Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Inquiline:

Animals that live in the dwellings of another species without affecting them are known as inquilines. Inquiline termites (Inquilinitermes microcerus) are unique among termites in being unable to make their own nests. Instead, they inhabit the labyrinthine hallways built by another termite, Constrictotermes cyphergaster. Until now, it has been unclear how the two parties kept peaceful in such tight quarters, because termites are typically very aggressive towards outsiders.

From “Termite intruders evolved cowardice to squat in another species’ nest,” Jake Buehler, NewScientist (8 August 2020).

This is one fancy hurdy-gurdy:

But still attractive, now that the burned out ferns have been replaced – temporarily – with some other items:

From Weekly Dish proprietor Andrew Sullivan:

All this reassurance played out against a backdrop of Kenosha, which was burning, and Minneapolis, where a suicide led to a bout of opportunistic looting, and Washington DC, where mobs of wokesters went through the city chanting obscenities, invading others’ spaces, demanding bystanders raise fists in solidarity, with occasional spasms of violence. These despicable fanatics, like it or not, are now in part the face of the Democrats: a snarling bunch of self-righteous, entitled bigots, chanting slogans rooted in pseudo-Marxist claptrap, erecting guillotines — guillotines! — in the streets as emblems of their agenda. They are not arguing; they are attempting to coerce. And liberals, from the Biden campaign to the New York Times, are too cowardly and intimidated to call out these bullies and expel them from the ranks.

Remember the pivotal moment earlier this summer when the New York Times caved to its activist staff and fired James Bennet? It’s no accident this was over an op-ed that argued that if New York City would not stop the rioting in the streets, the feds should step in to restore order. For the far left activists who now control that paper, the imposition of order was seen not as an indispensable baseline for restoring democratic debate, but as a potential physical attack on black staffers. They saw restoring order within the prism of their own critical race ideology, which stipulates that the police are enforcers of white supremacy, and not enforcers of the rule of law in a liberal society. It was a sign that the establishment left were willing to tolerate disorder and chaos if they were directed toward the ideologically correct ends — which is how Democratic establishments in Minneapolis and Seattle and Portland responded. The NYT, CNN and the rest tried to ignore the inexcusable, and find increasingly pathetic ways to dismiss it. This week, their staggering bias was exposed as absurd.

And

A long time ago, I was mocked for saying that I believed that the election of Donald Trump was an extinction-level event for liberal democracy. But this is where we are. There is no place for liberal debate or dissent, just competing mobs deploying propaganda, intimidation and mutual racial hatred. Norms are trashed, from the shameful cooptation of national monuments for partisan purposes, to violating the privacy and peace of ordinary citizens because they are not in the ranks of agitators. Liberals are now illiberal; conservatives are revolutionaries. The Republican convention we are witnessing makes no pretense of even publishing a platform — all to demonstrate total and unfailing fealty to the leader whose own family is now assumed to succeed him. What about this pattern of events do we not already understand?

Yes, we still have an election. But barring a landslide victory for either party, it will be the beginning and not the end of the raw struggle for power in a fast-collapsing republic. In a close race, Trump will never concede, and if he is somehow forced to, he will mount a campaign from the outside to delegitimize the incoming president, backed by street-gangs and propaganda outfits. If Biden wins, we may have one last chance for the center to hold — and what few hopes I have rest on this.

I have neither the academic training to evaluate, nor exposure to the far left for first hand experience, but it occurs to me that I should find some time to refresh myself on the basic principles of the liberal American Experiment, so if I’m accosted by woke extremists, they might be rebuked as politely, but as effectively, as possible – but reminded that their tactics may bear bitter fruit.

And, further in his column, he suggests that Biden is weak. I hope he’s wrong. While I don’t want a strong-man President – the lead-in to disaster – but I want a President who’s strong enough to know their mind and not topple in a wind.

And, yeah, to say, It’s inappropriate to have this delegated power from Congress – take it back.

Part of the Democratic National Convention, it’s Billy Porter and Steven Stills:

Kvell:

to be extraordinarily proud : REJOICE [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Trump will endanger American lives if it helps him get reelected,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

The media too often feel compelled to underplay the abnormality and the utter unacceptability of this president so as to preserve the patina of “balance,” as if this is simply the counterpoint to last week’s Democratic convention. They will score his speech, kvell when he sounds less unhinged than normal and pretend this is a functioning administration. In that, they give him the greater advantage — the ability to delude Americans into thinking he is temperamentally up to the job.

Long time readers who’ve read my dissections of relayed mail from conservative friends are aware that I object to mail that engenders a distrust of our government.

I use the phrase “our government” with great particularity. All too often, in those emails, it’s the government. It seems so innocuous, doesn’t it, interchanging the two? Yet, in my opinion, there’s a major, if subtle, difference. One suggests the government is an alien, imposed force upon us; the other, it’s our government and we can change it if we can muster the arguments to do so.

When someone uses the convenient excuse that they have to have a gun to defend themselves from the government, someone should stand up and say,

Buster, you’ve got it wrong. It’s OUR GOVERNMENT, and if you feel like you need a gun to enforce your political opinion, then you don’t understand how the United States works.

So I was really pleased to see singer and artist Billy Porter express something similar in this interview:

Q: How do you think the country ended up here?

A: We, the people, have to be engaged. You know, it’s a really complicated landscape to take in. And so the more complicated you make it, the more people turn off. Voter suppression is not just slowing down the mail system. When you don’t think your vote matters that’s voter suppression. That’s the whole point — to create distrust of your government. And if you distrust and it’s just chaos then nobody knows what to do and then nobody does anything. This is a playbook, y’all. And this is coming from a singer and an actor who’s educated enough to know what y’all are doing. So my opinion actually does matter, and I won’t shut up. [WaPo]

Porter is someone who definitely has their head screwed on right.

Last night, players in the NBA called a wildcat strike to protest the Kenosha incident; today, they’re returning to the floor, while MLB players have chosen to strike. I know the WNBA also struck yesterday, but I’m not sure about today.

I, and my Arts Editor, wish the NBA players had remained off the floor. In fact, I think the players in the various sports league should walk off for some designated amount of time in protest.

It makes a couple of points. First, the obvious one, is directing attention to problems desperately in need of resolution: systemic racism, harassment of the black community, profiling, the use of guns to resolve problems.

There’s no pretending that these are easy problems to solve. At least some of the players understand this:

On Wednesday’s nightly whip-around show on MLB TV, host Matt Vasgersian read an Instagram post from Colorado Rockies DH Matt Kemp, which said in part, “Tonight I stand with my fellow professional athletes in protest of the injustices my people continue to suffer.”

Vasgersian then chimed in: “I think there needs to be an important distinction made here, however,” he said. “The law enforcement community is under attack right now. And Matt Kemp’s statement was well-written and I think everybody empathizes with the point of view, but not every member of the law enforcement community is guilty of some of the atrocities that have been committed in the last few months. I feel like it’s important to make that statement, as well, along with supporting those who are not playing, along with the cries for social reform, which are so needed right now.”

Analyst and former player Harold Reynolds responded: “I agree with that, but also it comes down to one bad apple leads to a bunch, right? It spoils a whole bunch. That’s what’s been happening here. There are great police officers. I have great police officers who are friends of mine. But there’s been far too many things like this happening. That’s the point guys are saying.” [WaPo]

This lends an air of practicality and brings home to the fans the importance of these issues.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is the implicit message which may still need to be hammered into some Americans: this is your problem, too.

Sports players are, outside of a few exceptions, well known for being focused on their game to the exclusion of most of social questions. By imposing a work stoppage and talking vociferously about these issues, they model the behavior that we all need to look at these problems and try to find the right steps to take to resolve them. We all have input on such issues as police reformation, whether it’s disbandment and reassembly, or reformation and removal of certain responsibilities. Questions that bother me include

• how to effectively implement reparations so long ago offered and then shamefully retracted
• how do we quickly move to a model of divesting the police of certain responsibilities
• how do we ensure the police value the neighborhoods they patrol
• how do we identify counterproductive carrots in the law enforcement system
• how do we adjust for systemic racism, by which I mean unequal treatment built into the system, such as property taxation

Such issues should be put on the table by the players, as well as their retired colleagues.

And then there’s the entire question of paying for it. Look for the right-wing fringe to run around with their hair on fire when tax increase proposals come around. Many who take great pride in their ancestors coming over the Mayflower may suddenly be claiming their family just arrived twenty years ago – as if that’s a flower to hide behind.

Scott Adams – allegedly – analyzing Joe Biden – literally:

"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams uncover the hidden satanic symbolism in Joe Biden's name. https://t.co/gjyHQasTL6 pic.twitter.com/3JJt0aybSt

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 26, 2020

I don’t know anything about Scott Adams beyond his comic, Dilbert, which I haven’t read in a decade or more – I just became bored with it. Heck, maybe that’s not even him up there. In any case, The Friendly Atheist has a rejoinder here, where they prove another Presidential candidate is even more, ah, 666er.

But I can’t help but wonder if that was an epic trolling of the right wing. It’s so ridiculous.

This is upsetting:

For nearly 50 years, a statistical omission tantamount to data falsification sat undiscovered in a critical study at the heart of regulating one of the most controversial and widely used pesticides in America.

Chlorpyrifos, an insecticide created in the late 1960s by the Dow Chemical Co., has been linked to serious health problems, especially in children. It has been the subject of many lawsuits and banned in Europe and California. The EPA itself nearly banned the chemical, but in 2017 the Trump administration backtracked and rejected EPA’s own recommendation to take chlorpyrifos off the market. The EPA plans to reconsider the chemical’s use by 2022. [University of Washington]

What happened?

Lianne Sheppard, a professor of biostatistics and environmental health in the UW School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, explained that the 1972 “Coulston study” established erroneously how much of the chemical a human could be exposed to before adverse effects showed up in a body’s chemistry.

When Sheppard re-ran the study data using the same longhand statistical analysis as the original, she discovered that key data used in two other level-of-exposure tests in the same study had been left out of the central exposure question — inexplicably. Consequently, the safe exposure limit, called the “no observed adverse effect level,” that the EPA used was wrong.

But – inexplicably – no why. Worse yet:

Why the 1972 Coulston study was not thoroughly examined even as the maturing EPA began reviewing these kinds of studies more rigorously through its inaugural 2006 Human Studies Review Board is a mystery, said co-author Richard Fenske, emeritus professor in the UW School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences.

But when the EPA formally set out to review human-subject studies like the Coulston study, the maker of chlorpyrifos (Dow) specifically removed the study from that process, said Fenske, who was a member of that initial review board.

Which appears to be appalling, at least to me. While the initial error can be understood as a blunder – even if it’s inexplicable – the second incident appears to be a deliberate attempt to shield profits from damage by scientific scrutiny. This is – or should be – considered a severe ethical lapse.

If in fact the removal from the human-subject review process was deliberately to shield those profits, someone should end up in the pokey.

I know that in the local area last night’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was overrun by the coverage of the riots in Minneapolis, but it’s worth catching his monologue. It’s basically a call to the barricades.

I saw an early report on the background of the shooter this morning and decided to wait for confirmation – and here it is:

A 17-year-old has been arrested in connection with a fatal shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at a protest sparked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.

The suspect, Kyle Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, was taken into custody Wednesday and is being held in the Lake County Judicial System pending an extradition hearing to transfer custody to Wisconsin, the Village of Antioch Police Department said in a Facebook post.

Authorities in Kenosha County had issued an arrest warrant for him earlier Wednesday on a charge of first-degree intentional homicide, the department said. The Kenosha Police Department has not commented on the arrest. [NBC News]

The Guardian critically notes:

Before the shooting, the presence of white armed men at the Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha on Tuesday night prompted criticism from protesters – and some support from law enforcement.

In a widely circulating video from Tuesday night, Kenosha police can be heard thanking and tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets.

“We appreciate you being here,” an officer is heard saying over a loudspeaker.

But David Best, the county sheriff, told media outlets after the shooting that people patrolling the streets in Kenosha were a “like a vigilante group”, and said that the shooting was evidence of why suggestions to deputize citizens to help law enforcement contain the unrest in the city had been a bad idea.

Not “like”. They are a vigilante group. I don’t know if Sheriff Best is responsible for Kenosha, but this is the fault of a law enforcement agency that collectively doesn’t understand that it is responsible, along with any governmental group deputized by an authorized leader, for the proper management of the situation.

Civilians are untrained and, worse, unscreened. While a slightly older version of Rittenhouse might have been able to worm his way into law enforcement, there would be a better chance of being caught out as a rabid racist, of even being caught in some minor crime first.

There’s 0% chance of catching an unscreened civilian with evil intentions.

A properly law enforcement agency would have taken one look at that war weapon and taken it away Rittenhouse, along with all the rest, and justified it as a threat to the public safety.

The police just had their fingers burned, and BLM has suffered a tragic loss – people protesting for justice, gunned down by some damn kid who ingested inferior, discredited ideas.

I’d never heard of a rattleback.

Oscitancy:

1. the state of being drowsy, lazy, or inattentive
2. the act of yawning [Collins Dictionary]

From reader CJ, who remarks, of course:

I’m experiencing a lot of that this morning. 🥱

Another Trump orbiter breaks away and speaks to the dangers.

The people who know Donald Trump best are sounding the alarm: our country cannot survive four more years of a Trump presidency.

In our latest ad, a former member of his inner circle & "fixer" — @MichaelCohen212 — has a dire warning for us all. #RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/suPUODOdwz

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) August 24, 2020

It’s one thing when a Democrat warns of the Trump dangers, or even a former Administration employee. But when a Trump Organization employee speaks against him, well, it’s important that any undecided independent see this video. Spread the word!

Enjoy!

WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin is furious at the RNC appearances of former UN Ambassador and Governor Nikki Haley (R-SC) and Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), and for good reason. But, in this summary, I think she’s missed a bet:

Again, Scott was not forced to appear. Nevertheless, he came to praise a president who tries to scare White suburbanites with the prospect of Blacks moving into their neighborhoods; does not say the name Breonna Taylor or comment on the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.; refers to majority-Black nations as “shithole countries,” calls Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists”; encourages China to build detention camps for Uighurs; and betrayed his country by seeking to extort an ally in a war against Russia. What does it say about Scott that he would defend an overt racist and admirer of dictators? It says he either is blinded by the right-wing propaganda machine or, just like Trump, is willing to look Americans in the eye and lie. This, too, is unworthy of praise.

Or both Haley and Scott are ambitious. It’s no great surprise, as reaching the offices that they have requires a fair amount of ambition. But it’s worth noting that neither could switch parties, as the Democrats would have nothing to do with them. And the recently announced conservative alternatives are, at the moment, nebulous. I suspect both calculated that the current GOP is more likely to survive, and if they want to advance further, it’s their best bet.

Decency and morals be damned.

Go read Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad. The pointers will be obvious.

And they’ll point right at YouKnowWho as the real child-trafficker using kids to make immortality treatments. Not all those head feints we’ve had so far. Still not sure?

Really?

The clues are all right there.

Amazing that he can say he doesn’t know anything about QAnon.

Or maybe this was all sarcasm. Only you will know.

Somedays you just need some innocent laughter.

More here.

I must be getting bored with the willfully blind who continue to swirl about in Trump’s wake, and really bored with continually seeing the same message in the tea leaves about the vast incompetency of those same Trump followers.

Astute readers may have noticed I didn’t live blog the DNC, and am not blogging the RNC. I’ve watched neither. I’m not a political animal; I blog about politics as part of being an American adult who occasionally takes his civic duties seriously, not because I particularly enjoy it.

But a lurid fantasy or two makes the debacle pass faster – take that as you will – and so, in response to concerns raised by Trump’s frantic claims that this will be the most rigged election ever, I present this.

The date? January 1st, 2021.

The context? Most or all of the states have completed tabulations, and Biden, by all counts, has comfortably won the day.

The setting? The Oval Office.

Donald J. Trump is vengefully typing a Tweet, designed to stir up his supporters, suggesting once again the election is rigged and he will not vacate the highest Office in the land come Inauguration Day.

The phone on his desk – the official Presidential phone – rings.

He stares at it. It’s not that it’s unusual for it to ring, but the news of late has not been good. Fewer sycophants have been calling to slather him in compliments and good wishes. He vaguely wonders if they have come to disbelieve in his eventual victory, achieved against all odds, by … the plans are vague in his mind. He’s not in the mood for more bad news, but it’s persistent.

It rings again. And again.

Fine. It doesn’t look good to hide from bad news.

“Hello, this is the President!” Best to project confidence.

“Hello, Mr. President. This is the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Trump was unsure of which one of the chiefs of service it might be. It was a manly, gravelly voice, the sort of voice with which he associated a chiseled, possibly scarred face, hard eyes. And a good nickname. A nickname’s a brand, a brand sells, and selling brings money, sweet sweet green. He pulled himself out of the old day dream.

“Oh, hello, er, sirs. Is there a problem? Something in Syria, maybe?” His pulse quickened. Flames world wide would be –

“We hope not, sir, but we thought that we should remind you of a little known fact.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir. By the fact that we call you ‘sir,’ Mr. President, makes you a de facto member of the military.”

“Well, yes, of course.” The President puffed his chest out. They remembered his time at a military school. He felt vaguely proud, but also –

“And we felt it incumbent to remind you, sir, that places you under military discipline.”

“Eh? What?”

“To wit, sir, your commanding officer is the electorate of the United States of America. If, sir, you have not properly vacated the Office Of the President of the United States by the time of the Inauguration of your successor, three weeks hence, we will be forced to find you insubordinate to the lawful orders of the electorate.”

“WHAT?”

The gravelly voice paused – for effect, the reality show star President absently noted – and then continued.

“A court-martial will be convened on charges of treason, a capital offense, and you will be so tried.” The phone clicked.

President Trump stared at his now-dead handset, replaced it in its cradle, and placed his head on the desk.

The cavalcade continues, according to CNN/Politics:

More than two dozen former Republican lawmakers announced Monday they are endorsing Joe Biden for president.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania are among those throwing their support behind the Democratic presidential nominee through “Republicans for Biden,” and the endorsements come on the morning of the first day of the Republican National Convention.

Biden has repeatedly emphasized Republican support as he looks to build a broad coalition in his campaign against President Donald Trump.

And does this worry the Republicans?

While the endorsements offer a symbolic boost to Biden as he seeks to win over persuadable voters, Trump is still overwhelmingly popular among Republicans, a point made by Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, who dismissed the significance of the endorsements.

“Joe Biden has been a failure in the Washington Swamp for a half century, so no one should be surprised when Swamp creatures gather to protect one of their own,” Murtaugh said. “President Trump has unprecedented support — over 95 percent — among real Republican voters and is also making strong inroads in Biden’s core Democrat constituencies, like Black Americans, Latinos, and union members. President Trump’s record of success for all Americans will carry him to victory in November.”

Which, given the toxicity of the Trump Swamp that’s taken the place of the Swamp which Trump claimed to drain, is nothing more than sour grapes. It’s also reflective of the speed with which the Republican Party is headed over the cliff of right wing extremism, because many – if not all – of these former lawmakers contributed to the GOP culture which has led to these contretemps: team politics, no concept on governance, no morals, and an absurd clinging to a past that never existed.

But under the bus they go anyways. Notice how they were all RINOed – another symptom of the fatal illness of the Republicans.

Meanwhile, here’s FiveThirtyEight’s latest summary of polls concerning Trump’s Approval and Disapproval numbers:

13+ points divergence, and after a couple of weeks of tightening up, it may be growing again. My concerns about the overall health of the American polity is in inverse correlation to the size of that abyss.

But we’ll see what the RNC does for it. My suspicion is that the Republicans are still in their epistemic bubble, unable to see how everyone else sees them, and they’ll come out with a presentation which doesn’t appeal to most voters. The real question will be, will their presentation be sufficiently repellent to sink Trump, and the other Republican candidates, even further in the polls.

Jake Hulina on Arms Control Wonk cites a few instances of how North Korea continues international trade despite sanctions, such as this one:

Despite the efforts of Cambodia and Fiji, North Korean vessels have continued to exploit their flags by manipulating their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders – devices designed for improving navigational safety. AIS transponders transmit a series of unique vessel identifiers among other physical and geographic characteristics. Of these unique identifiers, the Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number – specifically the first three digits – is used to convey a vessel’s national affiliation. By altering this number, a vessel can claim any number of national affiliations without the knowledge or authorization of the countries affected. North Korean MMSI manipulation not only enables vessels to conceal illicit trade, but may also lead to reputational harm for the exploited states as it implicates them in activities they had no part in. …

From at least 15 November 2019 until at least 11 February 2020, a cargo vessel using a Fijian MMSI number to transmit under the name A LI can be observed in AIS data operating off the coast of China. Beyond the immediate red flag that Fiji does not officially operate any international cargo vessels, there are several signs the vessel may be involved in illicit activity. The vessel’s AIS was disabled when it appeared to be headed in the direction of North Korean territorial waters, suggesting potential trade with North Korea. In addition, the IMO number – a supposedly unique identifier assigned to a vessel’s physical structure – transmitted by the A LI is assigned to an Indian tugboat.

Moreover, A LI’s transmitted length of 146 meters matches with that of YON PUNG 3, a North Korean vessel. In addition, YON PUNG 3’s IMO number (8314881) is almost identical to the transmitted IMO of A LI (8814881). The close relation between these two IMO numbers is telling; North Korea frequently alters existing IMO numbers to create false vessel identities.

AIS data, while initially supplied for one limited application, appears to be processed for many other applications these days. I haven’t been able to track down any application using this data to identify potentially fraudulent use of AIS, but it’s almost certainly out there. Hulina cites IHS Markit for the source of his information, which appears to be an interesting information supply business, but I didn’t find anything on this subject on a quick scan.

I’m a sucker for good maps.

Why Sturgis was a really terrible idea:
This visualization was created using anonymized cell phone location data records from the rally, showing where those devices were active leading up to, during, and after the event.
The rally has already been linked to multiple Covid cases. pic.twitter.com/0RG3M9XJPJ

— Decoherence (@DecoherenceWave) August 22, 2020

And that one’s a beauty in all of its dire promise.

I wonder if the various State governments that have to deal with the results of the Sturgis motorcycle rally can sue Sturgis for governmental negligence.

[h/t whoever had this on their FB feed – CT, probably]

I like it.