The Return of the King

Not me, although I am back from holiday.  But while I was gone, we got a King again, one with unhealthy looking swollen fingers, a hatred of fountain pens, and a somewhat urgent need for a better PR agent (one who is brave enough to tell him that cameras and mics pick up every grimace and complaint.)  

I'm no great fan of the royal family, and ignore most of the news about them.  I do find the (largely Right wing media driven) hatred of Meghan Markle utterly ridiculous, though.   I mean, why do people bother paying attention to her at all?

The most interesting thing about the funeral arrangements to date is how everyone (well, nearly everyone) has resisted the urge to grab the imperial crown and (at least) put it on their own head for a second, before being tackled by 20 coppers.  (Some of those on guard around the coffin have looked rather old for the job, though, and might break a hip in the fracas.)   Alternatively, I would have liked to see a heavy duty drone zoom in on it with a hook while it was being paraded on the street, for it to be dropped off in a villain's lair nearby.  (Maybe an abandoned Underground station, of which there are several.  If it were a Batman movie, that's how it would have gone down.)

Anyway, on a slightly more serious note, my initial thoughts on the death of the Queen was that it felt symbolically like the true end of the 20th century.   I mean, while there are lots of world figures around who have done much of their work in the tail end of that century, including of course Joe Biden, Queen Elizabeth started her "career" so far back in the last century it really felt she was more truly embodied within that period than any other leader still hanging around. 

I haven't noticed anyone else saying this, but in the millions of words spilt on the topic, it might not be an original thought.   

Anyway, the funeral's later today.  I guess I'll watch some of it live, just in case something unexpected happens.

The packing is about to begin

I'm about to do something new - travel overseas for a week with just a carry on bag.  This one:

Total weight allowed is 10kg.  Very manageable, I think, as long as you are going somewhere warm.  

Women find it harder to imagine this working than men. But my wife is doing the same.  I think it will feel liberating, actually.

It must be a bad judgement

Noted on Twitter

 

Noah on the Trump problem

 Update:   I think "a decade" is too long.

A bit busy here....

I'll be going on a short holiday later this week, and have an embarrassingly large pile of paper on my desk to try and move around before then.

So I might not be able to post much for a few days.

But you never know - if really interesting stuff pops up, there's always some time to be found :)

Anyway - some random thoughts:

 *  reading online reaction to the latest Trump rally, I think it's pretty clear that even Trump sympathisers recognise that a 2 hour performance of his greatest "hits" is looking very stale.  Groupies will still go to it, but I have read that even they start to leave before it's finished (I think that has happened before.)  I also noticed someone on Twitter saying how many MAGA characters (especially the dumb and awful Marjorie Taylor Greene) are more about wanting to be a celebrity than anything else.  Just a case of following their leader, I guess.

* Lots of positive twitter reaction to that son of the late Foo Fighter drummer standing in for his Dad.  Only trouble is, I don't understand the appeal of any Foo Fighters song, even though their lead singer seems a nice enough guy.

* Lots of talk on American twitter last week about how school closures under Covid had a very negative measured effect on kid's education level now.  Has the Australian system found the same thing?  I get the impression not, or not as bad as America.   I wonder whether we did a better job at coming up with teaching via the internet than the Americans did.

*  I haven't had time to watch the Biden "we must defend Democracy" speech.  Am surprised that the Washington Post chose to editorialise it somewhat critically (although, of course, just about all of their regular commentary team that I follow praised it.)   The reaction from the Right is pretty much what was always to be expected - if they are stupid enough to still prefer Trump over any Democrat despite Jan 6, there is no hope of convincing them that they are "semi-fascists".   

Update:   Oh, Ross Douthat did a Sunday column arguing that Biden and the Democrats don't really believe democracy in the US is in crisis, otherwise he wouldn't sound so partisan (or something.)   You can read it here, but do read the hundreds of comments following criticising this take, too.

He also went on Twitter to defend the column, but the best rejoinder is this:

There is a simple rule to understand about Trump and pro-lifers like Douthat: they will bend over backwards to excuse him of anything because he facilitated the overturning of Roe, which is in their minds the biggest political issue ever. 

 

Old drawing device

I was somewhat aware of some controversy about the extent to which some famous artists may have worked with the aid of optical devises, but until Youtube popped this into my recommendations, I didn't know the details of how a (relatively well known) optical aid for drawing worked:

 

It's oddly interesting, and makes me wish I had one too.  For my retirement fun, perhaps.:)

Losing a pundit to a subscription service

Oh dear.  The main reason for visiting Hot Air has for a long time been the anti Trump attitude of Allahpundit, but he has left the site and is going to write (under his real name, which it seems is a well guarded secret?) at The Despatch, which I think is a subscription only site.

In his final post he writes that he has been at Hot Air since the beginning, when it was started first by Michelle Malkin, who I hadn't thought about for a long time.  I think she from mainstreamy conservative Right wing to "into the reactionary paranoid nutjob Right" didn't she?  (Yes, I've checked her Wiki entry - she did.)

I don't recall what he was like in his early days, but many who read Hot Air would say he has followed the opposite - all because he cannot stand Donald Trump and condemns him and the influence on the party regularly.

Let's extract some of his last post:

What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.

The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.

I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are.

I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.

Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone.

He also says this, and it's infuriating because I reckon he would know this to be true (my bold):

Lastly, to those who spent the last seven years barking insults at me in the comments for not genuflecting to Trump, I’ll give you this: You’re not phonies. You believe what you say. We have that much in common. I respect honesty and paid you the respect of being honest. It would scandalize you to know how many of your heroes sound like you in public and like me in private. Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill.

I hear Lincoln’s words in my head as I write that: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” Let’s hope. But let’s also be real: To a certain sort of Very Online Trumpist weirdo, having the right enemies is what politics is all about. To any who insist upon having me as one, I’m okay with it. Few badges of honor shine as brightly as the scorn of authoritarians.

Of the other writers there, Jazz Shaw is very interested in UFOs and so he's worth a look.  Ed Morrisey is Catholic conservative but not pro-Trump, I think.  Just doesn't attack him and MAGA as much as he should.   Karen Townsend is the worst - a shrill Right winger verging on Fox News level of personal animosity towards Biden and the Left generally.

Anyway, I will be visiting it less now.

Not sure anyone predicted this when the internet started...

OnlyFans has paid out more than $500m (£433m) to its reclusive owner in the last two years, as the British-based subscriber platform synonymous with pornography reported record profits.

Leonid Radvinsky, the site’s Ukrainian-American 40-year-old owner, is the sole shareholder in a business that has seen its profits boom, as users spent $4.8bn on the site last year.

The financial results mean OnlyFans is one of the most financially successful British tech start-ups in recent years, succeeding where other more mainstream companies have failed. The company’s latest accounts show pre-tax profits rose by 615% to $432m in the 12 months to September 2021.

Here's the article, in The Guardian.

I have to say, I find it a bit puzzling that people who post home made porn don't feel any embarrassment about immediate family stumbling across it.... 

Disappointing personal news

From an article at The Conversation, entitled :

The U-shaped happiness curve is wrong: many people do not get happier as they get older

On average, happiness declines as we approach middle age, bottoming out in our 40s but then picking back up as we head into retirement, according to a number of studies. This so-called U-shaped curve of happiness is reassuring but, unfortunately, probably not true.

My analysis of data from the European Social Survey shows that, for many people, happiness actually decreases during old age as people face age-related difficulties, such as declining health and family bereavement. The U-shaped pattern was not evident for almost half of the 30 countries I investigated.

So why the difference?

My study corrects a misinterpretation of research methods in previous studies. The U-shaped idea comes from statistical analyses that adjust data to compare people of similar wealth and health in middle and old age. That adjustment is intended to isolate the effect of age from other factors that influence happiness.

But given that people often become poorer and less healthy during old age, the adjustment can be misleading. When we omit the adjustment, an age-related decline in happiness becomes evident in many countries...

This decline is steeper in countries with a less effective welfare state. That’s especially true of Turkey, where happiness (measured on a scale from zero to ten) falls on average from 6.4 at retirement age to less than 5.0 among the very old.

For Estonia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, happiness falls steadily, beginning in people’s early 30s.

I wonder what the figures look like in Australia.

I'm amused

 Update:  I had the same thought:

All of Mar-a-Lago looks cringe to me, and certainly wildly out of place in a hot climate, to be honest:

It is a genuinely older building though (nearly 100 years old), and not some Trump invention. Still looks stupid for Florida.

Update 2:

Heh

In "another strange guy goes trad Catholic" news

Slate reports that Shia LaBeouf has said he is converting to Catholicism - and that it is in large part because of attraction to the Latin mass.

The article gives a fair summary of the reputation of the Latin mass for attracting Right wing reactionaries:

The traditional Latin Mass is at the center of an ongoing controversy in the Catholic church: the small, conservative group promoting it claims it is a beautiful and true expression of the faith, while more progressive Catholics—and Pope Francis—see it largely as a breeding ground for reactionary beliefs and conflict in the church. The TLM, as it’s called by those who celebrate it, refers to the “extraordinary form” of the Roman rite that makes up the rituals and prayers of the Mass and which was in use until the 1960s, at which point the Second Vatican Council took place and ushered in the “ordinary form” (Novus Ordo, or NO).

The overwhelming majority of Catholics attend Novus Ordo Masses; indeed, the overwhelming majority of Catholics today have likely never seen anything else. But traditional Latin Masses have a small but highly enthusiastic faction in the church. The main difference between the two rites is in style and not substance: In the extraordinary form, priests recite prayers in Latin instead of the vernacular; they celebrate the Mass facing the altar, with their backs to the congregants; there are no female altar servers. Proponents of the TLM describe it as solemn, beautiful, ancient, mysterious, sacred. Traditionalists believe that the Latin Mass is key to reviving the faith among young Catholics....

There’s certainly nothing wrong with enjoying the Latin Mass. (With the caveat that some traditionalist groups, such as the semi-legitimate Society of Saint Pius X, incorporate fully outdated parts of the pre-Vatican II liturgy into their worship, which can include explicitly anti-Semitic elements.) In the interview, LaBeouf explained that he was drawn to the Latin Mass because it was “immersive” and felt “almost like I’m being let in on something very special.” Fair enough!

But the traditionalists who love the TLM can be deeply toxic. “Trads” embrace traditionalism that goes beyond the language spoken in services. Many of them reject the reforms of Vatican II altogether, and stick to uncompromising positions on gay marriage, divorce, and the dress of women and their role in society. Their extreme counterparts, the radical traditionalists, or “Rad Trads,” often go further, idolizing the crusades, making vile comments about Jews and Muslims, and spreading conspiracy theories that decry the infiltration of the church by evil forces and accuse Pope Francis of being an antipope or even antichrist. The Rad Trad community flourishes on Twitter and Reddit and Discord, trafficking in memes about the saints and feminists and monarchism.

These highly engaged traditionalists may be small in number (most Catholics are blissfully unaware of the “liturgy wars,” as this debate is called). But they are well represented among clergy, including bishops and cardinals. And over the course of Francis’ papacy, their dissent has grown increasingly loud, to the point that many liberal Catholics began to worry that the culture wars in the church would lead to schism. The controversy came to a climax last summer when, in an effort to crack down on the “division” sown by the traditionalists, Pope Francis laid down strict rules for when and where the traditional Latin Mass can be conducted. The outcry that followed was intense. Pope Francis has not backed down from his position; In June, he said that those who “call themselves guardians of traditions, but of dead traditions” were “dangerous” to the church. Traditionalist Catholics have continued to claim to be martyrs.

And here's the biggest danger sign that LaBeouf is going "Rad Trad":

There’s another reason it seems LaBeouf knows exactly what side he’s taking: he told the interviewer that he had sought guidance from Mel Gibson in his conversion process. Gibson is not just an unabashed anti-Semite; he is also someone who speaks at traditionalist Catholic events, builds churches for disaffected orthodox Catholics, and makes friends with radical right-wing priests. (His father, Hutton Gibson, was a leading proponent of the idea that all popes since Vatican II have been antipopes.) In fact, in the interview, LaBeouf said that Gibson was the one who had shown him where to find the illicit Latin Masses.

 

 

When you've lost the Wall Street Journal

So even the Wall Street Journal is putting up videos in which an increase in flash flooding in the USA is noted, and the connection with climate change and increasing temperatures is fully acknowledged:

Huh.

Synthetic milk closer than I realised?

I was only musing recently about the slow progress in making synthetic dairy milk, but here's an article talking about it, and how a company in Melbourne is working on it:

In Australia, start-up company Eden Brew has been developing synthetic milk at Werribee in Victoria. The company is targeting consumers increasingly concerned about climate change and, in particular, the contribution of methane from dairy cows.

CSIRO reportedly developed the technology behind the Eden Brew product. The process starts with yeast and uses "precision fermentation" to produce the same proteins found in cow milk.

CSIRO says these proteins give milk many of its key properties and contribute to its creamy texture and frothing ability. Minerals, sugars, fats, and flavors are added to the protein base to create the final product.

 

Honestly, who would care, especially in France?

An odd story from Rolling Stone:

On the FBI’s list of documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, item 1a is listed solely as “info re: President of France.” For Trump, that has been a subject of intense — and tawdry — interest for years.

Specifically, Trump has bragged to some of his closest associates — both during and after his time in the White House — that he knew illicit details about the love life of French President Emmanuel Macron, two people with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. And the former president even claimed that he learned about some of this dirt through “intelligence” he had seen or been briefed on, these sources say.  ...

In his musing on Macron’s alleged indiscretions, Trump was light on details and specifics, according to the sources. And as a notorious gossip peddler for decades, it’s difficult to know if any of what he says is grounded in reality. “It is often,” one of the sources says, “hard to tell if he’s bullshitting or not.” 

 

Moral philosophising about the future

I haven't read all of this yet, but it is worth coming back to:

The New Moral Mathematics

In his new book, philosopher William MacAskill implies that humanity’s long-term survival matters more than preventing short-term suffering and death. His arguments are shaky.

 

Incident in France

I found this rather amusing:

 In the comments following, some further discussion of how things are done in France

I love their food, though.  And really thought they must be the most attractive Europeans on the street in all of Europe.

 

Stand over tactics

Allahpundit on lickspittle Lindsay Graham's weekend comments:

When it comes to making veiled threats dressed up as dispassionate observations, I see that this rodent has learned at the feet of the master.

In fact, Trump himself posted this video last night on Truth Social.

Graham isn’t wrong. If Trump is indicted, “riots in the streets” are plausible. But it’s one thing to say that as an analyst and another to say it on television as a well-known, influential Trump crony. Why, if I were a cynic, the clip below might look to me like a U.S. senator dangling the prospect of violence to try to influence a decision by the Justice Department on whether to charge someone. Imagine one of John Gotti’s goons musing in an interview about people getting hurt if the boss is charged. Then imagine electing that guy to the Senate.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Lindsey Graham has engaged in blatant civic malfeasance on Trump’s behalf either.

Graham is correct that Trump should be held to the same standard as Hillary Clinton. If he mishandled classified information no more recklessly than she did, he should walk. But we don’t know yet whether he did and neither do any of the would-be rioters. I understand why some were offended by Joe “The Uniter” Biden describing parts of Trump’s base as “semi-fascist” but if we’ve reached the point where a sitting senator is hinting at mass violence if his caudillo is charged and all of us look around at each other and think, “Yeah, that could definitely happen,” maybe we shouldn’t feel so offended.

He ends on a strong note:

It should not to be too much to ask cretins like Graham to accept moral responsibility for the worst excesses of the populism with which they’ve aligned themselves. If he wants a caudillo, let him make the case for having a caudillo. Blaming the Justice Department for riots on “look what you made me do” grounds is weak sauce even for a weakling like him.

 

 

This is what you do when you go to the North Pole via luxury French icebreaker

I wish they wouldn't do video thumbnails of Kara's skinny body, but still - it's interesting to see what a  luxury cruise to the North Pole does for entertainment when they get there:

 

One other thing:   I suppose I expected the ice to be a little thicker, even in summer.  I mean, yeah, submarines can break through it, so it can't be too thick.   But still, it seemed there was more open water around, and ice that was easily broken, than I expected.

Also, if you watch the video, you will probably understand why I find this couple cringey at times - they kiss and tell each other they are "so proud of you" in about every second video.

Amusing tweets noted

Lulz at that second one in particular...