Nationalism as done in Singapore

If I wasn't so busy at work lately, and the plane seats were a bit more certain, I would have headed off to Singapore to be there on its 60th anniversary National Day this Saturday.   

Instead, I will just watch the National Day Parade live on CNA via Youtube - and I would encourage anyone with a curiosity about the way nationalism and social unity can be "done right" to do the same.   I mean, I am generally leery of patriotism; but in the case of Singapore, it had to make a big effort from the start to ensure the multicultural society would work, and tying it to a patriotic appeal to take pride in making a poor tiny country rich, secure and safe has really worked.  

So, the National Day Parade (which I have watched in previous years) has elements of pure self soothing propaganda, about which I sometimes have a bit of a cringe laugh because it can be so unsubtle.  But mostly, I find myself deeply impressed, and quite often somewhat touched, by the intensity of the effort towards promoting unity, especially in the slickly produced songs and dance, which can feature a multicultural cast of scores of people, if not hundreds.  Perhaps you have to watch to understand.  Technically, my almost sentimental admiration for the country can't be because I was a Singaporean in a past live - I was here before it existed! 

The day ends with a very "you will be patriotic!" kind of thing:

SINGAPORE - The public warning system will sound at 8.19pm on Aug 9, as a signal for Singaporeans to recite the pledge and sing the National Anthem, wherever they may be on National Day.

The “all clear” signal will sound for 10 seconds, said the Singapore Civil Defence Force on Aug 6.

This marks the Majulah Moment at the end of the National Day Parade,which will take place at the Padang and Marina Bay 

Again, I find that a little bit funny, and a little bit impressive.

Such a shame I won't make it... 

 

     

News site decide events from 200 odd years ago are the headline

It was at the very top of The Guardians website this morning, but has since moved down the page.  It's still given a very large space, though:

When you read the main article, about a company started in 1824, it's not even coming up with anything new - it notes stories about atrocities that have appeared in a newspaper in 1922, about events about a hundred years before that!  

It ends with these examples of grievance mongering:

James Fitzgerald, a legal consultant for the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said companies had an obligation to confront the “evils of the past”.

“Just creeping along as though nothing happened is moral cowardice, particularly when it’s an enterprise that’s making money off dispossession,” he said.

“The more a company’s wealth is built on that sort of dispossession, I would have thought, the greater its obligation to take account of that as a decent corporate citizen in 2025.”....

The AACo spokesperson said the company had built “trusted relationships” with many traditional custodians across the properties managed. “We recognise their culture and deep connection to Country and work with them to ensure we engage respectfully,” they said....

Fitzgerald said the 1992 Mabo verdict, which recognised Indigenous peoples’ rights to their land, raised complex questions for Australian companies that had built their wealth on land taken from and cleared of Aboriginal people.

“If you keep pulling at the thread long enough, it implicates the entire basis of our sovereign state and economy,” he said. “We are all the beneficiaries of these actions in one way or another, whether as real property owners, shareholders or super fund members.”

 So, let's see - the company hasn't hidden anything, is respectful of the current "cultural custodians", and there are some academics and lawyer types making a living out of keeping the grievance alive...

As I have complained recently, such intense concentration on victim status in aboriginal advocacy is not a good way to move forward - and it irks me that The Guardian spends so much time promoting it.    

     

Hiroshima anniversary

It's fascinating, and makes me feel somewhat emotional, to read the first hand accounts of what it was like being on the Enola Gay when it bombed Hiroshima, 80 years ago.     The Washington Post provides a good service by publishing this.

Jobs figures explained

I'm sure I have mentioned this before, but the short explainer videos that the Wall Street Journal puts out now, often as a corrective to Trump and MAGA views, are actually pretty good (and non-partisan).   The latest one is about how it is an utter nonsense to blame the head of the bureau for jobs numbers that Trump didn't like: 

Something else to think about

 An interesting idea here:  check if there is any correlation between pre-space age "transients" caught on astronomical sky survey plates from Palomar observatory (in the period from 1949 to 1957), and nuclear tests and/or UFO sightings.

Seems there is, although I don't understand the statistical significance bits of the paper.   (Really, it would be good if researchers always explained that aspect in a clearer way for those of us who never studied statistics.) 

An article summarising the paper is here. 

I note that the transients are star like points of light; not streaks like satellites in low Earth orbit would make. 

I also note that other research thinks the transients are just faults in the emulsion.   But a secret government  organisation that doesn't want us to know the truth would tell us that, wouldn't they...!

It seems that the people who wrote the current paper have been out to prove something is odd about the transients for quite a while.    Mick West is very skeptical.   

I am too.   I have a dim memory from a UFO book - probably one of Hynek's - about a 50's or 60's sighting which started as apparently two star like satellites moving together, but then doing a very un-satelitte thing of starting to spin around each other.    I've always been curious if there were more sightings like that which went unrecorded...

More "about Gaza"

From the New York Times:

Hamas has consistently rejected Israel’s terms for ending the war throughout the negotiations. On Saturday, the group said in a statement that it would not disarm unless a Palestinian state was established, despite a call from Arab states last week for the group to do so.

The Israeli government opposes Palestinian statehood. On Sunday, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, visited the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, which Jews revere as the Temple Mount, long a tinderbox for Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Arab leaders denounced Mr. Ben-Gvir’s ascent to the site — during which he openly prayed — as a provocation.

“It’s important to convey from this place that we should immediately conquer Gaza, exercise our sovereignty there, and eliminate every last Hamas member,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said from the site, in a video shared by his office.

Doesn't the Hamas position on disarmament show that (well intentioned) Western nations calling for a recognition of the Palestinian state at this time are not helping?   While I understand the impulse to think that it helps show Israel does not have endorsement to do what it wants, it's hard to see the optics from Hamas's view as being other than "at last, the tide is turning in our favour, and we must hold out longer." 

A late Spielberg review

I finally got around to watching Steven Spielberg's last film - the critically well received semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans. 

I thought it was really good, and deserved a wider audience.   Clearly, it was intended a respectful take on the influence he came under from two very different parents, each with their own flaws.   (Both of them had died before this movie was made.)  

I had known enough about him to know before seeing it that most of the key parts of the film were true to life - he grew up mostly in Arizona, and was a precociously gifted child/teenage film maker, encouraged by both parents, but with the more artistic urges (by far!) coming from his eccentric mother, who is really the key character in the film.  I thought Michelle Williams was really outstanding in the role - playing it as pixie-ish but vulnerable and very flawed.   

I presume, though, that the film makes a case for Spielberg getting technical prowess, and perhaps stamina, in moviemaking from his intelligent father, who apparently was a bit of a workaholic.   

The danger with such a film is that the Spielberg character could have been portrayed in too self serving a fashion - but I think it manages to avoid that.   Sure, he's likeable throughout the film, but it didn't feel fake or "too good to be true" in any respect.   

This article is a good one for showing how true to life most of the film is - including the obvious care Spielberg took to make the actors look like the real-life counterparts.    

There was one funny part of the film (his first teenage girlfriend, with a sub-sexual infatuation with the image of Jesus) that I thought seemed so eccentric that it must be true.  But unfortunately, this is one aspect that has not been confirmed as such.   

Anyway, as a family drama that is not too heavy going, well acted, well made and overall very likeable, I do recommend it. 

 

Numbers, considered

 

You know, I have had a bit of a look around the MAGA infected parts of the internet, and seen very  little attempt to defend his immediate reaction to sack the woman in charge of the department providing the jobs numbers, because he saw conspiracy to hurt him simply because she was appointed under Biden.   

I actually think that this reaction is so much like that of a tin pot dictator that even many of his diehard supporters working in Right wing media think it's not a good look.   (Although, of course, there are no doubt thousands of conspiracy addled MAGA brains who will jump on any and all explanations given by their cult leader.)

 

 

About Gaza

Seems to me that two things can be true about Gaza:

*  there is genuine starvation happening on a widespread scale, as is evidenced by the hordes shown scrambling over each other on our TVs each night to get hold of food aid, and the reports of gangs hijacking some trucks and killing to control food.  (I was interested to hear an ABC journalist saying that Israel has admitted supporting some of the food raiding gangs, as they are seen as a competitor to Hamas.  I hadn't heard of that before, and truly it shows what an agent of chaos Israel has become.)   It just seems wildly improbable, and contrary to what all aid organisations are saying, for Israel's claim (that there is plenty of food, it's just not being distributed right by Hamas) to be true.

 * some of the evidence promulgated from within Gaza as proof of children starving to death is misleading.   Israel is complaining about this, but even before we heard from them, some of the images I had seen made me think "that degree of emaciation looks more like some other horrible form of illness, and why would a non starving looking adult standing next to the child not create the question 'what, have you not been passing on some of your food to that kid for the last 3 months or something?' " 

Hence, I think any sensible person should not get carried away with indignation about the cases of misleading photos - stuff like that is going to happen in PR wars, and it in no way counteracts the scenes of utter despair on a broader scale.   Have a look at this awful photo, for example:

 

It wouldn't look out of place in one of the climatic battles from the Lord of the Rings.  

The photo, by the way, is at the top of an opinion piece at the Washington Post which argues for something radical, but I think is the kind of radical thinking sorely needed:  that Egypt be effectively put in charge of reconstructing and controlling Gaza.

I mean, the wannabe state looks so utterly devastated, and the cost of rebuilding must be so horrendous, that I really can't see any point in reconstruction unless there is iron clad guarantee that it won't end up being destroyed again, ever, by the stupid terrorist adventurism of the likes of Hamas that led to the extreme punishment by Israel.   If no other Muslim countries are going to offer an alternative home to Palestinians (and, you know, sometimes I have wondered if Indonesia couldn't gift them a nice tropical island - they have thousands of them - that might end up twice as fertile as the unpleasant looking landscape of Gaza), then I don't see any point in anyone bearing the cost of rebuilding if it is not going to be permanent.

Here are extracts from the WAPO piece:

The only viable path to saving Gazans and stabilizing the Israeli-Palestinian arena is handing Egypt trusteeship over the Gaza Strip.

This is both a moral and a strategic necessity. Egypt is the only actor with the legitimacy, proximity and capacity to rescue Gaza from its current spiral and offer its people a life outside siege, war and despair. It is also the only party trusted enough by both Israel and large segments of the Palestinian population to serve as a custodial power.

Two parallel agreements could create the foundation for such an arrangement: one among Egypt, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and another between Egypt and Israel. These would secure the release of all hostages and establish a permanent ceasefire.

The Egyptian-Palestinian agreement would grant Egypt full administrative and security control over Gaza. Hamas would hand over its weapons to the Egyptian army and register all of its members with Egyptian security services. Egypt, in turn, would build a new Palestinian administration for Gaza, with a civil service and police force under Egyptian command. The Egyptian army would deploy throughout the territory to ensure security, end lawlessness and prevent the reconstitution of militant groups.

Simultaneously, a bilateral agreement between Egypt and Israel would formalize Israeli withdrawal and establish appropriate security arrangements, including a border coordination mechanism modeled on the existing Egyptian-Israeli arrangements in Sinai. The blockade would be lifted as security cooperation took shape and stability returned.

This framework would offer all parties a chance to win much while conceding little. It would enable Israel to restore security and eliminate the military threat posed by Hamas. Though transferring control of Gaza to Egypt might run counter to the ambitions of Israel’s most extreme factions, the majority of Israelis have no interest in Gaza beyond ensuring their own security. Egypt’s nearly five decades of security cooperation with Israel should provide sufficient reassurance for them.

For Hamas, this arrangement would allow disarmament without surrender. By handing its weapons to Egypt and not to its enemy, Hamas could claim it liberated Gaza from Israeli occupation, accepting a face-saving exit from its self-destructive cycle of resistance and reprisal. 

Sound fairly convincing to me... 

 

  

We need better tech billionaires

You know, I would have a bit more confidence in his predictions if it wasn't actually all about the money supposedly to be made by him:

Meta has spent billions of dollars to revamp its artificial intelligence strategy in recent months, including on a new team of researchers dedicated to creating a “superintelligent” A.I.

On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, told investors why the team would be worth its return on investment.

Superintelligence, which Mr. Zuckerberg defined as an A.I. model more powerful than the human brain, will improve “nearly every aspect of what we do,” he said on a call with investors. The A.I. will help Meta’s advertising business by improving its social media feed to keep users on its apps longer, which is already happening, he said. A.I. will also serve as a personal tool for users to create “a new era of individual empowerment,” he added.

The main way people will interact with superintelligence will be through Meta’s smart glasses, which have cameras and software that can shoot and process videos, Mr. Zuckerberg said. 

It's a little weird, isn't it, that we have one arm of AI researchers and advocates warning everyone that a disaster is coming;  and another arm (the one that stands to make lots and lots of money from it) telling us that it's going to mean we can all retire to the Bahamas (or Mars), or something, while superintelligent AI runs the world for us.

Isn't it hilarious that the Zuck also makes this claim:

“I think that if history is a guide, then an even more important role will be how superintelligence empowers people to be more creative, develop culture and communities, connect with each other, and lead more fulfilling lives,” he said. 

Is he just rehashing what he wrote for the Metaverse investors meeting all of (what?) 5 or 6 years ago? 

 

The stupidest waste of money

I had posted before about speculation that Trump's vanity project of accepting an ornate plane from Qatar to use as Air Force One would cost "billions" to retrofit to the required standards.

Now there is suspicion that the first round of funding for it is pushing one billion dollars:

Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where “black budgets” are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump’s pet project are inventive.

Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.

In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a “transfer” to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.)

Qatar’s defense minister and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the final memorandum of understanding a few weeks ago, paving the way for the renovation to begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. The document was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

Mr. Trump’s plane probably won’t fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the Qatari gift — improved with the latest communications and in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential library after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said. 

With the way anything being done by the Pentagon and defence contractors runs over budget and time, I would happily bet money that it will never be used as Air Force One, and it will count as pure wasted money for a yellow wannabe emperor with no clothes.

 

 

The last veterans

Here's an interesting article in the New York Times featuring a half dozen (I think) Japanese veterans of World War 2 who still have their marbles and appear to have active lives.  (As they could join the military as 15 or perhaps even 14 year olds, there are still about 790 veterans still around even though the 80 year anniversary of the end of the war is coming up.  And given Japanese longevity, I guess we might still have another 10 years or so before the last one dies.)   

It ends on a bit of a sad note:

While Mr. Kiyozumi once corresponded with a survivor of the American warship, he feels forgotten and alone. His wife died three decades ago; his best friend on the I-58 died in 2020. No one in his town asks about the war.

“Young people don’t know what we went through,” he said. “They are more interested in their smartphones.”

Nonetheless, as is usual with articles like these, one gets the impression that there's never a Japanese veteran who has been willing to defend the war as a worthwhile exercise.  The cultural turnaround from support for militaristic expansion overrunning neighbours viscously, to Asian peaceniks needing poking to being open to potentially getting involved in conflicts that are not directly self defence, is really remarkable.    

The correct headline would be "Our President is a lying, innumerate fantasist/BS artist"; but Republicans would cry bias, even though they know it is true.

In the Washington Post:

Trump’s imaginary numbers, from $1.99 gas to 1,500 percent price cuts

The president likes to cite specific numbers to bolster his claims. They are often wildly improbable — or just impossible.

President Donald Trump made a promise at a reception last week for Republican lawmakers that was as impossible as it was specific: He would drive down drug prices by as much as 1,500 percent — “numbers that are not even thought to be achievable,” he said.

A price cannot drop by more than 100 percent, but Trump went on to make several other precise but clearly false numerical claims. The cost of gasoline had fallen to $1.99 a gallon in five states, he said; according to AAA, it was over $3 in every state. Businesses had invested $16 trillion in America in the past four months, he added; the entire U.S. economy last year was worth less than $30 trillion.

Trump even congratulated Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas A. Collins for having an approval rating of 92 percent. In this polarized moment, it is unlikely any U.S. political figure enjoys a figure close to that, and the White House provided no source for the claim.

An unfortunate production of a good show

Having not heard anything about it, and not recognising any names who star in it, I wasn't interested in seeing the current staging of Jesus Christ Superstar at QPAC.  But then I got offered free tickets, so not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, off I went with my wife on Friday night.

It turned out that it was remarkable - for being what I consider the worst theatrical production I have ever seen at QPAC.   

It is, firstly, a curious hybrid of not quite a concert version of a show, and not quite a normal stage show.    So what that means is you get one set, with one (slightly) moving element, and hence it is up to the singers and dancers give a vague idea of where each scene is meant to be set, but in a very haphazard way.  And it also becomes unclear in this hybrid as to whether there is really meant to be acting as part of it, or not.   Essentially, it feels unacted, but they sometimes move around the stage interacting with people as if there is meant to be acting.  It's the worst of both worlds.  I would prefer it be one thing or the other - if all the songs are sung into stand up microphones, they could presumably deliver better performances.

Secondly, from the opening bars of heavy metal guitar, this is a very hard rock, rock performance - with most of the music coming from a couple of hard working synth players, by the looks.   Not my style of performance at all.   Sure, it's going to be hard to fit an orchestra in any stage show just for the ultimate song (as per the original album soundtrack), but going this way just made for loud with little nuance or enjoyment.

Thirdly, the singing is, often, very rock screechy.  And even the slower songs by Mary M had (I thought) annoying and odd phrasing like "I don't know how to [pause] love him".  She's Jimmy Barnes' daughter, apparently.  Don't care, didn't enjoy her singing.  Sometimes I thought the males singers were a little behind the tempo too.   But they get screechy loud at times, and some in the audience thought that was great.  (See below.)

And lastly, what I consider the biggest sin, for a musical that is just as notable for its clever  and sometimes witty lyrics as it is for the music, was that the loud rock style sound mix often obscured hearing the words clearly.  Almost anything sung in chorus was utterly indecipherable,  and even the lead males singers often (in the faster and louder songs) were not so clear.

And yet, at the end, half of the audience gave a standing ovation.   (It was an odd audience - mostly older people and few younger in the mix.   Must be some sort of thirst in them to again hear metal guitar with quasi Jimmy Barnes' singing since there were last in a pub in the 70's or early 80's.)

Fortunately, I see that I am not the only person who had big problems with the show.  From Reddit:

I am a huge Jesus Christ Superstar fan (this was my fourth time seeing it at different venues including West End in London) and I was incredibly disappointed! I felt that this production had one purpose only - to showcase the singers rather than the singing. It was so loud (screeching is the word I would use!) that it was hard to hear the vocals and I found Jesus a particularly high-pitched squealer. It was like he was trying to show how strong his voice was rather than have us enjoy the music. I thought Mahlia Barnes was just there as a token singer as there was no acting which was disappointing - to the extend that at one point she stood in front of the stage singing to a microphone - it may as well have been a Mahlia Barnes concert rather than a play. She definitely tried to "make it her own" by changing how it is usually sung, holding notes at places that are usually not held etc (i.e. show off her vocals rather than being authentic to the play and it's music). The costumes were like brown rags (they are usually really "rockstar" and fun) and with only one set the whole show was a disappointment. I left half way through (as did many people). I will definitely not be recommending this to anyone!

I do agree!   

It makes it very unfortunate given that I hadn't heard the soundtrack for decades, and forgotten some of the songs and much of the lyrics, which (as I say) are unusually good.   Made me feel like seeing a good production, or perhaps watching the very 70's era movie (which I saw in the cinema with my father.  Surprisingly, as a conservative Catholic, he took it quite well.)

It also reminded me how, in a Christian group I used to go to in the early years of high school, they once used the show's title song as an intro to talking seriously about "what the Bible says Jesus really said about himself."   It was taken as a quite serious minded speculation - the Gospel according to Judas, as perhaps Lloyd Webber and Rice said themselves?   And I think that remains a valid take.   

The Guardian busy promoting victimhood

While I like the Guardian generally for its political reporting, there's no doubt at all that it likes to run indigenous victimhood stories, sometimes where the racial element is completely unproved.

Hence I find its current series "into the maternal health and infant removal crisis facing First Nations women in Australia" very annoying and actual harmful.

Today's instalment:  an aboriginal mother lost her baby to poorly handled pre-eclampsia, and reading the account, I find it a bit hard to judge if her GP or the local (small) hospital was mainly at fault.  

But here's the kicker:

Grace says she is unable to say if her Aboriginal heritage was a factor but strongly believes her concern that something was wrong was dismissed by both local doctors and the hospital. She sued NSW Health over the incident and the department settled without prejudice and with no admissions of liability.

Her lawyer, Linda Crawford, a former midwife who now works for Catherine Henry Lawyers, claims Grace was let down by the medical system.

So, let's just run with a hunch that it was because she was aboriginal?   

I have become increasingly worried over the last decade or so that aboriginal advocacy has become completely overrun with promoting within its own community a victimhood mentality - and in the long run, putting too much emphasis in that direction is not helpful.  (That's not to say that advocacy is never going to be talking about needs - obviously that's why it exists at all.   But I think the older group of advocates were not as victimhood focused as the new, younger - and often purely urban and academic - advocacy voices.)      

Will he, or won't he (be hurt by acting like he definitely has something to hide)

There are already plenty of Trump cultists lining up to re-affirm their undying allegiance to their yellow cult leader.   Truth be told, I reckon ageing single men in the Trump cult like (ugh) Catturd would probably say in private (but not openly) "what adult man hasn't looked at some hot 16 year girl and wished he could bed her?  So sure, if he did that he was just being a red blooded man."   

Someone writing in the New York Times today (from a "Catholic literary journal" - presumably with a small readership!) argues that the Epstein story will go away soon enough, arguing (I think) about the endless malleability of conspiracy stories;  but I am not so sure.

I think that the Trump turnaround (and betrayal of his conspiracy base) is a serious personal dent to their credibility that is hard to come back from.

Of course, the MAGA cult being what it is, there has been a crazy diversionary attempt, swallowed whole and immediately with the zero comprehension that it typical of a cult, from nutcase Tulsi Gabbard (who has such low self regard she won't resign even when her boss tells everyone she's wrong and - impliedly - gullible for believing her own advisers) that PROVES Obama committed TREASON (when the very documents she cites show nothing of the sort.)   

There is really no reasoning with a conspiracy cult on matters like that - but I think it can hurt their faith in their leader when he's the one telling them that one of their core conspiracies, which he encouraged for years, was always a nothingburger and they've been wasting their time thinking about it.  

 

 

Monkish behaviour

Good to see it's not only Christian clergy who get into trouble, I guess!:

The disappearance of a respected monk from his Buddhist temple in central Bangkok has revealed a sex scandal that has rocked Thailand, with allegations of blackmail, lavish gifts and a string of dismissals raising questions about the money and power enjoyed by the country’s orange-robed clergy.

Investigations into the whereabouts of senior monk Phra Thep Wachirapamok unexpectedly led police to a woman who the police suspect conducted intimate relationships with several senior monks, and then blackmailed them to keep the liaisons quiet.

When police searched her home this month they found mobile phones that reportedly contained tens of thousands of compromising photos and videos of the missing monk, and several other senior Buddhist figures. Police also tracked her finances, which they said showed links to temples.

“We checked her financial trail and found that it involves many temples,”
Jaroonkiat Pankaew, from the Thai police’s central investigation bureau told a press briefing on Tuesday. “After we seized her mobile, we checked and found that there are several monks involved, and several [video] clips and Line chats,” he added, referring to the popular messaging app.

Phra Thep Wachirapamok has not been seen since he left the temple and no charges have been laid over his disappearance. But the woman, Wilawan Emsawat, was arrested on Tuesday, and has been charged with extortion, money laundering and receiving stolen goods.

The amount of money involved is really significant:

...in an interview with Thai media aired on Wednesday, she admitted to having relationships with two monks and a religious professor. Wilawan also said she received extravagant gifts, including a Mercedes-Benz SLK200 and “millions” of baht, in the form of bank transfers and a personal bank card. She expressed guilt over the relationships, saying she had fallen in love.

Police said that about 385 million baht ($11.9m) had been deposited into Wilawan’s bank accounts in the past three years. In a separate interview, she said she had given money to another monk she was dating.

Given that (I assume) the monks always dress like monks, I wonder how and where they find the privacy for such love affairs.   I mean, having a night in a motel and having a woman come to the door is going to be kind of obvious?   

Anyway, scandalous behaviour of monks in that country seem to have been prominent for many a decade now:

Newspapers in the 1990s were filled with stories of monastic scandals. There were countless reports of sexual misconduct, drinking, gambling, stealing from temple bank accounts, using and selling drugs, and even murder. Now, in the age of social media, these scandals are even more widely publicized. Each time another scandal goes public, Thai lay Buddhists question the role of monks in society as monks themselves consider their own relationship to the sangha.

Parallels to the mistrust of the Catholic priesthood in the United States are instructive. The widely reported pedophile priest scandal has resulted in fewer ordinations and more “priestless parishes.” The current birth rate in Thailand is 1.51 children per mother, even lower than China. Each year there will be fewer and fewer boys who will reach the age of ordination. Parents must decide if they want their son, and it is usually their only son, to pursue the monastic path. These scandals and their amplification through social media mean that having one’s son ordained as a monk is not as prestigious, or as safe, as it once was. Parents may hesitate to entrust the care of their sons to monks whose reputation may not be exemplary. 

Sounds a very bad idea

From The Guardian, the go to paper if you want sympathetic treatment for stories of illicit drug use, especially if it's got a new-agey indigenous connection:

Is it safe to use magic mushrooms while pregnant? One woman’s quest raises questions 

It's obvious, isn't it, that you're not going to know the effect of the children for (perhaps) decades; and unreliable records on the dose taken by the mother is going to further confound proper research.

Big of him...

A really bad idea

The Guardian has run an article or two before about the rise of choking as a more-or-less part of sexual play, and with this latest one, it really does seem to be a thing worth publicising for how stupid an idea it is:

‘There is no safe way to do it’: the rapid rise and horrifying risks of choking during sex

Now thought to be the second most common cause of stroke in women under 40, it can also lead to difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, memory problems, depression, anxiety and miscarriage. How has this extreme practice been normalised? 

Further down:

When it comes to prevalence, UK data is patchy. A survey by the Institute for Addressing Strangulation, established with Home Office funding in 2022, after strangulation became a standalone offence, found over a third of 16 to 34-year-olds had experienced this, compared with 16% of 35 to 54-year-olds and 3% of those 55 and above. “Larger academic studies of college students in the US and Australia put it at much higher,” says Meyrick. US research found that 64% of female college students had been choked during sex. In contrast, data on previous generations, collected between 2006 and 2015, found that most college students didn’t include choking when listing rough sexual behaviour (slapping, being pinned down or tied up were all cited) and, overall, choking/strangulation was reported as occurring infrequently. “It has become normalised practice among younger people and not viewed as problematic,” says Meyrick, “and most older people have no idea.” 

 And here's the thing:

It has become so standard among young people that one recent council-funded sex education presentation for Welsh secondary schoolchildren included “safe” choking advice such as: “It is never OK to start choking someone without asking them first …” and: “Consent should also happen every time sexual choking is an option, not just the first time.” When the presentation was made public, Fiona Mackenzie, the founder of campaigning group We Can’t Consent to This (WCCTT), was “absolutely furious but not at all surprised”....

The Domestic Abuse Act of 2021 clarified that a person cannot consent to being harmed for the purpose of sexual gratification and also made non-fatal strangulation a specific criminal offence. Before that, it fell under general offences such as battery, the mildest assault possible. “The major win for us is that [when women are] subjected to a non-fatal or a fatal assault during sex, there will be a much better response from the criminal justice system,” says Mackenzie. “There have been several cases since where the men have been prosecuted and convicted for murder by juries and given long sentences.”

On the second aspect, though – the normalisation of strangulation during sex – Mackenzie believes the situation has only worsened. “I’d hoped that lots of other charities and sex educators, the government and academics would get behind it, but instead what we’ve got is this completely mad idea that we can somehow help women to keep having violent sex but in a safer way. Maybe in a hi-vis jacket?”