I've said before that I like a lot of Noah Smith takes, but I don't agree with all of them:
I've tried watching The Orville, on more than one occasion, and I just find it dull, dull, dull.
And this:
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I like the way that in dispute threads about LOTR, quite a few people will admit the "problem" aspects - "the prose is often clunky", or "you can just skip the poems", yet go on to defend it to death.
Here's an interesting explanation at The Conversation about how the "chemical imbalance" theory of depression caught on, and arguing that just because the theory is wrong, there is still a case for using the serotonin influencing drugs because they do work well enough anyway.
I'm referring to Alex Jones in court. I watched this clip this morning:
You know the bigger thing that bothers me, though: I saw Joe Rogan - who allegedly has a much more "rational" audience - give a quasi defence of Jones not so long ago. Along the lines of "sure, he's made mistakes, and he's battled some addiction and mental health issues, but you know he was right on Epstein." As if Jones is to be pitied or is a genuine truth seeker.
Of course, I can't stand Joe Rogan, but in a way I have more concern about his influence than Jones's.
The other disturbing thing reported is how Jones called for, and has been receiving, donations:
Jones’ Bitcoin windfall roughly coincides with a string of losses in the Sandy Hook defamation case. A judge ruled on May 24 that the suit should be removed from bankruptcy protection and move to a trial in August to determine how much in damages Jones should be made to pay. Jones’ anonymous benefactor gave him roughly 206 Bitcoin worth $5 million on May 19, days in advance of that hearing and following a push for donations on Infowars. Hatewatch previously reported on the same donor delivering to Jones Bitcoin worth $1 million apiece across two separate transactions in April.
America - land of idiots with money.
Update:
I noticed an article at the ABC last week by an Australian professor who developed a heart issue after Covid infection, and it was a bit of a worry:
Last month, US researchers shared the preliminary results of a study looking at the impacts of SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection in a cohort of more than 5 five million American veterans.
The researchers examined the health records of more than 250,000 people who had been infected once; 36,000 people who had been infected twice; and 2,000 people who had been infected three times.
They found that for every health outcome measured, the Hazard Ratio — a measure of how often something happens in one group compared to another — increased with each COVID-19 infection.
The risk of cardiovascular disease, for example, increased after one infection, but doubled in people who had two infections, and tripled in those who had been infected thrice.
The numbers translate into 50 extra cases of heart disease per 1,000 people who've had COVID-19 twice.
Unfortunately, vaccination didn't seem to help: the cumulative risk of heart disease was indistinguishable when the researchers split people who'd received two or more COVID-19 jabs and those who hadn't been vaccinated at all.
The researchers found similar cumulative risks with each reinfection for pulmonary disease, clotting and blood disorders, neurological disease, mental health problems, kidney disease, musculoskeletal disease, fatigue, and so on.
These problems occur most frequently in the first month after infection, but can emerge up to six months later.
Soon after, I checked my own blood pressure (I have a machine at home, but the GP also checked it), and was surprised to see that it was much higher than normal. Like, 150/95 on few occasions, although more often around 140/90. (It has also been back in a more comfortable range sometimes - I have been checking morning, noon and night for a few days now. Before this, and I usually would check once a month or so, I was usually at 120-125/85-90.)
Could this be due to Covid? Google says "yes":
A total of 211 consecutive COVID-19 patients who were admitted to Parkhayat Kutahya hospital were retrospectively screened. Information was obtained from the electronic medical records and National health data registry. The study outcome was new onset of hypertension according to the Eight Joint National Committee and European Society of Cardiology Guidelines. Finally, 153 confirmed COVID-19 patients (mean age 46.5 ± 12.7 years) were enrolled. Both systolic (120.9 ± 7.2 vs 126.5 ± 15.0 mmHg, P <.001) and diastolic BP (78.5 ± 4.4 vs 81.8 ± 7.4 mmHg, P <.001) were significantly higher in the post COVID-19 period than on admission. New onset hypertension was observed in 18 patients at the end of 31.6 ± 5.0 days on average (P <.001). These findings suggest that COVID-19 increases systolic and diastolic BP and may cause new onset hypertension.
That seems a pretty small study, but there is at least one other study indicating it may well be right.
There is a large American study noting that hypertension went up in a large group during the pandemic, but they talk mostly about whether it was caused by the stress and isolation (and lack of exercise) caused by the pandemic, rather than the virus directly. But there is still suspicion:
“The disease itself may cause high blood pressure because of the interaction with certain molecules like the angiotensin-converting enzyme receptors. Moreover, many of my patients called to tell me that once they got the vaccines — especially the first dose — their blood pressure went very high, and they ended up in A&E and casualty with systolic blood pressure exceeding 200 in some of them.”
“What is also interesting is that for many of [my patients], the blood pressure did not settle down and remained high — not as high as 200, but higher than it was before. I am doing some research now to look at the effects of vaccination on blood pressure. And I have at least nine patients who had the same reaction: [their] blood pressure went up, and they ended up in casualty at St George’s [hospital].”
“Since then, there have been two publications — oneTrusted Source from Lausanne in Switzerland and the second from Italy — that describe exactly this. Especially with the BioNTech vaccine, the blood pressure goes very high. What we don’t know is why this happens and why it does not settle down,” said Dr. Antonios.
Dr. Antonios also said there could be a connection between long COVID and hypertension. However, this required more research.
So, this is an incentive for me to actually start getting some exercise. And drinking beet juice. (There is a cheap juice mix which is half beet juice. Can't hurt.) I'll be watching my readings closely - I've got a blood pressure tracking app on my phone to help with that.
My Twitter feed is full of promoted tweets for some mad person's* idea to build a mirrored city in the Saudi desert that will look like this:
You know what it reminds me of? The over-the-top illustrations for O'Neill space colonies in the late 70's and 80's:
And I would say the chance of it being actually built is about the same...
* (likely an architect who has gone on a bender after being told by a Saudi Crown Prince to dream up something different in which money is no object)
Interesting article about the latest outcome of investigation into alleged voter fraud in Arizona:
This wasn’t enough to shift the results in Maricopa, where Joe Biden won by 45,000 votes. It was, however, an important part of the narrative: Here was a place where suspect ballots were cast, amplifying questions about the level of confidence one could have in the election results. The report recommended that “the Attorney General further investigate this finding to confirm the validity of this finding.”
Arizona’s attorney general did investigate the finding — and found that the finding had no validity. Of those 282 dead voters, only one was dead. Many of those contacted by his office, Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) said in a letter, “were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased.”
The probe was yet another massive waste of state employees’ time and taxpayers’ money. There’s some slight benefit to the state in establishing that the allegation made by the auditing firm, Cyber Ninjas, had no merit. But Brnovich’s probe will not diminish skepticism about election results. Those who believed that the firm had uncovered dead voters solely on the basis of the presented evidence — which, despite all of those complicated numbers, was just a rough match of two lists of identities — will simply shift their assumptions about rampant fraud to one of the Ninjas’ other claims. That’s why the “audit” existed in the first place: to surround the election tally with as much just-asking-questions fog as possible.
It’s very easy to simply wave this away, to shrug at another claim of fraud falling apart. Why even bother covering it?
The answer is simple. As often as possible, we should highlight the fact that despite all of this attention and focus, no more than a dozen or two cases of fraud have come to light. The past 21 months have seen a flurry of allegations of varying complexity, asserting that statistical or circumstantial evidence shows that rampant fraud occurred. And every single time, those assertions crumple under scrutiny. This is not only the perpetual endgame for the claims, it’s the predictable one — as we keep seeing.
Trump is really looking physically unimpressive in his recent golfing appearances:
Google made me ponder recently, after making me watch videos from the Youtube channel FlyEast, like this one:
that it seems the Chinese have an irresistible urge to build on top of tiny, tiny precipitous heights. I can imagine them looking at the Three Sisters at Katoomba and thinking "why isn't there at temple on top of at least one of them, and stairway access?"
Not only that, it would seem that a lot of the population is missing the "fear of heights" gene. I find it hard to imagine the same tourist enthusiasm here for scrambling up near vertical stairs to get to small peaks with little standing space. Even with bridges, look at the tourists happy on this one, which I would go on too, I suppose, but not entirely without nerves:
Youtube is full of examples of precipitous buildings in China, and of course, horrendously scary mountain roads in China adjacent places. I know there are examples in Europe of buildings on scary heights too, but I still don't think that Westerners have quite the same enthusiasm for building things in such difficult and dangerous locations.
So why do they want to build structures up on tiny, tiny peaks anyway? Because of proximity to heaven or gods, I suppose, but I would like to know for sure.
Update: OMG, look at this video, which is incredibly beautiful, and has only had 23,000 views:
You can view the same temple complex in summer here.
Interesting:
Parts of the moon have stable temperatures fit for humans, researchers find
The moon has pits and caves where temperatures stay at roughly 63 degrees Fahrenheit, making human habitation a possibility, according to new research from planetary scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Although much of the moon's surface fluctuates from temperatures as high as 260 degrees during the day to as low as 280 degrees below zero at night, researchers say these stable spots could transform the future of lunar exploration and long-term habitation.
The shadowed areas of these pits could also offer protection from harmful elements, such as solar radiation, cosmic rays and micrometeorites.
For perspective, a day or night on the moon is equivalent to a little over two weeks on Earth — making long-term research and habitation difficult with such extremely hot and cold temperatures.
As someone who has had to "prep" for colonoscopies maybe 4 or 5 times, and recently got invited to have another:
Albanese is just coming across as very competent and down to earth, without the ego of Rudd or some other past Labor figures. Indeed, all of the new cabinet is doing very well, especially in comparison with the Morrison government.
I complained a week ago about the Netflix series Midnight Mass, but I decided to hate watch it to the end.
I'm not quite there yet (last episode to go), and I did start fast forwarding over scenes where I could just tell there was going to be another tedious monologue, but I have to say I am completely puzzled as to how anyone gave this ridiculous mess a good review. It's like Stephen King on a complete nonsensical bender (and that's saying something, given that I have read about how more extreme in "suspension of disbelief" elements his novels generally have been compared to their movie versions.)
To me it makes no dramatic sense at all - and I will say why after this:
SPOILER ALERT
The whole premise of the story is that a old priest suffering dementia (or perhaps just "Jerusalem syndrome") who is made young and capable of regeneration after being bitten by a vampire he happened to stumble upon in a cave in the Israeli desert (as you do), and his very conservative/zealoty woman parish helper, manage to interpret your classic demonic looking vampire as in fact an angel of the Lord, and the end times are here, or...something? And hey, let's ship said demon vampire "angel" back home in a crate, where we'll slip some regenerating blood into the parish's communion wine, so that the character who from the start looked and sounded like a young woman pretending to be old one can actually stop putting on that "old woman" voice, and other regenerative miracles will happen. Mind you, the regenerated priest (eventually) can't go out in the sun or he fries, and he has an incredible urge to drink blood, but somehow this can still be interpreted as a Good Thing from God and let's keep sharing it with the parishioners. And nutty conservative woman flunky is happy to go along with it all. In fact, she's played as the main villain, but I for one never understood why she was so on board so quickly with the priest's plan.
I mean, it's just really ridiculous - especially when said vampire reveals himself to the community at the climatic mass and at least half (actually, nearly all, I think) of the congregation goes all Jonestown and decides to drink the poison being passed around by bad woman, because, hey they know they'll come back to life because a friggin' demon vampire has just appeared and spread his giant bat wings, and of course they would trust him and the excitable priest - who they just realised is the old priest with 50 years off the clock. (How no one ever said "hey, you know your voice sounds exactly like our old priest" I don't know.) I didn't even really get exactly why poisoning everyone seemed a good idea - she is shown as having a predilection to poisoning things earlier in the show, but even so. Her references to Revelation hardly seemed a convincing explanation to me, given a distinct lack of references to vampires in that book. (Not that anything in the show convinced me.)
Yeah, yeah, they just watched someone drink it and apparently die and come back - but who knows for how long? "Give me that poison, I wanna die painfully for 5 minutes too."
Obviously, the writer/director is going for a "religion - even in apparently nice sincere Catholics - can turn into a death cult under the wrong influence" vibe, but the way this happens in this show just makes no sense at all. I mean, couldn't you at least have the vampire physically look normal and not like a freaking demon from the start? Stumble upon his true appearance by accident? Have him speak with charm? He could be the charming assistant priest, instead of flying around the island looking for random victims sometimes, and other times running around in old priest get up. Couldn't the effect of being bitten be a bit less obviously vampiric, so that the downside doesn't so patently wipe out the apparent upside?
I mean, the one core story element - the regenerating vampire blood being slipped into the communion wine - is a nice creepy idea - but there is zero plausibility as to how a non talking demon vampire convinces anyone that he's there from God.
Anyway, I'll watch the last episode, which I hope is really bad!
Update: watched the last episode, and it continued to be full of bloated monologues, plot points that didn't make much sense, and bursts of ridiculously high quality choral signing from the island's new vampires.
The priest gets to be regretful, and to explain that he was just trying to give everyone eternal life and avoid death (which, you know, isn't all that common a goal amongst Catholic priests - but I suppose it might have some psychological plausibility if it wasn't via a vampire demon thing you found in the desert drinking your blood.)
I went over to Reddit to read comments about it. Again, to my puzzlement, many people liked it, or at least found it creepy, but there are amusing aspects - such as a key plot point that everyone thought we were meant to infer, but one of the writers turned up and said "no, you're wrong, and stop blaming the director for misleading you."
Some people commented on something I noticed - hardly anyone on the island seemed particularly likeable. Mike Flanagan, the director/writer, seems to specialise in mopey characters, prone to using 500 words when 50 would do.
I think Netflix should stop giving him money.
Well, this is comforting to know, if ever an Independence Day style dogfight between us and aliens ever starts happening over our heads. I hadn't heard this story from the era of nuclear atmospheric tests:
Fascinating!Trump is sounding desperate, even for a man famous for saying anything, irrespective of truth or sense:
Former President Donald Trump told ESPN that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11” as he defended his decision to host the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series at his Bedminster course.
Trump defended his decision as he faces outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. He told ESPN the tournament’s Saudi sponsors “have been friends of mine for a long time.” He boosted the series as an “alternative” to the PGA, saying “nobody would’ve ever known there was gonna be a gold rush like this.”
On the other hand, Biden has a big win:
Joe Biden has hailed a congressional deal that represents the biggest single climate investment in US history – and hands him a badly needed political victory.
In a stunning reversal, Senate Democrats on Wednesday announced an expansive $739bn package that had eluded them for months addressing healthcare and the climate crisis, raising taxes on high earners and corporations and reducing federal debt.
And it sounds like he dealt competently with China. (And by the way, can anyone imagine what Trump would have said in a 2 hour phone call with Xi?)
The Chinese president has warned Joe Biden against “playing with fire” over Taiwan in a highly anticipated phone call that lasted more than two hours on Thursday, as tensions remain high over the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential trip to the island next month.
“Those who play with fire will be perished by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this,” Xi Jinping, according to a Chinese statement. He also urged the US to implement the three joint communiques that serve as the foundation for relations between the two countries “both in word and in deed”. Xi vowed “resolutely” to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and said this is “the firm will of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people”....
In response to Xi’s comment on Taiwan, Biden reiterated Washington’s policy and said it had not changed and that “the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan strait”, according to the US statement, which was much shorter than the Chinese one.
Sure, there is the matter of whether the US is in a recession or not, but I don't know - it seems hard to find it too recession-y while ever anyone who wants a job can get one, doesn't it?
The other interesting recent thing - polling indicating that the Democrats are looking better placed for the mid terms than anyone expected. (No doubt, the GOP's excited rush to ensure a ban on every single woman or child from ever getting an abortion is likely the key factor in this.)
Four national polls from the past week have shown Democrats favored by more voters to control Congress compared to Republicans, as many analysts and GOP leaders continue to express confidence that the liberal party will lose control of at least the House and possibly the Senate in the November midterm election.
And Republicans, for some reason, appear to want to look like complete jerks at the moment:
Why did the GOP reject a bill to help veterans exposed to toxins?
Remember how Jon Stewart went on Colbert's show and did an extended "bit" on how it was obvious that Covid would have come from the lab in Wuhan where they research it?
There are more scientists than ever who beg to differ, it seems:
Scientists say there is "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Two peer-reviewed studies published on Tuesday re-examine information from the initial outbreak in the Chinese city.
And I think we also have Trump still crapping on about making China pay.
Incidentally, Trump's done I reckon. He only wants to run again both for vanity (90% motivation for everything he does) and the hope that it scares off prosecution as looking too divisive and politically motivated.
I watched this Youtube last night (from a channel full of stories of odd or surprising aspects of Japanese history) about how it was quite the thing for a while for Buddhist monks to contemplate artwork of deceased and decaying women as a remedy for feeling sexual attraction towards them (while alive, I hasten to add!)
I presume this tactic did not originate in Japan: I recall a scene in the movie Samsara, set in Tibet I think, where a monk tried to bring back a fellow monk from abandoning the religious life for a woman by showing him a book which (if I recall correctly) allowed erotic drawings of intercourse to devolve in subsequent pages into corpses having sex. (!)
Here's some of what Wikipedia says on the topic of Buddhism and the body:
Revulsion
Though perhaps less concerned with issues of purity and pollution than the Brahmanist tradition, certain views of the body recorded in Buddhist scriptures do depict the body as unwholesome and potentially an object of disgust.[1] This is the “unwantedness” of a body in the tradition of Buddhism identified by some scholars.[5] Reflecting on the loathsomeness of the body is considered to be a particularly powerful method for countering attachment to sensual pleasures, such as sexuality or pride in appearance.[1] Stories recorded in scriptures and in the biographies of Buddhist teachers particularly focus on the contemplation of the foulness of the female body as a remedy for sexual desire in a male religious practitioner.[1]
Value
In contrast to views of the body as disgusting or a source of unworthy desire, the Buddhist tradition does speak of the value of the body in the context of the preciousness of human birth, and the value of a healthy body as an aid to pursuing the Buddhist path.[1] While contemplating the repulsiveness of the body is considered to be a powerful remedy for sensual attachment, this is a therapeutic perspective that is not necessarily intended to be carried over into other areas of life.[1] In particular, the suitability of the human body for the pursuit of religious practice is praised in traditional sources, comparing favorably with the capacities of birth among the gods or the various chthonic realms.[1]
It's quite the balancing act, then. Just as it still is in India today. From a story on BBC News today:
"I can be naked in front of a thousand people… It's just that they get uncomfortable," Bollywood star Ranveer Singh told the Paper magazine recently.
That is exactly what happened when Singh recently posed nude for a photo spread in the same magazine. Social media exploded with both appreciation and indignation - but mostly the latter. Memes and jokes making fun of the pictures abounded; and many accused the actor of denigrating men. If this was not enough, a police complaint was lodged against him for "hurting the sentiments of women".
Singh is not your traditional male star. He's endlessly energetic, flamboyant and embraces a frothy fashion style - velvet pants, sequin turtlenecks, jewellery - that Vogue magazine calls a "positive nod to the non-binary fluidity that fashion today is embracing".
In other words, says Paper, Singh has "challenged practically every stereotype of masculinity in a still-traditionalist Indian society".
"He has an ideal kind of male body. But he dresses on the border of androgyny. He is not rigid and openly talks about sex. He doesn't fit in the notion of masculinity in India. That is causing a lot of anxiety, and also making a lot of men uncomfortable," says Rahul Sen, who's doing his doctoral dissertation on literature and sexuality at Tufts University.
The article goes on to note the odd Indian mix of attitudes to the body, where being nude in public as a way of a holy man showing a spiritual disconnect from material things is fine, but for sexual appreciation, is disturbing (despite the temples covered in depictions of sex):
The differing reactions to Singh are illustrative of what some call India's "wild moral confusion", where people harbour a strange mix of conservative and liberal attitudes. The most graphic examples of erotic temple art can be found in many small-town shrines. One of the world's oldest textbooks of erotic love, Kama Sutra, is from India. Model and dancer Protima Bedi streaked on a Mumbai beach in 1974 for a film magazine cover. Nudity is not uncommon: thousands of ash-smeared Hindu holy men belonging to a cult turn up naked at religious festivals like the Kumbh Mela.
This made me think how it's also a little odd that Judaism has a reputation for being an 'earthy' religion, where the body and food for it are not to be disdained at all:
In the Jewish tradition there is no absolute division between material and spiritual, body and soul. According to the Hebrew Bible, the human body expresses divine reality and is a key to divine knowledge. As the Bible states, “From my flesh, I will perceive God.” (Job 19):
Before his expulsion from Eden, Adam’s body shone like the sun and was capable of living forever. Only as a result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge did God “place His hand on man and shrink him”. This changed to skin the body of light which en-clothed him, making it subject to death. One of the goals of Jewish spirituality is to reverse this process: to perfect the body and make it shine.
Judaism’s ultimate goal is not to transcend the physical, but to make for God a dwelling place in the lower worlds. This brings the divine into the physical world. Judaism’s ideal is the soul fully inhabiting the body, not the soul liberated from the body.
And yet, it has also always viewed nudity as shameful:
Anyway, it's not that I have any particular new insight into this topic - I just remain pleasantly puzzled as to how religious and cultural attitudes towards bodies is such a complicated thing.
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