Unsightly Mental Blemishes

The announcement that Trump Corp and Trump Payroll Corp have been found guilty of tax fraud, involving how they paid CFO Allen Weisselberg and others in order to avoid tax liabilities, and that they’ve been found guilty on all seventeen charges, has a whole lot of schadenfreude going on in lefty and NeverTrumper land.

Along with that ungraceful behavior, a few points come up.

1. That there were no Not Guilty findings may indicate that Trump and his minions were not particularly good at being tax frauds. In fact, it may be that, much like many of those who worked on his campaign and in his Administration, his business associates were also sub-standard, that he, like many bullies, only hired sub-average folks to do what he needed done; this low-quality approach kept initial costs down, and meant that it was very unlikely he’d be outshown by a minion. His pathological narcissism wouldn’t permit that. But the cheapskate, egotist approach is a recipe for disaster. Like this one.
2. Now that he’s been proven vulnerable – yes, yes, I’m sure he’ll appeal, as the corporate attorneys affirm in the article, and in a particularly snarly outraged manner, but the damage is done – a particular segment of his base, weak of faith or maybe stronger of intellect than the average member, will drop away. They’ll look at their own tax returns, devoid of that big old stamp that says TAX FRAUD, and realize that he’s not a buddy of their’s. He’s an alleged billionaire who still avoids paying taxes. How big a segment will peel away? Hard to say.
3. His grifting return will take a hit, at least from the little guys. Whether or not this will impact his millionaire+ donor class is another question, because many of them are resentful of having to pay taxes. It’s an attitude cultivated by their mentors and heroes when the soon-to-be donors are young, and whether they inherit, steal, or earn their riches, they just can’t imagine those government types doing anything worthwhile with their money.
4. The evidence from this trial, if not already in use – I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if that’s permitted or not – can now be released for use by all the other legal scandals swirling about the former President. This may prove fruitful.
5. The umbrella organization, The Trump Organization, has now suffered the soft impairment of being a corporate entity criminal, meaning business loans are harder to gain, and other corporations may decline to work with the company without tough guarantees, such as full upfront payments. I suspect it’s been running on empty for years; this may put a knife in it as Trump drains it of cash, whether out of sheer greed, or because of prosperity church philosophy.

And, finally, there may be a debate going on in Trump’s head right now. If he’s brought up on criminal charges, such as in Georgia for his illegal attempt to influence Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger, will he attempt to leave the United States for a country lacking extradition? Or will the drama inherent in being a defendant be too much for him? And then would he testify in his own behalf?

Exeunt Trump, stage left, pursued by prosecutors.

Stay tuned for more drama. This is just the beginning.

Erick Erickson isn’t doing well. First, he doesn’t like his leaders, especially when it comes to Hunter Biden and his laptop:

Again, I don’t have a problem if the GOP wants to see what all the fuss is about. But giving it this much attention and making it this much of a priority is more likely than not going to be self-defeating and blow up in their faces.

A better end goal would be not to drag the Bidens but shake up and reform the national security apparatus of the United States, which has been politicized. If the GOP were smart (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA), they’d wind this down and pass it over to a special committee designed to investigate the FBI, Justice Department, and the politicization therein. Then, the Biden laptop story becomes a useful illustration of how all the above collaborated with a social media company to censor a media outlet from telling a true story. And then the entangling details of the laptop provide extra news nuggets.

And then he makes the suggestion that the national security apparatus has been politicized. Sure. Maybe the first topic of the day will be how the FBI assisted Hillary in her run for the Presidency.

Or was it hated her? Quite honestly, you can find both views, although the former seems surprisingly popular. Talk to progressives, though, and it’s all about former FBI Director (and then-Republican) James Comey deliberately screwing Clinton over.

I read Comey’s book and felt he just got caught in the well-known Greek rocks, and then discovered that Trump is just a corrupt mess.

Yeah, have a pack of fourth-rate House GOP members questioning Republican and FBI Director Christopher Wray and his subordinates about how they all secretly supported Hillary. That’ll go down like an iron thistle.

Does Erickson really want the national security apparatus angry at his side? There’s just about no one qualified in the House GOP to conduct such questioning. How about if they put Gaetz, Jordan, and Greene in charge?

Oh, my. Now that’d be a dumpster fire to burn out the metaphor. We’d need something new.

If you happen to be one of those folks who think college – or high school! – students should have influence over how they are taught, consider this lesson from Freddie deBoer on Persuasion concerning the firing of Professor Maitland Jones of NYU:

Whatever the case, I want to suggest that the students who launched the petition were denying themselves a central element of education: figuring out what you’re not good at. Failing. Trying to learn, and failing to do so. This is an element of education as vital as learning what you’re good at, the act of self-discovery of one’s own lack of ability. All of us have limits, natural limits on what we can learn and do in academic fields. Some exceedingly rare individuals appear to be brilliant at everything, but for the rest of us, there’s a whole suite of topics and skills that we will never perform with any facility. And if colleges insist on reducing rigor to the point that learning those limits becomes impossible, something will have been lost.

In my own time as a graduate student in the humanities and as an administrator in the City University of New York, I was dismayed by the ongoing assault on rigor, with arguments against homework, against grading, and against taking attendance. Many in academia default to any position that seems pro-student, due to a desire to be “the cool professor” or through tendentious political definitions of the purpose of higher education. But such people tend to define “pro-student” as meaning whatever students want, when of course part of the point of being an educator is to do what’s best for students that they may not want to do themselves. I believe that rigor is essential to providing students with value for their tuition dollars, as I personally have been brought closer to the level of my potential thanks to professors who made serious demands of me. I have also learned the limits of that potential thanks to those teachers, who helped me to understand what I was and was not good at.

The one point that deBoer should have made, but didn’t, is that by making courses too easy, we run the risk of incompetency leaking into safety-critical fields, fatal accidents occurring – and then, who do you blame? The professor was fired, you can’t blame him. At one time, the pedagogical approach was … a graduate instructor friend of mine in the electrical engineering department explained the idea simply. If early engineering classes were easy, and most students passed them, then some of those students would inevitably run up against their academic limits later in their academic careers, at which point starting over with a new major would be harder and more expensive. [deBoer]

At one time, it was the responsibility of the educational institutions to ensure, as best one can, that only competent graduates get out the door. But if the administrators are now giving the students access to the controls, then who’s responsible?

These self-centered students. For every fatal accident caused by an incompetent graduate hailing their institution.

Those petition writers, those petition signers, have taken on responsibilities for which they lack all competency. The administrators, to be honest, bear some responsibility as well. They should know better. Indeed, deBoer’s friend’s recitation should be part of the curriculum for the would-be administrator.

And this is why you don’t let the students run the joint.

Some thoughts on possible review openings.

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) is all about the critical role our robot overlords will play in healing dysfunctional families everywhere.”

No, no, no.

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) gives us the grim consequences of helicopter parents meeting the issue of a geek who probably had helicopter parents.”

Oh, no, no, no! I mean, yes, but no!

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) chronicles the consequences of letting a child from a home of micromanagers try to pursue her dreams.

Maybe, but it’s a dismal, tired attempt.

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) demonstrates how a modern, happy family is utterly ineffectual in the face of the first bump in the road, said bump being smart-ass robots that think they know better than humanity.”

Sounds like the review for I, Robot (2004), if I had reviewed it.

Oh! Got it! Got it!

“The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) is the proof we all needed that our Galactic Protectors are, as we’ve suspected all along …. PUGS. There’s no other explanation.”

Strangely reminiscent of the car trips down to Chicago of my own youth. Station wagon, car sickness, panic over the driving. Check. Check. Check.

Otherwise, how is it? Not bad. Hard choices are not always soft-shoed, which is good. Plot holes are covered by breakneck pacing, which pauses just long enough to build empathetic characters and explain just how things will go wrong for us if we’re not careful.

Entertaining, even if the art doesn’t appeal to you.

It may look like lamb’s ear, but don’t assume it’ll vote with all the other lamb’s ears.

One of the terms that conservatives thinkers have for Dr. Kendi’s thoughts on correcting American racism is identitarian politics, which means that identifying a person on the basis of physical, or more rarely other, characteristics as a member of a given group will also give you the most reliable key to their politics.

This tends to get on the nerves of just about everyone else, and post election polling seems to confirm that it’s a broken contention. Democratic assumptions about the Latino vote has been wrong for several years, as many of them think that illegal immigration is a serious problem and illegal immigrants should be deported.

But this report might suggest something quite similar is going on in Oklahoma:

As a group pushes to make abortion a constitutional right in Oklahoma, there’s new attention on the process they’re trying to use.

State Sen. Warren Hamilton said he wants to change how many votes are needed to change laws. Right now, state questions pass by a simple majority, which he argues disenfranchises rural Oklahoma. …

The newest possible state question making headlines is State Question 828, which by a vote of the people would amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights. Hamilton announced via press release that he’s looking to file a joint resolution that would require state questions to be passed via a two-thirds majority.

Hamilton argued the current system disenfranchises rural Oklahoma, giving a voice to only the major cities. The McCurtain lawmaker also alleged it allows for voter fraud, election tampering and out-of-state influence. [KOCO News5]

It appears Hamilton has a sudden suspicion that all those anti-abortionists from the pre-Dobbs era are just not as devoted to the cause as he might have thought back then.

But his thinking is so odd. Rural Oklahomans are pro-life while city inhabitants are pro-choice? Is he so sure of that? And just because rural inhabitants are outnumbered, it’s necessary to come right out and say the votes of city-dwellers are to be discounted?

That’s one way to start a riot, to make voters, even your voters, unhappy with you.

I look forward to hearing how this works out for him.

I’ve long beat the drum for one of the GOP’s central illnesses being their tendency towards toxic team politics, or known to the political world as Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line: party line voting.

And it seems a few of them are inching slowly, with eyes squinted, towards this diagnosis. Well, one, at least. Sort of.

Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, declared himself unable to vote for either Walker or Warnock.

“When there’s division in the locker room, there’s finger-pointing. It’s usually kind of the hallmark sign of a losing season,” said Duncan, who has been highly critical of Walker. He drew derision from other Republicans this week after he said he stood in line to vote but left without casting a ballot.

“We’ve been asked to be team players as Republicans for too long,” added Duncan, who also has criticized Trump’s grip on the party. [WaPo]

Can’t vote for Walker, that’s a key part of breaking the rule of toxic team politics. Then Duncan veers off.

“We’re done being team players. If we want to win, we need team leaders.”

Maybe someone lusting for power.

But it’s a tiny baby step in the right direction.

Well, this is an odd one. Remember, these nominations are for those folks whose allegiance to the former President has strayed into ludicrousness, much like former Rep Earl Landgrebe’s (R-IN) did for then-President Nixon (R). Here we are:

Trump is calling for subversion of the Constitution & either declaring him 2020 presidential winner or holding a “new election,” saying there should be “termination of all rules, regulations, & articles, even those found in the Constitution” to undo Biden’s right to presidency. pic.twitter.com/BIHfQsVpXv

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) December 3, 2022

Trump is calling for subversion of the Constitution & either declaring him 2020 presidential winner or holding a “new election,” saying there should be “termination of all rules, regulations, & articles, even those found in the Constitution” to undo Biden’s right to presidency [in a Truth Social post].

Yes, the nomination goes to the former President himself, for his doubling down on his outlandish fraudulent election claims. His is a childish mentality.

A possible subsidiary nomination may go to the entirety of the Republican Party, as Professor Richardson notes this in regard to Trump’s demented call:

But Republicans, so far, are silent on Trump’s profound attack on the Constitution, the basis of our democratic government.

That is the story, and it is earth shattering.

Whether it’s earth shattering depends on the size of the Republican Party. The latest Gallup Party Affiliation poll does suggest some reason for concern, as Republicans are now at 33% of the population as of October 3rd, after being at only 24% in August. I wonder about bad polling, or outliers.

Congrats to the former President for the nomination.

I see some Indiana judges have decided to accept some important and apparently correct “sauce for the goose” logic when it comes to abortion:

A second Indiana judge on Friday blocked the state from enforcing its law banning most abortions after Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian women challenged it in a lawsuit.

Marion County Superior Court Judge Heather Welch issued a preliminary injunction against the Republican-backed law, which prohibits abortions with limited exceptions for rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormalities or a serious health risk to the mother. The plaintiffs have argued that the measure infringes on religious freedom protected by another state law. …

Welch issued her injunction after a group called Hoosier Jews for Choice and five individual women challenged the abortion law under Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU said the plaintiffs represented religions including Judaism and Islam as well as “independent spiritual belief systems.”

“The Court finds that S.E.A. 1 substantially burdens the religious exercise of the Plaintiffs,” Welch wrote, using the formal name of the law, in granting the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction while the challenge to its legality proceeds. [Reuters via WABX 107.5]

Both goose and gander have used the same substantive reason for their opposition and advocacy for abortion: the polyphony, if you will, of religion.

I’m not a lawyer and I haven’t read either of the decisions in this case, but it seems clear to me that this is a firm rejection of the notion, in the secular context, that the fetus is simply another human being. I’ve discussed this notion a bit in the negative, and I won’t reiterate it.

But it’s worth noting that we are a secular nation; the dangers of proclaiming we’re a nation of pick-your-sect has been noted, and condemned, here. That the Founding Fathers consigned the religious precept approach to law-making to the dustbin was a supremely practical and intellectual reaction to the madness of theologically oriented monarchs, and the violence that seemed inherent in their reigns; the notion that a peaceful society, undisturbed by the unsubstantiated religious tenets of various sects seems far preferable to the English example of burning at the stake, quite literally, those citizens whose religious practices were at variance with that of the monarch.

Ideally, that leaves rational, objective analysis, as difficult as that is, as the basis of real legislative actions. We’re not, being humans, particularly rational, and we’re not born with the tools of objective analysis ready to go, and our ability to teach it varies with teacher, local society, and opinions of both. This all means making laws is a messy business, of infinite frustration to those who believe there’s virtue in dispatch, regardless of their position on political spectrum. For some, it takes time to learn the error of the emotional response.

Skipping some thoughts and interlocutions, as my shoulder is giving me problems today, this leaves us with the classic approach of promulgate, evaluate, revise, repeat, also known, at least to my mind, as the approach of the humble. Our metrics during the revise step are key, and my proffered list is, naturally, incomplete:

1. Does the law have a rational basis?
2. Does the law infringe on the Bill of Rights?
3. Does the law promote or obstruct a peaceful society?
4. …

In any case, and to wrap things up, the anti-abortion forces have, in my opinion, failed on at least points 1 and 3; in their attempt to enforce their religious opinions on the population of Indiana, they have brought into play opposing religious forces, which have just as much right to their religious practices as do the anti-abortionists.

In an ideal country, these practices should cancel out, and, because abortion is never imposed, but merely available, I can see no need for anti-abortion laws.

Go, Indiana judges! They remind me of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled that gay marriage was legal, shocking the conservatives of Iowa and beyond. They, in turn, organized a drive to vote those justices out of their seats, in a move that proves my contention that judges should never be subject to votes of the electorate, but only of the relevant legislative body.

I have to wonder how long these judges will remain in their positions.

It’s Gogol Bordello!

OK, so the appeal is a bit odd.

Remember my suspicion that some Republicans would like to see the former President as Speaker of the House? I missed this, ummm, announcement from Rep Ralph Norman from Thursday:

Rep. Ralph Norman, who opposes McCarthy for Speaker, says the renegade Republicans have a secret candidate to run against him who is not a House member: “It will be apparent in the coming weeks who that person will be. I will tell you, it will be interesting.” pic.twitter.com/anD60jvNky

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) December 1, 2022

Rep. Ralph Norman, who opposes McCarthy for Speaker, says the renegade Republicans have a secret candidate to run against him who is not a House member: “It will be apparent in the coming weeks who that person will be. I will tell you, it will be interesting.”

Interesting? Only if it’s not Trump. Otherwise, drearily predictable and out of step with most of America, and he’d be terribly incompetent and unaware of it, unlike myself, who would be terribly incompetent and smart enough to not even consider accepting the position.

Suppose he is nominated for the position. Would moderate Republicans and Democrats vote for him? No. So he’d be left humiliated. Or so I think.

And, yes, the persistent stupidity of these folks does induce nausea in me.

Jansky:

The Jansky (Jy) is defined as:

1 ^. 10^-26 Watts / Hz ^. m²

[SETI League]

Incidentally, my first guess was that it is a synonym for jargon. Not. Even. Close. Noted in “Ronnametres and quettagrams have joined the ranks of SI units,” Alex Wilkins, NewScientist (26 November 2022):

[Richard Brown at the National Physical Laboratory] suggests that ronto and quecto could have uses in radio astronomy, such as for measuring the very weak strength of the cosmic microwave background, radiation left over from the big bang, but astronomers already frequently use the non-SI jansky for this, says [Mike Merrifield at the University of Nottingham].

Since the last update …

• Senator Murkowski (R) of Alaska has won her race over fellow Republican and Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka; Patricia Chesbro (D) was also part of the cheese grater action, which I characterize in this manner since, after all the conservative chatter about the Senator being on the edge of failure, she coasted to a 7+ point victory over Tshibaka. As I, and a host of pundits, expected, ranked choice voting vastly increases the chances for moderates even in highly polarized environments, as most independents would prefer a steady and predictable legislator like Murkowski over the product of a Party that seems controlled by radicals.
• The Georgia runoff is this Tuesday, which means the pollsters have had a bit of time to run polls. CNN sponsored a poll by C rated^[1] SSRS that shows Senator Warnock (R) leading challenger Herschel Walker (R) 52% to 48%, with a margin of error of ± 3 points. A rated SurveyUSA gives Warnock a 50% – 47% lead with no margin of error given. A- rated Emerson College Polling gives Warnock a 49% to 47% lead, with a ± 3.2 point margin of error. Place your bet and take your chances.

It’s encouraging to see no conservative pollsters in the mix here, because, while I have not systematically studied their results, my impression is that, as a group, they diverged from the less obviously linked pollsters near the middle of October onwards, and it was the conservative pollsters who seemed to perform worse. For example:

• In New Hampshire, some conservative pollsters gave challenger Don Bolduc (R) a small lead over Senator Hassan (D), while others called it a dead heat. Then pollster Lowell Center gave Hassan a ten point lead, pointedly out of step with everyone else. Hassan’s final margin of victory? 10 points. That’s more comfortable than Murkowski’s victory.
• Pennsylvania’s race between Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D) and Dr. Oz Mehmet (R) for an open seat was ultimately a 3+ point win for Fetterman, when various conservative pollsters suggested Oz was pulling ahead. However and notably, the last Fox News poll showed Fetterman up by 3 points.

But how did SurveyUSA do overall? Emerson College? I’m waiting for FiveThirtyEight’s analysis.

What’ll happen in Georgia on Tuesday? I cannot imagine a Senator speaking gibberish like Walker speaks it, so I can only hope Warnock manages to take the seat. I have far more confidence in his grasp of national and international issues than I do with Walker.

¹ All ratings continue to be from FiveThirtyEight’s ratings following the 2020 election, calculated in March of 2021.

This TRY Channel episode is one of my favorites, alongside their original durian fruit episode.

I’m torn between a joke about jumbo shrimp and noting that Titans don’t do well in most mythologies.

This is all about how some people think they should be lording it over everyone else, from Mark Sumner on Daily Kos:

Now, in what may be one of the most egregious case of someone using their power and wealth to bully both local residents and officials, drug company executive Fredric Eshelman—net worth $380 million—is trying to make the situation even worse. He’s trying to block off huge areas of land even when he doesn’t surround them, by pressing a case that would make it much easier to prevent the public from reaching public land.

In the process, Eshelman is trying to financially destroy four hunters for “trespassing,” even though they literally never set one foot on his property. The outcome of this case will affect not just hunters and fishermen, but hikers, bird watchers, artists, photographers, and anyone who simply wants to access land that belongs to all of us.

What? After the State lost a criminal case….

Eshelman piled on to the hunters with a civil suit “for causing millions of dollars in damage” which seeks not only compensation for this supposed damage, but for the hunters to pay all legal fees in both the criminal and civil cases. He is seeking an incredible $7 million in damages for disturbing a few inches of air over his land.

Unbelievable. Go read Sumner’s article, it’s a gob-smacker.

I know that, during the Eisenhower Administration, taxes on the high earners were, themselves, high, compared to today. I cannot help but wonder if those taxes helped suppress the self-regarding narcissists from running around like lunatics, which made for a calmer society.

Such taxation used to seem deeply unfair to me, but having a pack of Emperor Nero-wannabes running around like Eshelman seems a lot worse.

Femicide:

Femicide or feminicide is a hate crime which is broadly defined as “the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female,” but definitions of it vary depending on cultural context. In 1976, the feminist author Diana E. H. Russell first defined the term as “the killing of females by males because they are female.” Others broaden the meaning of the term by including the killing of females by females. In many Central American countries, where organized crime is a prevalent issue, the term femicide is used in reference to the violent killings of women and girls which are frequently perpetrated by gang members, a crime which is primarily committed in order to stoke fear and compliance among civilians. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Shanquella Robinson’s death is being investigated as a femicide. Here is what it means,” Nicole Chavez, CNN:

The killing of Shanquella Robinson is being investigated as a femicide, an unfamiliar term for many in the United States as this gender-motivated crime has not been defined by US legislation despite being a global issue.

The FTX collapse, featuring Sam Bankman-Fried, who apparently has achieved triple initial status, i.e., he’s now known as SBF, hasn’t happened in a vacuum. Another crypto company, BlockFi, a digital asset lender with “significant exposure” to FTX, is in bankruptcy.

The fascinating part?

BlockFi, the first direct casualty of crypto exchange FTX’s collapse, told a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday that the U.S. cryptocurrency lender was “the antithesis of FTX” and that it would seek to return customer funds as quickly as possible.

BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 protection on Monday, citing FTX’s collapse and volatility in the crypto markets. Earlier in November, BlockFi had paused withdrawals from its platform amid uncertainty about FTX’s stability.

BlockFi attorney Joshua Sussberg went to great lengths to distance BlockFi from FTX at the company’s first bankruptcy hearing in Trenton, New Jersey. While detailing the companies’ complex financial relationship, Sussberg emphasized BlockFi did not face the myriad issues plaguing FTX, which spectacularly imploded earlier this month, sparking fears of contagion across the industry. [Reuters, via MSN]

“No, we don’t look like this failure over here at all!” But, guys, you lent them enough currency that their failure withered your carcass as well. The magnitude of internal failure may not match the FTX blunders, but there’s still a rank odor of irresponsibility pervading you folks. Yep, without regulation the waves of putrid mismanagement will wash over everyone. And I say that after arguing that it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Object lessons are useful things.

Back to FTX and SBF, here’s a revelation about him, who incidentally happens to be all of thirty years old and was, briefly, the CEO of a largish company:

Amid all the bombshell revelations about fallen crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried, a seemingly trivial bit of information might tell us everything we need to know: He doesn’t read books.

If you’re anticipating a caveat or qualifier, you’re as out of luck as the FTX investors whose money SBF allegedly lost. “I’m addicted to reading,” a journalist said to the erstwhile multibillionaire in a recently resurfaced interview. “Oh, yeah?” SBF replied. “I would never read a book.” …

Behold, then, SBF’s reason: “I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. … If you wrote a book, you f—ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.” [WaPo]

Oh me oh my. He’s beginning to sound like quite the shallow bounder, doesn’t he? I mean, how do you evaluate all the sides of an issue if you don’t know there are multiple sides?

And, by the way, what is the issue at hand?

All this stemmed not simply from an inclination toward reckless management, but from something more deeply rooted: philosophy. SBF is a believer in effective altruism. This school of thought seeks to, by its own definition, use “evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible.” More specifically, SBF had devoted his life toward “earning to give.” You pick a career not because you care about the career itself, or even think it’s good for the world on its own merits. You pick a career because it will make you a massive amount of money, and you can spend that money on something that is good. So SBF picked finance, and after that he picked crypto.

Ah, to be a bug on the wall. Whether ’tis more noble in one’s mind to … oh, just squish me now, eh?

I haven’t studied effective altruism, but it sounds a lot like longtermism, In fact, to prove I haven’t studied effective altruism, I just found out that longtermism is a component of effective altruism.

Hah!

The similarity, suggested in the WaPo article, to the old, old fallacy that the end justifies the means, makes me think it may be a deeply suspect philosophy. But I digress.

I wonder if this failure to indulge in long-form reading is just a symptom of deep narcissism in the MIT-trained Bankman-Fried, or if it’s a result of social media destroying the mental faculties of his generation, or if it’s yet something else.

A reader remarks in reaction to the quote concerning the fall of the crypto market worth:

But there was never that much real money, was there? I never understood crypto except with my marketing spidey-sense that said there’s no “there” there. An artist can claim their original art is worth millions, but unless someone pays them actual millions, is it really? I realize my opinions/arguments/reasonings are convoluted, but so is crypto, and while I’m certain that some people got very rich on it, the rest are stuck with the equivalent of a monetary timeshare.

All right, all right, I’ll see myself out.

No, it was all about potential, and to an even greater extent than “market cap” of a public company, the liquidation or conversion of a crypto’s tokens to another currency will result in a fall in the value. Humanity on the other side of these trades may understand just what’s wrong and demand a greater discount, or it may see a great deal of conversions going on and figure something is going on – and in order to take the perceived greater risk, a larger discount, i.e., more favorable conversion rate, will be necessary.

Right up until the tokens become worthless and the primary servers catch fire, fall over, and sink into the swamp.

I think the reader’s spidey-sense is right on, though: There’s no “there” there.

A couple of weeks ago, a moderate House Republican indicated that he and his ilk might be willing to work with House Democrats on the problem of the House Speaker:

Moderate GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told NBC News on Monday night that if the GOP Conference can’t agree on electing McCarthy or any other Republican as speaker on the House floor, then he would be willing to work with Democrats to elect a moderate Republican for the top post.

“I will support Kevin McCarthy, but if we do get to that point, I do want the country to work and we need to govern. We can’t sit neutral; we can’t have total gridlock for two years,” Bacon said in an interview just off the House floor.

Pressed again that he would team up with Democrats, Bacon replied: “Yes, but that’s assuming we can’t get to 218 beforehand.” However, he added that a Speaker Liz Cheney “will never happen.” [NBC News]

And the chatter continues.

Yes, it’s a turkey of a thought.

The mention of Cheney is important, not for it being Cheney, but for an implication of Bacon’s statement: the Speaker of the House need not be a member of the House.

If my reader was unaware, then I wonder if their mind went where my mind has gone, to an unsettling, even vertiginous thought.

Of.

Speaker of the House Donald Trump.

There. I said it. Properly horrified? Keep in mind that if President Biden dies, VP Kamala Harris moves up to his slot and nominates a replacement for herself. But if Harris is disabled or dead when Biden became disabled or dead, then we have a situation right out of Bananas-land:

A President Trump. Again.

That’s right, the Speaker is next in line after the Vice-President. I leave the political machinations necessary for this to occur to my readers’ fevered imagination.

And the thought that Senator McConnell (R-KY) could have easily lead the Senate GOP to convict the former President of multiple transgressions, and would thus be kicking himself for allowing the politician he hates the most to become President again, would be hollow consolation indeed.

I can only hope there’s enough brave GOPers to disconfirm such a nomination, if it were to occur.

When it comes to nuclear arms, they’re just not that different from, say, artillery shells or 500 pound bombs: they have to be delivered to be effective. So this poster, reputedly from the British Ministry of Defense, is fascinating:

I’m sure analysts far brighter than I are chewing on these implications, but my mind is flooded regardless. Such things as these come to mind:

• Are we seeing the Russian nuclear strike force degrading with each hour? A nuclear missile sitting in a closet while its delivery system is used to disrupt and kill a few Ukrainians in Kyiv looks an awful lot like a lump of metal. Or does Russia have a vast oversupply of nuclear missile delivery systems?
• Was this a desperation move by officers tasked with the Ukraine mission?
• Or does President Putin know his nuclear force is diminishing?
• Does this say anything new about the Russian Army, or is there nothing left to say that’s new?
• While Putin qualifies as Russia’s super patriot in the minds of many, there are always citizens who are more patriotic than thou. How will they feel about this when the news gets out in Russia?
• Does this make it less likely that Russia will employ their nuclear strike force against Ukraine, or us, or China? Or more likely?

And are we nearing the conclusion of this bloody tragedy?

Triboluminescent:

The largest assemblage of extremely rare worked Neolithic rock crystal was uncovered by archaeologists from the University of Manchester at the monumental complex of Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire, England. More than 330 fragments of crystal were discovered during excavations at the nearly 6,000-year-old complex, which once featured a series of long earthen mounds and large timber buildings. Rock crystal is a form of nearly transparent quartz that was coveted by Neolithic people, who likely believed it had magical properties. “In the Neolithic period, there was no glass—or any other transparent solid material—so rock crystal would have been a really distinctive and notably different material,” says University of Manchester archaeologist Nick Overton. “Quartz crystals do a few really unusual things with light. They can be used to split white light into the visible spectrum and they are also triboluminescent, which means they emit a flash of light when struck with another stone or crystal.” [“Neolithic Crystal Age,” Jason Urbanus, Archaeology (November/December 2022) ]

As ever, Archaeology is one of the more gorgeous magazines out there.

Peter Olandt is one of the Daily Kos diarists who’ve been covering Putin’s War. This group has been fairly accurate in their prognoses of the Ukrainians and Russians, especially once it became clear that the Russians’ expectations of a one to two week war were so unrealistic as to indicate incompetence. So this off the cuff prediction is really interesting:

There will be no Russian army left in Ukraine by the end of winter. There may be no Russian army left period. Between the mass numbers of Russian soldiers dying from cold, and sudden breakthroughs by Ukraine caused by greater mobility, strategy, equipment, and depleted Russian units, we will finally see the full collapse of the Russian army many of us have been looking for.

I’ve mentioned, once or twice, that China has to be watching this conflict with great interest, as it tells them a lot of things: the military status of their Russian rival, the willingness of the Western powers to stand with countries and territories that may not be essential to Western security, the capability of a fellow autocracy’s military as a lead to their own military’s ability.

And while the obvious target in China’s viewfinder has to be Taiwan, the next target might be, of all countries, Russia. They share a border, over which there has been periodic conflict, and Russia has been considered an influential power, rivaling China’s influence. Both are old, old powers, full of pride and ambition.

So if China has a chance to gain at Russia’s expense, we may see that happen. We’ve seen Russia fruitlessly wave the nuclear dagger about, and China may decide that Russia doesn’t dare use it.

Will anything come of these speculations? Probably not. But if Russia’s entire military, excepting the nuclear arm, is seriously depleted by their Ukrainian adventure, it’s going to be a temptation for China to take some territory they may have been coveting.

Think that sounds nutty? Compare that to Japan maybe putting a military force on the long disputed Kuril Islands. Now that would be nutty.

UPDATE: The protests in China over Covid-19 restrictions, exacerbated with China refusing to use Western vaccines, may act to stop any Chinese aggression – or it may increase the odds of aggression. Why? As a way to distract protesters and silent supporters.

November 9th, to be precise:

The cryptocurrency market has fallen by about two-thirds from its peak to $1.07 trillion. [Reuters]

I gotta wonder where that “lost” money went.

A few months ago we watched the trio of movies that make up Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, these being The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). It’s a bit of a puzzle when it comes to reviewing, isn’t it, because it’s not clear as to what the focus of any review should be.

For the hobbit purist, the deviations from the original may seem the natural focus, and there are substantial deviations, including the prefixing of an introduction to Middle Earth at the beginning of An Unexpected Journey, the disappointing scanting of the dwarves’ imprisonment in the castle of the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, and the addition of an inter-race romantic subplot, in The Desolation of Smaug, and the explicit and grisly deaths of Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews, Kili and Fili, at (and in) The Battle of the Five Armies. With regards to the last item, in the book, Bilbo suffers an injury early on that renders him unconscious, and he returns to his senses barely in time to bid Thorin farewell, while Kili and Fili are already dead. The movie version of their deaths is wholly invented.

The outrage of the purist could be palpable and understandable.

But, at least in this reader’s estimation, the story delineated in The Hobbit, that is, the book, is imperfect. The plethora of dwarves leads to a lack of strong characterization of most of them. It’s true that the obesity of Bombur, and sometimes the counsel of Balin, distinguished them, and, of course, Thorin, as heir to an unavailable throne, and later a dwarf driven to the edge of insanity by his pecuniary lust, have some attainments of individual existence. But what of Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Fili, Kili, Dori, and a few others? In case my reader wonders, yes, I had to look some of those names up. That I had to attests to their annoying anonymity.

In general, the book reads like, well, the author is learning the art of story-telling. I can’t help but wonder if a more mature Tolkien might have assigned each of the dwarves a theme or character flaw, and used the battle as a way to winnow out those carrying an inferior theme – or have them discard or repair their flaw or theme.

Which is not to condemn The Hobbit. There is much to laud as well, such as the moral dilemma Bilbo faces when he finds the Arkenstone, the ultimate treasure of the dwarves, among the hoard of the late dragon Smaug, or the entire creepy sequence in Mirkwood, from entry to exit. It’s a book worth reading, particularly if you can assume the mindset of a child, eager for adventure.

Another option is to consider the movie trilogy in isolation, as a standalone artistic achievement. A quick appraisal of these many hours of action is a challenge, but I would note that the problem of the dwarves from the book remains a glaring problem in these movies; the aforementioned romantic subplot, which results in the graphic death of Kili in front of the elf Tauriel, left me wondering as to the point of the subplot in the first place.

On the other hand, the special effects are generally spectacular and occasionally funny, such as the death of the Great Goblin. The special effects are a signature of Peter Jackson’s, and occasionally work against the story-telling, reducing some of his work in the earlier Lord Of The Rings trilogy to little more than Let’s go kill some orcs! A similar observation applies here.

The acting is generally top-notch, but some of the details, such as discovering the Elves have a class system, was disappointing. Perhaps Jackson derives this from other material, such as The Silmarillion, which I’ve read but do not recall; I cannot say.

Generally, these three movies do not disappoint.

But I think, at least from a theoretic point of view, what interests me is the change to point of view from book to movies.

The Hobbit is told nearly entirely from the point of view of Bilbo, the hobbit. From the visit of Gandalf to Bilbo’s home, called Bag End and kicking off the tale, throughout their journey through the caves held by the goblins, in and out of the dungeons of the Wood-elves, into the nest of the malevolent worm Smaug, to Bilbo’s return to Hobbiton, interrupting one of the greatest injustices of the age, all we see and hear are what Bilbo sees and hears, with the exception, as I recall, of the minor, if critical, incident in which Bard of Lake-town battles Smaug.

This decision serves to concentrate the ties of empathy between the reader and Bilbo. Yes, there are similar ties organically built between the reader and Gandalf, and perhaps to Thorin Oakinshield, and even Bard of Lake-town.

But Bilbo’s role as the otherwise exclusive point of view permits the reader to learn as Bilbo does. His existence in isolated Hobbiton serves to place him nearly on the same level as the reader new to the book, learning about the wonders and friendships of wizards, dwarves, and proud elves, as well as the dangers of trolls, goblins, and orcs, all in concert with the reader, and the reader with Bilbo.

The movies make a different choice. For the audience member unfamiliar with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, in book or movie form, these new points of views potentially can be confusing, as Gandalf the Grey hares off^[apology] with fellow wizard Radagast the Brown to investigate the contents of the tombs of the Nazgûl; Tauriel and Legolas, the latter of whom is in LOTR but not the original The Hobbit, have a colloquy concerning a possible romance; the ever mysterious Elrond pops up; and during the climactic battle, keeping track of all the characters and their survival or deaths becomes quite a chore.

Not that this is a bad choice! Confinement to a single point of view does threaten to make the story difficult to comprehend, and necessarily constrains drama to that which affects, in this story, Bilbo.

In the end, it’s more the stuff of spirited discussion, rather than condemnatory or adulatory conclusions, and perhaps more of interest to professional story tellers and unqualified speculators such as myself, than to an audience eager to experience a land of good and evil.

In the end, if you’ve read and approved of the book, see the movies. You can compare your judgments to that of Jackson and his collaborators, who are not an inconsiderable lot in themselves. I think the movies might have done well to have more humor than they do, but admittedly it’s a grim story if you’re a dwarf, or an elf, or a goblin of Middle-Earth, particularly at the clash of the Five Armies.

^apology I do apologize for that quip. If you’re puzzled at the phrase, it means to run rapidly and/or wildly, and if you remain puzzled, see the movies and use your imagination.

Cryptocurrency has achieved some popularity in the Middle East, but the FTX debacle has spurred concern about legitimizing a currency which, traditionally, has spurned such calls as unnecessary. Here’s one call for crypto regulation in the Middle East, detailed by Cointelgraph:

A new blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused association has been launched within Abu Dhabi’s free economic zone that aims to further the development of blockchain and crypto ecosystems across the Middle Eastern, North Africa, and Asian regions.

The Middle East, Africa & Asia Crypto & Blockchain Association (MEAACBA) was officially launched on Nov. 8 in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a free economic zone based in the center of the city subject to its own set of civil and commercial laws. The zone was designed to further the growth of fintech companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The nonprofit organization will aim to facilitate regulatory solutions, create commercial opportunities and invest in education to support industry growth, according to its website.

It’s one thing to see users finding new uses for a project unenvisioned by the project creators/sustainers. It’s a bit of a ephemeral boost to the ego.

But it’s quite another to see organizations forming to build exactly what the creators were trying to avoid: government oversight and manipulation. But this is not happening just in the Middle East: