Monthly Archives: May 2022

Maybe act like a child while trying to convince your followers that a fantastical claim for which there is no evidence is, regardless, true?

Cheems:

Doge (often /ˈdoʊdʒ/ DOHJ, /ˈdoʊɡ/ DOHG, /ˈdoʊʒ/ DOHZH^[1]) is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme typically consists of a picture of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English.

Patience!

Since the inception of the meme, several variations and spin-offs have been created, including “liquified Doge”, a variation wherein the dog’s shape is morphed into other animals, and “ironic Doge”, a version where the Doge character is put into ironic and uncharacteristic situations. The ironic Doge memes have spawned several other related characters, often dogs themselves, one of which is Cheems, another Shiba Inu who is typically characterized by a speech impediment that adds the letter “M” throughout its speech. Walter, a bull terrier character who is typically portrayed as liking “moster trucks” [sic] and firetrucks, is another commonly recurring ironic Doge character. These memes are mostly present on subreddits like r/dogelore. One meme which became popular in 2020 was “Swole Doge vs. Cheems”, in which a muscular Doge and a baby Cheems are depicted as something considered better in the past, and its modern version, respectively. [Wikipedia]

Perhaps a trifle incoherent, or at least trivial. Noted in “cheems mindset,” Jeremy Driver, Normielisation:

I call this “cheems mindset”. While it’s a condition that can have fatal consequences during a global pandemic, it also has major implications for wider policy making. In many ways it’s the spiritual enemy of the Iron Maiden Britain concept I outlined in my recent piece for CapX– cheems mindset is the reflexive belief that barriers to policy outcomes are natural laws that we should not waste our time considering how to overcome.

Molly White (no relation) continues to run an extremely important blog, Web3 is going just great, when it comes to understanding cryptocurrencies and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). Here’s the latest post:

The Superlative Apes NFTs are a collection of Bored Apes derivative NFTs that feature colorful pastels. The project amassed a large following (including, apparently, the rapper Eminem), and its first collection of 4,444 NFTs sold out after launching in December 2021, netting the creators 301 ETH [Ethereum coins, a competitor to Bitcoin] (about $1.2 million at the time). They also sold most of their 8,888-piece Superlative Mutated Apes collection …

For lots more money. But here’s the important part:

The project has been plagued with issues including missed deadlines, accusations of plagiarism (somehow), and connections to another rug-pulled project. Additionally, a flawed staking contract required the team to have holders migrate their NFTs to a new contract—a slow and painful process that has resulted in most of the NFTs being “stuck” in a temporary contract. People who have questioned the project or accused them of rug pulling have been banned from the Discord and blocked on Twitter.

Because negative remarks will slow the flow of wealth from the non-wealthy to the wealthy, and we Just Can’t Have That.

This is computer-based grift. If the project personnel were honest, there’d be no banning anyone who had negative comments; instead, they’d be responded to and, if they’re trolls, permitted to twist in the wind.

The banning simply marks the project as dishonest, and possibly fraudulent.

If you have any urge, any inclination to “invest” in cryptocurrency, NFTs, or a “Web3” project, I’d suggest reading her blog for a while. Then, find a couch and lie down until the urge fades away.

“Sculpted entirely out of cake!” he boasted, the bastard.

The title The Monster (1925) may be the worst part of this silent movie, as it’s not really clear as to who is the metaphorical monster. People are starting to disappear near the little town of Danburg, leaving behind only their shattered vehicles, with little clue as to what’s happening. There are mysterious lights at the nearby sanatorium, but no one answers the door and the chief doctor and owner is out of town on a trip.

But when the kidnappers mess with young Betty and her beau, Amos, they miss the potential that pretty Betty has a second beau, and that would be underconfident general store clerk Johnny Littlegood. Johnny has followed one of the kidnappers to find Betty and Amos in trouble. Stumbling into a hidden tunnel as he runs from the kidnappers, Johnny finds Betty and Amos are now captives, and a clutch of insane minions who are former inhabitants of the sanatorium see them as toys.

And the former second-in-command of the sanatorium, Dr. Kiska, is now in control, and he probably should have been an inmate, not a doctor. Still, medical experiments are medical experiments and all that rot.

Well, everyone underestimates Johnny, and soon enough the police, sent by Betty’s father, arrive to help Johnny save the day.

So long as you don’t mind reading dialog boards, this is a fairly fun movie to watch. The acting works with the story, and Dr. Kiska is suitably evil. It’s not the greatest silent movie ever made – I liked Battleship Potemkin (1925) and The General (1926) more – but it’s certainly a credit to the genre of horror movies.

Sing soprano and I’ll cut you off at the knees, kid!

In The Sleeper (2000) elderly Violet Moon has been earning a bit on the side by running seances, those wee little dramas wherein a medium, or gatekeeper to the spirits of the dead, speaks to said dead for the benefit of those living who loved the dead.

Or just makes shit up, as Harry Houdini might have said.

But Violet neither foresees or even sees older adopted sister, Cath, acquired when her father married Cath’s mother. But, then, this is not a surprise: Cath has been in and out of prisons and asylums since the day, as a child, she clumsily bumped her mother off the top floor of a castle to the waiting stone floor, below.

Cath knows she’s clumsy because, well, her mother had told her that for all her life. Up to that point.

But at the seance, Cath, visiting from the old folks’ home with roommate Lillian, recognizes Violet. Violet, who went on to marry a dairy farmer, have a son, Fergus, and daughter, >name forgotten<, be widowed, and now is fighting to keep the farm going, despite various challenges.

Challenges that have discouraged Fergus into considering selling out, as his wife encourages.

But when Cath arrives to settle accounts with Violet, she disappears. Soon, Lillian and another oldster, George, arrive, find nothing, and are shooed away – but the nephew of Fergus has found a possession of Cath’s laying in the workyard.

And then Fergus’ wife goes missing, in the midst of a storm.

And what is going on with Fergus and who I think is his … sister?

And the poor old cops, having to deal with … poo slurry.

For all this interesting and mystifying plot, I never really got hooked by the story. Perhaps the British culture is off-putting for me, for the acting and script and sense of humor are fairly fine. But, taken as a whole, there’s a certain unpleasant sordidness to it, as if everyone has a dirty secret hidden in their knickers. Hell, even the administrator of the old folks’ home was, well, a bit repulsive.

But, as I said, it’s all nicely done. Sordidness with, ah, style?

The visual, influenced by Bloom County artistic style, though not any particular cartoon, featuring:

• manned machine gun nests on short poles, or stylos for the Greek-speakers among my readership, probably in the background;
• TSA (Transportation Security Agency, for those just awakening from that forty year coma) style X-ray machines, queueing spaces, and personnel, who are at rest, smoking cigarettes and checking their pistols;
• A pile of school backpacks in a corner, with books and guns spilling out;
• Obtrusive sign that says Greg “More Guns! More Taxes!” Abbott High School.

Caption: one of the TSA agents speaking to another, “Oh yeah? You should see the private schools. An entire Army tank battalion out front!”

No, I haven’t seen anything like this, but I also don’t see editorial cartoons. It just doesn’t happen, but I do like them when I see them, so I honestly hope someone beat me to the punch.

“Greg Abbott” is a reference to Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX), who revels in signing absurd anti-gun control bills.

My favorite cartoon strips in late teens through, maybe, my early thirties were Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County. I developed a taste for snarky surreality, obviously. No doubt SF writer Roger Zelazny contributed to it as well.

Inspired by this Daily Kos diary.

Feel free to use this idea!

A couple of night ago we visited Owamni, the Minneapolis-located restaurant run by The Sioux Chef. While I think “The Sioux Chef” is a bit cheesy, the restaurant itself, nominated for a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant, served delicious food. Our only complaint is that one of the deserts, a chocolate cake with sunflower brittle, featured a cake that was a little dry. This is our second visit, and the same could be said for that visit: delicious food.

If you can afford it, give it a try. Spendy but tasty.

Everyone should have a friend, but a cat’s head growing out of your chest is a bit outre.

Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (1947) is a movie based on the classic comic strip, featuring the police detective following clues in a murder and theft of valuable furs. He’s on the tail of a brutal and tough low-life, somehow connected to the crime scene, while the low-life is following up his own set of clues that will lead to … Dick Tracy.

Even though his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart – yes, you read that right,

T R U E H E A R T 

– barely exists in this story, despite getting second billing and doing nothing amazing, an irritating sidekick, a “friend” who I thought was Tracy’s butler, which was ridiculous, and who chewed the scenery something fierce, and some cheesy dialog, this was a surprisingly satisfying flick. This is no simple read the clues and wrap-up the problem: people dash desperately down alleyways to survive, pulling trick after trick; the clues are ambiguous, at least for Tracy, and, hey, no computers. That “war dialer” sure had sore fingers!

I won’t recommend it, but, ya know, I have no regrets watching this one. If only the lead actor had that square jaw like the cartoon strips did…

Fair use, Link

Paul Fidalgo of, and soon to be a high muckety muck, at CSI has a question:

Oh hey, Newsweek reports on Mark Sherwood, “a Republican candidate for governor of Oklahoma [who] has called for a total ban on abortion without any exceptions, while arguing that life begins ‘before’ conception.” What does that even mean?

I do believe that this has already been answered, Mr. Fidalgo, by the intrepid philosophers of Monty Python. Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great …

While non-alive things may be sacred, sperm flutter about under their own power, and so must be alive.

And Mr. Sherwood had best be careful in treading that particular path. Taken too far, too seriously, too honestly, and he’ll find that life is not sacred. Pushing broken premises right to the edge exposes their essential flimsiness.

The alternative of arresting all men for masturbation and “night emissions,” as involuntary orgasms while sleeping were once called, is going to prove troublesome, first for the men arrested, then for everyone who takes Sherwood seriously, and then Sherwood will find himself >plunk< down at the bottom rung of the power ladder he’s so enthusiastically clambering here.

When your assumptions have error bars of greater > 100%. Or even 1000%. Which makes for negative probabilities. Maybe that works, like the mathematical concept of i, which is defined as the square root of -1?

Oooops, there I go down the digression path. Here’s the quote:

The paper—which hasn’t been peer-reviewed—is called “Estimating the Prevalence of Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations” and was written by Alberto Caballero, a PhD student in conflict resolution at the University of Vigo in Spain and the author of a separate study published in Cambridge University’s peer-reviewed International Journal of Astrobiology earlier this month that attempted to analyze where the famous WOW! Signal originated. [Vice]

And it’s just gotta be asked – are these peers going to be representatives of the Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations?

How did the editor contact them?

Grounding your police in fantasies about a Divinity does not bring me comfort:

The police department that wrongly shot Breonna Taylor dead in her own apartment in 2020 had trained its officers just three years earlier that they are avengers who carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

New reporting by the Louisville, Ky., independent newspaper LEO documents that in 2017 Louisville Metro Police applied a Bible verse to a mandatory firearms training class. The verse from Romans 13:4 was superimposed over a “thin blue line” flag as the final image in the training slideshow. [Baptist News]

BN’s article seems at least faintly disapproving, but it’s not an opinion piece, but rather reporting. That this is a problem is apparent to some:

Bruce Williams, senior pastor at Bates Memorial Baptist Church in the Smoketown community of Louisville, told LEO he finds use of the verse by Louisville police an example of “weaponizing scriptures.”

“It’s more evidence of what’s kind of in the DNA of America,” he said. “And that is a history of weaponizing scriptures to justify violence sometimes and damnable ends.”

If we momentarily discard the question of whether there’s a Divinity at all, one of the problems of a difficult text such as the Bible having such authority is that most folks don’t really sit down and read it. Instead, they take the word of their cleric.

And if that cleric is ambitious?

Shit like this happens.

I don’t want my police officers fantasizing they’re God’s Avengers. I want police officers who are soberly aware of their responsibilities, and act accordingly.

Just a quick note that WaPo says we might have an amazing meteor storm – might:

The forthcoming Tau Herculid meteor shower ordinarily results in just a trickle of shooting stars between mid-May and mid-June, but there’s a chance it could be something extra special this year. Astronomers are focused on a clumping of cometary debris that — if positioned just right in Earth’s orbital track — could spark such an outburst of meteors. …

Astronomers have pinpointed the most likely time for the peak of whatever display may or may not transpire to be around 1 a.m. Eastern time next Monday night/Tuesday morning. The shower’s “radiant” point, or the part of the sky from which meteors appear to emanate, will be high in the sky over North America at that time, so there’s no specific place in the sky to look.

Happy watching!

The tenet: 2nd Amendment Absolutism, a tenet of the Republican Party. Mix with the religious zealotry known to infect the Republican Party. Apply to an irrational man-child and let loose.

And we have the sickening tragedy in Uvalde, TX, where twenty one were killed, and an unfolding aftermath, where the husband of one of the dead has already died of a heart attack, brought on by the violent killing of his wife.

Not “the passing.” Let’s give up that particular euphemism as a filthy way to hide the truth of the matter – these people died in terror as a madman ran around a school, killing children and adults, armed with a military-grade weapon.

So what do the zealous do when one of their tenets proves to be false? Not “under attack by the Godless liberals,” but actually leads to a tragedy such as Uvalde?

A zealot is someone who believes, without regard to evidence, in some sort of a tenet, a proposition if you will. Found often in the intensively religious and their theocratic leaders, along with the deeply arrogant, and the devotees of ideological positions who have built an intellectual castle of logic, often based on poor assumptions. When more than one of these positions come together in one group, and is seasoned with the anti-intellectual metric of extremism, aka You’re more pure if you’re more extreme!, then we see what we’re seeing now.

And what would that be?

If you consider Alex Jones, proprietor of the ridiculous InfoWars website, to be a conservative, rather than simply an amoral grifter and conman who’s now on the hook for immense monetary damages for his spreading the false idea that the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre was a hoax, then here’s sample #1:

1/Yes, America, Alex Jones is already insinuating that the murder of #Uvalde elementary school children today is suspect & was caused by some underlying politically opportunistic motive.

Alex #SandyHook Jones’s phone lines are open.

America, give him a piece of your mind: pic.twitter.com/JL5v2iQgFD

— Kelly Jones (@RealKellyJones) May 25, 2022

It’s the mindset that Surely it couldn’t happen without deliberately bad actors out to get us, so let’s call it that, ignoring the parallel conclusion that, in a world of bad actors and irrational people, which includes you and me, putting weapons into everyone’s hands simply encourages massacres.

More to the point is Texas Attorney General, and man indicted for misconduct in said office, Ken Paxton’s opinion:

“We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things. We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.” [Fox News via Maddowblog, the latter providing transcript]

Thus exposing students to the dangerous, even fatal results of gun accidents and, yes, angry teachers. Worse yet, this is a teaching environment: what are students being taught? That students are worthwhile targets? What if one of these students is the proverbial bad apple?

Is this a good thing?

Let’s go back to the 1950s and ask the Republicans if all the teachers ran around with guns on their hips, did the students attend schools with existential anxieties?

No. Not that I’ve ever read. Except in the context of nuclear war, of which there will be more anon.

And this is back when lead poisoning remained an issue. Lead poisoning, brought on by leaded gas, causes violent behaviors.

But gun training and gun control were a part of gun culture at the time. Before the accession of Wayne LaPierre to the NRA (National Rifle Association) leadership in the 1970s, the NRA was a leading proponent of gun control – that is, of being responsible gun owners, of teaching same, and of being a responsible society in the context of guns. After LaPierre and his cronies took control, the NRA became all about, well, quite honestly, selling guns.

But let’s get on with some examples of Republican responses to Uvalde. Lt. Governor of Texas Daniel Patrick wants to go military:

Obviously we have to do more. We have to harden these targets so no one can get in ever except through one entrance. Maybe that would help. Maybe that would stop someone.

“But it’s really bigger than that, Tucker. We’re a core society. We’re a society that’s just at each other’s throats all the time. And we’re better than this as a nation.” [CNSNews]

First, let me note that, despite early reports, apparently there was no engagement with the shooter by a school security officer prior to the shooter’s entry into the school building. The early suggestion that “hardening” had already been implemented and failed is false.

But, returning to Patrick’s response, yes, extremists are often at someone’s throat. Extremism is a performative art, designed to gain power through manipulation of a vulnerable audience, and a classic performance technique is to attack someone, no holds barred, no holding back.

And that party of Daniel Patrick? It’s a party of extremists.

But his tone is definitely of someone who is really short on ideas. More and more guns was supposed to lead to a polite society, as some conservatives have put it, where the madman is swiftly gunned down with minimal damage. No kidding, this is a point I often ran into in my libertarian readings.

Hiroshima, Japan, after the American nuclear attack on the city in 1945.

It’s quite akin to MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction, actually, the Cold War doctrine in which we assured the Soviet Union that if it engaged in a nuclear attack on us, we’d return fire and we’d, them and us, would all be dead, and they assured us of the same. The shooter in Uvalde, TX, did in fact end up dead, along with his numerous victims. But he achieved his objective, a revenge on children, a performance to be longed talked about, while we did not: we lost our children. MAD did not work, as it didn’t in Sandy Hook or the other school massacres. It’s logically wrong to declare MAD never works, as when it does work it doesn’t get the same news headlines, but it’s fair to say that it fails with dismaying and unacceptable frequency.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) takes one of Patrick’s ideas and mistakenly runs with it:

… Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (who’s speaking at the NRA’s convention this Friday) argued yesterday that the problem isn’t that there are too many guns out there, it’s that schools have too many doors–more specifically, more than one door.

• Schools need to “harden” by “having one door that goes in and out of the school [and] having armed police officers at that one door,” Cruz told reporters during his visit to Uvalde. [TPM]

Harvard Law School, which awarded Cruz a magna cum laude, must be very, very embarrassed, because this guy can’t argue his way out of a paper sack. Oh, he’s got the performance part down, I saw a little bit of his verbal arguments for rejecting electoral votes during the January 6th counting of the electoral votes, and he has the tone of voice and arm-waving down pat, but this untidy bit of nonsense, which he’s repeated several times (see the TPM link), is unfit for public display. Shall we consider windows, multiple shooters, fire regulations, distributed campuses, school trips,and no doubt quite a few others, against his proposition? What a load of bullshit. But, for him, …

Anything, anything, but questioning that tenet of the Party. It’s worth recalling that Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, is a preacher of the born-again variety, and to wonder how much bleed over from that absolutist belief system into the secular belief system occurs.

This is getting over-long, but the response of Georgia Senate GOP nominee and former NFL star Herschel Walker is priceless and must be cited:

“Do you support any new gun laws in the wake of this Texas shooting?” [CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju] asked Walker and repeated the question when Walker indicated he hadn’t properly heard him.

“What I like to—what I like to do is see it and everything and stuff,” Walker replied.

“I like to see it,” Walker said before moving away. He may have been indicating that he wanted to know more about the incident.

“He didn’t engage further,” Raju wrote. [Newsweek]

And did Walker clarify his indecipherable response? In the next day or two, this came popping out:

Herschel Walker's solution to school shootings involves "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media." pic.twitter.com/WAi7a4mwgz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 26, 2022

I can say that, for myself, it’s just more gibberish.

But it’s worth noting that his response is congruent with someone who’s been told that any pro-gun control response will result in losing this chance to regain the fame that he had in his football days. He’s obviously not otherwise prepared, so he gushes utter nonsense and hopes no one notices.

This is the GOP nominee for Senate. How can anyone even consider voting for him?

Where is this leading?

Certainly, a few more members of the GOP will be leaving. But not many; those willing to embrace irrationality, so long as it leads them to wealth, power, and/or prestige, will remain, and those not so willing have generally already left.

For independents, some will buy the line of More guns! More guns!, but others will look at the truly irrational response of the Republican Party to this and other mass shootings, and ask why they should vote for Republicans who espouse such positions.

Which leads to the question of Why should they vote for Democrats? Some, for whom I have little sympathy, will point at the pro-choice position on abortion of the Democrats, forgetting that we are a secular, diverse society, and not a theocracy, and refuse to vote for a Democrat; others will point at the autocratic way transgenderism issues have been implemented by Democrats when in charge, and object to voting for such a political party, and for them I have considerable sympathy, believing that the Democrats abrogated their responsibility to have a debate on the issue, as dictated by the liberal democracy political model to which the United States aspires.

Some will sit out elections, tired of the perceived dirtiness of it all. Extremism on the right has ruined the Republicans; the Democrats have not been properly wary of extremists on the left, but are at least partially aware of them. That dirtiness, that rigidity, leads to negative perceptions, of autocratic impulses, theocrats of the wrong stripe, or better yet at all, and of disregard of public opinion and public debate. I can’t say I blame them.

And some will look for alternatives. I have to wonder if an independent candidate or two might win seats. We do have two nominally Independent Senators, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine. Could there be more? Might we see some House seats come unexpectedly into the hands of Independents in 2022?

And will we see a new and popular party form? I accidentally ran across the last five minutes of a PBS documentary on the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota, existing 1915-1956, which controlled the North Dakota legislature and governor’s seat in roughly the 1916-1918 time frame, and had a mildly quasi-socialist flavor to it. For my purposes, the Nonpartisan League serves as an example that the major parties can be thrust aside, even if only temporarily, by angry mobs, aka parties, of citizens.

Both Democrats and Republicans had best be careful, or they may suddenly discover themselves excluded by citizens who want to be included in public policy discussions (transgenderism, gun control), who want parties that are responsive to citizen concerns rather than corporate profits (gun manufacturers, fossil fuel subsidies), and are generally responsible institutions.

The Republicans have already proven to be third-, fourth, and – see Herschel Walker – fifth rate politicians, in that they can win elections, but they have lost their way when it comes to actual governing, prizing extremism over moderation, arrogance over humility, purity over compromise. If there’s a Divinity, I would be surprised if it doesn’t appear one day, open a yawning chasm, and sweep all the Republicans into it, offended at what has been done in its name.

The Democrats, partly due to a legislature frozen by Senate Republicans’ intractability, also look less than impressive. The transgenderism blunder has an autocratic flavor, repugnant to Independents, and Critical Race Theory and the far left is full of arrogance that is easily punctured, except that the arrogant refuse to reform. If you want more on intrinsic Democratic woes, send Andrew Sullivan some money and read him, he’s more knowledgeable on that than I am.

Voting for Republicans and their inchoate responses to the disasters brought on by their heretofore unbreakable allegiance to Party tenets seems like madness to me. Especially if you’re in Texas, or voting in the Georgia Senate race. But are Democrats good enough alternatives? That’s the sad conundrum of today.

“Hey, dudes in the spaceship! We need a fourth for bridge!”

The War of the Worlds (1953) is the classic retelling of H. G. Wells’ novel of the same name. This version is far more conventional than the 2012 version, which was quite innovative, but the 1953 version has a certain charm in that the conventional approach makes the violence, both between worlds and between humans, and the imminent end of humanity a bit more shocking; the transition from dum-de-dum-de-dum to We just got the shit kicked out of us! highlights the change from humdrum world to a sudden, surprising, and horrifying end.

The understandable, yet deplorable, fight for individual lives leading to the last hope of humanity being trampled under the heels of people desperate for their individual survival has parallels in our current American political contretemps, although the latter speaks more to the fiercely me-me-me character of the basest human characters, rather than the more noble and effective communal approach.

Technically speaking, while there is an inevitable 1950s-vibe happening, and people of color apparently didn’t exist for this movie, it’s a well made flick: good acting, good script which knows when to be slow and when to pick up the pace, and the special effects are excellent for the era, winning an Academy Award, although the actual Martians, when seen, are almost cartoonish.

Representative of its era, but made to an excellent standard, if you have some historical curiosity then this one has to be on your Must Be Seen List.

For a feel of the scale of collapse we’re seeing in NFTs (non-fungible tokens, or how you can “own” a digital something that can be easily copied):

Meanwhile, from the same article:

“I think of NFTs as pure froth,” said Peter M. Garber, an economist and author of “Famous First Bubbles: The Fundamentals of Early Manias.” “It is more of a pump-and-dump, Wolf-of-Wall-Street operation than anything else.”

Garber seems to have a good head on his shoulders, to use an old, old saying.

Ya know, I wonder what Professor Turchin would have to say about this phenomenon, what parallels he’d draw to old Roman Empire corruption and decay.

While musing on yet another snark about Trump’s failure to upend Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) in the primary, it suddenly occurred to me:

Will Trump endorse Kemp, or would he consider endorsing the Democratic candidate, Stacey Abrams?

There’s a mad bit of logic to the latter choice that leads to win-win. If Abrams wins, Trump gets sweet revenge on Kemp after all. And if Abrams loses, Trump can call it the Trump Curse and take credit for Kemp’s victory.

If only in his odd little world.

Out here in the real world, though, that might peel off a large chunk of the MAGA base. Kathy Barnette, defeated candidate for the GOP nomination to the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, has already suggested that MAGA can live without Trump around.

But it’d sure upset the GOP’s world.

There have been reports of Trump’s rally crowds shrinking, and his influence becoming questionable, at least in some States. But the Tuesday (May 24) primaries in Georgia may have relegated the former President to the dustbin of history, outside of some possible legal entanglements stemming from the January 6th Insurrection – if I’m to believe Erick Erickson, who lives in Georgia and pays attention to local politics:

But here’s why this has a lot to do with Trump and “stop the steal”[.]

Trump went after three Georgia Republicans more aggressively than any other candidates in the nation: Governor Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Attorney General Chris Carr.

That Brad Raffensperger won without a runoff tells me voters have had enough of Trump’s stolen election grievances. They are ready to move on. They want to look forward, not be pawns to Trump’s ego. Raffensperger’s win is the big indicator this really had more to do with Trump than I was first willing to believe.

Donald Trump literally told Brad Raffensperger that Trump would destroy him and Raffensperger even exceeded fifty percent of the vote in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district. Raffensperger was the scapegoat, the villain, and the responsible party who cost Trump Georgia, according to Trump. And Georgia’s Republican voters just re-nominated him. His race was so close and there was a Democrat cross-over. So Trump could argue Democrats made it happen. But it does not matter. Trump failed to persuade enough Republicans to reject [Raffensperger].

Trump bullied and denounced Attorney General Chris Carr and Carr crushed his Trump-endorsed opponent. Trump and his team convinced a man who had retired from the practice of law to get his license back just to challenge Carr. It did not work out well.

Even John King, the state’s Insurance Commissioner, decisively crushed his opponent, Patrick Witt, whose campaign signs had, in big letters, “Trump Endorsed.”

Erickson doesn’t say it, but possibly the only primary winning, Trump-endorsed candidate was Herschel Walker, the former NFL star. Unlike most, or all, of the rest of the Trump-endorsed, Walker has his own, independent, and substantial reputation, and Georgia is part of the football-loving South. He owes nothing to Trump. But will he appeal to independents, or will his mental illness, his unfamiliarity with public life issues, allegations of domestic abuse, and his documented mendacity when it comes to his business claims obviate the football sentimentality? In this purplish state, the independents hold the balance of power.

Walker’s opponent, Senator and Pastor Warnock (D-GA), certainly has his own reputation. It’ll be an interesting contest.

But back to the point. I agree with Erickson, Trump was rejected by Georgia GOP primary voters yesterday. Some of this is attributable to who Trump endorsed: candidates with dim prospects but a strong and demonstrated allegiance to Trump. But as I noted here, if Trump wants a reputation as the man with the magic touch, it was absolutely necessary to go out and endorse nobodies. That brings the additional advantage, at least for the former President, of making the candidate dependent on Trump and not on their own accomplishments.

But it carries the risk of exposing the endorser as a charlatan, an electoral fraud, if those candidates fail.

So what happens next? Trump’s influence varies across American geography, so in some areas he’ll retain influence, but in others it’s going to wane. He’s been revealed as just another idiot with a big mouth. The Georgia GOP appears to be moving on, at least in part, and by that I mean that some of those who supported Perdue and other failed Trump endorsees may decide to take their toys and go home.

That is, not vote in the general election.

Will it be enough to affect some races? The state-wide races, yes. Incumbent governor Kemp is at a slightly increased risk of losing. Walker, already facing an incumbent Senator while carrying many burdens which, in a rational society, would invalidate his candidacy, has an increased risk – although his pre-existing reputation shields him, to some extent, from sore loser syndrome. District races, on the other hand, will depend on the district.

Similarly to the sore-loser voters, GOP candidates who pledged eternal devotion to Trump and Trumpism will also scream. After all, they’ve had their shot at, and in some cases their taste of, power, and they will bitterly resent that foreclosure, that invalidation that their notions of how their little bit of America should be run. To be returned to the bar stool after that little taste will be cruel, indeed.

But Trump-appointed judges and SCOTUS Justices will hang around, looking worse and worse as Trump’s incompetence and any crimes committed become more and more salient. But don’t look for any resignations, excepting those judges caught committing a crime themselves. I suspect we’ll see Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett blushing from time to time, should liberals choose to demonstrate when they are in public.

The Southern Baptist Convention logo. Soon to be retired?

And Trump? Another step closer to the dustbin. Add in his connections to the recently morally devastated Southern Baptist Convention, a cornerstone of his base, and two of the legs on his three-legged stool may be missing screws. Look for hot air from him and his coterie and devotees, but this may mark the beginning of the end for Trump.

Will he be smart enough to leave the United States? At one time, I thought the answer was yes, but with his long-time ally, or perhaps master, President Putin both ill and in danger of losing Putin’s War, he may have nowhere to go.

Which I don’t think is present any longer:

“Gucci, Gucci, Goo I said!”

Kung Fu Yoga (2017) is a fairly dull Jackie Chan epic / Indiana Jones riff. Chan plays China’s greatest, but very humble, archaeologist Jack. He and his retinue of young & agile students – I think they’re students – are recruited by Indian professor Ashmita to buy and evaluate a huge emerald. It’s stolen by Ashmita’s rival, evil and arrogant Randall, who might be a prince of India or something, and claims ownership of the emerald. There’s also the theft of a diamond from a trove, yada yada yada. I lost track.

Eventually, and there’s a lot of eventually here, fair warning, we find Chan recreating the third Indiana Jones movie’s scene of the invisible bridge. I think. At its end is a golden gazebo full of treasure – and after some acrobatic fighting, villagers abruptly appear, everyone, even evil Randall, says namaste, and they break into a Bollywood-style musical number. And that’s it.

Yeah. No kidding. I’m not making that up. It’s too insipid, really.

And the rest was sort of dull. Yes, lots of kung fu, escapes from tight situations, and I think my credulity was all stretched out of shape at the end. Don’t get me wrong, technically it’s well done, and the escape from the hyenas was fun.

OK, I hooted really loudly at the lion scene. I think I scared my Arts Editor, even. The lion might be worth the price of admission. If the price is fairly low.

But I won’t remember this ripoff of Jones for much longer, though.

Voyager 1, our first interstellar probe, is not only out beyond the heliosphere, but its warranty period as well, which is a compliment to the designers and builders of the probe. But now it’s having problems:

NASA has reported that while the venerable Voyager 1 probe appears to be functional, there does appear to be something up with some of its instruments. According to its recent press release, readouts from the Attitude Articulation and Control System (AACS) seem invalid.

For an as yet unknown reason, data received from the system doesn’t seem to match up with what’s actually happening onboard.

This piece of kit is vital for monitoring and controlling the 45-year-old probe’s orientation, and it is also vital for keeping Voyager 1’s high-gain antenna pointed precisely at Earth. This enables it to send data home, so is very important to keep working properly.

“All signs suggest the AACS is still working, but the telemetry data it’s returning is invalid. For instance, the data may appear to be randomly generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in,” explains NASA. [Interesting Engineering]

A technical problem? A phenomenon interfering with the spacecraft? I wait with great anticipation.

Stephen Colbert has a hack at NFTs (non-fungible tokens) last night:

I liked Emo Emu.

On a more serious note, back in January Jason Bailey mentioned NFTs a few times:

The NFT explosion this year has created an arms race toward increasingly loud and fast-moving digital imagery jockeying for attention (and sales). Against this backdrop, Iskra Velitchkova’s work stands out in contrast to all the noise for how quiet, subtle, and meditative it is. [Artnome]

And

By mid-2021, despite my best efforts, I found it almost impossible to ignore the avalanche of cutesy PFP (personal profile pic) NFT projects featuring cartoon apes, cats, penguins, etc. Around that same time, generative art also captured the public’s eye, but sadly, it, too, quickly devolved, turning into a flood of hastily constructed, hard-edged geometric abstractions produced to meet the new market demand.

Never had I been surrounded by so much imagery that left me feeling so flat. I found myself craving the grotesque. I wanted to be shaken, made to feel uncomfortable, made to feel… anything, really. It was about this time that I discovered the work of Ilya Shkipin. His work makes me feel like I blacked out in a cheap motel room and woke up to find Polaroids under a dirty ashtray documenting the bad life decisions from the night before. Yet it also has its own deep sense of beauty.

Neither of which I quote to define NFTs, or more properly the art promoted under the NFT label. Remember Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.

But my Arts Editor continues to snort at the very mention of NFTs.

Kleptoparasitism:

Kleptoparasitism means parasitism by theft. What is parasitism? Parasitism is when an organism benefits at another organism expense. Kleptoparasitism is used in different ways e.g. bullying other organisms to give up their food they just caught, and steal collected or stored food. This way of obtaining food normally saves the kleptoparasite hunting time and also gives them the chance of food they might not be able to catch themselves. A negative part with using this as a feeding technique is the risk of injuries. Bullying someone to give up their food put you in the direction of their claws, beaks or teeth. [Ocean Adventures]

I’m not sure I would have used the word ‘use’, above. Kleptoparasitism is a behavior, not a tool, although sometimes distinguishing between the two is problematic.

Noted in “Jackals seen stealing kills from lynx as they expand range in Europe,” Josua Rapp Learn, NewScientist (14 May 2022, paywall):

According to new research, [golden] jackals have been seen scavenging carcasses of deer killed by lynx in southern Slovenia. While the evidence is limited at this point, it shows the first recorded incidents of kleptoparasitism — the act of stealing food — against lynx in Europe by jackals.

And a quick nod of provisional nominative determinism to Mr. Learn. Thank you.

Kicking off a new feature centered around the late Senator Goldwater’s (R-AZ) concerns about extremist clerics taking over the Republican Party.

The first entry is Republican candidate for the Michigan Senate Jacky Eubanks:

“We have to decide if we want to be the ‘party of me’ or the ‘party of us.’ And that’s what a lot of these primaries are going to decide.” – former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) in WaPo.

The former, a ‘party of me,’ is what we see every time a losing candidate starts singing the “they cheated” song – in a primary!