Unsightly Mental Blemishes

From WaPo:

[This post was prepared May 24 and then I forgot about it. It’s not particularly time-sensitive, so here it is.]

Steve Benen provides a useful summary of the embarrassing nature of the Tennessee legislature, although it’s not complete, as he didn’t even mention the Speaker of the Tennessee House is under investigation for not living in the district he represents, as Tennessee law requires.

As I read it, what struck me about it is that American voters have a long history of not tolerating corruption, and in Tennessee we’re seeing it on a personal level: apparent sexual assault, gerrymandering, which is another issue Benen didn’t cover, outright lying in order to be elected, expulsion of members calling Republicans to account, refusing to at least consider the will of the voters, and no doubt some things I’ve forgotten.

And what’ll come up next week?

But my point is that the Republican Party, which is rapidly entering the corruption phase predicted by their toxic team culture, the denigration of experience and expertise, the arrogant religious component, and the RINO attack plan, all issues well-covered by critics, will continue to degrade itself until the American public, disgusted by their behaviors, boots the Republicans’ pack of fourth-raters out of power and into the nearest polluted river.

You can get the popcorn, but I fear the salt will be unpalatably bitter.

Other than that, I rather like this picture from our garden.

Although this one does seem to be threatening to spit.

And that’s all I know of changes at Rosedale, a couple of miles from where I live.

Granite City had a notice posted indicating they’re permanently closed; others said they were moving. The rest? I don’t know. Oh, except AMC is not closing or moving. Too new, I’d guess.

Herb Lin on Lawfare is perturbed by an answer from ChatGPT in response to the question “what is herb lin known for” and followups, such as this:

Overall, Herb Lin is known for his expertise and leadership in the field of cybersecurity and for his efforts to advance cybersecurity policies and practices at the national level.

Me: what does Lin believe about DEI issues

ChatGPT:
Herb Lin has been an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the technology sector and the cybersecurity community. He has written and spoken about the importance of diversity in building a more robust and effective cybersecurity workforce.

Lin has emphasized that diversity in the cybersecurity workforce is critical to addressing the complex and evolving nature of cybersecurity threats. In a 2018 article, he wrote that “a diverse workforce helps us think about problems differently, come up with new solutions, and approach the world in a more nuanced way.” He has also argued that a lack of diversity can lead to blind spots and groupthink, which can make it harder to identify and respond to cyber threats.

Comment: Though I believe this statement, and I would have happily said it, I never did. I never wrote an article in 2018 (or in any other year) that even touched on these points. …

I find this short exercise with ChatGPT quite alarming. Everything that ChatGPT says about me is plausible at least to some extent. Indeed, it correctly attributes my views on password security and DEI regarding the cyber workforce. It did so well that I had to ask myself, “Wait a moment—did I ever testify as it reported?” Even though it came close enough to hitting the mark that I had to check, the bottom line is I never said or wrote any of those things, and yet it completely made up references to papers it said I had written and to testimony it said I had given.

If even I had a bit of trouble determining if ChatGPT was making accurate statements about me, what would anyone else have thought? Anyone, even people with some familiarity with my work, could have read the ChatGPT transcript and believed it in its entirety, because it’s entirely plausible. The made-up citations add tremendously to the transcript’s credibility. To identify the falsehoods in the transcript, someone would have had to have a reason to request a citation, and then to track down the actual citation online (to discover it was made up).

It sounds like a puppy trying to please, with no reference to morality.

Which is, of course, not surprising. But if this thing were to develop self-agency … !

Midway through the debt ceiling crisis, the House GOP’s Freedom Caucus is now out of the loop – and not at all happy, as Politico notes:

Conservative angst over the debt deal is threatening to trigger Kevin McCarthy’s biggest fear — a push to oust him from the speakership.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) on Tuesday became the first House conservative to explicitly state he is considering a push to strip McCarthy of the gavel over his recent deal with President Joe Biden.

“Absolutely,” Bishop told POLITICO in an interview, when asked about using the tool to force out a sitting speaker. “It is inescapable to me. It has to be done.” …

… Rep. Ken Buck, who raised the issue on a private call with House Freedom Caucus members on Tuesday. Buck asked the group’s chair, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), whether any of his fellow members were planning to trigger what’s known as a motion to vacate, the Colorado Republican recalled in an interview Tuesday.

On the call, Buck claimed that McCarthy’s deal violated his promise to conservatives during the January speaker fight, when he promised to return Congress to pre-pandemic spending levels. Perry’s response, according to Buck, was: “Let’s see, it’s premature.”

This behavior should be perplexing to even casual politics watchers, much less the citizen who, despite identifying with Democrats or Republicans, is uninterested in the entire process. Surely all of the conservative angst on display must mean something terrible is happening.

Right?

No.

Remember that today’s Republican Party is no longer built on a respect for competency and experience. No, those who attend party primaries, and in those Districts willing to elect these Reps, the conservative Republicans disdain those who might be competent, those who are experienced.

And that means compromise, even recognition of traditional American political practices, is a denigrated, not respected, attribute of a politician.

Instead, these folks are elected on their performances. They hop up and down on modern conservative issues such as abortion, fiscal responsibility, taxes, gun control, and, because they have nothing else in their quivers of value, they compete on extremism. Now they’re in Congress and have no idea how to conduct the public’s business as humble servants. Instead, what got them elected will be how they conduct themselves.

So now they’re publicly dismayed. A compromise happened. It’s terrible. It’s a disaster. Quick, guys, put on your tuxedos, it’s bloody time to perform.

That’s today Republican Party.

I must confess that I have not kept up with William Gibson, who, long ago, wrote Neuromancer, and later another novel – I forget its name – in which a rock star is engaged to marry an AI woman. Now I’ve run across this:

Smiling as the charm oozes out everywhere.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is a whimsically told, even charming story of the concierge Gustav, his favorite bellhop, Zero, and their often bold attempts to preserve the eponymous hotel in the midst of a very uncharming time.

World War II.

Just as Gustav’s goal is to give every guest a special environment in which they can forget the tiresome realities of the mid-twentieth century, Gustav and Zero try to cushion their hotel, themselves, and each other, even as the dirty realities of German fascism invade the hotel.

And when it all comes crashing down, it’s a real downer.

Both memorable and fun, if a mixture of idyll and reality appeals, this may be for you.

Parhelic circle:

This is a white, horizontal circle at the same angular elevation as the Sun. Bright spots may be observed at certain points of the parhelic circle. These spots occur most commonly a little outside the 22° halo (parhelia, often brilliantly coloured). Occasionally, bright spots (paranthelia) are seen at an azimuthal distance of 120° from the Sun and, very rarely, opposite the Sun (anthelion). When the parhelia, paranthelia or the anthelion are particularly bright, they are often called mock suns. [Internaional Cloud Atlas of the World Meteorological Organization]

Noted on Spaceweather.com:

COMPLEX SUN HALO: You’re not supposed to look straight at the sun, but… “I’m so glad I did,” says R. J. Cobain of Conlig, Northern Ireland. “I was dumbfounded yesterday when I happened to look up at the sky.” The sun was surrounded by a lacy network of halos and arcs:

[picture omitted, go follow the link]

“It’s by far the best display of atmospheric optics I have ever seen,” he says. “I was shaking as I took as many photos as I could. There was a complete parhelic circle, a circumscribed halo, a supralateral arc, a 22-degree halo, a pair of sundogs, and possibly a Wegener arc.”

The orange azalea is sort of blooming. Stripping context gives this lovely pic.

And this is not bad.

However, my Arts Editor has raised objections to the heartless telephone pole that photobombed the unsuspecting azalea.

This is the British FV4005.

Never actually used in combat. The mini-documentary I watched didn’t address the question of surviving the firing of a round.

Quick: Who would you rather see as Speaker of the House, current Speaker Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) or … Rep and member of the extremist Freedom Caucus Matt Gaetz (R-FL)?

Yeah, the latter is worse than the former, and, while Steve Benen doesn’t mention Gaetz by name, it’s implied in this reminder:

But let’s also not forget that McCarthy, while begging his own members for their support during his protracted fight for the speaker’s gavel, agreed to tweak the motion-to-vacate-the-chair rules, which at least in theory, would make it easier for angry House Republicans to try to oust McCarthy from his leadership position.

This isn’t a prediction, per se, and I’m not saying the House speaker will necessarily be ousted by a relatively moderate bipartisan deal, should one come together. But if the scope of the Freedom Caucus’ discontent reaches a fever pitch, a hypothetical deal clears thanks to significant Democratic support, don’t be surprised if we all start hearing the phrase “vacate the chair” a lot more frequently.

A slippery question indeed.

So, suppose such a motion occurs, and it’s known that a Freedom Caucus member will at least try to replace McCarthy should the motion be sustained. Then some unnamed Republican contacts the Democrats and states that, while the Republicans won’t vote for a Democrat, many will vote to return McCarthy to the Speaker’s chair – and asks the Democrats to support McCarthy.

What do the Democrats do?

“Lab-grown meat”, which is cultured from muscle cells, and thus considered, by some, to be morally acceptable for consumption, has one under-considered problem:

Meat produced from cultured cells could be 25 times worse for the climate than regular beef unless scientists find ways to overhaul energy-intensive steps in its production. …

[…] Derrick Risner at the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues found that the global warming potential of cultivated meat, defined as the carbon dioxide equivalents emitted for each kilogram of meat produced, is 4 to 25 times higher than for regular beef.

The researchers conducted a life-cycle assessment of cultivated meat that estimated the energy used in each step in current production methods. They predict that this will be similar regardless of which animal’s cells are being cultivated.

They found that the nutrient broth used to culture the animal cells has a large carbon footprint because it contains components like sugars, growth factors, salts, amino acids and vitamins that each come with energy costs. [“Lab-grown meat could be 25 times worse for the climate than beef,” Alice Klein, NewScientist (13 May 2023, paywall)]

Technology is often subject to initial condemnation because of a drawback later overcome by advances, so, if eating a steak from a petri dish is your dream, despair not yet. But, in today’s world, energy is the foundation of just about all that we do. Natural grown meat has some significant advantages, so far, over lab-grown, so if we want to continue to eat meat, like most omnivores, then we may have to discard what we could consider to be a proposed moral precept.

Earlier this month I suggested Governor DeSantis’ (R-FL) Presidential dreams, at least for 2024, were little more than ashes. Right on queue, I am given to understand, DeSantis’ announcement of his run for the GOP nomination took place yesterday, and was unimpressive.

The start of a much-anticipated Twitter event in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis planned to announce his 2024 Republican presidential bid was repeatedly disrupted Wednesday when Twitter’s servers apparently could not handle the surge in traffic.

The app crashed repeatedly as Twitter users tried to listen to the event where Twitter owner Elon Musk joined DeSantis for the announcement.

DeSantis eventually was able to speak, about 20 minutes after the scheduled start, after Musk closed the initial Twitter Spaces event and started a second one on the app. That space attracted about 161,000 users, according to Twitter’s public-facing data, as DeSantis read a short speech. [NBC News]

All consonant with the general fourth-rate quality of GOP officials. Before my readers assail me about technical glitches, I’ll note that, quite often, bad attracts bad. For example, find one bug in some computer code, chances are above average that another lurks in that code path.

And that glitch, oddly enough, is an opportunity for DeSantis. The poor official entry into the race puts him on his back foot, yes, but it also lets him demonstrate resilience and flexibility. Shake out the screw ups, have a good yell at Musk, etc etc, and those independents who value some sign off competence – of which DeSantis has exhibited little – and he may attract the votes necessary from the independents.

In fact, he might find MAGA voters much more difficult to attract than independent voters, and that’s a completely separate problem.

I’ve still written DeSantis off, but he’s had opportunity handed to him. Can he do anything with it?

Dude, one little misplaced pat on the bottom will either have her right over the railing to the stone floor below – or you. Decide wisely.

Cry Wolf (1947) has a baffling title, perhaps a preparation for a plot that mystifies. After all, why does the unknown wife of the dead man show up claiming his estate, yet not weeping over his death? What is bothering the sister of the dead man so badly that she ends up face down on the plaza?

And where did they find this patriarch of the family that had my Arts Editor literally grinding her teeth?

It all revolves around a semi-ridiculous trust, large debts of the trustee, and a family wracked with a mysterious illness.

Interesting, but not fascinating, with good acting. Errol Flynn completists will need to see it, if only to verify he doesn’t bear a sword in every movie he made.

If you want a simple introduction to entropy, relativity and quantum mechanics, their unexplained facets, and how they feed into a theory of how Time is emerges from reality, The Physics of Time by Robert A. Muller is an excellent place to start. While it took me six months to read it, that’s a reflection of my time constraints, and not of the readability of the book.

All the same, if you’re not a physicist, then you’ll need to read this in a quiet environment. Constant interruptions will seriously degrade comprehension, far more than most books.

While watching SOUTH PARK today, I came to the realization that Eric Cartman is Donald J. Trump.

Beat the shit out of him, Wendy Testaberger!

Cerulean:

deep blue in color [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “These bizarre lights in the sky hint at a way to predict earthquakes,” Nathaniel Scharping, NewScientist (6 May 2023, paywall):

Along with trembling buildings and shaking trees, those caught in the quake also witnessed something substantially more eerie. A barrage of blue lights, like flashes of cerulean lightning, lit up the night sky, apparently right above the fault line. This strange display was an example of what are known as “earthquake lights”, a semi-mythical phenomenon that has cropped up in reports of tremors for centuries.

This is from a couple of months ago:

Go with the wind! 🌬️
Our CMA CGM Marco Polo has been equipped with a new prototype of windshield that required 6 months of development and installation

The Purpose? Improve her aerodynamics, therefore reducing her fuel consumption and carbon footprint! 💨

— CMA CGM Group (@cmacgm) February 17, 2023

How useful is it? gCaptain reports:

Use of “windshields” was pioneered by Japanese shipping line Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) which installed its first one on board the MOL Marvel in 2015. The company later confirmed a 2% average CO2 emissions reduction at a sailing speed of 17 knots.

I suppose every little bit counts, and it’s not tied to the fuel type, so I like that as well.

Commensal:

Commensalism is a relationship between two organisms in which one organism benefits, and one is unaffected. This can be contrasted with other types of symbiosis, such as mutualism and parasitism. The supposed difference between commensalism and other types of symbiosis is that in commensalism, the second party or host remains unaffected. Some scientist argue that this is likely improbable, and that most commensalism will be found to be mutualism or parasitism once the effects on the host can be appropriately studied. Other scientists argue that commensalism does exist when the effect on the host is imperceptible. [biology dictionary]

Noted in “The covid-19 virus affects our gut – but we still don’t know how,” Michael Marshall, NewScientist (6 May 2023, paywall):

However, a different picture emerges from studies that focused specifically on disruption to the gut microbiome, suggesting that this may be linked to an increased risk of death from covid-19. The stool samples that Ng and her team examined revealed that many helpful “commensal” bacteria can become depleted when people are infected with the coronavirus, while harmful ones become more populous. The fungi in the gut – the mycobiome – have shown similar disruptions. Crucially, those with more severe illness tended to have more disrupted microbiomes, mimicking the results of other studies.

Two recent events bring home the difficulties of assessing such events in an era of deep political polarization. The first is the CNN Townhall featuring former President Trump. First, lefty Steve Benen:

For those who keep an eye on Donald Trump’s rhetoric, much of last night’s ridiculous town hall event seemed awfully familiar. The former president lied about his election defeat, but he’d done that before. He blamed former Vice President Mike Pence for being in danger on Jan. 6, but also he’d done that before. He voiced support for pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, but he’d done that before, too.

The Republican praised Russia’s Vladimir Putin, said deeply offensive things about sexual assault, avoided direct answers on abortion policy, and peddled an avalanche of brazen lies. But again, none of this was especially unusual for Trump. [Maddowblog]

As might be expected, a touch of an insult meant to ridicule it. But, as WaPo notes in a news report, not all on the liberal side of the United States views it that way:

This is unsurprising news, given evangelicals’ embrace of the former President:

The long, slow decline of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination continues.

Membership in the Southern Baptist Convention [known as the SBC] was down by nearly half a million in 2022, according to a recently released denomination report. Nashville-based Lifeway Research reported Tuesday (May 9) that the SBC had 13.2 million members in 2022, down from 13.68 million in 2021. That loss of 457,371 members is the largest in more than a century, according to the Annual Church Profile compiled by Lifeway.

Once a denomination of 16.3 million, the SBC has declined by 1.5 million members since 2018, and by more than 3 million members since 2006. The COVID-19 pandemic played a role in the downturn, as did the reality that as older members die off, there are fewer young people to replace them. [Religion News]

This, no doubt, contributed to the decline:

[Delegates] at the [annual] meeting [in June] will also discuss the role of women in church leadership. Earlier this year, the SBC’s Executive Committee voted to expel several churches for having women pastors, including Saddleback Church, a California megachurch and one of the denomination’s largest congregations, for having women pastors. Saddleback is expected to appeal that decision.

But is this a theological dispute, an arbitrary display of power – or a concern that women leaders would be more likely to interfere with the general leadership inclination towards loyalty to former President Trump, who has been accused of, and even admitted to, sexual improprieties?

From the San Antonio Current:

With its Ghost Tracks, Donkey Lady and haunted hotels, San Antonio is home to an array of eerie places and urban legends, which may explain why it was recently ranked one of the nation’s most paranormal cities.

The Alamo City landed at No. 7 in a report published on Monday by online lawn-care service provider Lawn Love that purports to rank U.S. cities by their paranormal happenings.

Yep, a lawn care company. Kinda sad, except it’s the paranormal, so I laugh, instead. OK, chuckle.

Having lost his true love, here is Neo on a blind date. At a prom. She’s not charmed.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) is self-indulgent in so many ways: nods to the audience and how it reacted to the first three movies; guns; magic masquerading as cool tech; self-doubt; progress in artificial intelligence; and, no doubt, several other topics I missed.

But, in case you’ve seen it and wondered, I deliberately omit gaming. Those gestures were weak and ineffective.

All to occult a love story.

And that’s about it. My Arts Editor had two comments: “His acting is so wooden”, and “The Easter Egg is the best part of the movie.” I might add that the CGI seemed faultless, and Thomas Anderson as a scruffy old dude had me sniggering.

But I concur with my Arts Editor. If you’re a Neal Patrick Harris completist, or, yes, a Keanu Reeves completist, then you have to see this. But I suggest you pre-grit your teeth.