk.
* By and large, I think the ABC still does radio pretty well. I would mark out for particular praise the overall likeability and competence of Marc Fennell (he's pretty good on TV too, although he does draw some boring shows, like host of Mastermind), Richard Fielder as an interviewer (gosh he's been doing it for a long time now), and I still think Norman Swan is also good to listen to. Sure, there is a lot of content I won't listen to, and some hosts who are well past their "use by" date (I have complained that the Science Show has been pretty dull for many years now), but I always get the feeling that, for a small country, our government funded radio really punches above its weight. The best way to get "the best" of it now is to use the ABC Listen app - I find it works well.
* ABC TV is struggling a bit by comparison. It seems pretty lazy when quite a lot of bland British light drama/light crime content is still relied upon to fill up empty space. (Really, who watches shows like Sister Boniface Mysteries and Call the Midwife? I mean, when I was younger I could say "it's not for me but it's probably popular with the oldies", but now that I am over 60, I can't imagine any of my contemporaries watching it!) But then again, Australia drama is often completely unappealing too. It has always been that way, though. I'm not sure it is getting any worse, so that's a positive.
As for comedy content - yes I think it's main problem is in the innovation department. But maybe its because I don't like many comedians under 30 any more?
You still can't beat it for current affairs: watch the ABC news, 7.30, Planet America, Foreign Correspondent, and sometimes Four Corners, and you'll be pretty well informed on all major topics. Compared to the absolutely scandalous nature of current affairs programs on Channel 7 in the last couple of years, there is no comparison.
* I continue to love all videos put out on Religion for Breakfast. It doesn't matter what the topic (the massive scale of the Daoist "scriptures"), or whether I had an interest in it before (the origins of the Pope's pointy hat), there is a 95% chance I will enjoy it.
* This is hard to explain without sounding weird, but I un-ironically like watching the Singaporean National Day Parade. (This was on last week.) It starts with military parade stuff, then a demonstration, complete with corny narration, of all their defence and civil services in action (sort of like a souped up Edinburgh Military Tattoo, I guess?), and the last hour or so is a large concert full of songs old and new about the country which always - always! - emphasise the importance of unity of the mixed ethnicities. The only way to put it is that it is 100% pure propaganda - but when it's for sentiments that are purely positive - well, it's actually praiseworthy, isn't it? And it's flawlessly produced, with the participants from such a diversity of ages and backgrounds, it indicates that it's propanganda that is taken to heart by the citizens. Again - it's good propaganda!
So it's not a simple kind of "just the State engendering patriotism for self interested reasons" (although, of course, the cynical could say it is just that): it's a State that is continuously encouraging its people to get along together, and to be proud of the fact that they do, pretty much, get along.
Here, you can watch the (pretty decent) National Day theme song for this year, and get an idea of what I mean.
Musk's play thing formally known as Twitter is absolutely awash at the moment with Right Wing panic and attempts to invent and make slurs against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as a response to their rapid gains in the polls.
Some are gross, many based on typical RW reactions (such as "Tim Walz acts gay and weird"), others are based on "rumours" which are never, ever sourced ("Kamala's got a serious drinking problem - you can tell by the way she laughs").
It's transparently desperate.
I had assumed that the recent very extensive aurora, which I would quite like to see but live too far north, would not likely be repeated any time soon. However, as explained by the Washington Post this weekend, it is likely we are going to have a repeat in the next couple of years:
The displays so far have been quite the warm-up. On May 10, when Pegram saw her first aurora, Earth was hit by the biggest geomagnetic storm in about two decades, with the most widespread aurora in probably 500 years. The storm was rated a severity level of 5 on a scale of 5, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But at least seven other storms have reached a 4 since 2019....
Scientists won’t confirm when the peak month of solar activity is until a few months after it’s passed — like waiting for all contestants of a race to compete before declaring a winner. But they know we’re getting close.
About every decade or so, the sun’s north and south magnetic poles flip, which affects the solar activity seen at the surface. This “solar cycle” means some years are more active on the sun’s surface than others, usually measured by the number of dark blotches called sunspots. More visible sunspots mean more active, magnetically complex regions on the sun that can spawn flares and explosions. Not all of these sun’s eruptions hit Earth, but it’s like adding more darts to a dart board game — there are more chances one will land....
When the cycle does reach the other side of the maximum, it will be good sign for aurora chasers. The biggest geomagnetic storms tend to occur in the year or two after reaching the maximum, a phenomenon known as the Gnevyshev gap, said McIntosh, vice president of space operations at Lynker and formerly the deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“The real fun of the solar cycle is not now. It’s what comes in the next few years,” he said. “The storms get more complex, more frequent, and that makes them a bit more impactful for Earth.”
Coming off its solar maximum, the sun becomes a complex, muddy mess. As tendrils of the next solar cycle move in, it can merge with the old solar cycle. McIntosh said the two systems have different polarities and can get tangled with each other. When the systems merge, the pluses and minuses start to realign to make the simplest configuration. But as it goes through this intricate spaghetti rearrangement, enormous amounts of energy are released.
The one about how incredibly bitter he is over giving up his candidacy, and he might try to take it back at the convention. He was talking here with Kamala Harris on the same stage.
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Update: meanwhile, in Trump world -
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I liked Sabine Hossenfelder's take on Large Language Models and their limitations with respect to advancing AI. It's a very clear explanation for this topic, I think:
The comments are worth reading too - some saying that the issue is already being addressed.
The story of the two astronauts stuck in the International Space Station for (possibly) an 8 month visit instead of the original planned 8 days reminded me of a Jerry Lewis film from the 1960's. I really didn't remember much about it, except that it didn't seem very funny when I was a kid, and that it made me a bit uncomfortable because it was essentially a sex comedy before I was anywhere near understanding sex.
Googling the topic, I see that it called Way...Way Out (a title with an unusual emphasis on punctuation), and the Wikipedia entry about it confirmed the one aspect I could recall - that near the start there were male astronauts on the Moon who were going crazy because they had been away from women for too long. Not having access to women drives men nuts, obviously [sarc!]. This did not really compute to my boyhood brain. It's a curious thing, I think, that as a kid you can understand that something significant happens between men and women, but not really have any comprehension of the physical urge behind it. But still, I always felt that it seemed in bad taste to spend all your time obsessing over the matter. (I'm not exactly sure what made me naturally conservative in that respect.)
It is a pretty odd conceit for a film, given that 1966 was not all that long from World War 2 and the lived experience of a lot of men who had to have gone a long time without sex who didn't go nuts (for that reason, anyway). And now, we have lots of men on long, long stays in the ISS without any reports of insanity breaking out. I'm presuming that no sex with visiting females has ever happened there - although I guess any astronauts who did so engage wouldn't be telling anyone any time soon. But the place has barely enough water for decent normal hygiene, let alone additional washing required due to sexual activities.
Anyway - I've never been a fan of the "male sexual desperation" genre of comedy. Although, now that I think of it, should I count Spielberg's 1941 as an exception? I really like that film for a lot of different reasons, and there is one key sex element that is important to the plot. But it's more about a fetish that is amusingly odd, and it's driven by a female character's desire, so I think that makes it more politically correct than the comedies based all on males doing desperate things to get sex that featured a lot in movies in the 1980's that I had no interest in seeing. (1941 came out in 1979, in case you were wondering.)
But back to Jerry Lewis's bad movie - Wikipedia says it make no money and neither critics nor the public liked it. But someone has put the whole thing on Youtube (surprisingly, it was a Cinemascope film, apparently), so I guess I can go watch the whole thing and cringe again, if I want. Lots of people in comments say that they still thought it a great film as a kid, so it takes all kinds, obviously.
Recently, Noah Smith a couple of other mostly sensible people on Twitter noted that Richard Hanania seemed to be making some reasonable posts on the current state of politics. (He has made so many bad or peculiar posts on all sorts of things I had to stop following him, it was too much.)
Today, I see we are well and truly back to "very peculiar":
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I'm not at all sure that it is worth spending 5 minutes on this topic, but the mystery around what exactly was going on in the heads of both (shall we say) "low quality" breakdancer "Raygun", and the collective heads of those who selected her, seems very deep.
I even saw a tweet by old blogger Mark Bahnisch criticising her from the Left (although it seems most of her defenders have been on that side):
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Further down he even said this:
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Anyway, it may well mean no breakdancing next Olympics, and I'm not going to shed a tear over that.
Trump falsely accuses Harris campaign of fabricated AI crowd photos
I mean, everything points to Putin, Xi and Kim just needing to say "we really think you're doing a great job as President, Donald - the best President there's ever been. As for that question about whether we did X, no of course not. We wouldn't lie to you." And Trump would go out and announce to the press that there's no way they did it, regardless of the evidence his own officials are waving in front of his face.
Update: the other story that should be being pressed harder in the media is Trump's helicopter story. It is looking very, very likely to be either a deliberation fabrication, or a result of a completely muddled memory. (The key element and reason for telling it, that Willie Brown told him some terrible things about Kamala Harris, looks especially invented.)
We all know how the press would treat it if it had been Biden telling it.
