A comforting bit of information for the next time you're flying with a mad person

From the Washington Post:

In two high-profile incidents since Friday, airline passengers terrified fellow travelers when they tried to open a plane door during their flight. It has been a repeated move by unruly passengers in the past year.

Both passengers were arrested in the most recent incidents. Even if flight attendants and passengers hadn’t intervened, neither passenger would have been able to wrestle the door open.

“People are not strong enough,” said Doug Moss, a retired airline pilot and instructor in the aviation safety and security program at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering.

That is because no human is a match for the tremendous pressure holding the door in place.

Airplane cabins are pressurized, which lets people breathe normally even when flying at about 35,000 feet in the air. At typical cruising altitude, Ask a Pilot writer Patrick Smith notes on his website, as much as eight pounds of pressure push against every square inch of the plane’s interior — or more than 1,100 pounds against each square foot of the door.

“Just by pure pressure alone, the force required to open the door would be astronomical,” said Bob Thomas, an assistant professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Moss said the pressurization would have the same effect on any door on a plane, including the emergency exits, which are designed to be used in the event of an evacuation when the plane is no longer in the air.

That’s the door a Delta passenger tried to open during a flight from Salt Lake City to Portland, Ore., on Friday. The 32-year-old man allegedly removed the plastic covering over the handle of the emergency exit and pulled the handle; he later told police that he wanted to be recorded so he could share his thoughts about the coronavirus vaccine.

I guess the caveat to this is that if a mad person leaps out of their seat (or is sitting right next to an over wing exit) and tries this immediately on take off, they might succeed?  

 

A relatively simple explanation of superdeterminism

I barely look at Discover magazine's site anymore, but I'm glad I did today because of this pretty easy to follow explanation of superdeterminism.  (I reckon this idea is catching attention because the popular Sabine Hossenfelder likes it.)  

All about present day Russia

Some Twitter threads by people who seem to know their subject well are really good to read.

I liked this one today that explains a lot about present day Russia, mainly from a geographic and population point of view.  (It's more interesting than it sounds).

 

The Right wing and hysteria

With the Right wing hysterical reaction to Trudeau's moderate and targeted use of emergency powers to rid Ottawa (and other cities) of useless and unjustifiable blockades (according to "my employer says no one should take me seriously" Tucker Carlson, it's martial law and the end of democracy), I am reminded once again how the tide has turned.

When I were a lad (well, at least into my 20's), Monty Python used to ridicule Left wing political hyperbole:

Man:      (laughingly) Listen: Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords

is no basis for a system of government!  Supreme executive power

derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical

aquatic ceremony!

Arthur:              (yelling) BE QUIET!

Man:      You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some

watery tart threw a sword at you!!

Arthur:              (coming forward and grabbing the man) Shut *UP*!

Man:      I mean, if I went 'round, saying I was an emperor, just because some

moistened bink had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Arthur:              (throwing the man around) Shut up, will you, SHUT UP!

Man:      Aha!  Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

Arthur:              SHUT UP!

Man:      (yelling to all the other workers) Come and see the violence inherent

in the system!    HELP, HELP, I'M BEING REPRESSED!

I think "what have the Romans ever done for us" could similarly be said to be mocking the Left for wanting victim status all the time.   

And that was because political over the top hyperbole used to be a thing more of the Left than the Right.

Now, it's the speciality of the wingnut Right, and is amplified by its media that makes money out of spreading fear and misinformation.

 

Chris Uhlmann: Australia's own JD Vance

Look at the highly sympathetic treatment Chris Uhlmann gives the Canberra protesters in today's piece in the Sydney Morning Herald:   they're just like Trump's followers, mostly ordinary working class people who have faced hard times who are frustrated that they're not being heard: exactly the same analysis as given by JD Vance.

Uhlmann has always had crap judgement, and it would have to be at least an even odds bet that he will go increasingly wingnut, like Vance, once he leaves Channel 9 and (hopefully) gets out of media for good.  Did he actually give media appearance advice to some of the protesters, as one of them claimed last week?  Has he answered that claim?

I'm on the side of those who have no time for the sympathetic treatment of wingnuts - they are victims of malicious and greedy Right wing media, both institutional and social, and talked themselves into ridiculous, dangerous and often pro-fascist positions.  They need to be told loudly and clearly that they are wrong and been conned on multiple issues and because they are too gullible.

I will be very glad to see the back of Uhlmann.

Hot head

I thought I could tell by the writing style of an article by Vinad Prasad that Jason Soon finds convincing that this guy seemed unduly hyperbolic in his criticisms of the CDC. 

Googling him, I see that he is indeed a ridiculous hot head, and I would not trust his assessments at all without looking at calm and detailed commentary by others:

Prasad, an oncologist and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF, likes a good Twitter fight. He has incited brawls over FDA’s accelerated approval of cancer drugs, efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors, usefulness of next-gen sequencing, and—in recent months—the restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

In an Oct. 2 Substack blog post, Prasad argues that public health measures may have laid the groundwork for the onset of fascism in the U.S. 

The comparison set off a deluge of Twitter controversy, including accusations of anti-Semitism and ignorance of the circumstances that led to the rise of German fascism.

In the blog post and an accompanying video titled “How Democracy Ends,” Prasad speculates that in the name of public health and safety, an unscrupulous U.S. government could turn dictatorial and fascist.

“When democratically elected systems transform into totalitarian regimes, the transition is subtle, stepwise, and involves a combination of pre-planned as well as serendipitous events,” Prasad wrote. “Indeed, this was the case with Germany in the years 1929-1939, where Hitler was given a chance at governing, the president subsequently died, a key general resigned after a scandal and the pathway to the Fuhrer was inevitable.”

Also on Oct. 2, Prasad posted a link to his blog post and video on Twitter, sharing it again the next day. The Twitterverse exploded, with Prasad’s detractors battling his defenders while Prasad stood by his original point. Prasad didn’t respond to questions from The Cancer Letter, and at this writing, the post is still up.

He's a goose.

He's all too willing to allege bad motives on the part of other researchers rather than just accept that on the very complicated matter of this pandemic there can be a range of justifiable policy recommendations, based on research that's imperfect but might nonetheless be somewhat indicative of appropriate policy.

 

 

The departure of PJ O'Rourke

I wasn't his biggest fan, but PJ O'Rourke could be amusing in his contrarianism, and I had wondered what he thought of Trump, as I hadn't noticed him writing much in recent years.

So, Googling it up now, I am pleased to see that he had anti-Trump and anti-Brexit views, meaning he was more sensible than most conservative/libertarians in his own country (and those in Australia, like Tim Blair).  From an article in New Statesman in 2020:

O’Rourke sprang back into the national spotlight during the 2016 presidential election by announcing that he was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.

He puts the decision down to his natural conservatism. “Politics is a matter of least worst,” he told me when I recently stayed at his farm. “She was the devil I knew – she was going to be another eight years of Obama, which we had endured. Donald Trump? I knew people who knew him. Nobody liked him. I just thought he was unstable…dangerous. I still do.”...

he hasn’t changed his mind about Trump. “In fairness, his administration has not been as bad as I thought it might be,” he reflected. “But there have been moments when one has gone: ‘Whoah!’” What he described as Trump’s “group hug” with the North Koreans, and “stirring things up with Iran” are just two examples.

O’Rourke believes that the Founding Fathers made the presidency too powerful by giving it control of foreign policy – something he recently discovered Benjamin Franklin had opposed. “He thought it should have been a committee,” he said.

“Trump certainly is not a conservative in the sense of conserving the status quo. Arguably Clinton was more so. He is a radical, a populist one, and I don’t like populism anyway. Populism is, like, ‘The government should give me things I like or get rid of the things I don’t like’… The Nazis were populist, Mussolini was populist.”

For similar reasons, the perennial sceptic says he would have taken the Remain side in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. “I would have been against Brexit strictly on practical grounds – Britain and Europe had become too thoroughly integrated to do something as radical as Brexit.”

Though sympathetic to the Leave cause over European meddling, and happy to give Europe “a kick up the pants”, it was his conservatism that said “stay”.

 

 

 

So if Global Times said Trump was a pathetic dumb narcissist, that wouldn't be true?

First, the opinion piece (with its highly accurate summary of Morrison) is by Bruce Haigh, who (AFAIK) hardly counts as the official spokesperson of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Secondly:  as many in tweets following have said, isn't it rather more "Awks" that the coalition signed off on the long term lease of the Darwin port to a Chinese company barely 7 years ago, and is now wringing its hands as to whether it was a good idea after all.?

Thirdly:   I reckon the only way a hypocritical China scare campaign can "work" for Morrison, would be if there is an actual invasion of Taiwan before the election.   So let's send out positive vibes to Xi to calm down and not even think about that until next year, at least.  
 

Social media is strangling democracy

I agree entirely with Max Boot's Washington Post column "Social media is destroying democracy".  Some bits:

Freedom House reports that democracy has been on the decline around the world for the past 15 years — the same period that has seen the rise of social media. In her best-selling new book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” political scientist Barbara F. Walter argues that this is no coincidence. Social media, she writes, has become “the vehicle that launches outsiders with autocratic impulses to power, riding a popular wave of support.” Examples include Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil — and, of course, Donald Trump.

All of these demagogues are masters of a medium whose algorithms are designed to give users the content they crave. “It turns out,” Walter notes, “that what people like the most is fear over calm, falsehood over truth, outrage over empathy.” That explains why Breitbart is more popular on Facebook than the New York Times and why Ben Shapiro’s the Daily Wire is more popular than the BBC.

That, in turn, explains, why so many Americans believe that the FBI masterminded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that Trump won the 2020 election and that coronavirus vaccines are unnecessary or even harmful. That explains, also, why last year a crowd of QAnon believers gathered in Dallas expecting John F. Kennedy Jr. to return from the dead. Social media is full of useful, accurate information, but what most users really respond to is fear, falsehood and flakiness.

It is not clear to me that democracy can survive so much disinformation, and yet Republicans are bashing Big Tech because they are so mad that Trump and a few other political arsonists have been banned from major social media sites. The GOP position seems to be that there should be no gatekeepers at all, aside from those algorithms that feed collective outrage.

This is a deeply destructive and profoundly anti-conservative position.

 Of course, the comments following are mostly "But who are the gatekeepers going to be, you wannabe communist".   It's a good question, but refuse to solve the problem, and you're guaranteeing a worsening society.  

 

 

Speaking of animal death and cruelty...

...Elon Musk's Neuralink brain tinkering project is copping some bad PR:

Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has become the subject of a US federal complaint and lawsuit after “invasive and deadly brain experiments” were reportedly carried out on 23 monkeys – leaving 15 of them dead.

The Tesla billionaire’s firm - which aims to help paralysed individuals “by giving them the ability to control computers and mobile devices directly with their brains” – partnered with the University of California, Davis on the research, with $1.4 million allegedly given to the institution in funding.

However, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) claims the university has violated the Animal Welfare Act and has complained to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And I note that atheist blogger PZ Myers really puts the boot into the whole project in his post "Neuralink is feeling the heat".   I'm no expert, but my sense is that his scepticism is well justified:

The goals of Neuralink are sci-fi nonsense and hype about mundane technological developments. They’ve got a chip with more channels than previous efforts…but that’s not where the questions lie. Just throwing more needles into the brain does nothing if you don’t understand the interactions, or the long term consequences of healing, repair, and response to exogenous signals. It’s really a brute force approach to physically interacting with a mammalian brain, and it’s going to be increasingly disastrous as these people fumble about crudely under the directives of an incompetent narcissist.

I don’t want to hear what paid employees say. This is a case where an independent review is necessary by people who don’t get a paycheck from Elon Musk. I’d still like to know why UC Davis no longer supports Neuralink’s animal research. Is it under an NDA? That wouldn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I bet all those employees have a threatening NDA stapled to their backs.

If you want to see something really sad, though, check out Tanaka’s YouTube channel. Read the comments on this video, for example, but they all sound alike. They’re full of desperate people looking for hope. ‘Please sir, cure my seizures/paraplegia/tinnitis/depression/autism/Parkinson’s/multiple sclerosis/schizophrenia. Will it let me talk to animals?’ That’s where the fervor comes from. Musk is the messiah who will heal everything.

 

Sad but interesting reading

An article at Vice "Do Animals Understand What it Means to Die" is an interesting, if somewhat saddening, read.   It also introduced me to the term "comparative thanatology", and contained this somewhat startling section:

If we are interested in animals’ relationship to death as a topic on its own, and not only in relation to humans, we have to also look way beyond practices that we can identify with. One example is when pets feed on their owners after they die. “This is an extremely common phenomenon, much more common than we want it to be,” Monsó said. Even with dogs, who have strong bonds with their owners, “we’ve seen examples of dogs eating their owners 45 minutes after the owner died and with food in their bowl.” 

Monsó said the pattern of eating is also different than when a dog would be scavenging; when dogs scavenge, they usually eat the abdomen area first, but in these cases dogs focus on the face. “It’s a very disturbing behavior, but I think it's a super interesting one,” Monsó said. “But it's only discussed in forensic science papers. I think one of the reasons may be why it hasn't been deemed relevant until now has to do with the fact that it's not a behavior that we can really relate to.”   

And here's a key section about what animal awareness (or lack of it) means for ethics:

Ben Bradley, a philosopher at Syracuse University, said there have been some philosophers who argue that the concept of death is necessary in order for death to be bad for you. As long as an animal’s life is painless, killing them is no harm since they don’t know what death means. 

“If you can’t conceptualize something, then you can’t care about it, and so it can’t be bad for you,” he explained. “If this is right, then if animals don’t have a concept of death, their deaths aren’t bad for them. This would have important implications for how we treat animals, because it would imply that it is morally permissible to kill them for food, unless it were wrong for some reason other than being bad for the animals.”

Bradley thinks we should reject the claim that nothing can be bad for you unless you care about it. He wrote a book chapter on this called “Death Is Bad for a Cow,” and also a song of the same name, with the lyrics: 

Listen to me and I will tell you how

When you take that cow to the butcher's knife

You deprive the cow of the goods the goods of her future life

Don't need to have a sense of self over time

Or know what it means to reach the end of the line

Death is a serious harm

Even if, even if you live on a farm.

Gonçalves said we shouldn’t wait until the concept of death is proven to try to treat animals in ethical ways. “We should prevent the infliction of unnecessary pain and suffering regardless of them having a concept of death or not,” Gonçalves said.

 

The ultimate Wes Anderson

I'll probably come back to this post to expand upon it, but I watched The French Dispatch on Disney Plus on the weekend, and really enjoyed it.

 I was concerned about the trajectory of recent Wes Anderson movies - I kept finding them underwhelming since Fantastic Mr Fox -  but this one in much, much more consistently funny than those, and the visual style is just so over the top that I found myself pretty much continually gobsmacked at his imagination.  

I wasn't expecting it to be so intensely satirical of French culture, albeit in what I think was an obviously affectionate way, and because there is no racial element in an American making fun of French foibles, it didn't give me the uncomfortable feeling that I got from Isle of Dogs that it was close to the edge of encouraging racist stereotypes.  

That said, I can imagine some people hating it for being all surface and no substance.   But the surface is so spectacularly well thought out, and the humour so eccentric, I found it pretty delightful.   (And, I did kind of get it as a affectionate, funny, imitation of the style of The New Yorker.)  

 

Riccardo making up numbers, amongst other things

I see that conspiracy fantasy man Riccardo Bosi is on Twitter claiming that the police have said that 1.2 million cars entered Canberra, so that means there were probably 2 million plus people protesting (!)

As someone on Twitter says:

As for the speech he gave at the rally, he twice referenced the politicians being "Masonic" slime who are dividing people against each other.  (He is Catholic - and is this a specifically Australian import into his basically American conspiracy mindset?)   He repeated the outright lie that the electoral commission wants to use Dominion vote counting machines.  (That got a lot of boos from the crowd.)

Is there a word for this type of eccentric conspiracy mongering?   The bit about blaming e-vil politicians, corporations or what-not for "dividing us" - religion against religion, black against white, parent against children?    It's kind of weird, I reckon, claiming that everyone is just an unknowing pawn of forces they don't understand,  and they would all join hands and sing kumbaya if only - umm - every single politician is sacked and replaced by a bunch of wingnuts who believe Bosi and who'll re-write the constitution? 

It's so, so stupid.      

Still plugging for 5 million

In other ex SAS news, I just watched military junta cosplayer and all round professional wanker Riccardo Bosi on a video from yesterday claiming that the Australian government has been "unconstitutional" for the last 50 years or so (no detailed reasons provided), and explaining that he's staying camped in Canberra until the Governor General dissolves parliament and appoints a commission to clean up the corrupt electoral system and have the first fair election for decades. (Complete lack of detail as to why past elections have been corrupt.)    He's again calling for "millions" to turn up in Canberra tomorrow.  [Update - I've watched more of it now - absolutely obsessed with alleged "pedophile protection" being covered by 'The Establishment" - including Sky News figures like Peta Credlin and Paul Murry, apparently!  Having watched quite a few clips of him, I think it fair to say he swings wildly between claims of it being a peaceful, unifying movement between ordinary people of all faiths, to geeing up the crowd with promises of lots of people being deserved scared of being executed as part of the process of fixing the country.  In other words, a lunatic whose apparent moments of lucidity and modesty are a fake front for a man with a fantasy prone and violent imagination.]

But, I gather that there is a split between those who think they should welcome existing wingnut politicians who support them on COVID crap, and those (like Bosi) who claim they shouldn't.  

I'm now suspecting that the social media excitement of the "success" of the Ottawa protest will mean quite a high turnout in Canberra tomorrow.   Of course, so much being claimed about Ottawa on Right media is made up bullshit - see this, for example.

I'm starting to pine for a 1920's England style of reaction:

   Or at least water cannon.  

Yet more "winning" by Ben Roberts-Smith

More gob-smacking "yes, this will help my reputation, airing this unnecessarily in public" material coming out of the Ben Roberts-Smith trial:

Person 16 said he heard a radio call that improvised explosive device components were discovered in the vehicle and handed the two detained Afghans to Mr Roberts-Smith's patrol for tactical questioning.

Person 16 said about 15 to 20 minutes later he heard Mr Roberts-Smith make a radio call stating: "Two EKIA (enemy killed in action)".

He said he crossed paths with Mr Roberts-Smith in the barracks a day or two later and asked what happened to "that young fella that was shaking like a leaf".

"He said to me 'I shot that c*** in the head'," Person 16 told the judge.

"And he said, 'Person 15 (another colleague) told me not to kill anyone on the last job, so I pulled out my 9mil, shot the c*** in the side of the head, blew his brains out, and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen'."

The more this trial goes on, the more this seems the perfect metaphor for how it's going for him: 

Not looking desperate, at all

Seriously, doesn't the party think it's worth a shot at changing the leader, even this close to an election?  Or is it fear that Dutton will win the leadership that's putting them off?  

Sharing my fondness for Singapore, again

I reckon if ever there's going to a be city enclosed in a gigantic dome for precise weather control in future, it would have to be Singapore.   I mean it's already got such a green techno future vibe, with the number of high rise buildings featuring plants and gardens, and the extraordinary enclosed gardens at Gardens by the Bay (and now, the airport, although I haven't been there since Jewel opened).  Mind you, it's a pity they haven't sorted out how to do clean energy in future - its small size presents serious problems.   I mean you might say nuclear, but it's too small to have its own nuclear fuel infrastructure, so it's still going to be dependent on overseas supply; and besides, if you do have a serious problem,  there is no where to evacuate to.  So I don't know.   Anyway, this is inspired by this mini tour of a new building there:

 

The other CNA story of note is this one about success in reducing recidivism rates of its prisoners.   I mean, I've seen other videos about the Spartan conditions that prisoners live in (if I recall correctly, they more or less sleep directly on the concrete floor), but it still appears that they care a lot about successful rehabilitation, and talk openly about how it's going in a way few other countries do.   Again, the impression from watching CNA is always that the place is run by pretty talented technocrats who prioritise social order - and given that I like high technology and have the residual Catholic desire to force people to be nice and lead lives of moderation, this is very appealing.

(Yeah, OK, why don't I love China then?   I think the difference is that their interest is in technology supporting the one Party rule, more than social order.)

Bosi watch

Forgot to mention yesterday:  military junta cosplayer Riccardo Bosi is on Twitter clips saying that his nut followers demand is for the Governor General to dismiss the Morrison government by this Saturday, appoint a commission that will have 3 months to "clean up" our corrupt electoral system, and then have new election.  (Which will be followed by lots of hangings of former politicians "if they deserve it" - this comes from some other clips around.)

We know he's a complete nut, who has imported with zero evidence Trumpian conspiracy belief about  elections (and QAnon crap about paedophilia), but it still surprises me that he seems to have no foresight for planning beyond about 72 hours.  

Because if you keep promising you're going to be leading millions to government shattering events in just a few days, and none of that happens, aren't you asking for trouble from within the tiny band of dimwits that do follow you?

 

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....