Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Monica Hesse at WaPo asks what seems an important question:

For the past few months there has been a stealth political campaign going on, the subject of which feels so unseemly that nearly every person publicly participating in the debate insists they would rather not be participating in it, and would, in fact, prefer the debate not be happening at all.

The question: Should Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor voluntarily retire before the next presidential election?

And, if your answer is yes, are you sexist?

And, if your answer is no, and you support liberal jurisprudence, are you a fool?

No, not really. The short answer is that if the American electorate is taken in by the Big Con that Trump and his allies are selling and return him to office, they deserve everything they get.

Whether they like it or not.

At some point, the liberals have to accept that. Not that they’re likely to walk down the McConnell path of dishonor and, frankly, disaster, although some might urge that. Easily debunked lies and frantic power grabs is more a Republican thing.

And the American electorate has to bear responsibility for their bad selections, should they make them, and not depend on liberals to ride white chargers to their rescue – or depend on the right-wing extremists and their arrogant philosophies to lead the conservatives to self-defeat.

But asking Sotomayor to leave just because there’s a few more wrinkles in the face is really unacceptable. Not after the absolute parade of wrinkly old men leaving SCOTUS feet first. Stay in your chair until you’re tired of the job, Justice. We appreciate your efforts.

A Republican recognizes the tumor of the Party:

“It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags,” Gonzales said. “Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around in white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime.” [The Daily Beast]

Another rip in the Party? It’s especially interesting:

The evisceration came out of seemingly nowhere, as Gonzales, a Navy veteran who represents a portion of San Antonio and Uvalde, has in the past refrained from bashing his party, despite withstanding heavy criticism from his colleagues for supporting federal gun-safety legislation. He’s otherwise been a steadfast repeater of Republican talking points since he joined Congress in 2021.

I suspect he saw his behavior as a key to success, but recently just couldn’t stand the tumor that is Gaetz, et al, any longer.

This is rather cool. From paleoanthropologist Professor John Hawks:

This naturally raises a broader question: How many other people have installed travertine with hominin fossils inside? …

Travertine also commonly includes fossils. Many are fossil inclusions of algae, plants, and small animals—especially molluscs and crustaceans—that live within the spring water. Much larger animals may be found and humans are no exceptions: Several well-known hominin fossil discoveries are from travertine deposits. Most of these discoveries have happened because of quarrying of the travertine deposits for use in construction.

Pictures at the link. I do not have any travertine floors, otherwise I’d not be writing this, but crouched on the floor looking for fossils.

And it’s a doozy:

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

Launched in 1977, it’s damn near 50 years old, traveling through space, and recently was threatened with the dust bin of history when NASA lost its connection; a bit of recovery engineering saved a mission that was exceeded long, long ago.

The next time I buy a *phone, I want it to say

MADE BY NASA

Google, Samsung, and all the rest have nothing on NASA.

Given the bad guys’ inclination to project, I can’t help but speculate if former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has a reason to be nervous after this statement:

“But considering the rusophobic decision that took place [i.e., American foreign aid to Ukraine] I can’t help but wish the USA with all sincerity to dive into a new civil war themselves as quickly as possible. Which, I hope, will be very different from the war between North and South in the 19th century and will be waged using aircraft, tanks, artillery, MLRS, all types of missiles and other weapons. And which will finally lead to the inglorious collapse of the vile evil empire of the 21st century – the United States of America.”

Poor guy. The Russians are learning that war has become a technological endeavour, and we do it better.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has exceeded my expectations – kudos! – when, with Ukraine teetering on the edge of collapse, he finally passed foreign aid packages for Ukraine, as well as Israel and Taiwan, over and through the objections of the anti-Ukraine brigade of the GOP House caucus – a group that some call the Putin Wing. This is all at the risk of his position as Speaker of the House, as it’s commonly said his advantage in the House is one seat, so if more than one Republican files a motion to vacate the seat, as Rep Greene (R-GA) and a couple of others have done so, and the motion is activated (not the proper terminology, I’m sure – apologies), then he’s subject to a vote. The implicit expectation is that the expected assent of all of the Democrats, currently in the minority, plus a few of the Republicans, would result in Johnson’s losing the position.

However, the Democrats are not an inflexible group. They’ve backed Johnson, in very limited circumstances, in other areas, and certainly aid to Ukraine is a top, top priority of the Democrats. I expect a horse trade of voting for Johnson as Speaker in exchange for getting the desired foreign aid packages to the floor for a vote – which then passed – did occur, even if such is denied by the principals. If the Putin Wing follows through on the motion to vacate, we’ll find out if that horse trade did occur. I think there’s little doubt that Rep and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) can deliver  the necessary votes to save Johnson.

But, beyond this apparent snub of the concerns of the execrable Putin Wing, there are other concerns for the masters of the Republican Party.

First, Speaker Johnson has defied the wishes of well-known anti-Ukraine partisan and Putin admirer Mr. Trump. Mr Trump, presumptive but not guaranteed Republican nominee for President in the 2024 national elections, has a host of troubles, consisting not only his current New York state criminal trial, but his health (age 77, with known heart disease) and even his reputation. To the latter most point, Mr Trump depends, to a very large degree, on his purported accomplishments as a businessman, lover, actor, and even as an avatar of the Biblical character of Cyrus. If he’s convicted in his current criminal trial, more voters will begin to disregard him as worthy of their vote; revelations in this trial, which is a collection of accusations that he falsified business records, could do more damage to him. Even his inclination to fall asleep while at the defendant’s table may damage him further.

In essence, this is another rip in the tattered fabric of the Republican Party. Many of the fourth-rate party officials, owing to Trump their newfound positions and prestige, will stick with him; but Johnson has shown that ignoring Trump’s wishes is possible, even when Vladimir Putin, President of Russia and invader of Ukraine, is involved. This, in turn, damages the mystique, unearned as it was and is, of Mr. Trump. Naturally, this is a complex relationship between Mr Trump and his base, and many will remain loyal even in the face of the most dire revelations in court. But many others will have reached their limit in the number of major indiscretions and doubts, and not vote for Mr. Trump. His performance in the primaries, while victories in all but Vermont, have not been as convincing as President Biden’s, or of the sort of a truly dominating politician. They reflect the results of a Party suffering internal conflict. And that’s fine, out of context. American politics is about debate, because debate and doubt result in positive progress. But in a Republican Party where uniform voting in general elections – Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line – is a virtual law, the untold strain on the voter is worse. One might think, reasonably, that the primaries are a release valve, but if one’s preferred candidate loses, how easy is it, intellectually and emotionally, to transfer their vote to the winning candidate, who the voter detests?

At some point, the Republican Party member blows a gasket and refuses to vote, to participate, to even be a member. This Gingrichian dictate is, like so many such dictates, like borrowing money to pay dividends in the corporate world: madness.

Second, the purported power of the Freedom Caucus, the primary troublemakers in the House, to decide issues and control the House, is now on the line. If the Democrats choose to vote to support Johnson for Speaker, the power of the Freedom Caucus is shown to be blunted. It’s another step to understanding the true image of such Representatives as Gaetz, Gosar, former Freedom Caucus member Greene, and a number of others, as simply a pack of power-hungry and immature clowns, with little idea of how to govern.

Third, this violates another Gingrichian dictate: never give the Democrats a substantial victory. This is about as big as they come, and, much to the blindly loyal Republicans’ dismay, they’ll discover the world doesn’t catch fire and burn. Thus are the Republican Party’s tenets slowly and painfully destroyed. Again, the Party will suffer damage as some members walk away.

So there are many consequences to Johnson’s decision to bring desperately needed foreign aid to the House floor, and for doctrinaire Republicans, clinging to Mr Trump’s pants legs, none of them are good.

It is events of this sort that serve to put the picayune machinations and beliefs of humans in perspective:

In October of 2022, a wave of radiation washed through the solar system, more intense than anything observed before. Astronomers dubbed it the BOAT, the brightest of all time. Its source was an unusually close brush with a gamma-ray burst, a 1-in-10,000-year event, according to a 2023 study published in Astrophysical Research Letters. 

Fortunately for life on Earth, the confined nature of the beams means that a direct collision would be very unlikely. Nonetheless, the elusive nature of gamma-ray bursts ensures that they will continually inspire awe — and perhaps a bit of fear — of our cosmic backyard. [“Gamma-Ray Bursts Could Wipe Out All Life, But Are Unlikely to Hit Earth,” Max Bennett, Discover]

For an article on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), it’s almost unforgivable that the magazine didn’t supply the name assigned this GRB, so I looked it up. This is it:

GRB 221009A also known as Swift J1913.1+1946 was an extraordinarily bright and long-lasting gamma-ray burst (GRB) jointly discovered by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on October 9, 2022. The gamma-ray burst was around seven minutes long, but was detectable for more than ten hours following initial detection. Despite being around two billion light-years away, it was powerful enough to affect Earth‘s atmosphere, having the strongest effect ever recorded by a gamma-ray burst on the planet. The peak luminosity of GRB 221009A was measured by Konus-Wind to be ~ 2.1 × 10⁴⁷ J/s and by Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor to be ~ 1.0 × 10 A burst as energetic and as close to Earth as 221009A is thought to be a once-in-10,000-year event. It was the brightest and most energetic gamma-ray burst ever recorded, with some dubbing it the “BOAT“, or Brightest Of All Time. [Wikipedia]

It’s fascinating that we live in a Universe where such extraordinary power can be naturally focused and released, endangering the integrity of anything in its path.

And the pic?

The aftermath of GRB 221009A, as seen by NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). (Credits: IXPE)

WaPo has a report on an old technology:

Music fans may love the immediacy of streaming music, but that hasn’t stopped them from bringing vinyl records mainstream. Revenue from vinyl jumped 10 percent to $1.4 billion in 2023, and outsold CDs for the second time since 1987, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Back, back to the farm!

I always found vinyl to be annoying, from scratching to warpage to maintenance, and, after my fairly good record player was stolen, I was happy enough to be rid of my paltry vinyls and go to only CDs.

Is the quality advantage of vinyl over CDs really that discernible? I don’t doubt that it’s better than streaming and radio, or, if I may shudder in public, 8-track, but is the digitization inherent in CDs really that recognizable? I know my Dad claimed to know people who could discern virgin vinyl from vinyl played once or twice, but not me, so it’s no surprise that I can’t discern it.

Or is it the greater tangible footprint of vinyl? Streaming means, as most of us know, no tangible artifacts, as well as paying for each repetition. Having a CD is one sunken cost and a medium sized artifact, the jewel case if memory serves. A vinyl record sits between – a sunken cost that degrades with each play. And a bigger artifact with room enough for art and sheets of protective paper hanging out, to boot.

A romantic return to an earlier age where the environment is not in such perilous condition, where the dangerous impact of environment-deniers, of election-deniers, of people who isolate themselves from the real world through their horrendous hooting?

Probably contributions from these and a dozen other factors.

Gender incongruence:

Gender incongruence is a marked and persistent experience of incompatibility between a person’s gender identity and the gender expected based on sex at birth. [MSD Manual]

Noted in “Will Big Trans Be Held To Account?” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:

[The release of the The Cass Report (Hillary Cass) is] a decisive moment in this debate. After weighing all the credible evidence and data, the report concludes that puberty blockers are not reversible and not used to “take time” to consider sex reassignment, but rather irreversible precursors for a lifetime of medication. It says that gender incongruence among kids is perfectly normal and that kids should be left alone to explore their own identities; that early social transitioning is not neutral in affecting long-term outcomes; and that there is no evidence that sex reassignment for children increases or reduces suicides.

Inflation is neither some random thing that affects your finances nor exclusively the result of printing money; it also can reflect real-world phenomenon. Consider this UPI report on Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s statement on inflation:

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell highlighted a significant yet often overlooked contributor to the persistently high inflation rates: soaring insurance costs. Powell emphasized in congressional testimony that various types of insurance, including home and car insurance, have experienced substantial surges in recent years, impeding the Fed’s efforts to achieve its 2% inflation target. He noted, “Insurance of various different kinds — housing insurance, but also automobile insurance, and things like that — that’s been a significant source of inflation over the last few years.”

Climate change is overwhelmingly attributed to our fossil fuel economy, in case you were wondering, and climate scientists have been warning about it for two or three decades now. Think about who consistently defends the fossil fuel industry, while denigrating cleaner technologies, when listening to some politician harp on and on about inflation.

This WaPo article never mentions the possibility, but I have to wonder if the time of the cows in America may be ending, to be replaced by camels.

The camels had thump-thumped for seven days across northern Kenya, ushered by police reservists, winding at last toward their destination: less a village than a dusty clearing in the scrub, a place where something big was happening. People had walked for miles to be there. Soon the governor pulled up in his SUV. Women danced, and an emcee raised his hands to the sky. When the crowd gathered around an enclosure holding the camels, one man said he was looking at “the future.”

The camels had arrived to replace the cows.

Cows, here and across much of Africa, have been the most important animal for eons — the foundation of economies, diets, traditions.

But now grazable land is shrinking. Water sources are drying up. A three-year drought in the Horn of Africa that ended last year killed 80 percent of the cows in this part of Kenya and shattered the livelihoods of so many people.

If, faced with the same climate conditions, would Americans stubbornly hold on to cows, or would we switch to camels? It brings in dizzying visions of the Strategic American Reserve of Camels.

Rep Byron Donalds (R-FL) steps forward with a claim:

Phreatomagmatic eruption:

Phreatomagmatic eruptions are volcanic eruptions resulting from interaction between magma and water. They differ from exclusively magmatic eruptions and phreatic eruptions. Unlike phreatic eruptions, the products of phreatomagmatic eruptions contain juvenile (magmatic) clasts. It is common for a large explosive eruption to have magmatic and phreatomagmatic components. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Icelandic volcano erupts, turning sky orange and forcing evacuations,” Annabelle Timsit and Kasha Patel, WaPo:

Senator Vance (R-OH) would have us believe that Ukraine is doomed:

President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong. Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president. [The New York Times^[1]]

To which there is an answer that doesn’t involve dry statistics and other dreary things.

Senator Vance, you’ve forgotten one factor in your mathematical analysis.

We are the UNITED STATES. Together, we can do anything. We’ve gone to the Moon, we’ve sent probes to the planets and probes are on their way to other solar systems. We’ve rescued countries, and we have doomed other countries.

That’s right, we are capable of the greatest feats, and the greatest crimes. We can abandon Ukraine as we snivel about the penny-pinching cost of it all, or we can provide our aid, in support of another democracy, in support of international law, and in support of our national interest.

We can send more than enough arms to Ukraine to defeat those who threaten to oppress them, to rape them, to bully them, to eradicate them from their very homeland, many of them obsolete in our estimation – but not there’s. We can do this without sending troops.

Or we can turn our backs on them, our fellow humans who wish to control their own destiny, rather than capitulate to the Russian dictator.

Do you want to commit a great crime? Or do you want to accomplish the ‘impossible’ great thing, and set Ukraine free?

¹ Via Maddowblog, because I am too cheap to pay for subscriptions to both WaPo and the Times. And I don’t have the time to read both.

Perhaps a trifle cliched, but I’m busy today.

For those wondering how Mr Trump’s latest venture, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, is working out after a couple of weeks, well, ummmm, the stock market isn’t always the most accurate indicator. Hey? Yeah, well, it stinks:

That high point just before April? When it was announced that the merger between DWAC and DJT had been okayed by the SEC. It’s been downhill ever since.

If you bought stock, I wish you well. Good wishes are rarely good for rescuing you from unfortunate financial situations. Unfortunately.

Photoed a day or two ago…

Daily Kos‘ Joan McCarter remarks on the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that a law dating from before Arizona became a State is still a law:

Fascinoma:

But the duration of Sternlieb’s infection, its location in a uterine fibroid and the recurring hives made the case something of a fascinoma — medical slang for an unusual and unusually interesting case, a status that would be enhanced by the discovery of its source. [“Medical Mysteries: Years of hives and fevers traced to a startling cause,” Sandra G. Boodman, WaPo]

This week’s nominee is conservative media personality Byron York! As WaPo’s Dana Milbank provides important context, we’ll take it from him:

Steve Benen is puzzling over the Republican National Committee’s behavior, now under the management of Mr Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump:

Great. Buy solar panels last year, run across this article this year:

Researchers from Lehigh University have developed a material that demonstrates the potential for drastically increasing the efficiency of solar panels.

A prototype using the material as the active layer in a solar cell exhibits an average photovoltaic absorption of 80%, a high generation rate of photoexcited carriers, and an external quantum efficiency (EQE) up to an unprecedented 190%—a measure that far exceeds the theoretical Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit for silicon-based materials and pushes the field of quantum materials for photovoltaics to new heights.

“This work represents a significant leap forward in our understanding and development of sustainable energy solutions, highlighting innovative approaches that could redefine solar energy efficiency and accessibility in the near future,” said Chinedu Ekuma, professor of physics, who published a paper on the development of the material with Lehigh doctoral student Srihari Kastuar in the journal Science Advances. [TechXplore]

Furballs.

Mutable:

able or likely to change:
the mutable nature of love
Language is not static, it is mutable.

Noted in “April 9, 2024,” Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American:

The [Arizona Supreme Court] explained: “A policy matter of this gravity must ultimately be resolved by our citizens through the legislature or the initiative process…. We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens.”

Are you afflicted? Citizens of Turkey are positively aflame:

Turkey’s Central Bank, in a unexpected move, hiked interest rates Thursday by another 500 basis points, from 45% to 50%.

The monetary policy committee cited a “higher than expected” surge in the country’s year-on-year inflation last month, which hit almost 70%. The embattled Turkish lira strengthened immediately after the surprise announcement, trading more than 1% up on the day at 14:30 p.m. local time. [AL-Monitor]

A bit hard to borrow money. And this in an Islamic nation? I thought charging interest was against Islamic law?