By way of illustration of my "the Right's loss of contact with reality is much more serious than the Left's loss of contact with reality" theme....

In the Washington Post today:

*  An opinion piece by a famous female swimmer making the case that it's simply unfair for women to compete with women who used to be men (at least if they went through puberty).   The advantages are not reversed by the subsequent lack of testosterone.  An extract:

To be clear, trans women are women. Full stop. We must also be clear that trans women who have gone through male puberty acquire physical advantages female puberty does not provide: More red blood cells store and use oxygen more efficiently. Wider shoulders mean a leverage advantage, and narrower hips make for more efficient movement dynamics. Longer legs and arms, bigger hands and feet, can more easily handle a ball or cover a field.

A transgender woman who has transitioned from a testosterone-driven to an estrogen-driven system loses speed and muscle mass, yes, but puberty’s “legacy advantages” do not change with a new hormonal profile. Simply reaching an authority’s acceptable testosterone level should not qualify a trans woman to compete in the female category as currently designed. The physical disparity remains too great for true equal performance potential.

The comments following contains some of this ilk:

But by far the majority are actually on the author's side (she suggests there probably is no solution other than to have trans compete against trans - or men if they want.).   Many also have a problem with the line "trans women are women.  Full stop."   

So my point is - there is some identity politics nuttniness (no recognition of reality) on display in comments, by people who insist there is no problem.  But there's not that many, and do those who do think this way affect the country much?  No.

*  An article by Philip Bump noting the still extraordinarily high numbers of Republicans who are in the Trump fantasy land that he actually won the last election.  And this is by Pew Research polling, which I think has some credibility:

Pew found that only about 1 in 3 Republicans think Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and only about 14 percent of them say he definitely won, which he did. In other words, six out of every seven Republicans are unwilling to say that Biden definitely won. Instead, a third say Trump probably won — somehow — and almost another third say Trump definitely won. By now, this position is simply an act of faith, a rejection of all available evidence in deference to a feeling. It’s still remarkable in scale.

The polling also found that people whose views were furthest from reality on the results of the 2020 election were also those most eager to downplay what occurred at the Capitol. For example, 7 in 10 Republicans who say Trump probably won in 2020 think that too much attention has been paid to Jan. 6. That position was held by 9 in 10 of those who say Trump definitely won....

To believe that Trump won in 2020 is to reject concrete evidence that he didn’t. It’s to dismiss as unimportant or tainted any objective analysis to the contrary. Even allowing for the fact that members of the Jan. 6 committee would broadly be pleased to be able to implicate Trump more directly in the day’s events, it’s likely that any examination of the day would be treated with skepticism by a group that is defined by its skepticism about observable reality.

But then we factor in that original point: Most of those who think Trump probably won in 2020 also think he bears no responsibility for the violence and destruction on Jan. 6.  

Some of this is probably a function of partisan flag-waving, a rejection of the mainstream media’s (accurate) description of events in a way that casts Trump in a negative light. But some of it is also clearly true belief, a sincere insistence that Trump did win and that the violence wasn’t his fault. Millions of Americans want to believe that’s true, and so some do.

This is a rejection of reality by a very high proportion of the American electorate - and it's obviously serious in a functioning democracy when partisanship leads to fantasy beliefs that justify political violence.

 

 

 

COVID 19 origins discussed in detail

There's a long article in Technology Review (not paywalled) about the Wuhan lab's work and the question of the origin of COVID 19.

I have haven't read it all yet, but I take it from Twitter discussion that it presents a strong case for natural origin, and the Wuhan lab not hiding anything.

The amazing self-own of Ben Roberts-Smith seems to be escalating?

Is it just me, or is this an incredibly bad look?  [I'm sure it's not just me, although we haven't read if the other side admits any of this yet.]

A former soldier scheduled to give evidence against SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith is seeking to pull out, prompting claims in court that Roberts-Smith’s spoke with a senior lawyer who then contacted the secret witness.

In a dramatic turn in the case on Wednesday morning, lawyers for the newspapers defending a defamation claim from Roberts-Smith told the federal court two critical witnesses had been contacted by lawyers, allegedly after Roberts-Smith’s barrister Arthur Moses SC contacted another senior barrister to express concerns the witnesses’ interests were not being properly protected. The witnesses – former soldiers known in court documents as Person 56 and Person 66 – had agreed to give evidence for Nine newspapers.

Person 56 has an application before the court to be excused from a subpoena to give evidence, citing medical grounds.

Nicholas Owens SC, acting for Nine newspapers, on Wednesday said “through means unknown” the two SAS soldiers had been “placed in contact” with new lawyers after Moses contacted another Sydney lawyer.

Owens told the court: “We have become aware that recently Mr Moses has made contact with Mr Phillip Boulten … and we understand that Mr Moses expressed to Mr Boulten concerns that the interests of Person 56 and also 66 may not be being properly protected in relation to [them] being subpoenaed to give evidence in these proceedings.”

Owens raised the issue of how the witnesses’ identities became known to the new lawyers. He told the court “there is, of course, a prohibition on the true identity of Person 56 and Person 66 being made known to anyone” apart from authorised legal representatives. The new lawyers, Owens said, were not authorised representatives.

“There was an agreement by Person 56 to both speak to us and not oppose any application by us to call him to give evidence in the proceedings,” Owens said. But he said after contact from those lawyers “Person 56’s position has changed”.

 

 

The phone

This is very trivial, but after writing last week about using my phone with the Smart Launcher app, I thought I would join the ranks of the incredibly dull who like to share what their fiddled with home page looks like:

I do find this a very pleasing look, and layout. (I have blocked out the location on the weather widget, by the way.)

Update: Actually, I might prefer this configuration, after all:

(Smart search allows a quick search of all other apps, or an web search.)

 

What do you think, Homer?

About the Religious Discrimination Act

I haven't been paying much attention to it, but there are two main reasons why it seems to show weird political judgement:

a.  does the public have any sense at all that it was needed to fix a problem?  I don't.  Is it just because the Prime Minister, whose colleagues consider a liar and general psycho, is a member of Hillsong?

b.  why give it a priority now, in the dying days of an unpopular government?   The far Right conservatives in the electorate who see value in culture warring have already dumped the Liberals for their own stupid reasons - giving up on climate change and COVID mandates.  

Labels

While I can't see that Pinker deserves the label, I would say this, having just watched motor mouth Russell Brand whine about being labelled Right wing on Youtube:   if you're in the business of making excuses for Trump and the Republicans and their brand of proto-fascism, you're a useful idiot for the Right, regardless of what Lefty or moderate policies you claim to actually support. 

Gabbard and Russell are useful idiots.    

Update:  So is Taibbi, who I don't pay attention to, but thought I should after watching Brand praise him.  

Update 2:  I see from an article questioning the labelling in the list -

Rogan himself has never aligned with any political party, criticizing both Democrats and Republicans, though he’s described himself as a “progressive.” He has, however, endorsed and voted for Libertarian and Libertarian-leaning candidates in the past, such as former Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), and former Libertarian Party presidential nominees Gary Johnson and Jo Jorgensen.

OK, that would explain a lot - libertarians are essentially selfish and make terrible decisions because of that all of the time.  So instead of just, you know, not sounding like a racist, ugly sexist, or facilitator of the spread of vaccine scepticism or climate change denial, Rogan and his defenders would prefer to stand up for the "right" of people like him to not be subject to commercial pressure, which is all the fault of the Left, allegedly.

Some articles about Right wingers running amuck in Ottawa

This one in The Guardian links to this one in Politico.  Oh, and here's another piece in The Guardian.  And an explainer piece from the ABC.

Appalling. 

And thanks for explaining, journalists.  

(I see that Tim Blair, whose brain has been eaten by wingnuttery, apparently has no problem with it.  At least according to a header on a blog post, which is as much as I look at of his now.)

Since when did Australian wingnut threats to kill politicians become unremarkable?

Maybe this was covered in Australian media that I haven't read, but it's surprising that I only found out via a Washington Post article on the anti mandate moron protests in Canberra that some of the idiot "sovereign citizen" mob just openly go on social media talking about hanging politicians and bombing buildings, etc:

On Monday, one protest organizer ended a video with an allusion to hanging the prime minister, while in another clip, a protester warned a far-right lawmaker to stay away from Parliament, adding that if he had his way he would call in “bombers” to wipe it out.

In an interview later, the lawmaker, Sen. Malcolm Roberts from the One Nation Party, said the protests had been peaceful and respectful, aside from a small group.

“They were trying to hijack [things], and they had no, no success whatever. They were set aside,” he said. “I don’t see the very violent in the crowd that I addressed yesterday.”

 

Call out to Sinclair Davidson and Chris Berg - the least successful lobbyists for Liberal policy on the ABC, ever?

In the news yesterday: 

The federal government will end a highly contentious decision to freeze millions of dollars of ABC funding as it pours billions of dollars into the national broadcaster over the next three years.....

From July, the ABC will receive almost $3.3 billion over three years, while SBS will receive more than $950 million.

As part of that funding, the government has decided to end its controversial decision to impose an indexation freeze on the ABC's annual funding in 2018 which ultimately meant the broadcaster's funding did not keep pace with inflation.

Davidson and Berg wrote the book (literally) on creative ways to have the government stop funding the ABC, written (I always half suspected) in response to being dropped from the invitation list to The Drum (or any other show, ever.)   

They might argue they had some success - didn't some Liberal body vote in favour of ABC privatisation?  Oh yeah, here's Sinclair bleating about it a year ago in AFR:

This, of course, represents a governance problem within the Liberal party itself. In 2018 the Liberal Federal Council voted to privatise the ABC – a policy position the government has chosen to ignore. If elected politicians are able to ignore their constituents, it should be no surprise that apparently independent government agencies do so too. It is not just the ABC that is out of touch.

Hehe.   So they're persuasive to some dedicated crank culture war conservatives in the party - the same group who will continue to deny AGW and whine endlessly about clean energy - but the saner heads can the writing on the wall.    

Oddly, I've snuck over to Sinclair's Twitter feed, and can't see any tweet about it.   He's just resigned to be forever promoting bad libertarian policies that his own side of politics wisely ignore, I guess.   Meanwhile, Chris Berg's rather dull twitter feed doesn't seem to mention the news either.

Come on, boys.  Own your failure.

 

Roll out the comically large diplomatic table

Is there an explanation for this?

Is it the table always used in the Kremlin for high level diplomacy, regardless of how many are in attendance?  Or is it just the one used when Putin wants to send the message that they are (literally) far apart on the issue being discussed?

Just a tad self indulgent

Of course it would be The Guardian, writing about English "sex clubs" re-opening, but not your "traditional" type:

Between them all lies Crossbreed, a night where underground stars such as Shanti Celeste and Tama Sumo DJ to a room full of techno fans who can partake in everything from exhibitionist orgies to solo cups of tea in a dancefloor-adjacent wellness sanctuary. “The [queer fetish] community has long been dominated by gay men, who have rightly claimed and taken up space,” explains Alex Warren, who founded the event in 2019. “But that has left bisexuals, pansexuals, lesbians, trans and non-binary people with fewer non masc-dominated spaces to call home.”

I don't think it's my age - I've always been leery of normalising fetishism - but it's hard not to mutter something like "nothing that a good war with Europe wouldn't fix." OK, maybe I have to update that to "zombie invasion" or "meteor hitting the Atlantic":  the point is annoyance that people have too much time on their hands to engage in the silliest types of self indulgence.

The old "it's funny - because it's not funny" routine

I have to say that my long standing dislike of Jimmy Carr is feeling pretty vindicated by the strong pushback to him trying to make some kind of joke about the Holocaust and its victims.   But is it a case of unfair, out of context, criticism?

At this link is a Youtube video of the joke and his subsequent discussion of it.  It would seem that the entire special (called "His Dark Material") is some sort of meta show about dark or offensive humour.  Here is an extract of a mixed review:

The fundamental difference between a comedian such as Carr, compared to say, Dave Chappelle or Ricky Gervais, is that you never wonder about Carr’s sincerity. He’s not trying to troll you or confuse you about his intentions. He may enjoy writing jokes about offensive subjects. “But these are just jokes. They’re not the terrible things.” He even tells a story toward the end about a charitable gig he has performed at for multiple years through Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, performing for patients dying from cancer, and how exploring the darkest subject matter can free them and us from the most tragic of emotions.

“I feel sorry for the people that get offended. I feel sorry for the people that can’t laugh at dark s–t. Because when their life is terrible, they’ve just got to f—ing white-knuckle it.”

Now, the bit about the cathartic nature of jokes about death is understandable - but that's a case of the willing participation of the audience facing their own mortality.   

And I allow that dark humour has a "proximity" issue (in both time and place) that is sometimes a fine line that can be accidentally crossed - in Australia, perhaps even England, you might get away with a joke about a cannibal murderer in Germany in the news last year; but I doubt you're going to find any Australians yet willing to sit through a set on the Port Arthur massacre, whether you're in North Queensland or Tasmania.   And there's the example of Mel Brooks and The Producers, of course.   

People will say, in justifying Carr, that he is telling the joke because the shock value is what makes it funny: same as "Springtime for Hitler", really.

But there's a key difference here, and why it's a weak excuse for this particular joke:   everyone knows that Roma people are still seen as "a problem" to be solved in England and other parts of Europe.   Why could Brooks make an entire movie finding humour in the shock value of a modern neo-Nazi still loving Hitler?    I think it was because it both didn't reference the Holocaust itself, and at the time it was made, Jewish discrimination was a pretty much over in America - they were seen an essential and talented part of the American landscape. 

But, honestly, I find it hard to believe that a portion of the audience reaction to Carr's "joke" was not tinged with dislike of Roma people and the way they live today.   And Carr, in his post joke explanation, doesn't even seem to me give a genuine attempt at explaining that it is only ironically funny - he does say it's a "good" joke because it has educational value, but this is pretty pathetic and weak.   A significant part of his audience would know that the Nazi extermination policies extended well beyond the Jews, and even if they didn't, how does the educational aspect excuse the invitation to laugh at the group as the victims?

And let's face it, there's long been a lot of dis-ingenuousness about the ironic use of "edgy" humour - it's a good and mature thing to recognise that it has can work as a convenient cover to allow a significant part of the audience to feel their actual racism (or sexism, or insensitivity to disability) is endorsed.   (And how else can you possibly read obnoxious Joe Rogan's recently revived old clip in which he was clapping his hands in delight at a creep explaining how he forced women to give him oral sex in order to get a stand up gig.  How can you possibly interpret that as not his endorsement of the view that such obnoxious sexual politics is nothing serious?)

Yes, the "woke police" can go too far - and readers know that I find the trans community tiresomely hypersensitive on this issue.  Of course it's not even as if I believe Carr (or Chappelle) are personally anti-Roma, or anti-trans, respectively.   But that doesn't mean that making jokes that are clearly capable of being read by the audience as endorsing their worst impulses are excuseable on the basis that it's knowingly offensive, and therefore an innocent case of "funny because it's not funny".      

I note, by the way, that all of the comments I can see after the Youtube clip I linked to above are actually supportive of Carr.   David Mitchell's wife also supported him.   I put this down to an over-reaction to the alleged tyranny of "cancel culture".   But seriously, people - put some thought into what you - and the person next to you - find funny, or acceptable, in humour or entertainment. 

 

David Mitchell on religion

Oh, this is the first time in quite a while that I've noticed David Mitchell writing in The Guardian.  Here I find out that he counts himself as agnostic, not atheist, in the context of talking about a recent comedy event he participated in at a cathedral:

So was it “offensive to everyone who thinks a cathedral is a holy space”? I’m not very religious, but neither am I an atheist. I’m a “don’t know”. I hope there’s a nice big God, and I hope I find myself believing in one when I expire, but I don’t reckon thinking about it a lot is going to give me the answer. I like churches, though – I find them both calming and moving, a combination rarely achieved by TV drama. During the event, I was extremely pleased to be in a cathedral.

I would have judged him as more likely to just be an out and out atheist, so I am pleasantly surprised.  

Bossy Bosi

Wannabe military junta cosplayer Riccardo Bosi has made a big splash on social media this weekend with his speech at the moron gathering in Canberra during which he called for 5 million Australians to join the protest (a target I expect will be undershot by about 4,998,000, give or take), failing which he warned the crowd that their fate would be in the "vaccination camps" which, he assured them, have "gas pipes" connected.   

He is an extraordinarily paranoid conspiracy nut, but is it appropriate that the mainstream media largely ignore him?   I mean, surely his followers have to cotton on sooner or later that he's a bullshit artist of the highest order who cannot whip up the public support that he claims is essential.  But wouldn't that be assisted by mainstream media showing his nuttiness for everyone but his deluded followers to laugh at?

 

A question to my tiny, tiny band of regular readers

Should I just delete every single comment of Graeme?   I mean, my policy for a long time has been to delete anything that makes reference to Jews, directly or covertly, as I won't allow anti-Semitic conspiracy rubbish here.  I have been leaving his other rubbish comments up, without engaging with them, including the ones where he happily calls me (and any other commenter) dumb for not agreeing with his esoteric views.   Apart from a conspiracy addled brain, he has no manners.

I was watching some of the documentaries on the Holocaust on SBS last week, and it reinforced my view that anyone who aligns with the centuries old conspiracy mongering against the Jews really doesn't deserve engaging with on any topic.   I feel that allowing Graeme's comments to remain here, on any topic, is a form of engagement.

So, what do you think I should do?  Automatic deletion when I see them?

  

Tweets liked

Boosted

There are a lot of spare seats in the Brisbane Convention Centre vaccination centre.

My daughter had her vaccination here a few months ago and it did involve lining up.  Today, I walked straight in and reckon I had Pfizer in my arm in about 8 minutes flat.   (I'm about a week over 3 months since I got my second Astra Zeneka.). 

Despite the mis-steps taken by various Australian governments with respect to COVID,I think there has been some underappreciation of the efficiency of the Australian free vaccination process.  As with the way Australia runs elections, it makes me feel good to live in a country that organises such things well and efficiently.   Gives me a nice communitarian feeling.  

What was he thinking??

It continues to look a near certainty that Ben Roberts Smith's defamation case will go down in history as the most ill considered action of its type since Oscar Wilde thought he would come across as straight. 

What also continues to be dumbfounding is how badly the government has handled the investigation that we're watching the matter be litigated in a civil court before any action in a criminal one.

The stupid Moon movie is falling

Could this possibly be the well deserved end to Roland Emmerich's directorial career?   I've never liked any of his movies:

 

Tim's on a PR bender

Those of us with a decade's long allergy to the vain self promotion robot that is Tim Wilson are having a hard time reading Twitter at the moment, given his relentless PR re-invention as Mr Clean Energy and Somewhat Wet Liberal:

It must be what internal polling (is there any politician more likely to pay for assessments of his popularity?) is telling him will work for him.

I would bet he will dump any leader in a flash if he can see it as a step closer to the Prime Ministership.  Mind you, Morrison thoroughly deserves the humiliation.

Update:  yeah, it's time for the party room to put Scotty from Marketing out of his misery:

 

Update 2:  yeah, cowardice killed his Prime Ministership, but it's hard to not to like him at a personal level:

Conservative Catholics yearning for the days of complete control (of women)

A couple of enlightening comments at dover-beach's Catholics for Fascism (and Complete State Control of Women) blog:

 

Baguette war

A French supermarket has upset (some) Parisians by selling 30c baguettes for a few months.

(Also, have a look at the range of baguette style bread for sale in the supermarket featured - there's a lot):

 

Bill Maher and the nuttiness on the Left (an old theme here, but bears repeating)

Allahpundit notes how Bill Maher has quickly fallen out of Left wing favour (and risen in Fox News esteem) due to his recent "I'm over COVID" complaints (which included, I believe, the nonsense position that he was not going to get a booster because - well, they used to say that two was enough, so how dare medical science change its mind during an evolving pandemic?)   Maher has apparently gone on to complain about the Left going nuts in a more general sense.  (I haven't watched the clip, but I see the screenshot features the "pregnant man" emoji which my daughter told me - with amusement - that Apple had just released.)

I've always been leery of Maher as a reliable political friend - too many libertarian instincts in him are probably at the heart of it.   

And Allahpundit (and Maher) note that the problem is similar on the Right - a part of it goes nuts, and the "mainstream" stands around and fails to call it out.   It's cowardice.

But it's somewhat galling that they don't (well, at least Allahpundit doesn't) explicitly say what is clear:   the nuttiness of the Right is on topics that make it far, far more dangerous than the identity politics nuttiness on the Left. 

The Leftist extreme, for example, thinks gender is completely a choice and former men who grew up with male bodies should face no discrimination when joining a women's competition.  They get people de-platformed from Twitter and elsewhere for being mean to transgender folk, and vow never to read Harry Potter again.   They virtually beg for social media confirmation that they now look "hot" in their new body.   Academics, and sometimes researchers, do get very unfairly targeted if they are perceived to not be completely supportive of the agenda.    And in Australia, the patently obvious campaign to upgrade old Aboriginal society to the status of "civilisation" and sophistication continues apace, with sceptical and realistic voices rarely raised.  

The nutty Right, on the other hand, makes death threats to election workers, scientists and doctors continually, both on social media and directly, based on bad faith conspiracy promoted for greed by both big and small media outlets.   In America, they have no commitment to democracy and enabling greater participation in it.  They wanted to overturn a fair election, and rallied chanting death to politicians who thwarted their plan.  They do not believe in climate change and would happily burn every last bit of coal because they don't believe scientists and the evidence before their eyes.    They are happy to demonise both immigrants and their political opponents as being inherently evil.

It's clear that the conspiracy belief of the Right is priming material for Right wing terrorist acts:  its seems more by luck than anything else that there hasn't been a major incident for a while.

So yes, I would like more on the Left to speak up about extreme and unrealistic views on identity politics and culture war issues - but let's not pretend there is an equivalence of the seriousness of the problem on both sides.

Update:   I've watched the Maher clip and it is pretty weak stuff. Yes, he's upset with identity politics, but also goes on at greater length with a general libertarian whine that Democrats want to regulate too much. 

 

Appalling social media story

A Gold Coast doctor has been subjected to death threats and abuse and is living in “utter fear” of anti-vaxxers thanks to false reports that two children died in his clinic after being administered the Pfizer vaccine.

The Pacific Pines GP, Dr Wilson Chin, said “widespread panic” swept through his community when false reports spread online that the two children had died in his clinic.

The girls suffered what Chin described as a “normal” fainting episode while under observation at the clinic a fortnight ago and have since recovered.

But a post to a Facebook page purporting to be a “personal eyewitness account” wrongly claimed the girls had suffered “violent convulsions” and later died in the waiting room.

Another Facebook user posted false information describing the girls as “unresponsive when ambos got there” and encouraging others to share the post.

The backlash ultimately forced the clinic to pull out of the vaccine rollout of five to 11-year-olds after Chin and his colleagues received death threats, which have been reported to police.

But Norman Swan, hey Jason?  

Here's a link.

 

Sounds like an internal move to dump Morrison may be afoot

 

The only problem is, I don't really want him replaced by the only candidate with some degree of personal likeability - Frydenberg - because I badly want to see Labor in power again, and don't want to see anything the might make that harder.   (Also - what's the bet that try-hard, newly hatched green energy believer Tim Wilson will be part of a plan too to up his position?   A slimier ego desperate to climb the slippery pole I have rarely seen.)  
 

Top marks for positive thinking

My kids find it odd that I subscribe too, and happily watch, nearly all videos by some (presumably) Japanese guy who has a not very old Youtube channel called "Solo Travel Japan".   His speciality has been catching overnight passenger ferries in Japan, but he also does capsule hotel and other experiences.  Each video is usually about 20 minutes long, often less, so it's not a huge time commitment.

I had no idea that you could do so much travel in that country by some pretty fancy and big ferries - usually they're overnight trips, and the accommodation ranges from some pretty nice private cabins with views, to dormitory style accommodation where the sound of snoring on a crowded trip must be a problem.  They all seem to just have cafeteria style food, and he show his meals on each trip too, despite the food being pretty standard Japanese fare.

He does not appear in his videos, apart from his hand or sometimes legs, and he doesn't talk; nor does he show other people up close.   (Given the pandemic, so many of his overnight ferry trips look like he is virtually the only person on board!).  It's just a Point of View videos of a silent person making a solo short trip in Japan.  (Maybe I like it because I travelled solo, often being silent for quite a long time too, when I was in my 20's?) 

I find there is an almost meditative peacefulness and comfort in watching him following the same routine -  here he is catching the bus to the port;  now boarding and going to his cabin, checking out the amenities; let's see what he is having on his cafeteria meal tonight.  (He sometimes seems to eat huge amounts, too.)   And there is the matter of his relentlessly cheery commentary in English subtitles, the latest example of which is the reason I decided to write this post.

This last trip was on an actually quite old passenger/vehicular ferry; it had some clear rust on decks and was way below the quality of the usual inter-island ferries he has been on.   He stayed this time in a very cheap dormitory style room:

His bunk featured a blanket that was clearly old and daggy.   Yet this was his commentary, which I found such an extreme case of "looking on the bright side" that it made me laugh out loud:

 

 

OK, maybe it wasn't worth a whole post, but that commentary is funny, and a bit delightful too.  

I don't know, but it's also kind of delightful that a person can make money for a time out of really simple, but cheerful and positive, content on Youtube.   I get bored with Youtubers who are too serious and introspective (or who do podcasts that ramble on for hours) - but people who are cheerful in whatever they do, it's pleasing they can make money from being nice.

Big in Portugual

So socialists do well in Portugal...I didn't know that:

Portugal’s ruling Socialists unexpectedly won an outright majority to govern solo after snap elections on Sunday that also saw the far right make huge gains.  

The results pave the way for a stronger government under Prime Minister Antonio Costa as the country tries to boost its tourism-dependent economy, which has been badly hit by the pandemic.

Oddly:

The results bucked the trend of declining fortunes for Socialist parties in other European nations, including in Greece and France where they have been virtually wiped off the map in recent years.

 

Some Roberts tweets to agree with

 

Maybe I should read up on how ballet became ballet...

Seeing this article on Twitter, my first reaction was "yeah, it's an art form I just can't imagine being interested in.  I can understand girls being attracted to the prettiness, or I guess girliness, of the classic ballerina get-up; but how does any man or boy, straight or gay, get attracted to it?"  

And then I realised, I don't have any idea about the history of this artform and how the look of "classic" ballet became solidified into its current state.   I mean, it couldn't have sprung fully formed into that look and style.   

One day, when I've done that long promised household sock audit, I might look into it.

 

Stop panicking everyone....

...my phone with Smart Launcher is operating again.

I tried one other launcher (Niagra) and didn't like it....

First world problem (but a potentially serious one if you're unlucky)

I've used the Smart Launcher app on my phones for perhaps 5 (or more?) years now, and I've been very happy with it.   I've paid for the pro version too, and although it's had the occasional hiccup,  it's been pretty smooth sailing, and I like its features.

This morning, it had a very big problem.  It insisted that the version I was using had to be updated, and this was the first screen on my phone - the Google Play update page for the app - but it wouldn't update.  Nor would it let me return to the home page, meaning the phone couldn't be used for anything.

I could get to the phone settings and did work out soon enough how to revert to the phone's inbuilt launcher, and of course did that.  But as many people on Reddit (which the fastest source of confirmation that there was a problem) pointed out, there would be many people out there (typically, parents or older folk whose kids had set up their phone with the app for them) who would not know how to go back to the phone's default launcher so as to be able to get to the home page again.   Hence, they would have an inoperative phone due to massive error in a Smart Launcher update. 

The company has acknowledged the error and said it should be fixed within hours.  As many on Reddit have noted, this could be a serious legal problem for the company if a user wanted to make an emergency or critical call on their phone, but was prevented by not being able to get to the home page.  (It's been a few hours now - I should go check if it has been fixed.  Wait - no it hasn't.  It's now been 3 hours since I discovered the problem; I don't know at what time it started overnight.)

Like many others (again, Reddit comments are the source of information), I also tried uninstalling the launcher and re-installing, but it didn't work.   This also likely means I have to set up the launcher to my preferred setting again once it again becomes useable.

I'm sure lots of users will consider dumping the app because of this.  Whoever caused the problem will likely be out of a job, I suspect. 

 

Noah needs to meet more Australians

I like Noah Smith, and find his disparaging views of Australians a bit amusing, but also a tad unfair.  (Although I guess it's the unfairness that makes it amusing.)

Is Smith or Roberts mainly right?

There are two American internet pundits that I find myself nearly always agreeing with, or at least enjoying their takes - Noah Smith and David Roberts - but they are pretty much on opposite ends of the optimism/pessimism scale.

Noah is relentlessly optimistic and cheerful, and his free Substack article today is a good example of this:

Do we stand at the precipice of radical change?

Maybe, but perhaps we'll just putter along

The best thing about this piece is how it points out what I've been saying for a few years about Right wing catastrophic takes on the recent state of the US (and the world) - it's just politically motivated scary campfire storytelling, ignoring completely the history of how much worse American society (and the world) were faring in the 60's to the 90's:

Most Americans are now too young to remember, but in the early 1970s domestic terrorist attacks became so commonplace that they were practically ignored — over a year and a half during 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted over 2500 bombings in the U.S. Most of these attacks didn’t kill anyone — they were just bombs that blew up empty buildings. But imagine the hysteria if this was happening multiple times a day in 2022! Two left-wing radicals tried to kill President Gerald Ford within a three-week period in 1976!

And people were dying. In the late 60s and 70s, the murder rate — always much higher in the U.S. than in other rich countries — spiked to levels not seen since the 19th century, and stayed high until the late 90s....

The three decades from the mid-60s to the mid-90s were, simply put, a time of violence and madness. And let’s not forget the economic catastrophe of the late 70s stagflation, the wage stagnation between roughly 1973 and 1993, or the double-digit unemployment rates of the early 80s.

And as for looming catastrophes, eco-dystopias were already starting to appear in the 70s, but the true Sword of Damocles was nuclear war. Tens of thousands of Soviet tanks stood ready to roll into the Fulda Gap at any moment. By the late 80s, the U.S. and USSR were facing each other with over 60,000 nuclear weapons, many on hair-trigger alert.

Obviously, the whole "Flight 93 election" meme was just patent crap from the start - and exaggerating the effects of Trump era Left-ish protest (as if the country had never seen massive and damaging race related protest and riots before) was cynical self-gaslighting, promoted by the poisonous feedback loop of Right wing media and the Republican Party, and the stupid people all over the world who follow them.     

Noah then switches to talking about the genuine crisis of climate change and whether it really is the big issue that means the world has to move towards more socialist settings to see its way through.  But, given his optimism, he thinks we probably will get the problem under some sort of control:

And yet to me, it seems easily possible to imagine a future where we don’t just muddle along with business-as-usual, but in which we do address the threat of climate change with only mild disruptions of our current way of life. The biggest reason is the advance of technology. Renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles, and other green technologies have gotten so good, and so cheap, so quickly, that the economic incentives now favor decarbonization. 

I have to say, I am somewhat inclined to that view myself.  For example, I have stopped posting much about any climate change scepticism, because it is clear that the handful of contrarian scientists and their ideologically motivated supporters have been routed.   There just is no longer any point in engaging with their arguments, and it's kind of pathetic watching the losers cling to their "but I'll be proved right yet!" pleas while they are ignored by serious political leadership, and only give succour by ignorant clowns.  

As to whether we will get sufficient carbon emission reduction to prevent the really bad long term outcomes - my vague optimism extends to that too, even though I am dissatisfied with the current fiddling at the edges.  (See my recent post - The transition to clean energy - time for specifics, isn't it??)

Yet I still feel a bit dissatisfied with Noah's column, because it doesn't address the key issue that is so concerning for the future of American (and really, global) democracy and well being - the Right wing generated "epistemic crisis" that David Roberts discusses so convincingly.    

I mean, David Roberts is right in today's tweet:

It's incredibly bad that things that would have universally been considered appallingly anti-democratic, fascist worthy actions are now treated by half of the elected politicians to America as if they are just unremarkable "it's how we do business now" part of the landscape.  And people will still vote for those politicians!   As someone said in a tweet following:

As many have said, even worse than Trump himself is the cowardice of the Republican Party to stand up to him.   But this is not mattering to voters.   

I posted recently that if Right wing media is at the core of poisonous Right wing politics in America, maybe if Rupert and his son had a change of heart the turnaound in the political atmosphere could, in theory, be pretty quick?    If you had a new owner announce "we will not be the network of demonisation of Democrats and centrists politics anymore - it is harming the country" and sacked all its current evening line up - how long would it take to get politics back to reason?

I know this is wildly unlikey, and perhaps short of key members of the Murdoch family going down in a plane over a volcano (we all have our dreams), it's not going to happen.   Hence, the Robert's concern about the poor prospects for reasonableness in near-future American politics seems warranted, at least for the time being.   

PS:  another scenario for relatively rapid improvement - Trump and certain key supporters going down in civil or criminal trials.   I still strongly suspect that this is what at least a significant proportion of Republican old blood are hoping for - but it remains unclear how long the heart of the party is going to be tainted by making excuses for a wannabe fascist.   And I still see the Right wing media as the more crucial change needed.    

Update:   I have been having some further thoughts about this.  In particular, as to why, when things were pretty bad in those earlier decades, people (including me) did still retain a long term optimism that feels harder to have now.

I think I have worked it out.

Yes, the United States (and the West, generally speaking) did just "putter along" out of the days of radicalism and violence of the decades of the 60's to 90's;  and that does suggest that it will work its way out of the current social turbulence, too.   (Which isn't, in violence terms, actually as bad as the earlier period, as Noah correctly argues.)  

But the reason it feels different this time is that such a large part of the nation cannot even see that it is being radical.  Because, yes, sympathy to a idiot failed President's direct attempts to have an election overturned on false and imaginary claims is a radical position!  Failing to see the fascism in continual calls at rallies to have your political opponent locked up on drummed up charges, and calling all media that doesn't toe your line "the enemy of the people" is radical!    Yet there is a very big part of the American population that cannot see this as so bad - or even think it is warranted. 

The radicalism of Leftist terrorists in the 60's and 70's was something that the country and its media did not doubt.   The Right wing radicalism that led to (say) the Oklahoma bombing was not up for dispute.  The radical element in the country was small and knew it was radical.  Today it is much, much larger, and really doesn't know it.

To take an example of something unique to these times: the absurd Right's vilification of expertise and wholesale belief in conspiracy means that ordinary people doing their job are under threat in a way that is really novel - see the terrible (and badly under-reported) story of election workers who have been terrorised for purely imaginary actions, and the recent report in the Washington Post about the security that Fauci now has to live through due to the perm-haired idiot of a Senator and gormless media figures like Tucker Carlson.   In fact, let's quote that report:

“There is no truth,” Fauci says, for effect. “There is no fact.” People believe hydroxychloroquine works because an Internet charlatan claims it does. People believe the 2020 election was stolen because a former president says so. People believe that Fauci killed millions of people for the good of his stock portfolio because it’s implied by TV pundits, Internet trolls and even elected leaders. Fauci is unnerved by “the almost incomprehensible culture of lies” that has spread among the populace, infected major organs of the government, manifested as ghastly threats against him and his family. His office staff, normally focused on communicating science to the public, has been conscripted into skirmishes over conspiracy theories and misinformation.

“It is very, very upending to live through this,” Fauci says, seated at his kitchen table in the midwinter light. He pauses. “I’m trying to get the right word for it.” He is examining himself now, at 81, in the shadow of the past two years. “It has shaken me a bit.”

The way he can comprehend the situation is in the context of the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. There it was, on live TV, an experiment as clear as day: The abandonment of truth has seismic consequences.

Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can’t slide a whole country into an MRI machine.

“There’s no diagnosis for this,” Fauci says. “I don’t know what is going on.”

Exactly.  

This is what gives me pause about the nation "puttering along" out of its current state.   

Which leads me to the "civil war" issue.  I think Noah is sceptical of takes along those lines too, but so is David Roberts.  The culture war and political fractures do tend to run along an educational and urban/rural divide, meaning that there is no realistic way the nation can be divided geographically.   And, happily, because the military is led by well educated people, the danger of Trump was clear to nearly all in the Pentagon, and they were not going to support him in a ridiculous coup.

So no, the epistemic crisis is not going to lead to civil war.  I suppose that is a kind of "optimism".   But on the downside, it's hard to see how it can't continue leaving the country in a political paralysis on certain key issues, and weaken effective democracy.  Until the Right comes to its senses, the "puttering out" of the current problems is going to be very protracted, disheartening, and potentially dangerous.  

Some science talk about "Don't Look Up"

I've seen "Dr Becky" before - she's quite an engaging Youtuber, but I've only just subscribed - and her assessment of the science around Don't Look Up is worth watching, even if she doesn't talk about comets and their mineral content (which I thought was probably the biggest single silly science problem in the whole movie):

The Scots and the Inuit

I stumbled across this short article, talking about how the Scots whalers were not all mad rabble-rousers, as I would have thought they might be.  Didn't know that Arthur Conan Doyle had this experience, either:

The Arctic Bar in Dundee is an unprepossessing pub with a modern frontage, but inside the dusty harpoon guns and photographs of ice bound ships displayed around the walls indicate that this was once the pub where Victorian whaler men would go to collect their pay at the end of a six month voyage.

There are many reminders of Dundee’s whaling past around the city. The new Victoria and Albert museum is built in the shape of a ship, seeming to set out over the Tay, because it stands on the site of what was once the Earl Grey dock where whaling boats berthed over the last two centuries. Next to it at Discovery Point lies the ship RRS Discovery – Scott commissioned this converted whaling ship, with its triple-reinforced hulls, for his Antarctic expedition.

The McManus Museum of Dundee holds many Inuit artefacts brought back by Victorian whaler men, a stunning collection of photographs of Inuit and whaling boats crews, and several diaries written by various ships’ surgeons – usually medical students wanting adventure and funds for the summer.

Arthur Conan Doyle, while serving as a student surgeon on a whaler, wrote a ghost story about an Arctic voyage. From early Victorian times, writers have penned gothic tales about the sublime and savage Arctic wilderness and the journey to man’s darkest heart that six months of darkness can cause....

Here's the most interesting bit:

For my novel A Woman Made of Snow, however, I wanted to evoke the daily lives of the whaler men and the Inuit that they worked and lived with. The Dundee whaling industry lasted longer than in any other whaling port in Scotland and England. With steady work available and a strong church tradition the whaler men of Dundee were by and large sober artisans – though with plenty of the famous ‘wild rough lot’ found in most whaling ports. Conan Doyle found the working class Scots crew he sailed with steady and educated, sober and religious. He enjoyed talking with the crew and relished joining in with hunting expeditions.

 

 

Much amusement to be had in reviews of Rogan and Peterson having a 4 hour chat

In Rolling Stone:

There is a meditative quality to both Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson’s work that sucks you in. For Rogan, it is his voice — a soft, curious, always credulous murmur that lends itself to explaining complicated topics. Watching Rogan deconstruct a mixed martial arts fight can be a genuine pleasure for fans of the sport, like listening to a close friend really nerd out over something they’re passionate about. Peterson is not as blessed sonically — he sounds like Kermit the Frog as a freshman philosophy major — but he too projects the same blithe confidence in his own words that can make almost any topic sound compelling. 

The only problem is, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are two of the dumbest people on earth. The wildly successful podcast host and self-help author’s careers have intersected and built on one another multiple times, as their core audience of disaffected young men is largely the same. Their paths crossed once again this week in a four-hour marathon conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, during which Peterson bizarrely and very proudly wore a tuxedo. Their topics were varied, but almost all of them were intensely stupid, if not incoherent.

....

This sort of credulity is both Rogan’s biggest draw and his worst tendency. Rogan has built his brand around open-mindedness, which he passes off as “free thinking.” But in practice, instead of thinking about what his guests are saying to him, Rogan’s first instinct is to “mmhm” his way through topics that frequently stray into conspiracies, bigotry, or simple stupidity. Rogan’s guiding ethos doesn’t seem to be much more complicated than “seek out the controversial, and popular,” which has led him, during the pandemic, to repeatedly platform or publish misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines.

At Gizmodo, the nicely sarcastic headline:

Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan Talking About Climate Change Will Make Your Brain Dissolve

The big boys had a big thinky about climate change.

 

A science fiction idea making progress

In The Guardian:

A frog has regrown a lost leg after being treated with a cocktail of drugs in a significant advance for regenerative medicine.

The African clawed frog, which is naturally unable to regenerate its limbs, was treated with the drugs for just 24 hours and this prompted an 18-month period of regrowth of a functional leg. The demonstration raises the prospect that in the future drugs could be used to switch on similar untapped abilities for regeneration in human patients to restore tissues or organs lost to disease or injury.

“It’s exciting to see that the drugs we selected were helping to create an almost complete limb,” said Nirosha Murugan of Tufts University in Massachusetts and first author of the paper. “The fact that it required only a brief exposure to the drugs to set in motion a months-long regeneration process suggests that frogs and perhaps other animals may have dormant regenerative capabilities that can be triggered into action.”

The ridiculous Peterson

He's getting roasted for a very stupid opening on climate change:

His position: climate is everything, and you can't model everything so climate change is crap.  

Some people have generously explained what he was probably trying to say:

...but as the Tweet says  it's a line of attack which displays both ignorance and arrogance.

And these tweets following sum up the impression both Rogan and Peterson (but more especially Rogan) give me, on any topic:

And for services to the IPA...

Do all American conservatives have brain damage?

It is breathtakingly stupid that American conservatives should rush to play a game of "whataboutism" to try to downplay how Trump talked about the press compared to Biden's very occasional snappiness with reporters.

There is just zero comparison.

How thick and dumb do you have to be to not see the fascist nature of continually, at rallies, and elsewhere, calling all mainstream networks and journalists "the enemy of the people" unless they are bootlickers to the most absurd character ever to hold the Presidency; and outright lying about things like "and look up the back, they're turning the cameras off now."    

And you know what - it's weird, but the absolutely dumbest and most dishonest version of an American conservative seems to be gay conservative commentators - see Gateway Pundit and the awful Glenn Greenwald.   Greenwald's denunciation of Biden's hot mic snark is so weirdly over the top that it seems many assumed he was being sarcastic, but the following tweets just confirm he is an absolute partisan nut with not an iota of a sense of perspective. 

The Murdoch and the Russians questions

Does Murdoch think Putin empowerment by invading Ukraine is a good idea?    If not, why is he relaxed (well, relaxed enough not to be exercising any editorial control) about Fox News gee-ing up the Trumpist conservatives into taking Putin's side?   Is it really worth the money in the US, or does he think  there is money to be made in Russia too?   Is he smart enough to admit that Brexit is a populist failure?  Surely he doesn't think he has successfully "punished" the Europeans, who he complained he cannot control, by forcing Britain out of the EU?   Is he letting Fox's most influential "stars" take Putin's side as a second attempt at punishing Europe for not letting him do whatever he wants?  

So many questions.  Many brought to mind by David Frum:

 

I could come up with a better religion than this..

From a book review in the New York Times, about a young-ish enlightenment seeking trekker (and internet figure) who disappeared in a Himalayan valley knows for its trekker disappearances:

What animates Shetler? We learn that he’s the child of divorce, on the one hand having a father whose own experiences in India heavily influenced Shetler (as did their father-and-teenage-son partaking of hallucinogens) and a mother whose spiritual influence can be attributed to the Hindu-inflected Eckankar religion, birthed in the 1960s by Paul Twitchell, a onetime colleague of L. Ron Hubbard, promoting “soul travel,” the chanting of the word “Hu,” and a belief system said to have begun when an essence known as Gakko came to Earth six million years ago from the city of Retz on Venus.

I have heard of Eckankar, but never bothered reading up on its esoteric beliefs.

He's looking different

Is it just me, or does Newt Gingrich not even look like Newt Gingrich any more?    

He's aged 78 now.

Go home Arabs

We don't hear much about this in the West - but France 24 discusses the rise of anti-Arab sentiment in Turkey, which is such a troubled country now:

Homelessness and meth

So, it seems there is some discussion going on as to whether America's chronic homelessness problem is largely a result of a new form of meth that has been flooding in from Mexico.

A guy who wrote a book about it says:

I don’t know what is causing this very quick descent into psychosis, symptoms of schizophrenia, etc., among people using the meth that’s now on the street nationwide. I said this in the book.

It could indeed be the staggering quantities of the drug nationwide — certainly a byproduct of how P2P meth is made — that leads in turn to far greater consumption. It could indeed be its alarming potency. As I state in the book, there’s no neuroscience on this — no studies of the effects of today’s street meth on rats or mice. I hope the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will fund those studies, using authentic street meth from around the country.

In my book, I’m giving street reporting — just talking with folks who work or have lived in this world — because there are no studies. If there were any, I’d have cited them.

Also, people end up homeless for many reasons. A shredded safety net, release from prison without any family support, registered sex offenders who can’t find housing in the limited areas they’re allowed to live in, massive childhood trauma, etc. The list is probably as long and complex as the people who are homeless. I’m quite sure the high cost of housing is among the reasons for many people.

But people whose problem is a lost job or an expensive surgery with no health insurance forcing them out of housing do not collapse into a tent on the street. They usually have family support, friends on whose couch they can sleep. Not so with folks for whom using meth is the issue.

What’s more, meth’s prevalence is now so complete that once someone is homeless (for whatever reason) it’s quite easy to fall into using the drug. Meth-induced psychosis allows a user to escape the reality of living on the street. Getting out of homelessness then becomes a much more difficult task. My reporting shows that often users do not return to their former state of mental acuity once they stop using this meth. Recovery of brain faculties can take months.

Despite all this, on the list of causes of homelessness, this meth surge and meth-induced psychosis seems to me, after a lot of reporting on it, is the only topic that appears taboo to discuss in many activist/advocate circles. The issue’s narrative is almost entirely about the high cost of housing. Nothing else seems permitted. There’s almost a prohibition, a woke censorship, that prevents meth from being discussed.

Interesting...

 

Take your medicine

As reported in Science: 

Pill derived from human feces treats recurrent gut infections

...The new pill, called SER-109 and made by Seres Therapeutics, is derived from human feces purified to winnow down the resident microbes. Stool from prescreened donors is treated with ethanol, which kills many viruses, fungi, and “vegetative” bacteria—those in a state of growth and reproduction. Left behind are bacteria that can form hearty, thick-walled structures called spores, many of them from the common phylum Firmicutes. Bacteria in this group are valuable because they can compete with C. difficile in the gut, “taking its space and its food and its carbon sources,” says Seres Chief Medical Officer Lisa von Moltke; the Firmicutes also change the composition of bile acids in the intestines, making the environment less hospitable for C. difficile, she notes.

Still, you would want that gel coating to work well...