Category Archives: Uncategorized

Stretch it a bit and it’s a bit of baudiness.

An announcement:

The U.N. group that oversees the global shipping industry agreed Friday to slash the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades in an attempt to limit future global warming.

The landmark deal — for a polluting industry that has traditionally been resistant to change — includes a standout pledge to reduce its emissions to net-zero “by or about 2050.”

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had earlier pledged to reduce its emissions by half by 2050, so Friday’s agreement is a clear advance. [WaPo]

Drew this reaction, the harshest in the article:

John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, representing environmental groups pushing for greater reductions in emissions, said: “There is no excuse for this wish-and-a-prayer agreement. The level of ambition agreed is far short of what is needed to be sure of keeping global heating below 1.5 Celsius, and the language seemingly contrived to be vague and noncommittal.”

I worry that reactions like this are less criticism and more attempts to build a position in the power structure by belittling the shipping industry. Compare to this:

Whit Sheard, an expert in shipping emissions at the environmental group Ocean Conservancy, said the IMO has sent “a strong signal by historically committing to fully decarbonizing the shipping sector but has missed an enormous opportunity to cut emissions immediately.”

The United States and other countries were pushing for deeper cuts in shipping emissions much sooner.

“Caving to fossil fuel interests in the short term leaves a lot of work for industry and individual countries in the face of a global climate crisis,” Sheard said.

While critical, it’s delivered in a positive manner that recognizes belittled people rarely find reasons to cooperate with the arrogance exhibited by the belittlers. I get it, the shipping industry isn’t as cooperative as it might be, so putting a positive spin on a disappointing announcement can be difficult – but why throw gravel in the machinery?

Incidentally,

Another way for ships to immediately reduce emissions would be to slow down — essentially adhering to new voluntary “speed limits” in the ocean. Modern cargo vessels are capable of doing 25 knots. Soon, they may be “slow-steaming” at half that speed.

That’ll reduce trips, which will reduce profits – or, if that’s not tolerable, force prices higher. Which, in turn, may give consumers reasons not to consume.

All to the good, actually. A bit more here on gCaptain.

Either that or gravity, anyways. WaPo has an article on the concerns in academia WRT artificial intelligence:

Perseverate:

1. to repeat something insistently or redundantly:
   to perseverate in reminding children of their responsibilities. [Dictionary.com]

Never seen that one before. Noted in “When the doctor unexpectedly becomes the patient,” Leana S. Wen, WaPo:

In retrospect, self-pity got in the way of my diagnosis. I perseverated on how a healthy person such as me could suddenly become so sick. I exercised regularly; in fact, just days before, I’d completed my first triathlon. When I stopped being so defensive, I realized there were warning signs. I’d been traveling a lot and was feeling run down. I wasn’t feeling quite right during the race but had pushed through fatigue and body aches. The day before my hospitalization, I brushed aside vague chest discomfort.

Erick Erickson’s driving need to be part of the right is unfortunate because it keeps driving him away from accuracy, and its mother, truth. For instance, I might take this bit, concerning the recently rendered 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis decision, more seriously. The press and pundits have been buzzing that one of the parties in this suit, Elenis, is not a gay man, but a straight man who never tried to contract with 303 Creative for a gay marriage web site, an activity the owner of 303 Creative would refuse to do. Sounds dicey, but Erickson asserts

In fact, with regard to the online request, the case had already been filed in Court prior to the request being made. The State of Colorado helpfully stipulated that Ms. Smith and her company would immediately run afoul of Colorado law if she refused to build a website for a gay wedding. Courts normally require an existing controversy, but this case falls in a rare exception where the Court will hear a legal challenge knowing a plaintiff would immediately be in violation of the law if she acted as she intended.

And, indeed, Wikipedia notes

Smith, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), sued Colorado in 2016 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, seeking to block enforcement of the anti-discrimination law in a pre-enforcement challenge.

How the straight guy’s name got involved in this is not yet clear to me. But Erickson appears to be part way to being right. Too bad he fouls up all of his credibility by this ridiculous statement:

Yes, Trump supporters may have stormed the Capitol on January 6th. But it is members of the left who attempted both the mass assassination of members of Congress and the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice. The press corps that lectures Trump supporters on their illegitimacy feed and fuel the antics of the deranged and angry left.

This mass assassination reference is to an actual occurrence, a shooting at the US Capitol in 1954:

The 1954 United States Capitol shooting was an attack on March 1, 1954, by four Puerto Rican nationalists who sought to promote the cause of Puerto Rico’s independence from US rule. They fired 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols onto the legislative floor from the Ladies’ Gallery (a balcony for visitors) of the House of Representatives chamber within the United States Capitol.

It’s worth noting that he may also refer to the attack of a mentally ill man on a small group of Republican Congressional members assembled for a baseball practice, and I reprimand Erickson for his ambiguity. Seeing as Erickson takes a bit of pride in citing the Puerto Rican incident, I suspect his reference is to it, and will so continue in that vein.

Nobody died in 1954. Were those responsible clumsy assassins?

Upon being arrested, [Lolita] Lebrón yelled, “I did not come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico!”

Are they considered heroes of the left? Not being a leftist myself, I cannot definitively say – but, despite wide reading, I’d never heard of this shocking incident until Erickson mentioned it a couple of years ago^[1]. And they advocated for Puerto Rican independence, the definition of nationalists. What are one of the attributes of the Republican Party?

Ardent nationalists.

Perhaps citing incidents so isolated from current events chronologically is a fool’s decision, eh?

The attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice reference is easier. It refers to the 2022 incident in which a mentally ill man, Nicholas John Roske, arrived at Justice Kavanaugh’s residence with a gun, looked around, realized he was off his meds, called 911 and surrendered. Not a shot was fired, bomb thrown, poison dart flung. One might argue that the presence of Kavanaugh’s security detail was responsible for stopping an assassination attempt, but that is a weak argument inasmuch, in Erickson’s desperate attempt to drag his political opponents down to his level, he omits similar questions concerning assassination “attempts” on Democrats. That is, how would we even know about them?

In other words, this is nothing more than illegitimate speculation. The facts argue against calling this an assassination attempt; at best, it’s exceptionally weak-kneed.

And so Erickson discredits his perhaps-worthy commentary on 303 Creative v. Elenis, not to mention his frenzied defense of Thomas and Alito. This is why I find it impossible to credit right-wing arguments. They’re so easy to pick apart that it’s, charitably speaking, embarrassing.

¹ For that matter, the attack on the Republican baseball team has not resulted in adulation for the attacker, James Hodgkinson. He’s considered mentally ill at best, a shameful embarrassment at worst. This cannot be said for the January 6th attackers.

Damn, where’s the flying saucer when you need it?!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) is, sadly, a tired rehash of the previous three movies in this series, while the fourth, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), if anything, gets nothing more than an obscure head nod. Otherwise, it’s a boring collection of flash, lacking the meat necessary to make this fly.

The problem is that Professor Jones is no longer a driven character. The first installment of the series, and easily the best, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), features an up and coming Professor Jones who is absolutely driven in his quest for artifacts. How do we know this? Because every big decision he has to make has a moral dimension to it, and he tends to decide in his own favor and not that of morality. Just think of that first, heart-stopping sequence: His attempted theft, and that’s what it is, of an artifact representing a god of an Amazonian tribe. I mean, properly speaking, this is not even an archaeological find; it’s just out and out thievery.

It’s old, it’s valuable, and its acquisition will prove Jones’ prowess as a leading archaeologist. But when he steals it, it leads to the death of his remaining assistant, the other having deserted him, and Jones’ prize is taken from him by a foe, competing archaeologist René Belloq, who only wants it for its financial value, and is ruthless enough to order Jones’ execution; only Jones’ cleverness saves him.

The excavation of the Egyptian temple to steal information concerning the Ark, the discovery that Marion still lives and is imprisoned in Belloq’s tent in the desert, and Jones’ opportunity to destroy the Ark during the Nazi trek to a Jewish sacred location and thus saving it from the Nazis, are all moral situations in which his choice, motivated by self-interest rather than by the communal good, secular or religious, leads to existential danger not only for Jones, but for anyone who is not a Nazi world-wide. This moral ambiguity is the core of the fascination with Professor Jones, along with his reactions to the dangers brought on by his moral choices, and in turn leads to a superior story.

But the Professor Jones of Dial of Destiny isn’t a morally ambiguous character. A divorcee with a dead son, he’s just a worn out old man, burdened with a god-daughter just clever enough to get herself into trouble, but not get out of trouble. Running for one’s life, or that of someone to which an attachment has been formed, may be understandable, but it lacks that burning question of What is he thinking? Instead, we know he’s trying to stay alive and rescue the god-daughter. Yes, he has a cool artifact with various rumors attached to it, but it’s secondary. That seriously hobbles the buzz, because we know he’ll survive, no matter how many bad guys he has to dodge and trick – these storytellers don’t dare kill him off, and that might be the only way to save this story.

OK, so here’s a SPOILER ALERT. An improvement to this story is this. The principal bad guy wants to go back in time to kill Hitler and take his place, using his knowledge of how Germany failed in World War II to obviate that loss, turning it into victory. How about if Professor Jones agrees and goes with in order to kill the bad guy after he kills Hitler? It could certainly cloud the moral arc of the story, rendering it more interesting.

But that would require a rewrite – or three – of this script, and I think they felt pressure from Disney to get it out. That’s too bad, as the acting talent and technical resources are certainly top notch. In the end, the storytellers are let down by a script that, no doubt, checked all the boxes for big chase scenes and clever fights and all that crap, but had no insight into why these things worked in Raiders, while failing here.

You’re a Raiders, Rhys-Davies, Ford, or Banderas completist? Then you have to see this installment. Otherwise, wait for the cheap seats. Too bloody long for too little payoff.

But apparently in Libya the costs are a little less – at least until you get caught:

Libyan authorities have detained 50 Chinese nationals in a raid of a crypto-mining operation in the west of the country, the prosecution in Tripoli said Thursday. …

Prosecutors said in a statement that Interior Ministry agents were searching a farm in Zliten, 160 kilometers (99 miles) east of the capital and found “minors [sic] exploiting significant material capacity to generate virtual currencies with the help of 50 Chinese nationals.” [AL-Monitor]

And …

On Wednesday, prosecutors said police had dismantled another illegal crypto-mining operation in the port city of Misrata, adding it was operated by 10 Chinese nationals.

Which is a bit odd, given official disapproval of cryptocurrencies by China. Are the involved Chinese operating without official sanction?

It reminds me of when normal currencies were being forged by criminals.

Jennifer Rubin of WaPo asserts an assessment of SCOTUS that I fear isn’t quite accurate in detail:

In departing from the authentic judicial review, the right-wing majority unsurprisingly produces results perfectly aligned with the right’s agenda on hot-button topics. (By the law of averages, its “analysis” should occasionally favor the other side.) When foretelling a case’s outcome or following the majority’s “reasoning” requires a crib sheet on GOP political aims, something is wrong.

Right off the bat I can think of two decisions that have appalled conservatives: McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which judicial jurisdiction over much of Oklahoma was taken away from the State and given to the Five Civilized Tribes, as I understand it, and the anti-gerrymandering case of Allen v. Milligan, which, although caveat-laden, held that Alabama’s newly redrawn congressional districts were likely illegal and must be redrawn, a result echoed in its ultimate refusal to hear Ardoin v. Robinson, in which a lower court had ruled Louisiana’s redrawn congressional districts were illegal and must be redrawn.

All that said, Rubin’s point is substantive and applicable. The question is what to do? Court-packing is a favored answer for progressives, but I fear that it just looks like cheating to independents and moderate Republicans. It might seem nevertheless justified, given the problematic history of nomination and confirmation of Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, which I’ve addressed elsewhere, but the public’s attention is limited, and the left coming out looking like cheaters won’t benefit them.

But litigants can bring a measure of pressure to bear. While those of a short-term frame of mind may think that it’s ok to transform SCOTUS into a money game of buying votes (see the scandals attending Thomas and Alito), because they cannot imagine any bleed over into other parts of society, wise litigants will realize that is a plum-fool’s position. Putting SCOTUS Justices’ votes up for sale risks judicial chaos, reduces predictability, reduces societal agreement on what constitutes corruption, and may even put Justices’ lives at risk.

In fact, bold litigants may want to join forces with their erstwhile opponents in asking that Justices Thomas and Alito recuse themselves from the litigants’ cases, and for this reason:

Upon assessment of our financial resources, as well as the accompanying legal liabilities, we have come to realize that we cannot afford to purchase the votes of these SCOTUS justices.

The professional reputation of a vote seller.

The first employment of this recusal request would engender outrage from Thomas and Alito, but, by the fifth such request, it should become obvious to them that the respect accorded to them automatically as SCOTUS Justices is decaying rapidly.

Either one or even both might resign short thereafter, to the benefit of future litigants and the lower courts. Chief Justice Roberts might even follow, as it’s become clear, since Dobbs, that his leadership is a failure, and he’s reportedly quite the legacy-hound.

This illuminates another failing of court-packing: the important lesson of punishment. Professional ostracism is an important corrective when facts are undisputed. It must be used.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) is a modern retelling of the story of an encounter with a djinn, of three wishes and three stories, and how this impacts a lonely professor of classics. For all that the premise is promising and the technical work top-notch, somehow it never quite had an impact on me, and so I can’t say much for it. But I will say different people will have different reactions.

That’s a big needle. Jus’ sayin’.

After.Life (2009) is a messy, rather limp tale of a funeral director who can talk to those who have died but are not yet dead, a just-dead school teacher, and one of her students, a young boy who seems to have the same gifts as the funeral director. Add in a grief-stricken boyfriend who is completely unbelievable as a lawyer, a dysfunctional family or two that could have been vastly more interesting, and an ambiguity that is no doubt meant to evoke questions about existence, but was just irritating, this movie is really only of interest to Liam Neeson and Christine Ricci completists.

It looked fairly lifeless in the spring.

Much better.

Omerta armor:

Omertà (/oʊˈmɛərtə/, Italian pronunciation: [omerˈta]) is a Southern Italian code of silence and code of honor and conduct that places importance on silence in the face of questioning by authorities or outsiders; non-cooperation with authorities, the government, or outsiders, especially during criminal investigations; and willfully ignoring and generally avoiding interference with the illegal activities of others (i.e., not contacting law enforcement or the authorities when one is aware of, witness to, or even the victim of certain crimes). It originated and remains common in Southern Italy, where banditry or brigandage and Mafia-type criminal organizations (like the Camorra, Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita and Società foggiana) have long been strong. Similar codes are also deeply rooted in other areas of the Mediterranean, including Malta, Crete in Greece, and Corsica, all of which share a common or similar historic culture with Southern Italy. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Sheldon Whitehouse was right all along: The Supreme Court is corrupt,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

This thread had gotten quiet, but now NewScientist is reporting a development in the domain of proof-of-work currencies, in which miners compete to solve difficult math problems.

Brennen and his team have proposed using a kind of quantum computer called a boson sampler to create a new cryptocurrency network, which should be a more energy-efficient alternative when run on quantum hardware.

For two people on the network to agree on something, which is required to certify transactions or mine currency, they both must prove they have performed true boson sampling, which involves measuring a sample of photons that have passed through a labyrinth of mirrors and beam splitters. Classical computers can’t accurately make these measurements above a certain number of photons.

Sounds … expensive … and a bit silly.

And how is Bitcoin doing? It’s actually nearly doubled (CoinMarketCap here) from my last note of a while ago, from $16,000 to $30,000, which I don’t take to mean anything in particular, except volatility is not a desirable characteristic of a currency.

I wonder about unintended consequences:

Left-leaning New York groups pledged $20 million Thursday to support a change to the New York State constitution to protect abortion rights that will be on the 2024 ballot — something they believe will boost turnout for Democrats in key swing House districts.

A state Equal Rights Amendment will ask voters next November to codify a number of rights, including abortion and LGBTQ rights, in the state constitution. New York Democrats are hoping to replicate a model they found successful last cycle, when a constitutional abortion amendment was on the same ballot as vulnerable Democrats in Michigan. The amendment passed and those members held their seats. [Politico]

If this were to succeed, resulting in abortion rights being in the New York Constitution, are the Democrats throwing away a useful tool for spurring independents to vote Democratic? The fallout of the Dobbs decision is among the most potent weapons in the Democrats arsenal, particularly as the Republicans have given up on the central tenet of liberal democracies – persuasion.

One might argue the same is true of Democrats on other topics, of course.

Thag’s new invention, the wheel, in its factory on Mars:

Might be wrong but I reckon @NASAPersevere has spotted a big, ring-shaped meteorite in Jezero crater… Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/S Atkinson pic.twitter.com/k4TUcPgvWy

— Stuart Atkinson (@mars_stu) June 24, 2023

It still needs refinement. But it is cool.

CNN/Business has a report on an interview that current Fox News host Jesse Watters gave at the Big “I” Legislative Conference of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, where he’s reported to have made some grotesque remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris, thereby angering some of the participants. The organization disavowed the remarks and sidelined the interviewer, who happened to be their retiring President.

Or did Watters say something else?

When asked for comment on Wednesday, a Fox News spokesperson told me that Watters had “no recollection” of the events.

“In fact, the unscripted Q&A he participated in was well received with executives thanking him profusely afterward, enthusiastically taking photos, and presenting him with an award,” the network spokesperson said. “He was told it was one of the best talks they’ve ever held and never received feedback from the organization or his speaking agent after the event.”

Double-plus unbad?

Could this be the Fox News moral landscape?

Yeah, that’s how it reads. Caught with deliberate crude remarks on their employee’s lips, go with “profuse thanks,” instead. It sounds like something out of the pages of the Soviet Union’s PRAVDA, and, for those who wonder what that means, it wasn’t a compliment. PRAVDA had a reputation for being the most untrustworthy of sources, an instrument of the Soviet government.

Of course, I wasn’t at the conference. Maybe this is a hit job on Watters. But the reaction and language of Fox News speaks to coverup, not correction. We’ll probably not hear of this incident again, but the Fox News reaction, given the recent devastation of the Dominion Voting Systems suit, is most instructive.

Discursive:

1. 1. : moving from topic to topic without order : RAMBLING
      gave a discursive lecture
      discursive prose
   2. : proceeding coherently from topic to topic
2. philosophy : marked by a method of resolving complex expressions into simpler or more basic ones : marked by analytical reasoning
3. of or relating to discourse
   discursive practices [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Supreme Court says a conviction for online threats violated 1st Amendment,” Ann E. Marimow and Robert Barnes, WaPo:

A jury’s determination about “when angry hyperbole crosses the line will depend on amorphous norms around language, which will vary greatly from one discursive community to another,” [Justice] Sotomayor wrote. “Unfortunately yet predictably, racial and cultural stereotypes can also influence whether speech is perceived as dangerous.”

Hmmmmmmmmm.

One of our few annual reseeding poppies:

Often, marketing & sales is combined into a single entity, not only by the public, but by the organization employing them as well, because they often seem to be the same. But this example may be helpful.

Marketing is the message an organization sends out to advertise its wares. Consider a few of the GOP’s various marketing messages: We’ll lower taxes and raise prosperity; climate change is a lie; regulation is bad; all of the legal indictments and impeachments of former President Trump are hoaxes; we’ll never change abortion rights; fiscal responsibility is our middle name.

Sales is the wares delivered. In the case of the GOP, it has delivered lower taxes for the top 1% of taxpayers while prosperity dropped; the Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights and, consequently, high profile attempts to restrict access to abortion, sometimes successfully; increasing environmental damage from weather & climate, which, in turn, is impacting our economy; increasing Federal deficits that are directly tied to Republican financial policy, implemented when they controlled Congress.

An organization in which marketing and sales is significantly divergent is an organization in trouble. And the thoughtful American public is delivering on this model, as Steve Benen summarizes:

• A combined 65% of Americans believe the charges against Trump are either very or somewhat serious.
• 60% of Americans believe the former president acted inappropriately in the way he handled classified documents after leaving the White House. (The poll found that 1 in 4 Republican voters agree.)
• 60% of Americans believe Trump has left serious questions about the scandal unanswered.
• A narrow 51% majority of Americans agree that Trump should be prosecuted.

To be sure, the results weren’t all bad for the Republican: The Quinnipiac poll found that most Americans agreed that politics have played at least some role in the case.

But those assumptions — which do not appear to have any basis in fact — do not negate the other findings. In other words, most of the country has effectively said, “Politics probably contributed to Trump’s indictment, but it’s a serious prosecution anyway.”

Circling back to our earlier coverage, these results were hardly inevitable. In fact, I wasn’t necessarily expecting them. For months, there’s been a noticeable asymmetry to the public conversation: One side of the political divide has flooded the airwaves with vitriol, insisting an indictment would be proof of a corrupt Justice Department and an unjust system, while the other side has been largely circumspect, saying very little about the suspect, the process and his alleged crimes.

Given this, Americans have generally only heard one side of the argument. As Republicans have screamed bloody murder in defense of Trump, Democrats have largely responded with “Anyone want to talk about infrastructure and the importance of reproductive rights?”

And that’s because the White House has told the Democrats to stay away from the topic, as Benen notes. The President appears to have confidence that, if the message is not obscured or confused by the Democrats, then the indictments being delivered will speak loudly, and without Democratic intercession, there’s less of a chance of Americans disregarding serious legal claims as being political.

Which means that, once more, Republicans are caught with marketing making one assertion, while sales, in rough analogy, is quite a different matter. In essence, this pack of fourth-raters claims Trump is just a bit foul-mouthed, and nothing more; instead, the indictments speak of brazen law-breaking, with more to come.

I look for 2024 to be a blowout, unless Republicans begin adapting to the landscape. That would entail admitting error, though, and the Party backed, quietly as they may whisper it, by God, well, they just can’t do that.

Polysemy:

Polysemy (/pəˈlɪsɪmi/ or /ˈpɒlɪˌsiːmi/; from Ancient Greek πολύ- (polý-) ‘many’, and σῆμα (sêma) ‘sign’) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from monosemy, where a word has a single meaning. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The race to extract an Indigenous language from its last lucid speaker,” Simeon Tegel, WaPo:

Over time, Campos, who communicates with Zariquiey in both Iskonawa and Spanish, has managed to share much of this frequently onomatopoeic tongue from the Panoan family of languages of the Western Amazon. It’s heavy with polysemy — words with multiple meanings — and notable for allowing users to stack multiple verbs one atop the other.

The turning of Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of restaurants and other food services to the Kremlin^[1], as well as the leader of the Wagner Group, a mercenary band fighting in Ukraine, and, according to Wikipedia, owner of groups accused of interfering in the 2016 and 2018 American elections, on President Vladimir Putin is a grave new step in Russia’s evolution, and not necessarily a welcome step. Prigozhin is unlikely to inspire a popular revolution against the current effective form of government in Russia; instead, he appears to be attempting to establish control over the military facilities in Russian cities:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to punish those behind an “armed uprising” after the head of the Wagner private military group launched an apparent insurrection, claimed control of military facilities in two Russian cities — Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh — and warned that his troops could head for Moscow. [CNN/World]

And, of course, Russia has an immense nuclear arsenal.

Speaking of which, it’s not beyond imagination that Putin, if finding Prigozhin out of the reach of conventional means, decides to resort to nuclear weapons to put down this attempted coup. In that case, everyone in the nuclear chain of command becomes potential coup plotters, as using nuclear weapons on “the motherland” will not sit well with them.

Putin may fall to the classic internal plot.

And, for those convinced that Putin and former American President Trump shared, and continue to share, links, this must be provoking intense speculation as to how Trump’s Russian ties will change, and how that will echo throughout what passes for his business and political empires. And it’s worth wondering if the fall of Putin might affect his view of the generic autocratic head of state, which has been famously positive.

This may mark an inflection point in world history, and not necessarily a positive inflection.

¹ Thus, the epithet Putin’s caterer or Putin’s chef.

floccinaucinihilipilification:

floc·ci·nau·ci·ni·hil·i·pil·i·fi·ca·tion

noun

rare

noun: floccinaucinihilipilification

1. the action or habit of estimating something as worthless. (The word is used chiefly as a curiosity.).

   “my new book is more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification.“

Courtesy my Arts Editor.

Randy Rainbow, hard at work:

Professor Richardson is not entirely pleased with the media:

… a study out today by Media Matters shows that cable news networks are “obsessed over Biden’s age while overwhelmingly ignoring Trump’s.” Biden is only three years older than Trump—80 and 77, respectively—and apparently in significantly better health, but in the week after Biden announced his reelection campaign, CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned his age 588 times, suggesting it is a negative attribute rather than a positive reflection on his experience, while mentioning Trump’s only 72 times.

Then again, most pundits are not always happy with the media. Erick Erickson regularly rails on and on about its tilt to the left.

No doubt everyone has a point. Also true: for zealots, there are no independent, neutral media. Either you’re for us or agin’ us!

It’s worth nuancing Richardson, though. Age is only guaranteed to bring wrinkles^[1]. Good experience comes from working in an area for many years and then properly analyzing one’s failures and accomplishments. From this perspective, Trump is little more than a yahoo who managed to get elected to a single four year Presidential term, and, in that term, was ineffectual or worse by most measures, although conservatives will argue that is picks to SCOTUS were acceptable, an assertion disputed by non-conservatives.

Former Senator Joe Biden (1973–2009) and former Vice President Biden (2009-2017) benefited not only from being an influential Senator from age 31 to 67, but from being a VP, as he famously built a close working relationship with President Obama.

And he was a council member prior to his shock election to the Senate. That’s called working your way up, rather than buying position.

That’s a lot of experience, and, given his surprising list of accomplishments, from infrastructure to his response to Putin’s War, it’s clear he’s put that experience to good use.

Is it surprising the House GOP, already clearly a pack of third and fourth raters, has been repeatedly humiliated and defeated? Not really.

Yes, Biden’s age, just like Trump’s, should be concerning to the voter. It concerns me. But that’s why we have VPs. Right now we’re benefiting from his experience in two legs of the stool.

¹ An observation I picked up from late SF writer Robert Heinlein, but I doubt it originates with him.