Paganism re-visited

In a conversation over some craft beer last weekend, the topic of pagan practices being pretty ugly came up briefly, specifically this practice (referring here to Vikings, but I think the death of chieftains in other societies might have led to this to):

A man couldn’t marry his concubine, thus his wife didn’t feel threatened by her. They all lived together in the same household. The most powerful men among the Vikings owned sex slaves. The life of sex slaves was hard.

When a chieftain died, his men had sex with the sex slave to express love for their deceased leader. Afterwards, they killed the poor woman and cremated her together with her master. She would serve him also in the afterlife.

"...to express love for their deceased leader"!   That seems to be putting spin on the practice, to put it mildly.

Another site notes that pre-Christian Vikings took the idea of a male dominance in sex very seriously:

Calling a man by any term which suggested he played the ‘passive’ or ‘feminine’ part in homosexual sex was considered an insult so severe that the person who had been insulted had the right to avenge it in combat. Just the insult itself might be enough to get a man outlawed.

There is no apparent equivalent derogatory term for a man who played the ‘active’ part in homosexual sex. Indeed in ‘Guðmundar saga dýra’ Guðmundar plans to rape a male captive in order to break his spirit. This reflects badly on the slave, but not on the rapist, who is merely demonstrating his manliness.

Both castration and rape of defeated foes was seen as a good way of making them more effeminate, and therefore easier to control.

In this context – where the penetrator is regarded as perfectly normal and admirable, but to be the one being penetrated is to be shamed, broken, treated as a slave and ridiculed thenceforth as unmanly – it’s hard to imagine many m/m relationships existing as between equals.

From yet another article, I don't think I have heard before about men being the specific victims of sacrificial rites led by effeminate priests:

From Saxo Grammaticus, a 12th Century Christian chronicler, comes the information that the god Freyr was served by gender-variant male priests who displayed feminized behaviour and employed bells, which were considered ‘unmanly.’ They apparently enacted a symbolic sacred marriage in order to “ensure the divine fruitfulness of the season.” A ritual which took place every nine years, and consisted of the sacrifice of nine males of every species (including humans) to Freyr, who was worshipped as an erect phallus. The Priests of Freyr also performed shape shifting rites with boar masks.The ergi priests who practiced seidr also performed tasks usually associated with women, such as weaving and childrearing. The quality of their voices was was referred to as seid laeti, possibly indicating that some of them were castrati. Seidrmen were clearly differentiated from men who might occasionally indulge in same-sex relations & take the active role.The key theme here is that in surrendering themselves to passive intercourse, the ergi became a channel for the divine.

I wonder - how did one avoid becoming part of the 9 year festival?

And I can't say I know about Freyr, so here we go:

Freyr (pronounced “FREY-ur;” Old Norse Freyr, “Lord;” sometimes anglicized as “Frey”) is a god who belongs to the Vanir tribe of deities. He’s also an honorary member of the other tribe of Norse gods, the Aesir, having arrived in their fortress, Asgard, as a hostage at the closing of the Aesir-Vanir War.

Freyr was one of the most widely and passionately venerated divinities amongst the heathen Norse and other Germanic peoples. One Old Norse poem calls him “the foremost of the gods” and “hated by none.”^[1] The reasons for this aren’t hard to understand; their well-being and prosperity depended on his benevolence, which particularly manifested itself in sexual and ecological fertility, bountiful harvests, wealth, and peace. His role in providing health and abundance was often symbolized by his fylgja, the boar Gullinborsti (“Golden-Bristled”),^[2] and by his enormous, erect phallus.^[3]

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Freyr was a frequent recipient of sacrifices at various occasions, such as the blessing of a wedding^[4] or the celebration of a harvest. During harvest festivals, the sacrifice traditionally took the form of his favored animal, the boar.^[5]

This drawing of him (thankfully modest) is a popular one at several site:

 Yet a visit from the priests of Freyr was not always a worry:

We know from medieval Icelandic sources that priestesses and/or priests of Freyr traveled throughout the country on a chariot which contained a statue of the god.^[12] The significance of such processions is described by the Roman historian Tacitus, who vividly depicts the processions connected with the early Germanic goddess Nerthus, whose name is the Proto-Germanic form of the name of Freyr’s father Njord. When the chariot reached a village or town, the people laid down their arms and “every iron object” and enjoyed a period of peace and joyful festivities, reveling in the deity’s kind presence.^[13] Such processions and celebrations appear to have been a common feature of the worship of the deities the Norse called the Vanir from at least as far back as the first century CE through the Viking Age. 

Back to the human sacrifice story, from another site:

Another Freyr-related sacrifice is the Frøsblot ("Frø-sacrifice", with Frø being another name for Freyr) as recorded by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar who lived c. 1150-1220 CE. In Uppsala, Sweden, a certain Haddingus is said to have instituted a yearly sacrifice to Freyr – the Frøsblot - as a way of atonement to the god, something seemingly linked to the great sacrifice at Uppsala that is supposed to have happened every nine years.

There may indeed have been a temple at Uppsala, as a famous account – based on hearsay but usually considered reasonably to moderately authentic – written by Adam of Bremen c. 1070 CE argues. Adam writes of a big, golden temple with statues of Thor, Odin, and Fricco (synonymous with Freyr), the latter adorned with an "immense phallus" (4). Every nine years, men, horses and dogs were allegedly sacrificed, their bodies swinging from trees in the sacred grove. The archaeological record does not support the existence of a temple, although there are other buildings among which a large hall have been found dating to between the 3rd and 10th centuries CE.

 Anyhow - I'm rather glad to have avoided the era.    

As I said on Saturday,  the most pleasing aspect of Christianity is that it's a religion that displaced the extremely widespread belief* in the need for continual animal or human blood sacrifice - God partook in the ultimate (self) sacrifice, and doesn't require fresh animal (or human) sacrifice any more.   Which is a kind of relief, in a practical sense.    

*  I was even surprised to read this in Journey to the West.  The Monkey King does this:

One day he instructed his four Stalwart Generals to arrange a feast for the six other kings. Oxen and horses were slaughtered, sacrifices were made to Heaven and Earth, and the assembled monsters danced, sang, and drank themselves blotto.

Chinese babies

Not that I want to upset our (slightly delayed) future Overlords, but Chinese sensitivity to imagined  historical slights is getting out of hand.  They're almost as whiny as transgender folk are towards JK Rowling (or, to be fair, as Donald Trump on the failure of people outside of his cult to also praise him):  

South Korean boyband BTS is facing a barrage of criticism in China after its leader made remarks about the Korean War and several big-name brands, including Samsung, have apparently distanced themselves from the K-pop group amid the uproar.

The controversy is the latest example of the political landmines lying in wait for big brands in China, the world's second-largest economy.

The leader of BTS, known by the initials RM, upset many people in China in a speech when the band received an award from a US-based organisation for their contribution to South Korea-US relations.

RM invoked a "history of pain" shared between South Korea and the United States and, referring to the 1950-53 Korean War, spoke of "sacrifices of countless men and women".

The war pitted South Korean and US forces against those from North Korea and China.

The comments touched off heated debate on social media in China.

"They should not make any money from China," one angry user said on the Weibo platform, referring to BTS.

"If you want to make money from Chinese fans you have to consider Chinese feelings."

Posts featuring Samsung's BTS special edition smartphones and earphones disappeared from Chinese e-commerce platforms Tmall and JD.com as the controversy swirled.

I noticed the band and their somewhat catchy song Dynamite featuring in a Samsung ad here.   They need to retire soon, or this level of celebrity is going to eat them up, in the way it usually does.

 

Very unfortunate

It's pretty rare to see significant construction accidents in Australia lately, it seems; and this one seems particularly embarrassing given where it happened.  (Not that, I presume, the school or its graduates necessarily had much to do with it, I suppose):

At least one person is believed to be dead and several injured after a building under construction at Curtin University collapsed after midday WA time on Tuesday.

The construction site at Curtin’s Bentley campus has been closed, and police, firefighters and ambulance officers rushed to the scene after part of the building collapsed at around 12.30pm....

The five-storey building under construction is part of Curtin’s new facility called Exchange, and features a glass courtyard as part of the new School of Design and the Built Environment. It was due for completion in 2021.

Weird Japanese tomb to be excavated?

From Japan Times:

The Imperial Household Agency is considering excavating Daisen Kofun in Osaka Prefecture, the country’s largest ancient burial mound, in a conservation project that could begin around next fall, sources close to the plan said Saturday.

The tomb mound in Sakai, dating back to around the middle of the 5th century, is under control of the agency as the mausoleum of Emperor Nintoku, while academic debate continues over who was actually buried there.

If the planned re-excavation project is carried out, it would be the first digging since an ancient burial complex comprising 49 tombs including Daisen Kofun was added to the World Heritage list in 2019, the sources said.

Archaeologists and historians hope the envisioned research on the tomb mound will shed light on its structure, many aspects of which remain a mystery.

I posted about this tomb about a year ago, as I hadn't previously realised they existed.   A reminder:

 

  

Some good context on "court packing"

I learnt stuff from this column at CNN. 

Another cult noted

I have to say, the New York Times Op-docs videos on Youtube are very good.  Very artfully made, sometimes a bit trivial but still extremely watchable.  Here's one I saw recently: 

And here's a creepy one about kids growing up in the narco zone of Mexico: 

There's a lot more that look interesting, but I haven't watched many yet.

Corn fritters for future reference

I love when it's cheap, fresh corn season, and over the last couple of years I've tried making corn fritters a couple of times, with mixed results.   I tried again last night, basically using this recipe except just using self raising flour instead of plain with baking soda.  I probably used more than that amount of coriander, too, but it still working out fine.   The amount of salt for this quantity seemed just right, too.  (Working out the right amount of salt by taste can be tricky.)

I'll copy the key parts of the recipe here: 

For the fritters:

For dinner, we ate them with some hot smoked salmon on top (although cold smoked salmon would be fine too) and some grilled asparagus too.  Nice.

Exactly. Why doesn't Chas Licciardello realise this?

I refer to cheery Chas on Planet America who keeps saying Biden is playing this wrong.  

Maybe something good for my ageing body?

Oh look, maybe body builders have stumbled onto something good.  From Science last month:

A dietary supplement bodybuilders use to bulk up may have a more sweeping health benefit: Staving off the ravages of old age. Mice given the substance—alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG)—were healthier as they aged, and females lived longer than mice not on the supplement.

Other compounds, like the antiaging drug rapamycin and the diabetes treatment metformin, have shown similar effects in mouse experiments. But AKG is naturally made by mice and by our own bodies, and it is already considered safe to consume by regulators.

“The big thing about this is that its safety profile is so good,” says University of North Dakota aging researcher Holly Brown-Borg, who was not involved with the study. “It has potential and should be explored further, for sure.”

AKG is part of the metabolic cycle that our cells use to make energy from food. In addition to its use by bodybuilders, doctors sometimes treat osteoporosis and kidney disease with the supplement.

The molecule grabbed attention as a possible antiaging treatment in 2014, when researchers reported AKG could extend life span by more than 50% in tiny Caenorhabditis elegans worms. That’s on par with a low-calorie diet, which has been shown to promote healthy aging, but is hard for most people to stick with. Other groups later showed life span improvements from AKG in fruit flies.

In the new study, Gordon Lithgow and Brian Kennedy of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and colleagues turned to mammals. They gave groups of 18-month-old mice (about age 55 in human years) the equivalent of 2% of their daily chow as AKG until they died, or for up to 21 months. AKG levels in blood gradually drop with age, and the scientists’ aim was to restore levels to those seen in young animals.

Some differences jumped out within a few months: “They looked much blacker, shinier, and younger” than control mice, says Azar Asadi Shahmirzadi, a postdoc at the Buck Institute who did the experiments as a graduate student. In addition, the AKG-fed mice scored an average of more than 40% better on tests of “frailty,” as measured by 31 physiological attributes including hair color, hearing, walking gait, and grip strength. And female mice lived a median of 8% to 20% longer after AKG treatment began than control mice, the group reports today in Cell Metabolism.

The AKG-eating mice did not perform better on tests of heart function or treadmill endurance, however, and the tests did not include cognitive performance.

I see it is readily available, although in variations that are confusing.

Here's some reference to a possibly dubious claim by a certain company selling the supplement to oldies under the brand name Rejuvant.    Only $150 for a 30 day supply(!).   I might have to pass on that one.

 

 

It might be slightly exaggerated...

...but this Twitter commentary on how a Trump interview on Hannity went a short time ago is pretty amusing:

 

What he said...

 And also, what she said:

Extremely obvious sexism and misogyny

It's impossible to read the conservative reactions on Twitter and the net to Kamala Harris's debate performance without seeing screamingly obvious sexism and misogyny.

From Trump calling her a "monster", to Fox News calling her "cringeworthy", to (of course I went there) Australia's pathetic Trump base at Catallaxy saying that that her very voice was unbearable and making "jokes" about her and fellatio.

It is simply an inexplicable overreaction without factoring in white, older male sexism and misogyny - the same group in which Trump still has a majority of support, at least if they low education.   

I watched a bit of her performance on Youtube and I find her inoffensive.   I will make allowances for people letting political partisanship read things into voice and mannerism that are not really there (or not so obvious, at least, to the other side), but as I say, in this case, the conservative reaction is just over the top and the reason for it transparent.

By the way:   why are journalists buying into the whole Republican line that it's really bad if Biden and Harris don't explain clearly their intention regarding "court packing"?   As someone said on Twitter, what the Republicans are doing (or trying to do - it would be hilarious if COVID casualties prevent them from having a quorum to confirm Coney Barrett before the election) is a form of deeply unethical "court packing" anyway;  and I don't see that anyone who would be inclined to vote Democrat would really care if Biden kept his cards hidden on what his party might try to do re court numbers in future.

Update:  Ahem.

 

An unrelated thing

Seeking diversity of topics for this blog, I just had a scroll through this year's Archives of Sexual Behaviour.   As you do.   I see that someone has studied something I had noticed in about 1985 when sharing an office with a gay guy who could not, at the time, be openly gay and keep his job.   Everyone assumed, correctly, that he was gay anyway - they just didn't say it openly at the workplace.  Now, I have mentioned this story before, but it became clear to me that the "gay voice" became much more distinct when he took a call from one of his friends.  I told him, as it was not exactly in his interest for his sexuality to be too widely known in the organisation, and he honestly did not realise he was doing so.   Anyway, onto the abstract:

Listeners rely on vocal features when guessing others’ sexual orientation. What is less clear is whether speakers modulate their voice to emphasize or to conceal their sexual orientation. We hypothesized that gay individuals adapt their voices to the social context, either emphasizing or disguising their sexual orientation. In Study 1 (n = 20 speakers, n = 383 Italian listeners and n = 373 British listeners), using a simulated conversation paradigm, we found that gay speakers modulated their voices depending on the interlocutor, sounding more gay when speaking to a person with whom they have had an easy (vs. difficult or no) coming out. Although straight speakers were always clearly perceived as heterosexual, their voice perception also varied depending on the interlocutor. Study 2 (n = 14 speakers and n = 309 listeners), comparing the voices of young YouTubers before and after their public coming out, showed a voice modulation as a function of coming out. The voices of gay YouTubers sounded more gay after coming out, whereas those of age-matched straight control male speakers sounded increasingly heterosexual over time. Combining experimental and archival methods, this research suggests that gay speakers modulate their voices flexibly depending on their relation with the interlocutor and as a consequence of their public coming out.

So, evidence after all of these years that it was not just my imagination.

A VP debate

Didn't see any of it, but seems to me that Harris supporters think she won, and Pence supporters think he did.   (Actually, in the routine verbal imagery of violent dominance that the Right loves to use now - he "crushed" or "smashed" her in the debate.   I think they get a particular thrill when it's a woman they are saying it about.)   No reason to think it was other than a sort of draw then?  

Then again, probably not, because from comments around the place, it seems Pence was a bit of an interrupter and ignored the time rules on a more minor scale than Trump but in a context in which it looks like he wanted to walk over women.   Given Trump's unpopularity with women, that should have been something to avoid.  

The biggest scandal that may come out of it would be if it turns out his pink eye really was a sign of a COVID infection.   It would not be too surprising if this happens, and damaging to the Trump brand.  

I also note that, as someone reminded us on Twitter, the Lefties watching thought the fly that was attracted to Pence's head was hilarious and a great metaphor; but if it had been the other way around, there would have genuinely been Trump supporters talking on social media about how it was a sign she was a demon or in league with them.   [The tweet reminded us that Alex Jones had claimed this when a fly briefly alighted on Hilary Clinton in 2016.   The nuttiness of the Right has only increased since then.]

Some appalling social media news

Noticed this at Gulf News:

Manila: Online misinformation is leaching out from cheap mobile phones and free Facebook plans used by millions in the Philippines, convincing many to reject vaccinations for polio and other deadly diseases.

Childhood immunisation rates have plummeted in the country - from 87 per cent in 2014 to 68 per cent - resulting in a measles epidemic and the reemergence of polio last year.

A highly politicised campaign that led to the withdrawal of dengue vaccine Dengvaxia in 2017 is widely seen as one of the main drivers of the fall.

But health experts also point to an explosion of vaccination-related misinformation that has undermined confidence in all types of immunisations.

In the northern city of Tarlac, government nurse Reeza Patriarca watched with horror the impacts of Facebook posts that falsely claimed five people had died after receiving an unspecified vaccination.

The problem is the popularity of Facebook in the country, even with the poor:

Most of the Philippines' 73 million internet users have a Facebook account, according to Britain-based media consultancy We Are Social.

Many poorer Filipinos rely on Facebook's Free Basics plan to use the internet, trapping them in the social media giant's information bubble.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended the service, saying it gives people who could not otherwise afford it an opportunity to use the internet.

Posts about President Rodrigo Duterte flooded Facebook in 2016 and were seen as playing a key role in his election victory - and officials say the site has been a boon for anti-vaxxer groups too.

Wilda Silva, the health department's immunisation programme manager, said fake news about vaccines "travels faster and wider than correct information".

 

 

Some cultural education for you

I should know more than the average Australian about what (some) Japanese don't like about their own culture, but this list by a young Japanese guy (who I think went to college in America) has some amusing surprises in it:  

Wishing him ill

Forgot to mention on the weekend, but this Vox piece:

Is it immoral if you feel schadenfreude about Trump’s Covid-19? 

is really good.  After considering what some famous philosophers have said on the topic, it ends on this consideration:

That said, what if someone wishes for Trump to die, not out of pure punitiveness, but out of a desire for Americans to get a new president who that person believes would save many lives?

 Whether you think this is ethically acceptable depends a lot on your preexisting moral commitments. Specifically, you’ll answer differently depending on which school of ethics you gravitate toward: utilitarianism, deontology, or virtue ethics. Here’s a brief (and admittedly oversimplified) breakdown.

If you’re a utilitarian, you might argue this is a perfectly acceptable wish because something is moral if it produces good consequences — and having a president who doesn’t bungle a national pandemic response would prevent a lot of death, which is clearly a good consequence.

But if you’re a deontologist (also known as a Kantian), then you’d argue this is an unacceptable wish because something is moral if it’s fulfilling your duty to others and immoral if it’s not. Immanuel Kant famously said we have a duty always to treat human beings as ends in themselves, not means to our ends. Wishing death upon someone — even if it’s to save many more people from death — is treating that someone as a means.

A virtue ethicist would likely agree with the deontologist that wishing death on someone is unacceptable, but for a somewhat different reason: By doing so, you’re cultivating in yourself a negative trait, rather than a virtuous trait like empathy. Even if it doesn’t actually harm anybody else (wishes are different from actions, after all), it harms you as a moral being, potentially chipping away at your capacity for empathy in the long term.

The virtue ethicist would probably want to remind us that it is perfectly possible to wish for the alleviation of suffering in a human being who has tested positive for a lethal pathogen, even if we happen to deeply dislike that human being. It is possible to wish for that human being’s recovery even if we feel a simultaneous sense of superiority, of vulnerability, of desperation to see justice in our world — and even if we think the world would be better off if that person didn’t recover.

If we examine what’s under the hood of our schadenfreude and don’t like what we see, it’s worth remembering that we have this option at our disposal.

Despite my general sympathy towards Kantian and virtue ethics, I'm leaning towards utilitarianism on this one.

Just stop it, Patricia

Patricia Karvelas is quite OK as a broadcaster on the ABC, even though her evening slot means I don't hear all that much of her show.   But I have to say, her recent daily tweeting of her radio studio dancing really strikes me as gratingly undignified and more becoming of a "look at me" teenager on social media than a mature adult.   [This is today's example.]  I wish she would stop it.

 

Netflix movie review time

Last weekend - saw the recent Netflix Tom Holland/Robert Pattinson vehicle The Devil All the Time.

First:  how does Tom Holland manage to act American so convincingly?  He's the best thing about the movie, by far.

But secondly and more importantly:  what a strange story, and not in a good way.  Basically, it's a multi-generational tale of psycho/socio-pathic preachers (as well as one or two nutty ordinary believers) which plays like a Southern Gothic written by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins on a drunken weekend tag team effort to come up with the most evil and hypocritical evangelicals they could imagine.   The result is too patently over the top, and lacks an overall narrative credibility, even if on a scene by scene basis, the acting is fine and it is nicely directed.   

A very odd effort.

 

 

 

Kevin has a point

You all know I had no time for Rudd as a politician, but he really has a point here:

 

Typical of Trump supporters

They support an idiot, and they also claim victim status for supporting an idiot.  

Now, I don't know for sure that this anti-masker is a Trump supporter, but what are the chances?:

 

As I mentioned yesterday: Trump supporters are the dumbest people on the planet

And this:

And this:

And this:

That Lahren person is a Fox News host, apparently.   I find it absolutely hilarious when blond conservative women act as if they find Don Trump's version of masculinity attractive, and even funnier when misogynistic men make it clear they admire Trump for having had sex with lots of women, while sympathising with his whiny "everyone is mean to me in the Fake News and Deep State" act.   

In little noticed climate change news...

A rather unlikely allegation

Sinclair Davidson seems very excited by the prospect that a claim by an Italian newspaper that a (now) ex-Cardinal transferred more than a million dollars to Australia for the purposes of paying off witnesses (or just one witness?) to give evidence against his internal enemy Pell might be true.

Yet even some of his culture war brainwashed and dumbed down by "conservative" media followers are wondering how it would be done, exactly.  

Because, yeah - bribing witnesses from afar is more than likely going to involve quite a few people in a chain, with all of them aware of how sensationally corrupt and damaging to them and the Church such a bribe would be.  And we're not talking, say, life-long mafia members who have always lived off corruption, either.  There would, it would be virtually guaranteed, be people involved who were formerly at no risk of ever being convicted of a crime who would have to have decided that it was worth the risk because they really, really dislike Pell.  (Or who were willing to take a piece of the money along the way - but again, if you're not routinely corrupt, you don't usually turn corrupt overnight.)

I therefore strongly suspect the allegation will come to nothing (or nothing serious.)   As I have said before, Sinclair's excitability factor over dubious claims means any barrister should always reject him during jury selection.   

PS:  it is true that a Cardinal getting sacked is a rare event; but there has been suspicion of financial corruption around this one for years, it seems.

Just your average personality based death cult

You know what I'm talking about:

There is much speculation that this (and his series of ALL CAPITALS tweets yesterday) are due to a steroid high - but of course, there is no way Trump will ever admit that, even if true.

The other obvious things out of this whole episode:

*   how do so many dishonest, dubious quality doctors find their way into being his personal physician, or in important roles?   Do they find him, or he find them, so to speak?

*   there is a strong and not unreasonable suspicion that Trump may have had a positive test before the debate [update:  perhaps more likely, was already infected and contagious, even if he didn't have a positive test].  Surely the exact timing of his testing regime last week will leak soon if it is indeed true.

*   Trump's reaction is readily explained by chronic narcissistic personality disorder:   because he might be over the worst, and because he had it, he thinks he is now the most knowledgeable person around on the topic, and that if he can beat it, people shouldn't fear it.    Watching such poisonous and policy dangerous narcissism should, by any normal person's standards, be stomach churning.  But American is suffering from an evidence free personality cult by the dumbest cult leader who has ever ended up heading a cult.   So there is no reasoning with his base.

* It is tempting every day to just do post after post with the title 

TRUMP SUPPORTERS ARE THE DUMBEST PEOPLE ON THE PLANET

because the evidence for it is just so overwhelming.

The secret service will enjoy dragging him out of the White House

This is, of course, in reference to his pathetic decision to get his daily narcissism fix by making his guardians drive him past his cult tragics.

Update:

Ha! 

That's some delay

Googling Steven Spielberg news:

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, fans will have to wait to see Steven Spielberg's new West Side Story film. Originally scheduled to hit theaters on December 18, Variety reports that the movie musical will now be released on December 10, 2021.

This is my least anticipated Spielberg film for many a year.  I'll still see it, though.

Trump and theology

My daughter made the claim the other day that Donald Trump's failure to come down with COVID strikes her as proof that God can't exist.  With news like this, her case is getting stronger, I'm afraid:

 Update:  as God says:

Update 2:   The plausibility of God is re-established with news that the Orange One has it.   But if he is one of these politicians that suffers barely a sniffle, God's credibility will take another hit.   

Meanwhile, in Australian alternative reality land...

As I said yesterday, and has been further cemented in commentary from a string of Trump sympathetic, gormless, Australian Sky News personalities overnight, no one thinks Trump "debated" well yesterday, and all agree that the interruptions were self defeating.   (It's also unquestioned that Trump interrupted more than Biden by a wide margin,)   

But what do the ageing "it's all a socialist plot!" brainiacs at Catallaxy think, especially the embarrassingly cultic Steve Kates?   Obviously, this:

 

 

Honestly, there is not a wingnut trope that Kates will not swallow when it comes to Trump;  he is truly, obliviously, brainwashed by the Right wing information bubble world of Fox News, Breitbart, and the other propaganda outlets of the GOP.   Has he always been this embarrassing, I wonder?  

 

Facebook is a disgrace

As noted in Mother Jones:

“Report: Joe Biden Has Been Given Tonight’s Debate Questions In Advance” reads a headline on arch-paranoiac Alex Jones’ site, Infowars, a notorious peddler of right-wing disinformation. The “report” Infowars cited was from former Fox host Todd Starnes, who was just citing Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist with a history of spreading outright lies. Corsi offered no proof that Biden had been given the questions, but Starnes’ story on the baseless allegation reached over 1 million followers on Facebook and another million on Twitter, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool owned by Facebook.

Infowars published its story around noon. By later that afternoon, more Biden disinformation was hurtling out of control on Facebook. A New York Post story with a single anonymous source from the Trump campaign claimed Biden had agreed to be inspected for an earpiece before the debate, which the Biden campaign denied. Regardless the story spread across Facebook, amplified by right-wing sites and posters.

NBC’s Ben Collins noticed that the claim predated the New York Post story; it had been floating around online for weeks before the online poster at the center of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a user claiming to be Q, posted the theory on 8kun, the successor website to the 8chan forum.

Breitbart‘s story on the claim reached 5 million accounts on Facebook and 3 million on Twitter.

The massive spread of disinformation about Biden came just hours after Facebook essentially blew off Biden’s concerns about disinformation being spread about him.

On Monday, the Biden campaign sent a letter to Facebook calling it “the nation’s foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process,” and saying that “Rather than seeing progress, we have seen regression,” according to a copy of the letter published by Axios.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone responded vaguely, saying that the company has received criticism from both Republicans and Democrats and added that “we have rules in place to protect the integrity of the election and free expression, and we will continue to apply them impartially.”

 

A presidential debate, noted

I happened to see about that last 15 minutes, which was perhaps not quite as full of interruptions as was the first part?   (Certainly, even at the end, it was clear that Trump was the prime interrupter, refusing to follow the rules regarding a two minute statement that was had been agreed to be without interruption.)

Looking at the comments of the Australian based Trump supporters, it seems an uncontroversial opinion that their dumb ass orange hero interrupted too much and was too aggressive.  Many theorised that he wasn't letting Biden hang himself by not allowing him to talk long enough.  

I thought that, in the parts I saw, Biden was doing fine in his language, especially if you make allowances for an old issue with stuttering, which I think does still show itself in occasional vocal hesitations.

It is quite unbelievable that some "two sides" commentators think that neither side won because Biden also cut loose with some personal insults.   I mean, seriously?   Do they think contenders just have to "rise above" the rambling personal aggression of Trump in that context?   

The correct view is that Trump's performance could only possibly have appealed to his already rusted on, beyond all reasoning, culture war fighting, base.    And anyone who claims they were fence sitting and decided to side with Trump after that performance are, with 99% certainty, not being truthful about there ever being a chance that they were going to vote for Biden.

There is no point in saying that Trump won because he "dominated" and would have impressed his base.  His base is not really like rusted on party members of old - they are (in large part) genuine deplorables given permission by their cult leader to finally be open about their worst instincts, and if Trump had gone over and punched Wallace and slapped Biden in the face, they would say they deserved it and still vote for him.   He's their projected revenge figure against, basically, a modern world over which they are losing control.

Biden performed well enough to dispel any genuine concern about his mental acuity, and reinforced his basic humanity, serious approach to issues, and genuine move towards at least trying to not further divide Americans and promote self serving conspiracy based theories damaging to confidence in democracy in the way Trump clearly seeks to.     

So yeah, obviously, Biden was the winner.   It seems most on line polling and the betting market agrees.

10 meters of water!

Science magazine has an interesting article:

Moon safe for long-term human exploration, first surface radiation measurements show

 But I am not sure the details are as encouraging as the headline.  It's about how some recent dosimeters on recent moonlanders have given a more accurate idea as to the amount of radiation astronauts would be exposed to while staying there:

The device measured hourly radiation rates and found that astronauts would be exposed to roughly 200 times the radiation levels as people on Earth, they report today in Science Advances. The dosimeter’s placement inside the Chang’e 4 probe provides partial shielding, much as an astronaut’s spacesuit would to their body, so the findings are quite applicable to human explorers, Wimmer-Schweingruber says.

The measured dose is about five to 10 times what passengers on an intercontinental flight from New York City to Frankfurt, Germany, receive when the plane is above parts of the protective atmosphere, Wimmer-Schweingruber says. Though high for Earth-based standards, radiation is one of the known dangers of spaceflight. NASA is legally prohibited from increasing the risk of its astronauts dying from cancer by more than 3%, and these levels remain below that.

What’s more, the researchers calculated that Moon bases covered with at least 50 centimeters of lunar soil would be sufficient to protect them. A deeper chamber shielded with about 10 meters of water would be enough to protect against occasional solar storms, which can cause radiation levels to spike dramatically. (Between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, the Sun flared up in a way that could have caused radiation sickness, vomiting, and possibly death had astronauts been unprotected in space at the time.) Such a chamber would need to be reachable within 30 minutes, the amount of advanced warning time that is now possible with monitoring satellites.

Why the heck are they talking about 10 m of water on the moon, as if that's what would be readily available to use for your emergency shelter?   It's going to be a long, long time before there's that much of it available for colonists.

If I recall correctly, Gerard O'Neill's work on L5 colonies used to argue that your would need about 2 to 3 meters of moon dirt packed around one of his gigantic space colonies to provide adequate radiation protection.   Is that the same effect as 10 m of water?  I don't know.   I want to know how much dirt moon stations are going to need to bury their shelters under for an emergency shelter.

Oh - and let's not forget - this need for radiation shielding is one of the key reasons why they may as well be looking at old lava tubes as a place to building a station.   Although, the other thing is, I don't know that there are any near the South pole, which I think is where they think the ice may be?

 

 

More than a hint of hypocrisy

Re the Victorian situation with the decision to use private security for COVID hotel quarantine:  am I the only person who detects strong hypocrisy whenever a Liberal opposition goes nuts about a Labor government using private contractors who turn out to be of dubious quality?   Wasn't the "the public service is coddled and inefficient and we should privatise services for greater efficiency and value for money" political party always keener to use private contractors for the last, um, four decades or so?  

It was the exact same thing with the Rudd insulation program.   The crap, profiteering private sector was the one that caused some deaths, and the true lesson should have been "if you want a job done properly, don't rush it out into the private sector".   (Mind you, I know the insulation job could not have been done by public servants.  But still.)

More about Victoria, Adam Creighton continues his hyperventilation:

Ooh, I like the "evil eyes of Dan" photo the AFR is running with.  I bet Adam wished it was being used in The Australian.  But maybe it is?

Adam presumably is still dismissing entirely the reports of long term effects of the virus.  This report from the BBC explains why India should be worried:

Mr Ketkar is not alone in this - tens of thousands of people have been reporting post-Covid health complications from across the world. Thrombosis is common - it has been found in 30% of seriously ill coronavirus patients, according to experts. 

 

These problems have been generally described as "long Covid" or "long-haul Covid". 

 

Awareness around post-Covid care is crucial, but it is not the focus in India, which is still struggling to control the spread of the virus. It has the world's second-highest caseload and has been averaging 90,000 cases daily in recent weeks.

 Lots of experts warning about the long term effects of Covid are quoted.   

But no, Adam hates the idea of people being told to wear masks outside, so that's what's important.

Things seem not to be going so well for the Trump campaign...

There's the NYT story about his tax fiddling, which apparently includes this:

Between 2010 and 2018, Trump wrote off about $26 million in mysterious "consulting fees," helping to reduce his family's tax bill. At least some of those fees appear to have been paid to his daughter Ivanka Trump, despite her being a top Trump Organization executive, according to the Times.

And this:

President Donald Trump spent more than $US70,000 to style his hair when he was on “The Apprentice,” and he wrote off the costs as a business expense, The New York Times reported Sunday. 

and this:

Additionally, nine Trump entities paid nearly $US100,000 to Ivanka Trump’s hair and makeup artist, according to The Times report. 

And the NYT promises more stories to come.

Trump is sounding desperate with "Biden should be drug tested before the debate".   

Polling seems to be sticking pretty solidly in Biden's favour.

And meanwhile, his recently sacked campaign manager is suicidal.   

I find it hard to imagine Biden doing so badly in the first debate so as to undo all of this bad PR.

But I guess you never know...

Okra recipe (and a beef curry)

Just for future reference:   cooked okra this way on Saturday, to go with a basic beef curry* (using the easy homemade mix of curry powder I referenced before) and it was nice.    

*  onion, three fresh tomatoes, 500g of cubed beef, that curry powder (couple of tablespoons it makes), some water, some curry leaves, a little bit of cream at the end.  (Yoghurt's probably better, but had none.)

Mexican movies and sense of place

I really liked the much praised Mexican movie Roma from a couple of years ago, and in my comments about it here, I noted the very distinctive and convincing (for want of a better phrase) sense of place it achieved (in its case, Mexico City in 1971.)  

Last night I watched another Mexican movie on Netflix I'm No Longer Here, and again I was blown away by the direction and sense of place it gave.   

Set only a decade or so ago, it cuts between the poor parts of the Mexican city Monterrey and a pretty seedy  looking Queens area in New York.  I had never heard of Monterrey before, but it's a distintive looking city because of the mountains surrounding it, and here it is on the map:

 

 

It is an arthouse-ish flim, which as I described in my Roma post, means you should expect more a "slice of life" story than much of a narrative arc. 

But it's so interesting.  I had not heard of cumbia music as such, but it is a key feature of the film, which indicates that there are youthful dance gangs in Monterrey who do not do much more than hassle their fellow school students for money to buy cumbia music and get into weirdly distinctive fashion.  For a kind of gang, the one in the film seems quite innocent.  But gang related conflict and violence still happens in the movie, and our hero has to move out of country and try and find his way living in Queens.  

 Here, the background to the setting is better explained at the start of this review:

With flashy dance moves and even flashier hairstyles, the Cholombiano street culture of Monterrey, Mexico exists at a cultural crossroads. Patterns of migration and commerce have brought together this subculture’s preferred genre of Colombian cumbia, the laggy mixes of Mexico City’s sonidero DJ style and the oversized garments of West Coast cholo fashion into this northeastern Mexican city.

It is in Monterrey where sounds and culture which have captivated the rest of Latin America have risen up from. The Avanzada Regia movement which took over Monterrey during the mid 90s laid out a blueprint for electronica, alternative rock and hip hop in Spanish to spread into the Spanish-speaking mainstream, at home and abroad. The corrido tumbado movement, currently setting Mexican regional stations ablaze, might riff closer to Sinaloa and Sonora-style folk ballads, but draws its core from German polka and Texano influence hailing from Monterrey over a century ago.

But unlike the many popular sounds and trends which spawned in this city, the cholombiano way of life remained contained in the city’s marginalized communities. In Ya No Estoy Aquí (I’m No Longer Here) we are treated to an exploration of place and belonging through the experience of Ulises Samperio (Juan Daniel Garcia), a cholombiano displaced from the his home in the middle of an intensifying turf war triggered by the Mexican war on drugs of the 2010s.

Monterrey as a centre of cumbia music in Mexico is was also discussed in this Vice article from 2018 (which also gives the impression that the city as a whole is pretty seedy.)  As for the style of dancing to it, my son perceptively noted that its sort of similar to what Cab Calloway does on stage sometimes.     

Anyway, I think the most remarkable thing about the film is the direction - there is not a lot of camera movement, but instead it's nearly all exquisitely composed shots in which the action happens (sometimes with the actors or objects moving in and out of the framing.)    I love a fancy moving camera as much as anyone, but this shows how fantastic a movie can look with a stationary camera most to the time, but with great care for composition of every single shot.  

Once again, a movie set in Mexico has made me strongly wish that I could visit there - if only it felt safe enough.  I'm drawn to Asia enough that I like to joke that it's probably because I must have been East Asian in a past life; but if that's true, I am starting to assume there must be a Mexican re-incarnation in there as well.

 

On a personal, dental note

I think I should probably be embarrassed to admit this, but it seems I took the risk and it worked out OK.

Today I had my first dental check up in, I am pretty sure, about 20-something years.

I don't know why - I had some older amalgam filings replaced in the last bit of dental work around my mid 30's.  And that was replaced with the white stuff instead of the old amalgam.  

Since then, I got married and had kids and am pretty sure never got around to going back to the dentist.  Maybe 7 or so years ago I bought a cheap dental pick from (I think) Daiso and use it occasionally to held remove the tartar (stupid word that) which can build up behind my lower front teeth, regardless of morning and evening brushing and evening flossing.  (I asked a dentist what that was about - why do I only get it there - and was told it is because it is near salivary glands that produce a lot of calcium ions to repair enamel.  That made me stop worrying that I was a failure at brushing, and perhaps my saliva is just particularly calcium rich.)   

Anyway, I had a couple of minor issues I wanted to get checked and finally went back to a "new" dentist today.  I didn't like the old one much.  He got very cranky with me once when I was late for an appointment.

The result - I made a full confession to the dentist, but she didn't find any cavities or problems.  X rays show no hidden problem.   She did take a long time to give my teeth a proper clean though, and I sort of promised not to leave it another 20 years so that the next clean could be quicker.   

But I do feel somewhat vindicated that my 20 year hunch that my teeth were, by and large, not getting any problems, seems to have been correct.

[Actually, I seem to recall that my father had an enormously long gap in seeking dentistry too, and when he finally did there was not much wrong.    I think flossing had been "in" for a good couple of decades but he never did it.   Is there something about the middle aged mouth that means more youthful propensity to decay stops or slows down?   In my father's case, it could have been pretty regular evening alcohol consumption, perhaps.   He was very big on drinking port (or sherry) nearly every evening.  Does that work like a bacteria killing mouthwash?]

  

Allahpundit is worried

He's always been against Trump, but he's really starting to panic about the state of the nation post election.  He's making this comment following Trump refusing to give a commitment to a "peaceful" transfer of power yesterday:

My earnest advice to anyone who’s not bound to stay put here in the U.S. because of family or employment ties from which they simply can’t extricate themselves is to think seriously about leaving. And I don’t mean “think seriously of leaving if Trump wins.” I mean think seriously of leaving, period. Because even if he loses by 250 electoral votes, more than 60 million people will have watched him say stuff like this for months, insisting repeatedly that any defeat can only be explained by cheating, and will vote. for. him. anyway.

There’s no coming all the way back from that, even though Trump will eventually leave the political scene one way or another. Anyone who’s willing to look the other way at what he says here is willing to look the other way at much worse, and that’s an enormous population. That’s the reason to leave.

By tomorrow, the right’s anti-anti-Trump faction will have long forgotten this clip, assuming they noted it at all. They’ll be right back to the task of confirming Amy Coney Barrett followed by a glorious November victory in which Trump will once again get millions fewer votes than his opponent and then govern as if his approval rating is 80 percent.

Speaking of which, he explained earlier today why it’s so important for him to have a ninth justice on the Court before November. Interestingly, this wasn’t a concern for the GOP in 2016, when they preferred an eight-person Court to one with Merrick Garland in Scalia’s seat. Trump wants a full house this time, though, for a specific reason:  [clip of Trump]

He wants his nominee to be the fifth vote for him in invalidating contested ballots that might give Biden the presidency. He made the same point yesterday in another gaggle with reporters. Why any fan of Amy Coney Barrett would want her placed in that horrendous situation, knowing what it would do to public perceptions of her and of the Supreme Court if she cast that vote — or if she refused to cast it — I can’t imagine.

If it does happen, with Trump’s eleventh-hour bizarro-Garland appointee becoming the deciding vote that assures him a second term, we’ll be in a new era in American history. I’m not trying to be dramatic in saying that. It just is what it is. The country will be ungovernable.

 

 

Dumb, dishonest, or just unable to process information due to - whatever?

That's the puzzle about Trump supporters, isn't it?   And still not resolved after 4 years.

For example, here's the headlines to Wall Street Journal reporting on the Republican's failed "gotcha" report on Joe Biden:

 

Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Work Raised Concerns With Obama Officials, GOP-Led Probe Confirms

Findings don’t support Trump’s accusation that Joe Biden sought to remove a prosecutor to protect a gas firm whose board Hunter Biden served on

Um, yes:  every "fake news" liberal commentator on the matter had already acknowledged years ago that it wasn't a great look for Hunter Biden to be on the board.    But obviously, the mere potential for family related conflict of interest doesn't mean there was actually one, and as the press had reported umpteen times before, there was no evidence that Biden's actions were motivated at protecting his son, and in fact, put the company in question at greater risk of actual investigation.   This is confirmed in the second part of the headline.

But at Sinclair Davidson's Home for Ageing Fools:

It's like (well, it's the fact that) there is no point in trying to reason with them.  They can't process information if it doesn't fit a preconceived conclusion.

Dumber though

 

An extraordinary fool

 

Not that I want it to happen, but it's a bit surprising it isn't happening...

I have to walk a fine line here:  political violence is never to be encouraged, but I do wonder about this a lot lately...

Left wing political radicals (of "the revolution is just around the corner" kind) in the US used to be seen a real threat in terms of targeting Right wing politicians for assassination, and the wealthy for kidnap and ransom.    Now, no one on the Left seems to be on the radar as possibly thinking about doing things that would make a real political difference in the US - targeting conservative Supreme Court judges, for example, or (of course) Trump himself or McConnell.   It's a similar thing for environmentalism - I often get the feeling that radicals in the late 60's and into the 70's, if they knew about global warming and corporate and political reluctance to do anything about it, would have been willing to risk death in blowing up an oil pipeline, or a coal field train track.  

Did the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the obvious economic (shall we say) under-performance of Cuba or other socialist regimes in countries around there deflate the whole idea of success for radical Left wing revolution so much that they just lost all motivation towards highly targeted political violence?     Was it the military draft that radicalised them so much, and without it, Lefties can't get as motivated to threaten violence now?  Or is it that it became obvious that threats of direct violence against politicians never worked in the big picture?   (And yes I know:  trashing businesses, targeting police buildings, and street violence is a form of violence.  But it's not the same as very targeted kidnappings, threats to kill or bomb that used to seem to be the radical Left's idea of how to influence things.) 

These days, it's obvious that the risk of some kind of very serious political violence is more real from the Right in the US.  It's quite the turnaround.  And worrying because it attracts bigger numbers of armed, semi-organised nuts than the radical Left ever had,  spinning out on their own fantasy of how the world is and how it should.  

Yet, observers on the Right are so self-gaslite they think that it's the Left that is the "real danger" to political and social stability in the US.   

The other "funny" thing is that the blatant authoritarian and anti-democratic statements of Trump and Barr - seeking to encourage a fake crisis of election results credibility amongst their followers - means that Left wing threat of violence, if aimed at preserving democracy, would actually be more rational than ever.    Let's face it, if Trump was shot, everyone would condemn it, while about 60% of the US population would say under their breath "well, you know, if ever a President provoked an assassination attempt, it was him."

Some speculation

 I agree with this:

and I hope he does.  I reckon all Democrats should be saying repeatedly that it is nuts and any politician expressly any sympathy to such a dangerous fantasy of violent revenge against imaginary crimes is a danger to the nation.  

But - I bet if Biden did put out this challenge, Trump would respond with some mealy mouthed "I don't know.  I don't know if any of it is true or not; but who knows? There might be an element of truth in there somewhere.  And I see more danger from rioting in the streets by anarchists." And his cult followers would praise him for being an open minded and fair President who has his priorities right.   

It's hard to find a likeable cult

About that Siberian cult leader who's been around a long time but has only now been arrested:

Torop, who lost his job as a traffic officer in 1989, claimed he experienced an “awakening” as the Soviet regime began to collapse. In 1991 he founded a movement now known as the Church of the Last Testament.

Several thousand followers live in a series of remote hamlets in the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia. Converts to the cult have included professionals from across Russia as well as pilgrims from abroad.

“I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me,” Vissarion told the Guardian in 2002.

Russian media reported that in the original ideology of the cult, Vissarion claimed Jesus was watching over people from an orbit close to Earth, and the Virgin Mary was “running Russia”, but later he declared himself to be Jesus.

His commune mixes a selection of rites drawn from Orthodox Christianity with environmental edicts and a series of other rules. Veganism is enforced and monetary exchange is banned inside the commune. Followers wear austere clothing and count years starting from 1961, the year of Vissarion’s birth, while Christmas has been replaced by a feast day on 14 January, his birthday.

 Well, I do like the idea of Jesus watching us from orbit - that's all a bit Philip K Dick-ish.   I don't care for the veganism, though.   I wonder where they stand on sex - cults are either rabidly against it and suggesting men lob off bits of their body, or excessively for it, it seems.   

Anyway, I think we can all agree - Russia has a history of being a weird place when it comes to religion.

 

Well, I thought it was funny

 

Sweden has a space corporation?

 This seems odd:  

China will lose access to two important and strategic space satellite-tracking stations in Australia, with their Swedish owners citing the "complexity" of doing business with Beijing.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), owned by the Swedish Government, operates 11 satellite-tracking facilities around the world, including the Dongara and Yatharagga stations south of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The Dongara station is primarily used by US government agencies such as NASA.

 The Swedish government has built a satellite tracking facility in Australia that is used by NASA?   Why isn't Australia building them on Australian soil?

SETI still plugging away

Science magazine had an article a couple of weeks ago:  How big money is powering a massive hunt for alien intelligence.

 Some extracts:

SETI researchers are used to negative results, but they are trying harder than ever to turn that record around. Breakthrough Listen, the $100 million, 10-year, privately funded SETI effort Siemion leads, is lifting a field that has for decades relied on sporadic philanthropic handouts. Prior to Breakthrough Listen, SETI was “creeping along” with a few dozen hours of telescope time a year, Siemion says; now it gets thousands. It’s like “sitting in a Formula 1 racing car,” he says. The new funds have also been “a huge catalyst” for training scientists in SETI, says Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, which opened this year. “They really are nurturing a community.”

Breakthrough Listen is bolstering radio surveys, which are the mainstay of SETI. But the money is also spurring other searches, in case aliens opt for other kinds of messages—laser flashes, for example—or none at all, revealing themselves only through passive “technosignatures.” And because the data gathered by Breakthrough Listen are posted in a public archive, astronomers are combing through it for nonliving phenomena: mysterious deep-space pulses called fast radio bursts and proposed dark matter particles called axions. “There are untapped possibilities here,” says axion searcher Matthew Lawson of Stockholm University.

Breakthrough Listen set out ambitious goals.  It would survey 1 million of the closest stars to Earth and 100 nearby galaxies using two of the world’s most sensitive steerable telescopes, the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Buying up about 20% and 25% of the time on those telescopes, Breakthrough Listen promised to cover 10 times more sky than previous surveys and five times more of the radio spectrum, and gather data 100 times faster. 

 There's a lot more in the article, which is a good read.

Some good news for a change

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s record of losing legal battles remained unblemished this week when the Connecticut Supreme Court denied three separate motions in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Sandy Hook families.

The link to the story is here.

If ever a media figure deserves suing out of a job, it's him.

Comedy's a funny thing

I see that Schitt's Creek is winning Emmies, and it is widely praised by ABC types.  I have also seen warnings that the first episode is not a good guide to the rest of the series.   

I dunno - I have only seen small bits of it and I don't know from what season, but it didn't grab me.   It seems, shall we say, a sort of laboured sitcom writing which I don't care for.

Another widely praised show that feels that way to me - Parks and Recreation.    I guess it seems good natured, but the dialogue and characters just a bit too forced.

I have also re-watched a couple of Seinfeld episodes recently.   It really did become bad in its lack of connection to reality in the last season or two, and the laugh track seems extremely excessive by current standards.    

And OMG, Friends has started on Netflix and is up the top of the popular list already.  Seriously?   I always maintained it was a vastly over-rated show held up by basically likeable actors but so-so writing.  There were some occasional bits I liked enough to watch it semi-regularly, but I really am puzzled by how it has maintained its popularity.

I am sounding like a grump who is generally down on all popular sitcoms:  but I have given lots of praise to recent shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine and The Good Place, and I went through a list of older shows in a post in 2005.   (Gosh, I have been blogging for a long time.)   I just find it interesting trying to work out why I don't like some comedy sitcom writing, and what does work for me.

Update:   Oh!  I am not alone on Schitt's Creek failure to impress after all.  A "lefty" Australian cartoonist has given it her best shot, and still doesn't care for it:

I'm sorry to say, but as explained at length in a comment I make below, it seems to be yet another illustration of how a sitcom with a prominent gay character gets over-praised.

Yes, just glossed over