Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Follow the link to see humanity’s best going up against a typical … insect.

Vox reports on possibly dangerous actions on the part of Trump ally Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI):

One of the Republicans who pushed “the big lie” about the 2020 election — namely, that President Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate — used the first congressional hearing about the violent January 6 attempt to overthrow Donald Trump’s loss to amplify a fantastical conspiracy theory aimed at exonerating Trump and his supporters from any responsibility.

That senator — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — used his questioning time during Tuesday’s Senate hearing to read excerpts from a January 14 article published by the Federalist that argues “agents-provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters” were behind the assault on the Capitol, rather than actual Trump supporters, as was the case.

Is Senator Johnson not aware that many of those same protesters are furious at being labeled antifa and agent provocateurs by Trump allies? And that they have a strongly documented history of violence?

Senator Johnson often seems to be living in a bubble all of his own, feeding only on right-wing approved propaganda, but this sounds simply downright personally risky to me. A word to this wise, Senator Johnson – don’t believe your own side’s propaganda. And don’t piss on your own allies. They hate that.

And we’ve already seen what hate can motivate these folks to do.

I see that the conservatives – if that’s what they are – have mostly decided to shut their eyes and sing la-la-la loudly. CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) leads the way:

Top Republicans are split on President Trump’s first post-presidential appearance at a key meeting of conservatives in Florida this week.

“I don’t believe he should be playing a role in the future of the party,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney told reporters Wednesday.

Trump is slated to speak at the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, also known as CPAC, which is meeting in Orlando between Thursday and Sunday.

TRUMP REPORTEDLY TO USE CPAC SPEECH TO ASSERT CONTROL OF GOP, MAKE CLEAR HE IS ‘PRESUMPTIVE 2024 NOMINEE’

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and Trump ally, did not hesitate when a reporter asked whether Trump should be speaking at CPAC.

“Yes, he should,” McCarthy said. [Washington Examiner]

Cheney is well known to be a far-right Republican, so her dissent is at least refreshing. But between GOP Members of Congress signing on to the Stop The Steal campaign, as noted by their objecting to the the counting of the ballots in the Electoral College (that would be 147 of them) on January 6th, 2021, and the subsequent refusal of House Members to vote for impeachment of President Trump, and Senate Members to vote for conviction of President Trump, for the Insurrection which occurred on the same date, with only a few shining examples, such as Cheney, counting as exemptions to the general moral depravity of the Republican Party, it’s safe to say the Republicans refuse to take the public business of the Republic seriously.

Take, for example, Erick Erickson, a far-right pundit who has punctuated incidents of sanity, but today seems to have lost it in his eternal quest for moral equivalence:

The bulk of the American people are not politically engaged like you and me. What they see, are a bunch of jackasses on one side and a lot of conservatives who have concluded they too must behave like jackasses. I suggest conservatives not act like jackasses and not conclude nice guys lose. In fact, if you look at November and get past they [sic] mythology of the stolen election, it was the jackasses who lost. The voters rejected Donald Trump and wide range of Democrats who supported the insane policies of the left most Americans find contemptible.

Does Erickson mention the Insurrection even once?

No.

It doesn’t figure into his political calculations. It doesn’t figure into his moral calculations.

It’s a refusal to engage with the fundamental authoritarian tendencies of the right that have run out of control at the behest of the man-child and former President.

Erickson cannot admit that Trump is the product of the current toxic conservative movement, because his very presence, profoundly illegal and immoral conduct, condemns Erickson’s fantasy that the conservatives have some sort of moral supremacy over the Left.

And here’s the real problem for Erickson: the top down nature of the far-right makes it very difficult to get rid of the bad ideas or even the rot. This is self-evident.

The Left is rather less vulnerable to such inflexibility. Oh, sure, they can be stubborn about an idea – but they do seem to learn from failure. Erickson is complaining about this:

Seth Brenzel is a gay, white dad to a biracial child. A parental advisory council, or PAC, unanimously voted to add Brenzel, but the San Francisco School Board — the one that voted against Washington and Lincoln remaining on schools — rejected him for a lack of diversity. …

”He lives in San Francisco with his husband and their young daughter. If approved, Brenzel would have been the only man on the council. According to an online transcript, when prompted a representative of the PAC said, ‘The PAC can have up to 15 regular members and three alternates. Currently, we have 10 regular members and no alternates.’ Currently, the parent advisory council has two African American parents, one Asian American parent, three Latinx parents. One Pacific Islander parent and three White parents. Currently, all of those are women.”

For Erickson, this is a moment of condemnation.

For me, it’s a moment of experimentation. If the results are superior, then Erickson is proven wrong. It it doesn’t, then the Democrats, if not the far Left, will retreat and rethink. That flexibility is what marks the Democrats as probable winners over the next decade. The mid-terms in 2022 will be fascinating as the Democrats pound on all Republican incumbents who refused to vote for impeachment or conviction.

And this is what really made me laugh about Erickson, even as it marks his delusional approach to politics:

Loving your neighbor goes a long way, laughing at the left’s insanity gets us further, and not being a jackass gets us a few steps further with people who vote but are not committed partisans. I think the sooner the right realizes happy warriors win, the sooner we get out of the wilderness and back into power.

I’m sorry, but some dude not being selected for a school board position just doesn’t compete with images of an Insurrection. Erickson may be so buried in conservative dogma that he can’t see that, but I think a lot of independents will hesitate before ever voting for a Republican spouting extremist rhetoric again. Or even just a Republican. Especially in the absence of a sincere Republican Reformation. I have to wonder if Erickson would even agree that a bit of self-inspection is necessary for the Republicans – nevermind their tolerance for rampant lying and political cannibalism we’ve seen over the last five years.

Elections have consequences, and sometimes they are not what are expected.

Possibly the best scene in the movie. Don’t blink, it goes fast.

Oh. Evil Brain From Outer Space (1964). Really?

Nominee: Worst Stage Combat Ever.

Plot? Movie comes with a Warning: Do Not Take Out On A Windy Day, Plot May Blow Away.

Characterizations? We don’t need no steenking characterizations! Just look at what they’re wearing and you’ll know who’s evil!

Frankenstein Movie Nominee: Evil Brain from Outer Space is a 1964 film edited together for American television from films #7, #8 and #9 of the 1957/1958 Japanese Super Giant film series. –Wikipedia

Special Effects: At least StarDude’s cape was blowing in the right direction when he was flying.

Earnest level: Just above zero. At least the bad guys waved their hands about and kicked, albeit half-heartedly.

Little boy alert: Why do all these Japanese movies have this annoying little boy?! – Arts Editor midway through.

Science: No, I won’t even bother.

Listen, if you still want to watch this, go to a psychologist. Or go to the fridge for a beer.

Or both.

But trust me, you can find something better to do with your evening. Please Please Please trust me.

Engastration:

Engastration is a cooking technique in which the cook stuffs the remains of one animal into another animal. The method supposedly originated during the Middle Ages. Among the dishes made using the method is turducken, which involves placing chicken meat within a duck carcass within a turkey. Some foods created using engastration have stuffing between each layer. The carcasses are normally deboned before being placed together. [Wikipedia]

Noted in Max Miller’s The Legendary Medieval Cockentrice. This link is to the point at which Miller is discussing engastration.

Over the years I’ve occasionally heard the following mentioned as an epithet, that is, negatively:

Never let a crisis go to waste.

But I don’t think of it as an epithet. Let’s take the current Texas crisis. Steve Benen notes the reaction of Senator Cruz (R-TX), already exposed for running from the state when the crisis began, whose reaction is not unique within the Texas Republican community:

Rather, Cruz is playing a deceptive political game. Having been roasted for fleeing his state while his constituents suffered, the GOP senator is trying to work his way back into his party’s good graces — not by tackling energy policy in a serious way, but by pretending Republicans’ ideological foes should be blamed for a breakdown they had nothing do to with.

The New York Times‘ Jamelle Bouie explained a few days ago, “Faced with one of the worst crises in the recent history of the state, Republicans have turned their attention away from conditions on the ground and toward the objects of their ideological ire. The issue isn’t energy policy; it is liberals and environmentalists…. Amid awful suffering and deteriorating conditions, Texas Republicans decided to fight a culture war.”

And here’s the thing: engaging in honest leadership would benefit his constituents, and the result would accrue to his credit. By standing out from his fellows, he’d increase his chances of winning the GOP Presidential nomination.

And that would be not letting a good crisis go to waste.

Cruz may believe he’s taking advantage of the crisis, but in this case he’s letting it go to waste. You want to be known as a leader? Be one.

And that’s why I don’t consider Never let a crisis go to waste to be an epithet, an insult. There’s just doing your job and being incompetent.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) is a Czechoslovakian film that has taken the physics-free, bravado-filled story of Baron Munchausen, and set it to a wildly imaginative, and one imagines labor-filled, variety of sets, composed of film, painstaking line drawings reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s work, and other special effects. These were pronounced to be fascinating by my Arts Editor. Add in an electrifying sound track, and, while the story may not make a lot of sense or carry much thematically, the visuals are crazy enough to be worth the time.

If you’re a lover of stylized visuals in your movies, this is something not to miss.

Some of potentially oldest cave art so far found in Sulawesi, Indonesia:

From NewScientist (23 January 2021):

Each of the three pigs is more than a metre long. The images were all painted using a red ochre pigment. They appear to be Sulawesi warty pigs (Sus celebensis), a short-legged wild boar that is endemic to the island and is characterised by its distinctive facial warts. “This species was of great importance to early hunter-gatherers in Sulawesi,” says Brumm.

These pigs appear in younger cave art across the region, and archaeological digs show that they were the most commonly hunted game species on Sulawesi for thousands of years. “The frequent portrayal of these wild pigs in art offers hints at a long-term human interest in the behavioural ecology of this local species, and perhaps its spiritual values in the hunting culture,” says Brumm.

Or they just liked bacon.

And that’s something about archaeologists interpreting artifacts: they don’t seem to think our ancestors had a sense of whimsy.

Kim Jong Un may be in trouble, according to WaPo:

Kim Jong Un is angry, and he’s lashing out.

North Korea’s last economic plan failed “tremendously,” he complained. And his inner circle lacked an “innovative viewpoint and clear tactics” in drawing up a new one, Kim told the ruling Workers’ Party last month, yelling and finger-pointing at frightened-looking delegates.

His economy minister, appointed in January, has already been fired.

It’s not altogether surprising. North Korea is suffering its worst slump inmore than two decades, experts say. It’s a combination of international sanctions and especially a self-imposed blockade on international trade in attempts to keep the coronavirus pandemic out.

Management through terror can only last for so long. 38 North reports that the use of the country’s propaganda radio channel is mandated:

Kim’s call to improve the third broadcast comes as the country appears to be embarking on a new crackdown on foreign media. In December, the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted the “Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture,” according to state media reports.

The law is a timely example of the use of closed networks by the state.

Details of the law and its penalties have not been disclosed by any North Korean media that can be monitored from overseas. Doing so would highlight the problem of foreign media and culture on the country. Instead, the state is disseminating details to citizens through the weekly propaganda lectures that all North Koreans must attend and, almost certainly, through the third radio network where it can be heard.

Alongside the new law, the state is also responding to the influx of foreign media by strengthening and expanding its own offerings. North Korea is expanding the availability of multi-channel television throughout the country via digital TV and intranet broadcasting. Up to four channels are now available in areas with the expanded service.

One part distraction, one part reinforcement of the importance of Kim.

Is it likely that Kim will abruptly go away? The North Koreans have had many opportunities to rid themselves of the dictatorship, but realistically it seems unlikely. Substituting one dictator for another seems like a waste of time, and the ignorance of the masses of other governing systems makes it unlikely that they’ll suddenly become socialists, much less capitalists.

They remain one of the great conundrums of humanity.

As The Lincoln Project (TLP) begins to come apart at what appears to be its many seams, it’s an interesting lesson in how effective messaging is disconnected from the basic moral fundamentals of an organization. Amanda Becker of The 19th has the story:

Like tabloid TV journalism. Or a Simpsons exposé as done on The Simpsons.

The organization is facing a rapidly escalating controversy over allegations that another of its co-founders, John Weaver, sexually harassed more than a dozen young men, including some working for the project, and over what other members of senior management knew about the claims and when they knew it.

The accusations have roiled the organization, and as its current and former employees and contractors began coming forward to discuss them, they described a workplace where women in key positions were sidelined and where sexist and homophobic language was used by those in leadership posts.

In reporting a story over the past several weeks about the Lincoln Project’s management, culture, finances and handling of the Weaver allegations, The 19th interviewed nearly two dozen individuals currently or formerly associated with the group or familiar with its operations.

Nearly all of them said they feared speaking publicly about their experiences with the Lincoln Project and its remaining co-founders. Many cited their tendency to “go nuclear,” as several put it, when faced with internal dynamics that could undermine the public image they cultivated with their liberal fans.

The interviews depict an organization that grew quickly, with little planning at its inception, and then began to spiral out of control as its founders quarreled over the organization’s direction, finances, tactics and even who would own the donor data that the project would eventually amass. Some of the co-founders had an informal management agreement that excluded the others, without their knowledge. Several had private firms to which the Lincoln Project channeled tens of millions of dollars that are then not subject to disclosure, while others were paid relatively modest amounts directly or nothing at all. There were clashes over ego and resentments over podcasts and television contracts.

Their superb messaging belied the general nature of those who lead the organization, who were Republicans, and not necessarily of the old, moderate variety, as I think a lot of people – myself included – had thought.

The Lincoln Project’s founders were some of the highest-profile players in Republican politics before they rejected Trump and became apostates within their own party. There was George Conway, a high-profile conservative lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, who was a top adviser to Trump. Weaver worked on Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaigns, as did Galen and Schmidt. Mike Madrid is a strategist specializing in Latinx voting trends. Jennifer Horn is a former GOP chair in New Hampshire. Wilson worked on Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral and Senate campaigns. Ron Steslow started his own consulting firm after working at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

They grew up, politically, in the Republican culture which eventually came to see in the failed man, Donald J. Trump, a champion and force for good. These were not old Richard Lugar staffers, but instead people who had worked for long periods of time for a Republican Party for which Trump wasn’t an anachronism, but instead a predictable product. He’s the savior they needed for continued Party survival, because, without him, the Party had little more than an highly effective marketing machine, and a couple of effective Governors (Hogan, DeWine, Sununu, and one I cannot remember), all of whom might end up leaving the Party. Rubio, Cruz, Hawley? Ineffective trophy winners who don’t realize there’s more to politics than winning a seat.

Do you know what we saw in the clash between TLP and President Trump?

A gang rumble.

The Republican leadership of TLP wasn’t bringing light to a dark Republican cave, although, at least for independents, that was the effect. They were waging war against a hated rival. Trump had absconded with the Party machinery and membership, introduced atavistic notions, and generally discredited them. A war was inevitable, even if Trump didn’t see it coming.

But the TLP leadership is also a product of decades of Party corruption. The use of dishonorable tactics, even against comrades during primaries, the distrust of cooperation in gaining electoral objectives, and the misogyny we’ve seen in the actions of Trump and, later, the Party faithful (see how hard-line conservative former Rep Martha Roby (R-AL) was treated once she demonstrated her loyalty to Trump was not total in the wake of the “grab them by the pussy” scandal), these notions are all demonstrated in the struggle for control, power, and wealth at TLP, as Becker depicts.

The Lincoln Project, despite the excellence of their messaging – perhaps as a result of the competence of their more liberal staffers – was not a saviour of the right from itself. It was a comeback effort by the corrupt right against the shocking, for them, interloper.

When Trump’s inevitable exit from the American stage occurs, whether through death or disgrace, don’t look for TLP leadership veterans to take a leading position in reform efforts. They are not demonstrating effective leadership skills. Oh, they may try, but I expect that the voids in their moral makeup, which inevitably reflects in the leadership they provide, will cripple and even destroy them. They’ll be struggling against both resentful Trump faithful and themselves, and I don’t see any of them achieving any positions of great influence, much less of titular importance.

They may try to descend upon any new conservative parties that form, but those will be wary, aware of the toxic culture and its effects.

I expect we’ll see little more out of TLP worth noting.

A pity.

Misfit Division 1, ready for prattle!
Battle. Battle. Dammit!

Yamasong: March of the Hollows (2017) is a visual treat for those who are fans of puppet movies. A fusion of CGI with those puppets, this is the story of a Creator who made a mistake, gifting one of his most powerful creations, Yari, with the over-confidence to believe she knows what is best for her world.

And then making her into a Hollow – or what I might call a cyborg, a mix of biological and robot. And near-invincible.

Naturally, not all biologicals want to become Hollows, and the Creator’s assistant, a Hollow itself, is still around to help in the resistance. But can it and the local analogue to a Balrog be enough to stop Yari, along with the usual raft of misfit heroes?

Yari in her High School senior picture. She’s crabby because no one took her to prom.

Featuring creatures from the size of minuscule fairies to flying whales and the aforementioned Balrog, it’s still the struggle between dominance and freedom, the exotic and the familiar, the family and ambition, which drives this story. It’s unexpected, has attention to detail, and if I’m not entirely happy with some of the puppeteering, maybe I’m just overly critical.

Perhaps the biggest lack, though, is a failure to really convey the emotional attachments and relationships. Attempts are made, it is true; this is no artificially transactional culture. But they just don’t quite ring true.

But that didn’t stop us from watching a fairly compelling story. Now if they could have just done away with that annoying introductory narrative …

It appears Fox News is a slow learner.

As a historic winter snowstorm devastated Texas, personalities and guests on Fox News and its sister network Fox Business went to bat for the fossil-fuel industry by falsely blaming frozen wind turbines and green energy policies for statewide power outages a staggering 128 times since Monday evening. Fox has continued its false narrative even after other outlets already debunked the claim that renewable energy sources and green energy policies were solely or primarily the cause of the blackouts. [MediaMatters]

I suggest all of these wind turbine generator manufacturers sue Fox News. For billions of dollars. This bullshit needs to be punished, again and again, until Fox News learns that lying through one’s teeth is not an acceptable way to do business.

Here is a suitably dull tableau. I wonder what Rogers thought of being cheek to jowl with this dude, played by Dennis Morgan.

I have to confess that I could not finish Kitty Foyle (1940), a Ginger Rogers vehicle which won her the only Academy Award of her career. It’s the story of impetuous Irish-American Kitty Foyle, young, beautiful, and charming. Told through an interesting extended flashback mechanism, it chronicles her lack of interest in the mores of the day, and her chronic poor decision-making when it comes to the man in her life, Wyn Stafford, the spawn of a high society family. He cannot break free from his family’s privileged hold, despite his belief that a man should run his own business, and when the Great Depression closes his magazine down, he folds as well – after charming Kitty, who is inevitably from a lower class, into accepting a marriage proposal.

At this point, disappointed in her poor decisions and the languid pace of the movie, I gave up, but my Arts Editor, with time on her hands from an injury, continued. She reports the poor decisions keep on coming: their marriage, the rejection of the marriage by his family, the consequences of his lack of spine, Kitty’s clinging to a rosey past. Only in the end does Kitty, after promising Wyn that she’ll sail to South America to start a new life with him, come to her senses. Does she stick around to tell Wyn she’s changed her mind? No. That’s disappointing, too. But maybe she’ll marry the right man in the end.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t an awful movie. I’ll stick around for an awful movie, just out of morbid curiosity. Even long time readers may not realize that it’s a rare movie I won’t finish, but I didn’t finish this one. Rogers really is charming, and I can see how she had the potential to win the Academy Award. Although I must admit there’s something odd about her left eye, or perhaps eye socket.

Mr. Speakeasy Owner is the guy with the sassy bow-tie. Although I’ll admit Rogers is competitive, sporting that hat.

But I was bored, bored, bored! Sure, Wyn is handsome and charming, but was he smart and clever? There was little to go on, and I didn’t get a feeling for him. Kitty exhibits some amusing symptoms of … what? Mental illness? A coping mechanism? Unlike vampires, mirrors are, for her, too reflective, and I’ll let it go at that. You know who I’d like to know more about? The speakeasy owner! A speakeasy is jargon for an illicit bar, and all bars were illicit when this movie is at least partially set: the end of the Prohibition Era. This owner, oozing with character, is serving customers while listening to the election returns of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) first run for President, hoping against hope that FDR would lose, because FDR was a “wet” – someone in favor of ending Prohibition, and this would diminish, if not end, his speakeasy. His hysterics are quite the little drama as more and more returns come in on that fateful night.

But I couldn’t go on at some point. Maybe I lacked the insulin for it. Maybe there had to be more support for Foyle making the decisions she was making. Maybe her father’s shrieking of Judas Priest! in every other line of his dialog just irritated me.

But my Arts Editor suggests I missed nothing. And you, my reader, get this hybrid review for my troubles.

This article in NewScientist (23 January 2021) is more noteworthy for where it doesn’t go than where it does:

Artificial intelligence could train your dog while you are out at work. A prototype device can issue basic dog commands, recognise if they are carried out and provide a treat if they are.

Uh huh. And?

“It is a step forward and an exciting area,” says Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas at Aalto University, Finland, who has a PhD in dog-computer interaction. “Yet it is also ethically precarious as computers are not able to recognise the welfare of dogs as effectively as humans.”

Dirk van der Linden at Northumbria University in the UK also praises the tech while having some qualms. “It’s the automating of the human-dog relationship that I think is increasingly problematic, because it is using a technological fix for a very valuable interspecies relationship that caregivers ought to keep working on,” he says.

No, no, no! These folks are worrying about ethics towards dogs when they should be asking this: Is the dog smarter than the AI? Look: somewhere, I have no link, but somewhere I’ve read of experiments where little robots are left around college campuses with big eyes, and students carefully treat them with respect, imputing human intelligence to what are just dumb chunks of slightly animated machinery. (I’ve promised myself to carefully step on any such that I might stumble across.)

Will these dogs accept the AI as being on par with a human? Or are they perspicacious enough to realize these AIs are not really AIs, just some ML in a body, with no self-agency, and certainly not intrinsically considerate of their welfare.

That’s what I want to know!

The latest in high fidelity flat maps of globes by some guys at Princeton:

More here.

David Neiwert’s summary of the status of the erstwhile Insurrectionists is salutary:

The movement’s true believers who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege and are now facing federal charges are similarly perplexed and outraged by the large numbers of fellow MAGA “patriots” who are now claiming that the insurrection actually was the work of violent “antifa” leftists. This fraudulent claim—promulgated not just by conspiracy theorists and fringe partisans, but by elected Republican officials, including members of Congress—has spread so widely that one poll found that a full half of all Republicans believe it.

This infuriates the people who participated and now face charges, because they all are ardent Trump supporters who believed then that they were participating in a nation-saving act of patriotism—and many still believe it now. They can’t fathom how quickly their fellow “patriots” have thrown them under the bus and are now depicting them as actually acting on behalf of their hated enemies.

“Don’t you dare try to tell me that people are blaming this on antifa and [Black Lives Matter],” wrote insurgent Jonathan Mellis on Facebook days after the event., prior to being charged with multiple crimes. “We proudly take responsibility for storming the Castle. Antifa and BLM or [sic] too pussy … We are fighting for election integrity. They heard us.”

“It was not Antifa at the Capitol,” wrote “Stop the Steal” organizer Brandon Straka, who has ties to Trump. “It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic because literally nobody cares about them. Everyone else can denounce them. I will not.”

When a political movement doesn’t value honesty, truth, and facts, it’s no longer a movement, but a machine that pitilessly grinds its adherents into dust. What we see above is the screams of those being dusted. Neither they nor their fellow Trumpists had taken the subject of group epistemology, the study of how groups ascertain truth in an uncertain and difficult world, as seriously as it must be taken.

Instead, they took the five-year old approach to politics – they didn’t like the outcome, so they screamed like a five year old kid denied their treat, just like their leader.

And now they’re paying for it – in many cases with years and years to be spent in jail.

Metastable:

If we can understand the structure and the mechanics of how high pressures might create a Cooper-pair interaction, we may be able to start doing it at lower pressure. One hope is that the material is “metastable” and won’t fall apart when the pressure is released. Diamond is an example of a metastable material: it is created when carbon atoms are subjected to extremely high pressures, but once it has formed you can remove the pressure and it doesn’t revert to its previous form. [“The superconductor breakthrough that could mean an energy revolution,” Michael Brooks, NewScientist (16 January 2021)]

Yay! Go Perseverance! From NASA:

And now I’m just like all the other space geeks!

I can’t wait for its helicopter to take off!

I have to wonder if Fox News is beginning to separate itself from President Trump, because they’re using a forbidden phrase in their news releases:

The former president is “relieved” that he no longer has his finger on the Twitter trigger, the adviser says. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, Trump has told others, for him not to have to respond to every story and swipe.

Over the last two or three weeks the pundits has been buzzing over the former President and his minions’ refusal to admit that he’s, well, a former. “45th President” is the favored label.

If Fox News is violating this precept, does it mean that the President has accepted reality? Or is Fox News deciding that hewing a little closer to the truth is prudent in this new era of existential lawsuits? They may even see the former President as a lost cause and are casting about for their next Republican to whom to tie their sailboat.

The problem with that latter idea is that the very nature of narcissists like Trump is to drive out competitors; thus, the Party leadership is really quite drab. Sure, Hawley and Cruz will have their adherents, but in terms of candidates who can appeal to most or all of the Republican factions, there’s not really anyone.

The former President may find himself without any real allies in the news network category.

The aftermath of the Gamestop incident in the market may not be shortlived, if this WaPo/Bloomberg article is to be believed. I found this particularly interesting, even if I don’t pretend to do short-selling:

Short sellers — funds that borrow a stock and sell it, betting that the price will have gone down by the time they have to buy it to give it back — have become the target. Such firms usually would unveil a new position to great fanfare, expecting to cast a cloud over the company’s shares. The scrum this year over GameStop — in which retail traders went head-to-head with short-selling firm Citron Research — suggests that could become a thing of the past, and in fact, Citron’s Andrew Left announced on Jan. 29 that the firm will no longer publish short selling research. A hedge fund or short-seller advertising a bet against a stock might now be the equivalent of waving a red flag to r/wallstreetbets’ herd of bulls: a signal to charge in with call options and force a move higher. The predators have turned prey.

What catches my eye and my thought is false advertising by firms that they’re taking short positions, when their position is actually long. It could be as simple as a whisper campaign, nothing official but definitely there. Wave the red flag, ride the share price up, then get off. It’s a bit of a reverse of the old pump ‘n dump, but only executable by reputable, but perhaps disliked, firms.

And now I’m seeing a market niche for marketeers striving to make your investment firm just a little bit disliked…

Or, rather, plural:

A week ago, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis revealed she opened a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.

A day later, a group of Georgia Senate Republicans sought to make future investigations of election fraud a statewide affair.

Senate Resolution 100 calls for a constitutional amendment that would require a statewide grand jury for “any crime involving voting, elections, or a violation of the election laws of this state and all related crimes.”

That would mean that Willis or other local prosecutors would have to empanel a grand jury from beyond their territories, drawing in more residents from rural, conservative corners of the state.

The legislation, which boasts 25 GOP co-sponsors, is unlikely to pass. It would require a two-thirds vote in the General Assembly and a majority vote on next year’s ballot. [AJC]

Because Dear Leader should never be subjected to the normal consequences of his actions.

Steve Benen notes a delicate conundrum that appears to be afflicting a few Republicans these days:

For generations, there have been interesting political debates over how elected lawmakers should best serve their constituents. Is it the job of a senator to simply vote the way his or her constituents would vote? What about when there’s broad disagreement?

In a lower-case-r republican form of government, don’t voters effectively hire officials to serve in legislative bodies, listen and learn, and then exercise their best judgment?

This is in the context of those few Republicans, having voted for impeachment or conviction in the last month, being censured by their parties for voting for impeachment. Here is an example involving Senator Toomey (R-PA).

I think Benen’s question of What about when there’s broad disagreement? delegitimizes the first suggestion, that of legislator-as-mouthpiece. But, worse, the first suggestion, if taken seriously, reduces the legislator to nothing more than a conduit for the opinions, well-informed and otherwise, of their constituents, an instrumentality of the ethos of amateurism, a tenet of the GOP. It becomes no longer a seat of honor and responsibility, but a convenient cubbyhole to thrust the politically ambitious but chronically incompetent.

And often those sorts of politicians have all sorts of odd notions about how the nation should operate. Sound familiar?

Even more importantly, there is now no motivation to develop expertise in matters beyond the mechanics of legislation. In a very real and rational sense, and in my view, a member of Congress is sent to Congress to become an expert in a subset of the matters before Congress, most usually those of particular interest to the member’s State. Through this expertise the member helps develop effective legislation, or at least effectively criticize election which is disapproved.

They may even develop opinions at odds with their opinions prior to joining Congress. Such is neither abnormal nor to be lamented. An informed opinion is generally better than an uninformed opinion.

And if it differs from the general opinions of the constituents, that’s just fine.

If, in the end and after much robust debate, the constituents just can’t stand the informed opinion, then they have an option: Vote the member out at the next election. But give the informed opinion a chance to educate the uninformed, to better the general intelligence of the constituents.

I prefer expertise over ignorance, and governing a nation as large and powerful as ours really demands the very best: informed legislators with curious minds and habits; neither inflexible ideologues nor braying, unserious mouthpieces need apply.

And screw the dude who doesn’t like Toomey, above. He’s a dead-ender.

Oh, and just a trifling bit of bondage!

If you’re a nascent fan or scholar of the old-fashioned movie serials, Lost City of the Jungle (1946) might be for you. Featuring fabulous B&W cinematography, similarly B&W characters which, painfully enough, gain credibility in the light of recent political events, a repetitive episodic plot that features a cliff-hanger every twenty minutes or so, wretched science, and the occasional plot hole, the repetitive parts are to be endured while we wait for the action – how did the good guys avoid being blown apart in the exploding boat? – to refloat our spirits.

The story concerns the search for an element that can be used to build an effective defense against atomic weapons – and one man’s search for it in order to sell it to the highest bidder, enabling war and world domination. Yeah, it’s silly.

The characters are static and predictable – no growth here! But the storytellers are to be congratulated on avoiding some chauvinistic ditches that they could have driven this vehicle into. For example, Queen Indra, a white woman ruling a small kingdom in the Himalayas, is no pushover, but an active, aggressive, and intelligent schemer – and perhaps the one exception to my observation that the characters are static. Another is the character of Tal Shan, played by Chinese born Keye Luke, which is a major part, if not quite leading.

It’s all your basic morality tale, as the personality flaws of the bad guys let the good guys win. There’s a lot of flaws, it has a share of chauvinism, even if it avoided some of the worst, but the scenery is gorgeous and the cliff-hangers are fun.

Theoretical frameworks – theories of how society should work vs how it does work – are a vital part of discussions about how almost anything in society works. For instance, conservatives – especially the extremists who have a religious tint to them – embrace deregulation, privatization, and lower taxes. Those on the left look more to government and are less sensitive to the concerns of the conservatives.

These discussions are important when it comes to products and services that don’t fit neatly into the free market paradigm. This morning I woke to read that it appears the theories of the right wing took quite a jolt over the last few days, and Professor Richardson provides a short summary:

First up is the deep freeze in Texas, which overwhelmed the power grid and knocked out electricity for more than 3.5 million people, leaving them without heat. It has taken the lives of at least 23 people.

Most of Texas is on its own power grid, a decision made in the 1930s to keep it clear of federal regulation. This means both that it avoids federal regulation and that it cannot import more electricity during periods of high demand. Apparently, as temperatures began to drop, people turned up electric heaters and needed more power than engineers had been told to design for, just as the ice shut down gas-fired plants and wind turbines froze. Demand for natural gas spiked and created a shortage. …

Frozen instruments at gas, coal, and nuclear plants, as well as shortages of natural gas, were the major culprits. To keep electricity prices low, ERCOT [Electric Reliability Council of Texas] had not prepared for such a crisis. El Paso, which is not part of ERCOT but is instead linked to a larger grid that includes other states and thus is regulated, did, in fact, weatherize their equipment. Its customers lost power only briefly.

And so I learn a little history as well as the problems of Texas. Naturally, those who adhere with frantic zealotry to ideological positions didn’t take well to the poor outcomes:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) told Sean Hannity [talking head at Fox News] that the disaster “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal” for the United States, but Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the organization in charge of the state’s power grid, told Bloomberg that the frozen wind turbines were the smallest factor in the crisis. They supply only about 10% of the state’s power in the winter.

Other sources directly blame the failure of the Texas energy system on its inability to prepare for extreme weather events because of low prices^[1].

And that’s the key, isn’t it?

Not really.

The problem is that the deregulation leads to an emphasis on low prices rather than an emphasis on availability. Look: Deregulation has lead to putting energy into the same consumer category as, say, coats. But while coats are easy to make and normally an optional item, abundant energy available 24/7 is the foundation of our civilization, as well as any other advanced civilization of which I’m aware.

You lose your coat, you get a little cold. And in this weather causing problems from Minnesota^[2] to Texas, you make sure you don’t lose your coat. But when it comes to energy, an individual can’t ensure they don’t lose it in this sort of weather. That moves energy out of the tidy confines of the free market and into the untidy range of public utility.

Texas’ insistence that deregulation and low prices are the be-all end-all illustrates the cost of having the wrong metrics in place for measuring success. Sure, it’s nice to have low prices for the most important commodity in the world – but the flip side is a greater addiction to it. And when it goes away in a dangerous situation, the consequences are dire. The proper metric is availability, and quite frankly this is a difficult metric to implement in a free market.

That’s why public utility commissions exist.

Will Texas figure this out? Not so long as the conservatives are in charge, but that’s a political and cultural matter. It may take a number of these events before they awaken to the question of how the energy system fits into the framework of society, and move it from the free market niche to the shared resource, shared management foundation. But it’s important to understand that the theoretical structures in play are the real culprits here, and if they are not corrected – or tossed out in favor of better theories – Texas and other states will continue to suffer.

¹ It’s worth noting that, while Abbot’s remark reeks of a frantic defense of the religious tenet that is deregulation, it has a worthwhile side to it. The freezing up of turbines, of which I’ve not heard of happening here in Minnesota, suggests that wind turbine technology needs an upgrade, or that the mix of renewables in the future should be tuned such that wind turbines are a useful auxiliary but not a main load bearing member. Batteries remain an important, and, in view of Abbot’s remark, an underappreciated part of the mix of future energy grids. But fossil fuels, while no doubt having a future role, are basically on their way out, and rather than whining about a Green New Deal that no one else is talking about, he should start planning for the future, rather than just warming the governor’s seat.

² Here in the Twin Cities we’ve had a stretch of temperatures in the minus teens Fahrenheit. This is unusual for February, and dangerous.