Landing in the morality tale category is Whistle Stop (1946), a dour tale condemning all the usual sins, with the usual rewards for those who stay on the path. I’ll skip the usual details and simply note that Kenny, our clinical subject, smokes, drinks, gambles, and plays pool, which, of course, leaves little time for working; he’s bitter and has the personality of a sponge; he’s not particularly good looking; and, finally, he has no money.
And apparently all of this is meaningless to the local ladies, who flock to him regardless.
All of this renders this tale of mobsters and the virtues of working with one’s hands, rather than being shot at by the cops, a bit hard to take.
Pertaining to a zoonosis: a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people or, more specifically, a disease that normally exists in animals but that can infect humans. There are multitudes of zoonotic diseases. …
Zoonoses may appear suddenly and be relatively virulent, as illustrated by HIV which ignited the AIDS epidemic and the coronavirus responsible for the outbreak of SARS. [MedicineNet]
There are no known U.S. cases or any cases in any countries outside China, the CDC said. “But outbreaks of unknown respiratory disease are always of concern, particularly when there are possible zoonotic origins to the outbreak,” the CDC statement said.
And here’s an informal example of Famous Last Words:
Xu Jianguo, a former top Chinese public health official, struck an assuring note and said the government’s disease control capabilities today are much stronger than they were in the early 2000s.
“More than a decade has passed,” he said. “It’s impossible for something like SARS to happen again.”
No, I don’t love my husband, let me prove it by tickling your tonsils with my tongue! Who needs reasoning powers anyways?
Blonde Ice (1948) is a study of a psychopath’s behavior, and how the expectations of those around them, a collection rendered invalid as they’re based on a model of human behavior inconsistent with the psychopath’s pattern, can lead to disaster.
We meet Claire Cummings, pretty lady, on her happy marriage day to wealthy Carl Hanneman, but little does Carl know that Claire is working hard to keep two other men happy as well: Al Herrick, and, more persistently, Les Burns. Both are newspapermen, and Herrick helped her get a job at the newspaper which led to her romancing with Les.
But the marriage to Carl is a relative surprise, and both work to keep their feelings under control. Les faces an especial challenge in this regard, as Claire insists on a full-blown kiss out on the terrace after the tying of the knot; indeed, she may be using that tongue of hers to start undoing that which even the Queen may not put asunder, as the old saying goes. Carl stumbles onto the parasite and her victim, but Claire fobs him off with an excuse, and soon they’re on their way to the resort for the usual activities of the newly wed.
But the very first morning, Carl manages to stumble over a love letter Claire is writing to Les, and, not being entirely dim, pronounces the marriage to be over. He’s nothing if not decisive: he leaves her with the cash she won at the horse races, a little from his pocket, her luggage – and the hotel bill. He’s off for home immediately.
Claire’s pissed at him, not at herself, and that night, having spotted a low-on-morals pilot for hire, gets a flight on the sly back to home, and then right back to the hotel. The next day, she comes home the normal way, calls up a surprised Les for a ride home, and, together, they discover Carl’s dead body.
The first reaction of Les is suicide, and Claire pushes it, but the police are slow to cotton to that theory, seeing there’s a lack of expected powder burns – and fingerprints. But Claire wastes little time hooking back up with Les, and he’s helpless in her beautiful-lady charms. He’s been there before Carl, and had seen her climb the social ladder to Carl’s level, and then return to him, and while there’s a case to be made for admiring her gymnastics capability, the fact that Les is helpless in her charms speaks powerfully to how the expectations that go along with physical attraction – and, by extension, other attributes – can render humans insensible to rational analyses.
But Herrick isn’t a slug. He’s been assigned the story of the Hanneman death, and he’s digging around. When an up and coming politician, wealthy & single attorney Stanley Mason, makes an appearance at the club they all frequent, Claire is fast on her feet, persuading Herrick to introduce her, and she begins the process of worming her way into his affections. But she’s run into a problem: that pilot who flew her on the sly for a surreptitious visit to the Hanneman home has put one and one together, and needs a bit of cash to tide him over.
And she doesn’t have it. The estate is in probate.
Eventually, it turns out the pilot is a gambler, and, like most, really bad at it. He puts a big squeeze on Claire, but when meets him to pay him off, she adds a gift to the package: a slug in the back.
And meanwhile she’s so close to heaven. Mason, the politician and attorney, soon wins two things: a trip to Washington as an elected Representative, and Claire’s hand in marriage soon-to-be. The latter is announced without Les knowing a thing at the party he’s attending as a guest, once again blindsiding him. But Claire is keeping him on the hook, and when Herrick figures that out, he lets Mason in on Claire’s predilections. Mason charges in to let Claire know that he’s no sucker, but he makes a mistake and takes a knife to the back from Claire. And Les’ back luck just keeps getting blacker, as he walks in on the body, picks up the knife, and turns to find the cops crashing in on the scene. Oooops.
But not all is lost. Mason’s buddy, Dr Kippinger, is a police psychologist specializing in pathological personalities, and he puts together a plan to get Claire to reveal herself as the fiery representative of hell that she is. Sadly, his plan works all too well – she confesses, and when she tries to kill the psychologist, she ends up dead on the floor as well.
Seeing Les Burns, on the floor mourning her loss, sums up that even in the face of a confession of three deaths being on her, he cannot help but mourn both her and those expectations built up by the conventions of the era: a woman and mother at home, all the better for being pretty.
He should have married his assistant, instead.
Tight and well told, this isn’t a whodunit, and not really noir, despite claims to the contrary. This, not unlike our current political contretemps, highlights how someone who operates outside of our parameters, our realm of familiarity, a psychopath who cares little or nothing for the opinions of others, except as to how they can help advance her self-centered agenda, can leave a trail of disaster behind her. It’s like pitting a guy with a knife against a guy with a machine gun, without telling the knife guy that he’s outmatched.
I shan’t recommend it, as it’s a little flat, and building empathy with the characters isn’t quite as easy as it should have been, but it’s still a worthwhile flick.
We’ve been seeing the horrific pictures and stories (not to mention ridiculous conspiracy theories) concerning the Australian wildfires, but their impact on Americans may be a bit blunted because we don’t really think Australia’s much more than an oversized island. Au contraire, thanks to Kyle Hill:
Australia’s area is 7,692,024 km2, and the United States’ area is 9,833,520 km2; subtract Alaska at 1,717,856 km2 and the continental United States’ area is roughly 8,115,664 km2, or we can just say Australia is roughly 94% the size of the continental United States.
And those fires are doing significant damage to an area about the size of our own.
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One of the defenses of the election of President Trump is that he’d learn on the job. So has he? Professor Rebecca Friedman Lissner of U.S. Naval War College, who studies Strategic and Operational Research, thinks not:
Although considerable variation characterizes this administration’s approach to decision making, learning should be apparent in across-the-board procedural improvements. Instead, President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria is a useful, recent test case that suggests the foreign policymaking process has, at minimum, not improved and may actually have grown less effective with time. Reportedly, the president “instinctively” elected to withdraw U.S. forces after a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which Erdogan signaled his intent to attack Kurdish forces in northern Syria near the Turkish border. The decision was not part of a formal policymaking process and ignored the recommendations of the Departments of Defense and State. In fact, it came as a surprise to the Pentagon, which indicates its disassociation from a meaningful interagency process and precluded carefully considered implementation. The abrupt withdrawal was rife with unintended consequences the president does not seem to have considered, from the liberation of Islamic State prisoners to the complication of an ultimately successful mission against Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and diplomatic fallout from the abandonment of the United States’s Kurdish partners. Its suddenness echoes earlier presidential decisions about Syria, most notably Trump’s surprise order to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops in December 2018—which the president later partially reversed, but not before the resignation of Secretary Mattis in protest. In a further procedural parallelism, the president seems to now support a new plan that leaves approximately 200 U.S. troops in eastern Syria to guard local oil fields. [Lawfare]
I found her use of the instinctively interesting. In the evolutionary context, we do well with off-the-cuff decisions when they regard situations which we’ve faced many times before as a species. It should be obvious that making complex decisions regarding whether or not troops should be stationed in the Middle East on an instinctive basis is simple madness.
Perhaps most critically, the president’s personality is simply not amenable to learning. Research in cognitive psychology indicates that individuals tend to be better learners when they are open to environmental feedback, change their beliefs readily and receive discrepant information open-mindedly. Yet first-person accounts of those who have worked with the president, at-a-distance psychological assessments, and observation of President Trump’s public rhetoric and behavior all indicate that the president indexes poorly on each of these dimensions.
I would simply say that the President is a narcissist who cannot, in his own mind, be wrong. Since improvement implies failure, in his mind, we won’t see failure.
In fact, learning on the job was the expectation of people who didn’t understand the inferior nature of Donald J. Trump.
Not much is making it through the congestion clogging my brain as I undergo the bi-annual head cold which is my doom, but through all the analyses of the Qassim Soleimani killing I haven’t seen anyone talking about how Iran really might respond.
I mean, they can run around screaming for revenge, kill some Western aid workers, and be done, or launch an attack on an American naval vessel, but this doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter: What does Iran really want to accomplish?
If you shrug and say, Hurt America badly!, well, that’s rather dodging the question. Anyone who’s played a thoughtful, competitive game is well aware that analyzing your opponents methods in the context of their goals is of vital importance. And when you Hurt America badly!, you have to define what that means. Or, more accurately, what the leaders of Iran might mean by that.
Of course, a military response is visible and satisfying, but the riposte from the American military might be devastating to the Islamic Republic of Iran – after all, a visible sign that Allah is not on your side could be dispiriting to the masses – it could even foment revolt. And, in the end, the United States can always build a new ship or replace a few dead troops, tragic as it may be to say. Our resources are amazing.
But we’re the Great Satan, so I wonder if Iran’s leaders are getting together to think about this more deeply. They might ask themselves, What has hurt the United States the most over the last couple of decades? And I fear their answer might be this:
Donald J. Trump in the White House.
If they come to that conclusion, we may see a response designed to rally American support behind the worst President the United States has had the misfortune to have in office. Another four years of Trump? More division, polarization, mistreatment of refugees and immigrants, more encouragement of rabid racism.
Over the next six months, historians may trace the future of the United States, not Iran.
Ten Little Indians (1959) is a TV movie made from the Agatha Christie play And Then There Were None (1943), and chronicles the arrival of guests and staff at Indian Island for a weekend of revelry in a classic old Victorian house, supported by the mysterious generosity of Mr and Mrs Owen.
Mr and Mrs U. N. Owen.
Soon enough, the classic nursery rhyme Ten Little Indians is found inscribed colorfully on a wall, beneath which are ten Indian statues. It’s quaintly amusing.
Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.
The tension ratchets up when the butler plays a record on instructions from the missing Owens, but it’s not music, it’s a dry accusation of everyone in the house being responsible for one or more murders. Even the kitchen staff is unexcused. The sensibility of an imminent social faux-pas is upon us.
And then a guest collapses and dies while sipping a drink. Dr. Armstrong diagnoses cyanide poisoning, based on the symptoms of foaming at the mouth and … choking.
The bodies begin hitting the floor in earnest shortly thereafter, each echoing its line in the rhyme and always followed by a broken Indian statue, until, as the thunder crashes and the lights go out, only two are left, torn apart by the knowledge that it has to be one of them committing these revenge murders.
Right?
The production values are, unfortunately, fairly inferior, even for 1959, and the pace is just a trifle hurried. We never do really get to know anyone well enough to mourn their demise, or even cheer on their increasingly desperate failures. This is unfortunate, as it reduces the tension we could have felt for all these doomed people.
Still, it’s a lovely – and fortunately short – bit of fun.
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I see that, in the wake of the United States’ fatal attack on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps‘ Qasem Soleimani, Iraq is taking action:
The Iraqi parliament has voted to obligate the Iraqi government “to work towards ending the presence of all foreign troops on Iraqi soil,” according to the media office of the Iraqi parliament. [CNN]
This may be an opportunity for my reader to evaluate their favorite “pundit” to see if they really are a pundit, or merely an ideological zealot, unworthy of your attention. Did your pundit attack President Obama for pulling most of the troops out of Iraq, using that to blame Obama for the development of ISIS? Even though Obama was legally obligated to do so?
Let’s see if your pundit begins screaming about Trump doing the same. If he does, then she’s a pundit – even-handedness is the definition, despite the fact that contravening Iraq’s parliamentary will is, in itself, problematic.
If, on the other hand, they remain amazingly silent on the topic, then you can guess they’re nothing more than an ideological water carrier for Trump, and really aren’t worthy of further attention.
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My apologies to Kevin Drum, but I must point out a flaw in his history of the United States. During his analysis of the American killing of the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassim Soleimani, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and a number of others, including four generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kevin suggests …
Escalation of hostilities almost never gets the other guy to back down. It doesn’t get us to back down, after all. Why should we think it will get Iran to back down?
Except it has. In 1983, the United States lost 241 military personnel, and the French lost 58, in an attack by Islamic Jihad. The goal of the attack?
The result? It may be questionable to use Wikipedia to connect action to result, but here it is:
The attacks eventually led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon, where they had been stationed following the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) withdrawal in the aftermath of Israel‘s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
And I recall observing at the time that President Reagan’s force had, indeed, been chased out of Lebanon.
My point is not that Drum forgot about this, really, but that, yes, sometimes the application of deadly force can cause another nation to back down – if it’s done properly. There is no generally applicable rule; it’s entirely dependent on the character of the attacked entity. As a colleague I met at the start of my career once noted, the Indians succeeded in chasing the Brits out of India using peaceful resistance because the Brits couldn’t stand the immorality of slaughtering the Indians en masse. There would have been no such moral compunction if the foreign invaders had been Nazis. The United States suffered mass casualties in the attack on the MNF, which was publicly unacceptable; another such incident would have damaged the GOP brand for a generation, because the casualties were a raw reminder of what happened in Vietnam.
So we left, because the GOP was in charge.
Of course, the problem with the current incident is that Trump and his Administration has not displayed competency. That doesn’t mean this won’t stop the Iranians from meddling in their neighbors business, but it really lowers the odds that this has been thought completely through, particularly since we have this report:
When President Trump’s national security team came to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, they weren’t expecting him to approve an operation to kill Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach to brief Trump on airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia groups.
One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take, among them targeting Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.
Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president’s decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors. [Los Angeles Times]
The scene was indeed set perfectly. Washington could not have chosen a better time, as after a series of protests from Baghdad to Tehran and Beirut, Soleimani had lost some public support and was seen as part of Iran’s suppression system against people and their free wills. The attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad had also turned the majority of Iraqi political forces and the international community against Soleimani as the highest — albeit unofficial — leader of the PMU. The location turned out to be perfect as well. The strike took place in Iraqi territory, raising questions among the Iraqi public about the reason for an Iranian general being present in Iraq, especially after accusations facing Iran-backed forces of killing Iraqi protesters and abducting many of them. Selecting a quiet place in the airport also prevented the killing of any civilians that might allow Iran to victimize themselves and demonize the United States.
But, in the end, I’m just picking a very important nit; I more or less agree with Drum:
A Talleyrandesque sort of devious statesman might—might—be able to handle the aftermath of this in a way that makes relative peace more likely. Unfortunately, Trump is an idiot who is doing this because he’s obsessed with Benghazi and wants to show his predecessor that, by God, a red line is a red line. He has no idea what he’ll do next.
The Fantasticks (1995) is the story of a tutelary deity of love taking the form of a carnival in order to press two young neighbors to honor their mutual vows of love. This is a light, fluffy American musical, and it got off to a fast start but then fell apart, and if I made up parts of this review, that’s just too damn bad.
The term, Nepantla is a Nahuatl (Aztec language) term connoting in between or a reference to the space of the middle. A number of contemporary scholars, writers, poets and artists have elaborated upon this concept, enhancing and/or adding on to the Nahua concept. (See Gloria Anzaldua, Pat Mora, Yreina Cervantez, Miguel Leon Portilla).
Most often the term is referencing endangered peoples, cultures, and/or gender, who due to invasion/conquest/marginalization or forced acculturation, engage in resistance strategies of survival. In this sense, this larger, cultural space of Nepantla becomes a postmodern paradigm or consciousness rooted in the creation of a new middle. [ChicanoArt.org]
A conservative friend sent me a YouTube, purporting (and probably is) from Australia, commenting on the current dire fire situation. I thought it would just be an interesting documentary, but it turns out to be a potent cocktail of facts and highly suspect assertions, which you can read as conspiracy theories. The video runs for 31 minutes, so you can watch it, or you can skip it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxHcBDp4J84 [link is now broken]
For me, the red flags are raised by these observations, chronologically ordered:
Doppler radar is used to keep the storms away. This was pushed so quickly I almost missed it, but there it was beginning @ 5:36. Then there’s this radar image @ 5:55:
Impressive, no? Ignoring the issue of simple fakery, the problem, of course, is that if there’s any evidence of Doppler radar affecting the weather – pushing the clouds away, as this chap would have us believe – I can’t find it. Wikipedia doesn’t know about it[1]. I can’t even find skeptical commentary on the subject; you’d think Skeptical Inquirer would have checked into such a claim, and I’ve been a subscriber for decades. I’m no physicist, but it’s my suspicion that Doppler radar could have an effect on the weather if the amount of power pushing the signal out was so outrageous that it burned out the transmitting elements of the apparatus. And possibly the power plant backing it.
The end of Australia (@ 14:00) is nigh due to the politicians. Perhaps my weakest objection, this dude asserts that a series of decisions made by popularly elected politicians were all taken in order to destroy Australia as it’s currently known. My problem with this is two-fold: (1) Does anyone really think a vast collection[2] of elected politicians can coordinate such a conspiracy over the number of necessary years, (2) just to destroy the very thing that benefits them? Really? I’d grant the suggestion that politicians will make foolish decisions, especially if, like the American President Trump, they smell short-term gain and are quite self-centered or delusional, but to expect the politicians to cold-bloodedly destroy that which gives them value is just silly.
Chemtrail conspiracy mongering (15:37). The dude doesn’t actually actually call it that, but he remarks that aluminium, barium, and strontium have been sprayed on the country. Upon looking up barium spraying, I discovered this article in The Guardian, entitled My month with chemtrails conspiracy theorists: … But to Tammi, a 54 year-old organic farmer, it’s a “chemtrail”: a toxic cocktail of aluminum, strontium and barium sprayed from planes in a plot to control the weather, the population and our food supply. Chemtrails have been researched and found to be jet exhaust and condensation. While I didn’t view this dude’s other videos that concentrate on that subject, I’m willing to guess he’s gulped down the chemtrail conspiracy pill – or is at least willing to use it to manipulate his more conspiracy minded audience members.
His careful stirring of passions over reason (@16:45). He admits he’s no experts on forest fires, and yet he can’t help but use the chaos and fury of a wildfire to suggest that the forests have been salted, as it were, for a tremendous fire. That stirs emotional fury, the thought of someone planning to destroy the life on the continent through carefully planned fires. Is this rational? No, and it’s planned as a way to ensure the audience doesn’t start thinking for itself. He’s evoking the flight or fight reflex, and this strategy is often used by these sorts, as explained in The Persuaders, a book I recommend for those who want to understand how marketeers and dudes like the guy in this video try to manipulate audiences. A little later, around 19:30, he uses the term genocide to describe what is going on in Australia, another stir of the emotions.Why not consult with experts? Well, they might come up with inconvenient facts which would not support the tale he’s telling.
Climate change denial (@20:54). In just a single comment, he shrugs it off. It doesn’t support his narrative, so he doesn’t consider it important; he’s focused on his conspiracy theory that Australians are under attack by their own politicians.
In general, this is a skillful mixture of facts and dubious assertion, and the stir-stick is a gentleman with a very fine voice and foreign manner – a problem Americans in general have is that a good accent can cover a host of sins. Brit Andrew Sullivan observed that he could push the most outrageous stuff in class at Harvard, and most of his fellow students would swallow it all because, he said, of his authoritative British accent.
The problem for an audience member who does a bit of research, though, is that the video completely loses its value because of his reliance on discredited and/or deeply implausible conspiracy theories. For example, he suggests the government isn’t nearly doing enough. Maybe, I don’t know. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has certainly not impressed me with his mental acuity. But this dude doesn’t have any credibility, so I don’t know.
Similarly, his overview of MPs not being required to disclose whether they own water rights might be a good point. Australia is an arid continent, perhaps this is happening and is a serious matter. Maybe they are corrupt. If only I could take this dude seriously.
He’s entirely ruined any valid points by his inclusion of these conspiracy theories and his method of arguing. Ironically, he warns that some web sites have fallacious information or pictures; I’m not sure if he’s defending his territory by a bit of sleight of hand, or if he’s in earnest in his warning.
So, for the viewer who’s impressed by this video, be warned: it’s included conspiracy theories and employed communication strategies that render it quite untrustable. I rather enjoyed his delivery and manner, and I have to wonder if it’s rehearsed or comes naturally. It reminds me of Rush Limbaugh, although Limbaugh’s voice is warmer and more friendly.
But, in the end, that’s fluff: when you’re pushing sordid lies, your voice’s warm and friendly qualities are don’t matter. Anything this guy says has to be taken with a very large grain of salt.
1 Which is not to suggest Wikipedia is the end-all, but it’s certainly a good place to start.
2 A rabble, if you will, but a very dignified rabble.
… a critical concept and term from Ibn Khaldun, meaning the “capacity of a social group for concerted collective action.”
When a society – or empire, since that was Turchin’s focus – is in decline, its asabiya is running low. For those of us who like economy of expression, asabiya and societal health is correlated. And in a society in which the asabiya is running low and overpopulation is present, Turchin observes internecine war begins to break out in the upper levels of society which are involved in governance as they battle to stay in the elite, or even to become a dominant faction.
While Turchin suggests this is because of a burgeoning scarcity of resources, basically the commoners who do the work, he also notes that it can be caused by the cessation of an existential threat. We’ve seen the latter in the failure of the Soviet Union. China may be just as dangerous as the Soviet Union, but, unlike the Soviet Union in its hey-day, it doesn’t try to frighten the United States into submission; the leadership of the China, whether due to internal issues or due to craft, is very subtle in its adversarial relationship with the United States.
What brings this up? This APreport concerning the attacks of Trump’s allies on Democratic Presidential nominee-wannabe Joe Biden:
A video of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that was selectively edited to falsely suggest he made racist remarks during a recent speech made the rounds Thursday on social media, raking in more than a million views on one tweet alone.
Experts have been warning about the dangers of selectively edited videos being used as a misinformation tactic ahead of the 2020 presidential election. They are easier to make and do not require the sophisticated technology needed to produce deepfake videos, which are fabricated to look realistic.
In the edited clip, which was less than 20 seconds long, Biden says, “Our culture is not imported from some African nation or some Asian nation.” Social media users paired the video with comments like “It’s almost like Joe Biden is a Racist.” Posts with the video surfaced across social media platforms on Wednesday.
For those of us who believe in the value of facts, truth, and fair play over the ethic (!) of victory at all costs, this is disheartening, especially when Steve Benen predicts this is only the beginning.
So let’s talk about the implications of high asabiya. Often acquired in the face of continual and severe threat, it is a recognition that, as a whole, we are greater than our aggregate worth as individuals. This is essence of teamwork, and so much more. But the binding has to go both ways, the potential members of the society to be bound together by asabiya must have motivations to join that society that are greater than the motivations to remain apart.
Those latter motivations, of suspicion and distrust, are often traceable to differences in color, religion, perceived value systems, politics, etc – and more subtle factors, such as affinity for dogmatism, or certainty that you are always right. These factors are more or less unconscious; one sees conscious, manipulative actions for socio-political reasons, which most often have to do with jealousy of position, as leaders who do not wish to become small frogs in big ponds exert themselves to keep their followers separate – keep the pond smaller so they seem bigger and more dominant. The latter can be, but are not necessarily, pathological; it certainly lessens asabiya.
Contrariwise, implicit in the increase of asabiya is the commitment to treat others in the bound community fairly, in all venues, from sharing food to competing for political position. Treating other members unfairly is the utter equivalent to dumping arsenic in the community water supplies in order to be rid of some hated personality, it’s really simple as that. There may be some short-term benefit, but in the long term, no matter how much the miscreant wishes to believe otherwise, it’s a loser for everyone.
That’s what I see happening here. Someone – I don’t know who, but probably plural – who is no longer worried about outside threats has decided that it’s time to tear the United States apart in their pursuit of wealth, power, and prestige. Nevermind that there are strong external threats, and Trump’s strikes against Iran-aligned Iraqi militias has made those threats stronger.
But what really bothers me is the fact that this is just another step on the path trod by the Roman emperors and Senate, the French nobility, the English nobility, and many others as population pushed up pressure on resources, foes were vanquished, the elite feared losing their status, and the personal pride and religious vanities of some all conspired to destroy the social cohesion which had brought them their eminence in the world. Not that eminence, in and of itself, is desirable, but the positive things that can be done with eminence, such as alleviating illness and suffering, suffocating the warlike instincts of others, and all that sort of thing, are lost when that eminence is lost.
Trump may not be aware of this problem in a direct way, but indirectly, through world-wide polls of confidence in American leadership and its importance to the American citizenry, he has some awareness. We know this because he lies about it. He says world confidence in America has soared since he took office. Wrong.
But, in the meantime, we keep walking this bloody, weary path of history, ripping ourselves apart, rather than operating as a team to face the immense challenges of today. Those who have become fixated on wealth, power, and prestige keep denying reality and use the political weapons of total destruction in their strategies to hold on and gain more of those things, no matter what the cost might be for the future.
It sounds depressingly like Turchin. The path leads down into darkness and disaster.
Tensions abound in Pamela (2020), which we caught on Amazon Prime but is listed in IMDb as a February 2020 release. This is a tight family-tensions thriller, set over a single dinner. As mother Pamela, daughter Vanessa, and son Matt order and ignore dinner and down far too many cocktails, the latter two reveal they know there’s a big, nasty family secret involving their late father and themselves. As they seek answers, each prods the other, but Pamela is the chief target of their thrusts, their hunger for answers to the questions brought up by their shared childhoods. Who is their father, after all, and why did he do as he did? And why is she defending him?
As we learn that no one’s perfect, we also discover how those imperfections interact with each other, and how that affects the characters, even those that aren’t there to defend themselves – and why deep, dark secrets can sometimes be problems with no good answers.
There’s no question this is well-acted, but the script might have benefited from another draft, especially as some pointed barbs might have brought out a bit more tension, a few more questions to chase around on the table with one’s fork. And I’m curious as to whether they tried to film this without that unnamed furry animal clinging to Matt’s face, and finally decided he looked better with it than without it. It was … distracting.
But this kept the attention of my Arts Editor and myself, and not out of morbid curiosity. Each actor knows what they’re trying to accomplish, and they do it well. As I recall, the movie poster was decorated with various film festival awards, and it earned them.
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Jason Campbell captures a prime specimen off of Fox News:
Trump campaign Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: "In 2016, President Trump was the foregone nominee from the beginning. Never did anyone go up against President Trump. We loved our nominee." pic.twitter.com/9Q4aXLV0Lu
This is so Soviet it makes me mildly ill. Much like the Soviets airbrushed figures of disgraced high Soviet officials out of photographs in an effort to reshape history to their advantage, this McEnany character is trying to turn Trump into the eternal and obvious savior of the Republicans – in the face of one of the largest Republican fields ever back in 2016. In the face of a field which fought tooth and claw to beat Trump. It’s worth noting in the face of this blatantly false propaganda that Trump didn’t win all of the Republican primaries (in Minnesota he came in a paltry 3rd, behind Rubio and Cruz); in fact, he only began to poll more than 50% after the race came down to him, Cruz, and Kasich.
It helps to remember that McEnany is all of 31 years old. She has no experience with seeing this sort of damnable propaganda for what it is; she’d need to be 60+ years old. But her disregard of the facts remains inexcusable. An honorable campaign would fire her immediately and apologize; Trump’s campaign will give her a raise and the Medal of Freedom, because that’s how they operate.
But Fox News viewers do have memories. Will they disregard them in this casting of Trump as their last, great, eternal hope? Or will they growl a bit and take her with a grain of salt?
First stabbed, now you get hunted down. Tough life. Or the particular might even ask if the couple had body organs named Riverwest. The actual headline?
Not quite so harsh on the victims of the stabbing. Makes you wonder if the translation from headline to FB news summary is created by the content provider or created by FB, or more likely an automated FB process (we shan’t make the mistake of calling it an AI).
Fishing Naked (2015) is an oddball mixture of juvenile humor and self-aware screwing with audience expectations, the sort of movie that makes you wish it was better, but also worry that making it better would make it worse.
Young adults David and Rodney live at the intersection of American and Indian life in backwoods Oregon, raising some mild hell while fly fishing and messing with tourists using their Bigfoot suit. When two young women, Sarah and Amy, wander in, getting away from the big city after finishing school, they’re more than ready to jump when the ladies say hop – and Bigfoot gets a workout. The fun & games begin.
Meanwhile, David’s grandma happens to be pleasantly enthralled by the floating orbs she seems to be the only one seeing. But when a tourist manages to photograph something, blurry as it may be, that doesn’t belong, the juvenilia turns into the interesting. Grandma knows something they don’t, and when it comes time to do something about it – is it time to panic, or help out?
Sure, it’s silly and hormone-ridden, but just when it become painfully predictable, it isn’t, and that’s where the real fun lies. Sure, it could have been better in parts – but would that have detracted from the parts that turned out to be good? An indie apparently made on a minuscule budget, this survives on the enthusiasm of its acting and the mild cleverness of its script.
Ever wonder what lives at various depths of the ocean? Try neal.fun. I had no idea polar bears could be found, living one hopes, at 25 meters, or about 75 feet. I do see a claim that the bird name the Thick-Billed Murre can be found at 211m, while Wikipedia will only admit to 150m, so I’m uncertain as to its accuracy.
This did spark in me a question as to analogous situations, in the sense that, at least in me, the idea of going down deep into the ocean in a mere scuba suit leaves me with a sense of apprehension, even if the problems of pressure and nitrogen narcosis were solved – I dislike the thought of some hungry predator taking a chunk out of me. But any similar situations?
Caving, perhaps, although caves are not known for their predators.
But how about a hypothetical species based outside of an atmosphere? It is not unreasonable to suggest such a creature might have eyes sensitive to the electromagnetic spectrum that is filtered out by our upper atmosphere. Might they look at a planet like Earth as a dark and foreboding hole in space, possibly populated by similarly predatory creatures that create unease in me?
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Following up on the use of Mechanical Turk in research, it turns out there’s more flaws to this approach than just bot-induced corruption, as NewScientistnotes:
People seem to be answering research survey questions randomly on Amazon’s crowdsourcing website. The findings could mean that many academic studies are wrong.
Michael Chmielewski at Southern Methodist University in Texas and Sarah Kucker at Oklahoma State University recently revisited data they had collected on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, a virtual labour marketplace where people are paid to perform short tasks. MTurk is often used to gather survey responses for social science research.
Since 2015, Chmielewski and Kucker had used MTurk to collect data on how a child’s language skills developed depending on their parents’ personalities. When New Scientist published an article in 2018 claiming automated bots were targeting the site and ruining academic studies, the pair revisited their data and found inconsistencies. But rather than bots ruining their data, it seems humans racing through possible survey answers and not reading the questions were causing the problems.
By performing a statistical analysis on their results, the team found that the responses just weren’t right. “The conclusions were just massively wrong,” says Chmielewski. “Well-established links between neuroticism and depression weren’t there. We were seeing links in the wrong directions. Things that should have been negatively related were now positively related.”
One of the most difficult elements of science is collection of data, and it appears Mechanical Turk was merely an illusion of a source of data. A worker elaborates:
Kristy Milland who does work offered on MTurk wasn’t surprised by the results. “MTurk is a labour platform, not a participant pool,” she says. “We signed up to make money, not to help science.”
Self-reporting and other sources that might be classified as secondary must always be treated with skepticism by researchers, even when that is the only available data. As Chmielewski & Kucker demonstrate, it’s possible, in many cases, to examine the data for consistency and plausibility, even though that might seem to be placing an otherwise unwarranted expectation on the data. In the future, more researchers should do the same.
Shadows On The Stairs (1941) is a light and floofy story within a story, as a writer pursuing a woman to be his wife is prodded into writing a murder mystery, and soon a boarding house of victims and potential murderers are running around in hapless circles. While the actors make a go of it, the story is unconvincing and joyless. Especially the matriarch of the boarding house.
If you’re interested in digital privacy but not a techie, this WaPoarticle may be of interest to you. I liked this bit on ultimate goals:
There’s more: Amazon also keeps reports on appliances you connect to Alexa — in my smart home, every flip of a light switch or adjustment on the thermostat. Last week, Amazon reported that Alexa users received “millions” of doorbell and motion announcements during the 2019 holiday season, “from carolers to delivery drivers and holiday guests.” Surveilling that many homes is a thing the company brags about. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but I review all technology with the same critical eye.)
Amazon isn’t building its dossier on you just to be creepy. It wants your voice and your data to train its AI, the technology it hopes will rule our future economy.
“And I, for one, welcome our new Artificially Intelligent Overlords!”
Maybe my reader is copacetic with that, but I’m not. Especially given the inscrutability of AI decisions.
And I am planning to check up on the author’s recommended privacy service, Jumbo. It’d be a pity if it’s just a dodge for one more company to get its claws into my data, but it looks useful if it’s on the up and up.
Hey, we just caught Sneezy! Any other dwarves back there?
Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) has the elements of a good story, but they don’t come together. Drummond, whose place in life is never made clear, makes a dramatic entrance by ignoring landing tower instructions and landing his plane in a dense London fog, ignoring reporters’ questions, and driving off towards the hospital where his longtime friend, Algy, is waiting for his wife to give birth. From there, he heads for home to meet with the Commissioner of Scotland Yard.
But before he gets there, a young & attractive woman appears out of the foggy darkness and collapses as he skids to a halt. Stopping as any chivalrous lad would do, he puts her in the car and then runs off to investigate a gunshot. Upon discovering a dead body next to a marsh, he dashes back to the car, only to discover it’s gone. Hearing a splash, he returns to the body, only to discover it is gone, too.
Resuming his journey by foot, eventually his car drives up with his butler, Tenny, at the wheel, who announces it was found in a ditch. Finding clues in his car, they continue to home, where Commissioner pleads with him to be quiet, as the Commissioner is on vacation. Meanwhile, at nearby Greystone Manor, an old friend of the Commissioner, Norman Merridew, is caring for the young woman, who we learn is Phyllis Clavering, and when Drummond follows the clues to the manor, Merridew explains the situation, proclaiming her driven mad with grief at the recent death of her brother, and a more distant death of her father.
However, when Drummond returns her handbag to her personally, she contrives to secrete a message in his hat; when he later recovers the message, it consists of nursery rhymes. The fun continues, between Algy, who joins Drummond at his call, leaving his wife to have the baby by herself and him hyperventilating over it, Tenny, who deliciously gets just about every good line in the movie and delivers them in the driest British manner possible, the bad guys, who are plausible and not buffoons, and the damsel in distress, who makes for a damsel who’s more than willing to take care of herself, yet finds Drummond irresistible.
The problem? It’s not the plot, it’s the presentation. Drummond, played by Ray Milland, shows little emotional range; it’s almost as if he’s bipolar and currently in the manic phase, an outgoing optimist who shows little concern about the artillery his opponents may be lugging about, and while his daring choices do make a certain sense, his insensibility of the chances he takes makes him a little hard to take. This is Milland comparatively early in his career, with only traces of his future trademark style (far as I can make out, it consisted of speaking through his nose, but an effective technique), and his features rarely remind the audience that This Is Ray Milland! The latter is a good thing, but his racy delivery of lines seems to be a mistake.
Algy, Drummond’s friend having his first baby, is painfully two note – either panicking over the baby, or a spear-carrier with no personality. Sidekicks are hard to respect if they’re not given a good backstory, and Algy is not.
On the plus side, Phyllis the damsel is, as I noted, given quite the personality for a lady of the era. Most damsels of the time waited around for someone to rescue them, and were little more than Wonder bread with saltless butter, but Phyllis, while happy to accept help, doesn’t shrink from helping the cause along. Her proactive approach to her dilemma, her spunk (to use my Arts Editor technical jargon) makes her an unexpected charmer.
But perhaps the best, if most limited role, is that of the butler, Tenny, whose wry observances of how the plot is going are unexpected gems of dry humor, to be gathered, cherished, and saved from Drummond’s blundering feet. Even with a black eye, he delivers every line with a spoonful of relish.
It didn’t help that the print we saw was quite muddy, both in its visual and audio qualities. But that just accentuated the problems with the presentation, and were not the source. It’s too bad, because the story actually has some fun twists to it, especially as the Commissioner gets the last laugh on Drummond. But Tenny’s gems are too infrequent to make the journey from plane to denouement worth the travel.
Maybe I’m just silly, but this app strikes me as a commentary on our approach to our digital lives:
Let’s be real: When you download a new app, you probably don’t bother to read its privacy policy first. I write about privacy as a journalist and even I rarely bother to read those policies. They’re written in eye-glazing legalese perfectly calibrated to make any normal human being want to stop reading as soon as possible.
Who can blame us for rushing to check that little box that says we agree to the terms of service?
Now, a new tool called Guard promises to read the privacy policies of various apps for us. It harnesses the power of AI to analyze reams of text, breaking down each sentence for the level of risk it represents for our privacy. [Vox]
Meaning we can’t find a better way to actually have agreements that are readable by non-lawyers. Instead, we have to employ a computer proxy which will read and evaluate these agreements, without having any idea if it’s doing a worthwhile job or not – and you can bet your booties it won’t come with some sort of guarantee or warranty as to whether it does anything more than take up bits in your computer.
It’s rather like asking a randomly selected stranger at a law conference to go over your last will and testament and pronounce whether it meets applicable legal standards or not. Maybe your stranger is a lawyer with the appropriate specialization, but then again, maybe not.
