Category Archives: Uncategorized

Longtermism:

Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts to reduce existential risks to humanity.

Sigal Samuel from Vox summarizes the key argument for longtermism as follows: “future people matter morally just as much as people alive today;… there may well be more people alive in the future than there are in the present or have been in the past; and… we can positively affect future peoples’ lives.” These three ideas taken together suggest, to those advocating longtermism, that it is the responsibility of those living now to ensure that future generations get to survive and flourish. [Wikipedia]

Uh huh. A deliberate purging of the chronological aspect of existence, sounds like, with a dubious helping of the same intellectual errors made by anti-abortionists, to wit, equating the a prior existence to a later existence of different things.

Noted in “Why ‘longtermism’ isn’t ethically sound,” Christine Emba, WaPo:

Longtermism relies on the theory that humans have evolved fairly recently, and thus we can expect our species to grow long into the future. The world’s current population is really a blip; if all goes well, a huge number of humans will come after us. Thus, if we’re reasoning rationally and impartially (as EAs pride themselves on doing), we should tilt heavily toward paying attention to this larger future population’s concerns — not the concerns of people living right now.

Depending on how you crunch the numbers, making even the minutest progress on avoiding existential risk can be seen as more worthwhile than saving millions of people alive today. In the big picture, “neartermist” problems such as poverty and global health don’t affect enough people to be worth worrying about — what we should really be obsessing over is the chance of a sci-fi apocalypse.

It rather makes me wonder which group of humans get the assistance. I mean, if not today’s suffering folks, how about tomorrow’s? Day after? Thousand years from now?

I wonder if they’ll be making a religion out of this, with your position in the sainthood determined by how many people you, ah, “helped.” Every once in a while they update the computer’s database of people with the data, just to give those so stored a bit of a thrill.

They said it was impossible, then another they crossed an elephant with an amoeba. No typo there, “another they” is right. And, now, in other news …

• Democratic pollster Impact Research , aka ALG Research, a “B/C” rated pollster by FiveThirtyEight, gives Rep Tim Ryan (D) a 50% – 47% lead over lawyer/author J. D. Vance (R) in the race for the open Senate seat in Ohio. This is within the margin of error. Make of that what you will. You’ll find the salt shaker behind the ersatz ketchup bottle.
• A working dude like me simply doesn’t have time to do eye opening research; I just mess around with a general sense of how the electorate is leaning, and how that electorate is perceiving, or will perceive, certain events of political significance, such as the Dobbs decision, the January 6th Insurrection, or Palin’s loss in Alaska. Therefore, I really appreciate this WaPo article by Jennifer Rubin on the chances of Cheri Beasley (D) in North Carolina’s Senatorial race. The contrast between her and her opponent, Rep Ted Budd (R), is instructive, and I hope his anti-veteran vote in the House becomes well-known in the State.
• An AARP poll gives Senator Masto (D) of Nevada a 44% – 40% lead over challenger Adam Laxalt (R), which is more or less in line with other polls. AARP polling is not known to FiveThirtyEight.
• Colorado’s incumbent Senator Bennet (D) has an 11 point lead, 46% – 35%, over challenger O’Dea (R), according to Public Policy Polling. This pollster gets an A- rating from FiveThirtyEight. It suggests Bennet has a solid lead with two months until Election Day.
• 

  Senator Todd Young’s (R-IN) On The Issues summation.

  A poll taken by Change Research for the McDermott (D) campaign shows him trailing incumbent Indiana Senator Young (R) by three points. As Change Research is only rated a B- pollster by FiveThirtyEight, it may not be sensible to take this poll seriously, especially in the absence of any other Indiana polls, and, as the Young campaign points out, it was an online poll, always a negative sign. On the flip side, though, Young won his 2016 race by roughly ten points, and defeated a member of the politically prominent Bayh family, for those of us who remember the late Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN). Challenger McDermott doesn’t have that kind of political pedigree, although he is a successful, longtime mayor of the city of Hammond, Indiana, and has the additional credential of being a Navy veteran. If we stipulate the poll to be accurate, a three point deficit (and 2.62% margin of error!) is indicative of something unexpected happening in one of the more conservative States of the Union. It suggests that the the question is whether Young’s vote for the recent gun control bill has him in trouble with far-right gun rights absolutists, or if his position on abortion has him in trouble with voters deeply troubled by the Dobbs decision. Young’s On The Issues summation suggests he’s one of the more moderate members of the Senate’s GOP caucus, but whether that’s bad or good in Indiana may depend on the weather in Indianapolis. In the end, I think, mostly because this was an online poll, it’s not worth getting excited just yet. It might have even been a fishing expedition, designed to draw in someone like A rated Fox News polling without actually paying for their service, or perhaps lure money from the national Democrats who hope to finance an upset win. We need a more authoritative poll before I speculate further.

• A- rated Emerson College Polling gives Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) a 48% to 44% lead over Dr. Mehmet Oz (R) in Pennsylvania, which is conspicuously less than other polls. Has something changed, or is this an outlier? Did the Oz campaign’s reminder to voters concerning Fetterman’s stroke just prior to primaries hit home?
• 

  Tiffany Smiley’s (R) On The Issues summation.

  Previous, if scarce, polls of Washington State’s Senate race of incumbent Murray (D) vs challenger Smiley (R) had shown Murray with an overwhelming lead over her moderate Republican rival, except for one outlier produced by a dubious pollster. But now Trafalgar has released a poll showing Murray leading 49.2% to 46.3%, which is within the margin of error. Trafalgar is rated A- by FiveThirtyEight, so it’s unlikely to be polling incompetence. Has Smiley’s moderate policy positions taken their toll on Murray? Possibly Smiley was unfamiliar to voters prior to this poll, but now they know and like her? The word went out to the far-right extremists that they support her or get out of the Republican Party? Or perhaps President Biden’s college debt forgiveness program, as predicted by some right-wing pundits, is negatively impacting Democratic opponents? It could, despite Trafalgar’s reputation, just be an outlier. Ah, so many options! The next couple of polls from respectable sources should be quite interesting. But if we’re to believe Smiley’s On The Issues summation diagram at right, she’s at least not a denizen of Clinton’s fever-swamp far-right. My buck-ninety-eight is on Washington voters discovering Smiley is not the MAGA-radical they expected the Washington GOP to nominate, with a consequent willingness to give her a chance. Murray, who has turned down debate invites, had better get off her ass and participate, or this will turn into an avoidable upset.

No, I don’t have a link for the amoeba story! Stop asking! Read this link to previous news, instead!

The tomato patch is bloomin’ with sunflowers!

Lots of noms there? These pics are from a few days ago, and some of these blooms (or inflorescence) have been picked off and carried away by critters unknown. But probably not this guy:

He’s just an audience member my Arts Editor spied and snapped.

Remember the news that nuclear power may not be anathema any longer for certain members of the left? Of course, Professor Lovelock has long backed nuclear power, but it takes more than one person to make such a concept fly.

Well, it seems to be flapping its wings a bit harder:

From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones. The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And it comes even as fears mount about another potential nuclear disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine. …

The global reevaluation shows the extraordinary degree to which the war in Ukraine is reshaping long-held positions about nuclear power. Europe is bracing for a winter of energy shortages in which it may run out of natural gas supplies, potentially forcing it to shut down factories and leave citizens shivering. Worldwide, prices for fossil fuels have skyrocketed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, with Europe, the United States and a few other countries around the world significantly scaling back their purchases of cheap Russian oil and gas. [WaPo]

A little slice of life for a town that has cryptocurrency miners moving in:

It’s midnight, and a jet-like roar is rumbling up the slopes of Poor House Mountain. Except there are no planes overhead, and the nearest commercial airport is 80 miles away.

The sound is coming from a cluster of sheds at the base of the mountain housing a cryptocurrency data center, operated by the San Francisco-based firm PrimeBlock. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, powerful computers perform the complex computations needed to “mine,” or create, digital currencies. And those noise-generating computers are kept cool by huge fans.

“It’s like living on top of Niagara Falls,” said Mike Lugiewicz, whose home lies less than 100 yards from the mine.

“When it’s at its worst, it’s like sitting on the tarmac with a jet engine in front of you. But the jet never leaves. The jet never takes off. It’s just annoying. It’s just constant annoyance,” he said. [WaPo]

While wandering around the house this morning, it occurred to me to consider this term, mining, and how it functions in this context. Let me illustrate:

Image: Our State

Yes, that’s Murphy, NC, site of the cryptocurrency mine mentioned in the WaPo article. Outside of the tan-ish river flowing through, it qualifies for the adjective bucolic, at least in terms of appearance.

And then here’s an iron ore mine near Virginia, MN:

Image: International Mining

Having been through the area and visited the museum, the name of which escapes me, I can state that it actually looks much worse, even after cleanup.

Environmentalists have been diligent in their efforts to paint various mining techniques, as well as mining in general, as devastating to the environment, and not without good reason. But mines have a more nuanced history than Mines be bad! Beyond their use as casual and formal punishment (“Send him to the mines!”), mines have been the source, the beginning, of the effort to make life better through the extraction of the materials with which we create, primarily, metals, as well as coal. This foundational material is used in buildings, sheltering us from weather to wild animals. The environmentalists have had to fight an uphill battle against mining because there is a certain gritty romance to mines and mining and miners. Just ask a coal miner, and discover their pride in themselves and their families for going down into the mines to extract the ore used by the nation to build cities.

Cutting the rhetoric short, the use of mine in cryptocurrency is, to some extent, an example of the willingness of programmers to borrow terminology liberally from other industries to illustrate just what we’re doing, and, in an unknown percentage of cases, to borrow the goodwill accorded the sources of these metaphors by the general run of humanity.

And that will color our thinking, I suspect.

So when we talk about cryptocurrency mining, the operationality isn’t comparable to real mining, and while many advocates will argue, in some level of of vagueness, to the advantages of cryptocurrency, the case remains profoundly unproven. I suspect it’ll remain unproven, a solution inapposite to the problem they claim to solve. Because of this, I think mining should be disdained by cryptocurrency critics, and just called it coin-generation, which is value-neutral and far more accurate.

Rebus:

I’ll just let the Try Channel folks deliver the definition.

They’re rumored to be Lord of the Rings fans.

These are my Arts Editor’s doing, and I’d say they were done very well.

As expected, Alaska Republicans are infuriated at their unexpected loss in the Alaska special election to replace the late Rep Don Young (R), and are blaming it on ranked choice voting (RCV):

One of the most vocal critics has been Palin. On Thursday, she issued a statement saying this week’s ranked-choice results were “not the will of the people” and calling on the other finalist in the recently completed special election, Republican Nick Begich III, to end his campaign ahead of November’s general election in which the candidates will square off again for a two-year term. Palin also called for the state to provide more information on rejected ballots.

Begich on Wednesday issued his own statement portraying Peltola as out-of-step with most Alaskans and Palin as unelectable under the new system. He said the ranked-choice results made clear that in November, a “vote for Sarah Palin is in reality a vote for Mary Peltola.” [WaPo]

Finger-pointing galore – but making sure the Democrat who won, Peltola, is portrayed as being “out of step” with the electorate. It’s an insult to the electorate, really.

See, these Republicans are terrified. The Alaskan electorate has, through the mechanism of RCV, shown itself to be more of a moderate group than an extremist group, even if that’s ignoring the realities of special election voting, which typically feature lower turnout than normal elections^[1]. And that isn’t going to suit the extremists currently controlling the GOP; in a showdown between a politician wielding the magical phrase You are a RINO!^[2] and an RCV-implemented election, the magical phrase wielder will lose, as many have predicted.

The second prong of the trident attack of the Republicans on the electorate has been single-issue voting, and RCV will also have an effect on those voters. See, single-issue voters are apocalyptic voters, voters who believe that if enough of the wrong people are elected, their critical issue, be it abortion, or gun-rights absolutism, or what have you, will go the wrong way and the country will implode.

I’m not kidding.

So if such wrong folks are elected, promulgate policies, and the country doesn’t implode … some of those single issue voters will decide they were wrong. There is no smoking crater. That’s bending the prong of the trident, blunting the Republican appeal for votes.

And the extremists lose their appeal.

The above WaPo article told me something new: Nevada has a proposed constitutional amendment on tbe ballot this November to make RCV the law of the desert the election system for congressional, gubernatorial, state executive official, and state legislative elections. I see this as a looming disaster for Nevada Republicans, and possibly certain Democrats and other parties farther to the left.

The extremists recognize the threat, and they’ve chosen fear as their weapon of choice:

Despite advocates’ claims that ranked-choice voting is better for democracy because it would give voters “more options” on Election Day, such arguments ignore the extremely confusing nature of the process. While speaking with The Federalist, Zack Smith, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in Heritage’s Meese Center, explained the intricacies of ranked-choice voting and how the process oftentimes “obfuscates the candidates and their position” from voters.

Ranked-choice voting can potentially lead to “someone getting elected to office that only has a minuscule amount of support from the electorate,” he said. “If [candidates] have problematic positions, it can make it very easy to hide those [from voters].” [The Federalist]

First, yes, The Federalist Society did supply lists of judges to former President Trump for nomination to the Federal Judiciary, including SCOTUS Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Second, yes, the Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank. So, third, yes, this is conservatives talking to conservatives, not to neutral third party observers and analysts. Epistemic bubble time. They’re running around, hair on fire, flapping their arms in terror, and engaging in desperate mendacity – or just faulty analysis.

Or, in other words, No, RCV is not that complex. Ya got a favorite? Write them down here. Second favorite? Write them down here. Third? Put them there. Put the ballot in the machine. Done.

And, most importantly,

YOU DO NOT LEARN THE POSITIONS OF THE CANDIDATES WHEN YOU’RE MARKING THE BALLOT!

That comes earlier, from candidate materials, debates, gaffes, media reporting, and what have you – that does not change with RCV. Repeat after me, That does not change with RCV.

And it doesn’t hurt to tell the electorate they need to step up their game. In this case, it’s just not much of a step.

Why haven’t Democrats been pushing RCV harder? Well, for one thing, they inevitably have a salting of extremists who don’t like the idea that moderates may have more appeal. RCV does encourage cross-over voting in the secondary positions, doesn’t it? Better a conservative Democrat than an extremist Republican to the moderate Republican voter, for example.

It also gets rid of partisan primaries and caucus systems, both more susceptible to the party zealots; the open primary employed in most RCV electoral systems means anyone who can gather enough signatures gets to join the game. That favors people who’ve gained some fame or notoriety.

But I think the Democrats should push RCV harder. So far, no fundamental defects have emerged. Implementation can be a problem if computers are not available, resulting in several days delay for counting, otherwise it’s no big deal.

And for those of us who value moderates, who value humility, RCV is more likely to deliver the electorate’s honest choice.

¹ For example, in the late Rep Don Young’s (R) last election to this seat, a total of 353,165 votes were cast. In the recent special election to replace Young, which is the first of Alaska RCV voting and thus makes this comparison reminiscent of apples and oranges, 188,582 are listed as having been cast. Does this mean 188,582 voters participated? This should be clarified by Ballotpedia, my source for this information. But, as an afterthought, I would expect moderates to be less likely to show up for a special election than extremists, who, by definition, have more interest in politics.

² RINO is an acronym for Republican In Name Only, an epithet applied by right-wing power-seekers to those power-holders who get in their way. As I’ve said many times over the years, this is the mechanism, beginning probably with former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and in combination with team politics, aka voting straight ticket no matter what, and single issue voting, that has driven the GOP from a right-centrist party very capable of governance into a far-right collection of power-grasping fourth-raters, such as half-term Governor, for no particular reason, Sarah Palin (R-AK). In other words, yesterday’s wielder of this magical phrase can easily be today’s victim of same, with one of the most famous victims being former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). For some in the Republican Party, extremism is the primary measure of virtue these days, a fatal flaw in those voters.

Demonic pink eyes glowed in the darkness. Marcel offered an ointment for pink-eye, and it was hungrily grabbed from his hand and squirted violently into the monster’s eyes. The monster was … a ladybug.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021), despite the date given to the film, is currently in theatrical release. This is your archetypal whimsical film in which documentary film maker Dean meets and documents the life of Marcel, a young, even child, shell creature, perhaps an inch tall. He and his grandmother live in a human house that Dean has rented, and they describe for Dean the life of a shell creature in this house, a creature akin to hermit crabs I’d say. From gathering food, to play, to watching 60 Minutes on the television, they seem have their own version of a full life.

But Marcel’s parents and, indeed, extended family disappeared when the previous human inhabitants had a fight and moved out, inadvertently taking most of the shell family with them. Marcel is devastated, yet firmly in control, caring for his Nanny. Dean represents an opportunity that Marcel doesn’t immediately recognize, but when Dean pre-releases parts of his documentary and attracts unexpected attention, Marcel realizes that perhaps he can search for his family via the Internet.

This leads to celebrity and all that implies – and then even more.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has some problems with the audio, or perhaps the theatre we visited did. As we were the only patrons on a Friday afternoon, it wasn’t a problem with other customers. The stop-action and computer-generated affects, however, were nearly faultless to my eye, though, and very appropriate to the subject. Please excuse the joke.

The charm does wear thin after a while, but the film does not extend too far beyond this point, and can be excused. A fun and witty show, it’s worth your time if you need a bit of gentleness in your life.

Recommended.

Inapposite:

inappropriate, not suitable for the situation [Wiktionary]

Hmmmmm. New one on me. Noted in “Trump aggravates the GOP’s national security and crime problem,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

Donald Trump walked right into it. His brain trust stupidly requested a “special master” to review the documents he took from the White House — totally improper since he does not own the documents and his claim of “executive privilege” is inapposite. (Executive privilege raised against part of the executive branch, the Justice Department, makes no sense.)

When it comes to the second choice of Begich voters in Peltola’s victory in Alaska on Wednesday, Aaron Blake of WaPo clarifies that their second choice is actually slightly worse for members of the Alaska Republican Party (ARP) than my interpretation suggested:

Almost as many Begich voters picked Peltola as their second choice (15,445) or didn’t rank one of the two finalists (11,222) as ranked Palin behind Begich (27,042). In other words, only about half of Begich voters were willing to also rank Palin ahead of a Democrat.

Which is very bad news for every extremist candidate fielded by the ARP. If a Democrat or someone else is better than the candidate bearing the ARP banner, the proud and famous candidate, then what about the far-right whose grasp on reality is, at best, dubious?

It remains true that ranked choice voting is a rare bird in American elections, but we can see that there’s a hesitancy, even wariness, to vote extremist when there’s a choice available. And Palin has her own set of unique political attributes – quitter and religious nutcase as well as an extremist, if you’re not in the mood for diplomatic language – to which many voters may have had a negative reaction.

But fighting ranked choice voting is moving up the list of dangerous issues for the current GOP.

Ever see a train with a snowplow attachment? This is sort of the same. Don’t think about that.

• “A-” rated Trafalgar’s latest poll in Wisconsin shows Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes (D) leading incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R) 49.4% to 47.1%, which is within the margin of error. That race is tightening up as the Republicans rally to the dude who spews conspiracy theories and dementia while talking about corrupting Social Security with investments in the stock market. Maybe they don’t like their monthly checks?
• Trafalgar has more news, saying that its latest poll shows incumbent Senator Kelly (D) of Arizona has only a 3.3 point lead over incumbent Blake Masters (R), 47.6% – 43.3%. I gotta ask, then, why is Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) Senate Leadership PAC withdrawing a lot of money from that race as if they’re writing it off?
• A temporary slump or is Georgia’s collective mental infirmity going to hold until the elections? A rated Emerson College Polling now has challenger Herschel Walker (D) up by two, 46% – 44%, ahead of incumbent Senator Warnock (D). This despite a history of mendacity on Walker’s part, possibly tied to his mental illness, last manifested yesterday, when he once again claimed to be a member of law enforcement, to the groans of the crowd.
• The race in Pennsylvania continues to be badly broken as Republican candidate for the open Senate seat Dr. Oz Mehmet plays on possible electoral concerns about Democratic candidate’s and Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s stroke in a debate proposal that included “concessions” such as an earpiece for Fetterman so he could be fed answers. While, yes, the offer was an insult, it’s on par with Fetterman’s jibes about Oz’s houses (just how many does he own?) and his lack of familiarity with Pennsylvania. It’s also very true that Fetterman’s stroke is relevant to the election. Just as is Oz’s endorsements of various snake oil cures over the years.
• Another week, another “generic Congressional ballot.” This time, The Wall Street Journal says Democrats hold a slight edge over Republicans, 47% to 44% … which is an improvement over earlier measurements. I contrast this with the right’s staple contention that the economy will wreck the Democrats. I see occasional citations, by Republicans, of Democratic consultant James Carville’s famous quip concerning the Clinton 1992 winning Presidential campaign in which he beat an incumbent President, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I’m beginning to think it’s a Republican, if not simply a political, habit to strip all context from everything. Carville’s context was the recession following the Gulf War, and it wasn’t entirely the economy, but disenchantment with President Bush (43) shattering his promise of Read My Lips, No New Taxes. Purist anti-taxation Republicans wouldn’t vote for Bush after that. Today? A pandemic that floored the economy, followed by a big recovery during the Biden Admin, including amazingly low unemployment numbers; the return of jobs from overseas as companies see the dangers of long supply-lines close up and personal; supply line issues slowly being resolved; infrastructure and other legislative wins for the Democrats, showing they can get things done; the Dobbs decision by the conservative wing of SCOTUS, threatening the autonomy of women regardless of political ideology; the January 6th Insurrection, never denounced by most of the Republican Party; extremist Republican election-denier candidates; and a former Republican President who has been caught with his entire head in the cookie jar, while screaming that the Presidency should be returned to him as if it’s a magical incantation, and he may be quite serious about the magic part. The context is both pragmatic and principled, and, while the pragmatic points are, I think, a slight inclination for the Democrats and still have two months to run, the principles are all, or almost all, good for the Democrats. Their blundering over the management of the transgender issue is a festering wound in their side, it’s true. But, in general, it’s been apparent from the moment Speaker Pelosi announced the January 6th bipartisan committee that there was a strong potential that the Red Wave theory of the November elections would manifest as the Republicans weeing in their diapers as committee members Representatives Cheney (R-WY) and Kingzinger (R-IL) kicked their unprincipled and immoral former Party members right in the head, and that has come to fruition, with more to come. The discovery of government documents at Mar-a-Lago is a gift to the Democrats, contaminating the Republican Party as a pack of lawless, power-grubbing fourth-raters. Senator McConnell (R-KY) may be anticipating being Majority Leader in 2023, but, for me, he’d better be praying really, really hard. There’s a potential for the Democrats picking up seven seats in the Senate, and a wild guess of 15 seats in the House, but that’s a best-scenario forecast. There’s plenty of time for both sides to disembowel themselves.

Previous snowdrifts here.

Back last week I mentioned, in one of my Senate campaign updates, that Mary Peltola (D-AK) was leading in the race to replace the late Don Young (R-AK) in the lone Alaskan seat to the House of Representatives, but election officials were waiting for absentee votes to be counted. Recall Alaska is using ranked choice voting (RCV), which I consider favorable to moderates.

The winner has been announced, and it’s Democrat Mary Peltola, says CBS News:

On Wednesday, the Alaska Division of Elections tabulated the final results during a public livestream, which showed Peltoa coming out on top with 51.47% after Begich’s votes were redistributed to his voters’ second choice candidate.

According to election officials in Alaska, 15,445 of Begich’s voters listed Peltola as their second choice while 27,042 put down Palin as their second option. The final tally showed Peltola with 91,206 votes to Palin’s 85,987 votes.

This is the latest in “Democratic overperformance” (they did better than expected) in special elections, and once again refutes the red wave theory, aka Republicans taking back the House and Senate in November, as touted by pundits up until a couple of weeks ago. What does it portend?

No red wave.

While Palin did pick up a majority of the second votes for Begich, who is presumably less extremist than the former Alaska governor known for her extremism, more than 1/3 of his voters chose to go with Peltola, which put her over the top.

To me, that indicates a sizable minority of Republicans do not buy into the long-held extremist proposition that Democrats are evil (“babykillers!”), as Peltola announces on her website that she is pro-choice. They recognize that the threat to the United States is not from Democrats like Peltola, who appears to be fairly middle of the road and focused on Alaskan issues, but from extremists like Palin.

Palin is running again in November for the same seat, as is Begich and Peltola. If Palin loses again, she’ll fade into the Republican extremist woodwork, showing up as a celebrity politician who makes extremist speeches and collects paychecks for doing so. Extremist politics is a grift.

Begich has something of a political background, and may be back.

And the Alaska Republican  Party (ARP)? This loss is a step towards their own political hell of irrelevance, as I said before. If Peltola turns this into a streak, there will be some serious upset in the ARP, and if archetypal moderate Senator Murkowski (R-AK) wins her reelection campaign, as I, and everyone else, expects, the ARP may just fly apart as moderates fight to regain control of a party that is becoming an extremist sandbox, to judge by their actions and not by any special knowledge on my part.

And, finally, if it wasn’t for the Trumpian debacle in Mar-a-Lago, RCV would be the target du jour of the Republican Party. RCV has the potential to be the bane of extremists on both sides of the aisle, so they’ll hate on it.

Until something distracts them.

It’s long been said in American politics that the third, fatal rail of politics is Social Security, because stirring up the old folks over their income will end your political career, and very quickly. Fear the people with walkers, eh? Something I read by Professor Richardson reminded me of that, and of what I think may be the future extension of this old aphorism:

While Biden is consolidating and pushing the Democrats’ worldview, the Republicans are in disarray. The revelation that former president Trump moved classified intelligence to the Trump Organization’s property at Mar-a-Lago has kept some of them sidelined, as they didn’t want to talk about the issue, and has forced others to try to justify an unprecedented breach of national security. Republican candidates for elected office who are not in deep red districts have been taking references to Trump (and to abortion restrictions) off their websites.

My amused bold. And, yes, you guessed it: the former President becomes the new third rail of politics. His divisive message and disregard for the law, much less norms of government, are just the beginning. His grasping, boastful, mean-spirited, self-centered ways, and his disregard for the value of simple truth will be perceived as deeply un-American, even by those Americans who have these character failings in abundance. These latter will scent the wind and adjust their sails accordingly.

And if Trump is accused by law enforcement of selling those government documents found at Mar-a-Lago to national adversaries? The amount of juice in our proverbial rail will go up by a magnitude. The only mention of Trump by American politicians will be as a synonym for failure and adherence to his Me! Me! Me! ideology, and that doesn’t work well with government, which is about helping out the people.

But let’s take this a step further: What happens if Chad Bauman did get this right and it’s all about Trump’s upbringing in a prosperity church? That the apparent madness of his repeated calls that he be restored to the Presidency, despite his manifest electoral loss as well as his  profound failure as a President, are the Name it and Claim it magical invocation of some Divine entity? Yes, that is his wand sputtering.

Consequently, and fortunately for us, we may see some holes in our cultural landscape where prosperity churches used to exist. Some may disappear, while others drastically shrink. Some prosperity church leaders – I hesitate to call them pastors or bishops or whatever title they’ve awarded themselves – will desperately try to keep the grift going, while others will head out to foreign lands to enjoy their gains. A few may meet untimely ends at the hands of angry followers.

And a lot of folks who lack Trump’s mental instability but are still burdened with the prosperity church teachings will need help.

And, meanwhile, this graph will continue its trend:

Source: Gallup

Evangelicals had celebrated Trump as Cyrus of the Bible, striding from its pages into their lives. It’s not looking that way now, and if I were them I’d have a chat about getting rid of the Biblical respect for Cyrus, who, as I understand it, is the guy who did bad things that benefited Christians, and so hey he’s blessed.

Remember Amanda “I’m Trump in heels!” Chase (R-VA)? She may be changing to flats.

Inter alia:

Adverb

1. – among other things [Legal Dictionary]

Noted in “Should Uncle Sam Worry About ‘Foreign’ Open-Source Software? Geographic Known Unknowns and Open-Source Software Security,” Dan Geer, John Speed Meyers, Jacqueline Kazil, Tom Pike, Lawfare:

We then used an open-source tool called GitGeo to analyze the contributors to packages and to predict, when possible, the country in which the developer resides. The GitGeo tool makes this prediction by using these developers’ GitHub profiles, a page similar to a Facebook profile where developers can optionally provide their location information, inter alia. We first look at the top 100 contributors to each package and then redo our analysis using only the top 10. “Contributors” to a package are those users who make changes to the package (that is, adding or subtracting code). The more changes an open-source software developer makes to a package, the arguably more central that developer is to the continued maintenance, health, and security of that package. Figure 1 displays the four graphs that resulted from this analysis. Each column of each graph represents one open-source software package and the stacked bar graph colors represent the different locations of developers associated with that package.

For those still wondering about supply chain issues, there are of course long-term questions, such as shortening those chains and whether or not the government needs to take action, or if the companies have taken sufficient warning from getting their fingers singed during the pandemic.

And then there’s the short-term question: is it fixed yet?

Here’s gCaptain with some evidence:

The number of container ships headed for the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — a traffic jam that once symbolized American consumer vigor during the pandemic — declined to the lowest level since the bottleneck started to build two years ago.

Eight vessels were in the official queue as of late Monday, according to data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California & Vessel Traffic Service Los Angeles and Long Beach. That’s an all-time low, officials said in a statement, down from a record of 109 set in January and about 40 lined up a year ago. …

Though officials changed the way inbound ships queued in November 2021 — having them slow-steam across the Pacific rather than bunching them at anchor near the ports — the dwindling count reflects a slowdown in consumer demand, ample inventories built up by American companies, and ships rerouting through Gulf of Mexico and East Coast ports.

I suspect slow-steam will generate a little less pollution and lower fuel consumption, but probably not to any great extent.

And it distorts any claim  that supply issues are fixed, at best. There’s been progress, but it’s not fixed in my mind.

Putin’s War in a time-series map.

Reaching a grim six-month milestone: Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an animated map. pic.twitter.com/BuSiZsgugf

— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) August 26, 2022

I like it, and I hope its successors show Russia being pushed out of Ukraine in the near future.

And so, presumably, is the rest of the Trump-wing of the conservatives, although I haven’t the time to explore. Erickson’s latest is a devious defense of the former President and his boxes of goodies, devious because Erickson hardly mentions the former President at all.

Instead, he goes after social media sites, claiming – and maybe he’s right – most social media sites are biased against conservatives, but even that’s a head feint. For those who’ve been watching national scandals for years, his final target is unsurprising: the bastion of conservatism, the FBI.

Why?

Because the FBI is the current greatest threat to Trump. They’ve found, with the help of the National Archives, that he took documents with him when he was kicked out of office by the voters, and some of those documents are Top Secret – or worse. He lied on a response to a subpoena. He’s alleged to have demanded all the documents back, that they’re his and not the government’s, all in violation of settled Federal law on the matter.

And, of course, there’s the Why of the matter. Not Why did the FBI investigate, but the Why did Trump take – perhaps, more accurately, steal – those documents? The man’s allegedly a billionaire, so it seems unlikely he’d be peddling them to potential customers. And the American capitalist system is the source of Trump’s prestige and power, so it’s hard to see his destroying that in some haze of hatred. Right?

But what if Chad Bauman is right? That Trump thinks, if you’ll excuse my macabre sense of humor, all that matters is He Who Dies Richest Wins?

That would certainly explain pilfering important documents for later sale to the highest bidder. And not caring about the future, given his age. And, no doubt, a number of other puzzling issues.

But as Erickson attacks the liberals and Twitter, he has a slip up. I don’t know if it’s him or if someone told him to write to a collection of talking points, but it’s the sort of slip up that makes it easy not to take him seriously.

TikTok is a Chinese intelligence operation wherein the Chinese harness woke Americans to induce our children into transgender surgeries, all while compiling a facial recognition database. It is the most dangerous social media site on the planet. Americans have allowed their children to be willing users of a Chinese surveillance system.

That entire last sentence implies that “Americans” have full knowledge of TikTok: its owners, goals, and internal policies.

And they don’t.

Persuasion is too often treated as a big chess game, where the moves and configuration of the chessboard are known at all times, and those performing the argument are boning for a position of superiority over their opponents and their allies: Look at how smart I am and how dumb they are!

But it’s just not so. I doubt 5% of American parents know more about TikTok than that it’s a social media site their kids use. That five percent may know it’s Chinese-owned, but almost none of them are aware of facial-recognition ambitions, since at least Wikipedia is also unaware of them; for all I know, Erickson is indulging a conspiracy theory.

As the far-right chews off its own leg? Nyah, too obvious.

But, conspiracy theory or not, it’s part and parcel of Erickson’s real goal, alienating conservatives from the very FBI which has stood in their corner during the Hoover years, and is often considered to have a conservative leaning, as one expects from law enforcement. It’s sad that he thinks he needs to make this case, but with Trump now in imminent danger of arrest and trial, and – it’s no longer unthinkable – eventual execution, he may think it’s necessary to throw the FBI and its Republican director, Christopher Wray, under the bus.

In the end, though, there’s an unmistakable dodging of responsibility. Trump is, by most accounts liberal and conservative, in trouble up to his neck. As a product of the conservative movement, his condemnation also condemns the movement. But Erickson will have none of it. He’ll blame the FBI, he’ll blame the social media sites, anyone but the conservative movement.

And it’s dishonest not to critically examine the movement’s social dynamics when they can produce and elect to the Presidency such a terminally toxic person as Trump. Erickson’s really embraced his role as a propagandist, hasn’t he? And, being one, it reduces his effectiveness.

We were just plowing the road and this popped up. Honest!

• Madison Horn (D) has secured the Democratic nomination for the Oklahoma Senate seat and will be facing incumbent Senator Lankford (R) in the regularly scheduled Senate contest. My apologies for implying Horn had already won the nomination in the above link, which was false; she actually ended up in what appears to have been an acerbic runoff. Don’t confuse this with the contest to fill the retiring Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) seat, held at the same time, with Rep Markwayne Mullin (R) vs former Rep Kendra Horn (D). And Madison Horn’s chances? Low, but not zero. Throw us a bone poll!
• Dueling polls in Pennsylvania: A rated Emerson College Polling gives Lt. Governor Fetterman (D) a four point lead over rival Dr. Oz Mehmet (R), 48% – 44%, which is well below the margin most other polls have suggested, and also clashes with The New York Times report that the NRSC has cut bait on the Pennsylvania race. Meanwhile, B/C-rated Franklin and Marshall College Polling has given the Lt. Gov. a nine point lead, 45%-36%,, more in line with other polls. What does it mean? Possibly ideological groups of voters are refusing to answer pollsters, or are answering dishonestly. This has been suggested by Erick Erickson as a reason to distrust polling. And the polls did get the recent New York District 19 special election wrong – but the Democrats won when the Republicans were favored. It’s all still unsettling, though.
• In Missouri Eric Schmitt (R) has an eleven point lead, 49%-38%, over Trudy Valentine (D) according to a poll by Saint Louis University and YouGov. Neither joint-conductor of the poll seems known to FiveThirtyEight, so it’s hard to say how serious this poll should be taken, but Missouri is considered very conservative these days. Valentine has quite a hill to climb, but that was a given going in. The last time a Democrat won a Missouri Senate seat, though, was due to a foot in a pothole having to do with abortion. Will Schmitt follow his predecessor? Will Valentine try to bait him into such a mistake? Stay tuned.
• The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) is canceling nearly $10 million in Arizona and Alaska ad reservations. This must raise further questions, but exactly their nature is not clear. Why? SLF is controlled by Senator McConnell (R-KY), who may be considered the strongest of the traditional Republicans still in a powerful position, what with the apparent failure of Rep Liz Cheney (R-WY) to gain the nomination of the Wyoming Republicans to her seat. The Arizona nominee is the Trump-endorsee Blake Masters, who has little else beyond that endorsement but whatever financial resources of billionaire Peter Thiel is willing to give him. Trump’s dislike of McConnell may be moving into legendary territory at this point, while I’m not sure about Thiel. We could be seeing an effort by McConnell to drain resources and, eventually, prestige from Trump by withdrawing financial support from a candidate associated with Trump who was doomed from the get-go. And the official explanation? “The McConnell-backed super PAC’s strategic change is in part a reaction to its massive $28 million commitment in Ohio, where GOP nominee J.D. Vance is facing a strong challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio).” Yes, it would be a major blow to Republican prestige to have not just one, but two, Democratic Senators from the supposedly reddish Ohio. Heck, those voters might learn that Democratic Senators are better than Republicans! McConnell is a tactician, but not a strategist; Trump is just a bum who got lucky once. Their mutual dislike and antagonistic maneuvering could lead to a smoking pile of rubble in the Republican camp come November.
• Yes, Alaska was also mentioned, above. I’ll go with the common wisdom on this one: incumbent Murkowski, McConnell’s endorsee, appears to be easily beating Trump endorsee and extremist Tshibaka, as well as the other two candidates in this ranked choice voting (RCV)-based race, so there’s little point in sending her money. RCV is biased towards moderates, and that’s Murkowski to a T.

Previous snert here.

Good Lord – it’s Pinhead vs. the Mob Boss.

In Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) we’re confronted with a confounding question:

Why did the producers bother?

Oh, sure, there’s big audiences and big money, wherein the latter is incurred in the big budget necessary to render monsters not derived from rubber suits, reportedly ranging from $155-$200 million. There’s gotta be an ego-boost in being told that you put that much money into a movie about a rivalry between an overgrown, supercharged chicken with a grumpy ‘tude and big fucking chimp. Fucking big chimp. However you prefer those overused adjectives ordered, eh?

But it might help to consider the traditional thematics of these two star critters. Gojira (1954) used Godzilla as the vehicle to ask what a society is to do when attacked by the forces of irrationality. Japan had not provoked this attack, at least in this version of reality, and its attempts at defense were dubious at best. Some reviewers narrowed it down to an implicit condemnation of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, as Godzilla is contaminated with radiation; later stories gave him an actual nuclear heart, whatever that meant. But the terror of being menaced, minus provocation, by a vehicle of indiscriminate destruction made Gojira a true horror tale.

King Kong (1933) is a classic anti-free markets screed, as a corporate head chooses to transport a truly gigantic ape from its isolated island into the very midst of American civilization, all in pursuit of a lot of money; once Kong escapes and kills a few people, he must be exterminated, all while he expresses a slightly creepy affection for a normal sized woman. It attacks at least a couple of American ideals having to do with our favorite obsessions, money and sex, and that made it, along with the poor guy plucked from a tree and eaten by one of Kong’s dinosauroid rivals on the island, a real horror story for the American psyche.

But in Godzilla vs. Kong we have little more than a grudge match between two ancient rivals. Yes, there’s the corporate fellow who may be responsible for this clash in the middle of a city, but his motivation isn’t the crass chase after profits, but rather being the saviour of mankind. Maybe. Or maybe king of the world. He’s not well developed, unlike the hackers who get a role in this because … computers. Important, ya know?

This lack of clearcut connection to the earlier, effective sagas damages this story, leaving the audience to wonder just how much they’ve been taken for. Are they really here because they’re susceptible to the charms of a fight between an overgrown chicken with halitosis and a chimp borrowed from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)? And, maybe, a robot? A telepathic robot?

Or cyborg?

Yeah, it’s just a mess, as sequels often become. It’s flashy enough, but not very sensical. Don’t mortgage your house to see this. It’ll be hard enough on your good sense.

Off in cryptocurrency land, the platform known as Tornado Cash is leading quite a tale of existence. For example, there’s this odd claim:

But the sanctions aimed at Tornado Cash are novel. Tornado Cash is known as a mixer, obscuring the source of digital assets by pooling them together before users withdraw them. It exists as software code on a decentralized, globe-spanning network of computers, and its authors wrote it in such a way that even they can’t edit it. [WaPo]

Can’t even edit it? I sure wish WaPo had gone into a bit more detail on that claim, as it seems extremely unlikely. Perhaps they mean any modifications and the entire platform stops functioning.

But it strikes me as a childish resistance to authority.

“More than anything else right now, we’re an industry that needs guidance,” said Ari Redbord, a former Treasury official now with TRM Labs, which provides crypto companies with tools to monitor fraud and financial crime.

And that strikes me as good a reason as any not to use cryptocurrencies where possible.

The markets have been down a bit of late. Is Bitcoin proving to be a redoubt of value? Here’s the one month chart.

Source: CoinMarketCap.

The answer would appear to be No.

The 3 Day Novel Contest is open again this year, in case you’ve been feeling the itch. Registration is here.

No, I’m not.

Just like everyone else, I stare with wonder…

The Cartwheel Galaxy via JWST. Source NASA/ESA/CSA/STSci.

But we know that JWST is mostly sensitive in the infrared range, which means these images are false in the sense that our eyes wouldn’t see this. Scientists or algorithms select which visible color is mapped to by a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which we’re not sensitive.

And what if our understanding of JWST’s instrumentation is defective? Here’s an article from NewScientist (20 August 2022, paywall) on that subject:

When JWST sends data back to Earth, it doesn’t come as complete images. Astronomers have to process it to make it usable, which requires understanding the sensitivity of the telescope’s scientific instruments. As JWST takes more data, we gain a better understanding of that sensitivity. But new information on the performance of an infrared camera caused the telescope’s operators to update its data-processing algorithms in July – well after the first images were released – and this threw some astronomers into a tizzy.

“When the first images came out, it was a bit of an ‘astronomers at Christmas’ scenario with everyone diving in to see what they could find,” said Nathan Adams at the University of Manchester, UK, in a statement. “What I think flew under the radar of a lot of astronomers was a part of that report mentions that NIRCam (one of the main cameras on the telescope) was overperforming in its reddest wavelengths.”

This isn’t nearly as easy as I thought it might be.

Octonion:

In mathematics, the octonions are a normed division algebra over the real numbers, a kind of hypercomplex number system. The octonions are usually represented by the capital letter O, using boldface O or blackboard bold {\displaystyle \mathbb {O} }. Octonions have eight dimensions; twice the number of dimensions of the quaternions, of which they are an extension. They are noncommutative and nonassociative, but satisfy a weaker form of associativity; namely, they are alternative. They are also power associative. [Wikipedia]

That’s opaque, if I may be polite. Noted in “Octonions: The strange maths that could unite the laws of nature,” Michael Brooks, NewScientist (20 August 2022, paywall):

Mathematicians are excited because they reckon that by translating our theories of reality into the language of the octonions, it could tidy up some of the deepest problems in physics and clear a path to a “grand unified theory” that can describe the universe in one statement. “This feels like a very promising direction,” says Latham Boyle at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. “I find it irresistible to think about.”

Sounds exciting. I wish I had a brain that worked that way.

I’d dust it every day and never let the cat play with it.