Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Robot and Frank (2012) is, despite the robot, a conventional tale of the aging mind, vitiated by a changing focus. Who is Frank? Frank is a retired thief, an expert at lockpicks, especially that of safes.

And Robot? It’s an artificial intelligence paired with a capable body, tasked with helping Frank with the serious infirmities of old age. When Frank indicates that ‘casing the joint’ has enthused him, Robot is willing to help, learning the fine craft of thievery.

Notice I didn’t say Robot was ‘happy to help’, nor ‘reluctant to help.’ Robot is Robot, for what it’s worth, and it’s the escapades Robot enables which function as the cautionary tale considering naive robots.

Until the climax, when the requisite plot twist has nothing to do with Robot, absolutely nothing. This mistaken change of focus leaves the audience dissatisfied, as Robot is reduced from a new societal factor to be considered to merely a prop.

And that makes Robot and Frank disappointing.

And discover the American President and their Administration are not the Overlords of the Universe:

Then there is the weather. It is only May, but already China has warned that its winter wheat crop could be the “worst in history” due to heavy rains, the US winter crop has been affected by drought, there have been floods in Australia and South Africa, and extreme heat in India, Pakistan and most recently Spain.

There is no doubt that global heating is making such extreme weather events more common. According to the UK Met Office, for instance, climate change has made record-breaking heatwaves in north-west India and Pakistan more than 100 times more likely. [“Global food crisis is leaving millions hungry, but there are solutions,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (28 May 2022, paywall)]

In other words, food prices will remain high for at least another year. People will scream for relief and blame Biden, when the problem is weather and the loudest hidden problem that the American public never seems to notice in connection with what we call inflation:

This makes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a double whammy. It is leading to direct shortages, because Ukraine produces, among other things, 9 per cent of global wheat exports and 40 per cent of sunflower oil exports. The invasion is also causing global energy prices to rise further, which will push up food prices indirectly.

And Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports adds to the problem in a world where humanity’s transportation capabilities has transformed food supplies from local-only to fungible status – which means disruption in one part of the world can impact nations thousands of miles away.

And banning Russian exports cuts both ways:

Even if no more extreme weather events hit yields this year, there is another crucial factor at play: high fertiliser prices. Fertiliser prices started rising in 2020 along with fossil fuel prices, and have gone up even further because Russia and Belarus are major exporters. They now cost three or four times as much as they did before the pandemic.

Long-time readers are well aware of my belief that we’re badly overpopulated. Is this the beginning of some sort of population adjustment, if I may indulge in a droll euphemism for mass death?

No, I don’t think so. I suspect humanity’s cleverness will see us through this mess, and a few others as well. Efforts to minimize the overuse of fertilizer, already under way, will be driven harder by the higher fertilizer prices. Genetic engineering to produce more food stuffs from fewer inputs will become more acceptable as people discover empty bellies are not compatible with today’s lifestyles – that is, European opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will fade, much to the consternation of the leaders of anti-GMO organizations, who will find their positions and prestige threatened.

But, at some point, a crisis will precipitate some sort of adjustment. It’s barely possible we’ll employ the Roman interim solution, which was to find more land: discovery of and mass transportation to an inhabitable, empty planet.

But I won’t have fantasies about it. Moving to Mars is not a solution. The Roman implementation, land via victorious warfare, seems improbable today. And the Dutch solution, recovering land from the ocean, is a slow process and inhibited by rising ocean levels. Other ideas?

But the ongoing and singular focus on packing the sardine can with more sardines is disconcerting and real, as population adjustment is not acceptable to most people – and rightly so. We evolved in a context lacking medical capabilities, and therefore offspring production reflects the reality, in the past, of pre-maturity high mortality rates. This has also lead to the adoration of life, without which humanity might have been extinguished. And while, yes, more education leads generally to a lower birthrate, numerous institutions, primarily of the religious class, oppose lower birthrates, because, of course, a smaller group reduces the prestige and influence of the group, from the leader on down.

I queasily look forward to the future, and hope to be proven wrong.

Actually, a bit mediocre. The hail storm and the wind have been unkind to the orange azalea this year.

Given that theology is really little more than fan fiction …
– Kyle Morrison, OpenSky

That can be weaponized and used to deadly effect, though. I can’t say that for the fan fiction of most topics, like, say, Fifty Shades of Gray.

Our latest nominee to be Earl is Rep Billy Long (R-MO), running for the open Senate seat in Missouri:

My #MOSen platform 1.) Get @KamalaHarris to resign 2.) Have @POTUS appoint #Trump as VP 3.) Get @JoeBiden to resign 4.) Finish #KeystoneXL 5.) Finish the wall

— Billy Long (@auctnr1) June 2, 2022

Rep Billy Long (R-MO), from Ballotpedia.

The noteworthy part of this tweet is: Have @POTUS [that is, Joe Biden] appoint #Trump as VP

Does he think that any of this, excepting #4, has any chance of happening?

Really?

Or is he just brown nosing the former President and his waning endorsement powers?

Judging from his picture, Rep Long should refrain from the necessary contortions to effectively brown nose, for, at his age, he might not survive the experience, if only metaphysically. But points for putting his soul in this much danger in pursuit of worldly influence.

Good thing I’m an agnostic and don’t know if there are souls or not.

While watching an obscure episode of The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978), in particular one of the As The Stomach Turns skits, today’s audience noted:

SHE: They’re really broken canon in this one, haven’t they?

HE: Uh?

SHE: That, that’s really not how this goes. The daughter leaves after bringing home a baby. She doesn’t go upstairs back to her room.

HE: I didn’t know Carol dated Napoleon.

SHE: Uh?

HE: Sure. Napoleon was an artillery officer. You say she broke the cannon. That is, she broke it off with Napoleon, the guy who ran the cannons.

SHE: Oh.

And that, folks, is how QAnon works.

Gotta love how Republican legislators put, ah, regulations in your way – at least in South Dakota. This is from last year, but I can’t resist:

In the lingo of South Dakota petition circulators, it’s called the “beach-towel effect.”

The term describes the massive, folded-up sheets of paper that petition circulators carry as they gather signatures to put a proposed law on the ballot.

The Secretary of State’s Office says the full text of a petition and its signature lines must be contained on a single sheet of paper. For complex proposals, those single sheets of paper may grow to several feet wide and tall.

Now those sheets of paper might get even bigger. This winter, South Dakota’s Legislature passed a bill requiring the font size on petitions to be at least 14 points.

Republican Sen. Al Novstrup, of Aberdeen, said the font on medical marijuana petitions last year was too small. He estimated it was 6 points.

“I was just unable to read it,” Novstrup testified, “and I would estimate that approximately half of South Dakotans were unable to read that particular font size.” [South Dakota Public Broadcasting]

So bloody well authorize multiple pages, Senator Novstrup! But seriously, you need to follow that link, above, to see what a petition looks like, as it’s carried around to citizens to sign.

This’ll slow down those damn citizens and their citizen legislating, now won’t it?

And that word is sharing. Way overused. Please, everyone just stop using it. It’s not clever, it’s not supportive, it’s just a really bad cliche.

Just Stop Now. Stop Sharing.

SCOTUS has told Texas that it may not regulate global social media platforms – at least for the moment:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped a Texas law that would regulate how social media companies police content on their sites, while a legal battle continues over whether such measures violate the First Amendment. …

Two Washington-based groups representing Google, Facebook and other tech giants filed the emergency request with the Supreme Court on May 13. The Texas law took effect after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit lifted a district court injunction that had barred it.

The appeals court’s order, which provided no legal reasoning, shocked the industry, which has been largely successful in batting back Republican state leaders’ efforts to regulate social media companies’ content-moderation policies. …

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Republicans who crafted the law have argued that it will prevent conservative viewpoints from being banned on social media.

Alito said the issue deserves the court’s review: “At issue is a ground-breaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.” [WaPo]

It’s an interesting issue, and I’ll be eagerly waiting to find out if SCOTUS comes to the same conclusion so many social media proprietors^[1], including myself, came to years ago, and that’s this:

People can, and will, vote with their feet.

Which is to say, the history of social media, from BBSes to MySpace to blogs to Facebook to TikTok to Mastodon is not that of stasis, of neverending dominance. It’s of change, change in features, change in capabilities, change in platforms, change in administrative philosophies.

Enhanced features attract people. Bad administration? It repels them.

Disregarding the horrific thought that the States, individually, can possibly regulate a national, nay, international platform, and all the legal mayhem that would result from conflicting State laws, here’s what we, back in the 1980s, observed in a day when we were overlooked by most legislative & regulatory bodies.

A social media platform was popular or unpopular in proportion to several factors: stability, features, availability, social atmosphere, and administrative style. The last area is the area of interest here. What does it encompass?

It was often defined by the edges of acceptable conversation as defined by the platform. On one end were those systems which essentially did not exercise any restraints. Even calls contaminated with static were considered valid contributors to discussion.

And on the other end were authoritarian administrators who tightly controlled subjects of discussion and would delete public correspondence that didn’t meet their high-handed standards.

And, most importantly for SCOTUS, I’ll tell you what: people didn’t hesitate to walk when they felt administrators behaved in an unfair manner. Someone had a viewpoint and presented it, and so long as it was presented honestly and didn’t touch on a few high-voltage subjects, it was resented if it was deleted. If this happened more than a few times, people walked.

And then new social media sites would go up in response to sites run in an authoritarian manner.

Put together the willingness of users to move on to other sites, such as is happening with Facebook right now as they lose the younger generation to TikTok and other platforms, which I probably have not yet heard, and the solution to the problem appears to be self-regulation, much like most private enterprise.

And this is a far better solution than government-specified speech requirements. If Facebook is required to specify Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid, however futile it is, because someone says that’s a conservative viewpoint and shouldn’t be repressed just because no scientific studies support it, and other studies suggest Ivermectin has its own dangers for the human organism, well, take a deep breath, who the hell should be held responsible when people start dying?

Facebook?

Faceless, if you’ll excuse the ineluctable wordplay, conservatives who proclaim this grift to be a legitimate conservative viewpoint?

SCOTUS??????????????

Small government conservatives asking for more government that will be ineffectual because there’ll be no useful metric for measuring its worth. That may be the pinnacle of irony. Watch out for avalanches.

I sure hope SCOTUS figures this out. There’s nothing necessarily permanent about any of these social media companies; if they make enough chronic errors, they’ll be out on their noses.

¹ Also known as BBS operators, sysops, etc.

At least, I suspect this honeysuckle would relish a Sasquatch.

It’s just a bit ridiculous otherwise.

Lt. Governor Mark Robinson (R-NC) is running for Governor of North Carolina against current Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC), who chose not to run for the Senate because he wanted to keep Robinson out of the Governor’s office.

Great system there in North Carolina.

But Robinson, who claims to be a classic pro-gun, anti-abortion, has quite the grifting ways:

“God gave the garden slug a way to defend itself,” he continued. “Now, if God gave the garden slug a way to defend themselves, what makes you think he didn’t give man, who he created in his own image, a way to defend himself? Those AR-15s and Glock 9mms and .45 calibers; where do you think they came from? Who do you think inspired them? God knew the world he was putting us into, so he formed in our mind the ability for us to be able to defend ourselves from anybody who may threaten us.” [Right Wing Watch]

Satan for all questions? Seriously, those questions can be answered by Satan one and all, and quite plausibly for the religious. Otherwise, his God appears to be a God of War, not peace, who inspires weapons rather than ploughshares, and likes to pluck wings off humans and throw them into a hellish world where the hand of every man is against them. Great place, eh?

But will his audience pick up that? Or are they too full of testosterone to figure out they should question what he says?

Someone knows what they’re doing:

Wow. Probably the most powerful ad I've ever seen. @Booker4KY is the real deal. pic.twitter.com/lNNCwdUH1v

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) June 1, 2022

A reader comments on the latest Word of the Day, Cheems:

And then some fool invented a cryptocurrency based on that meme, Doge Coin.

It’s the sort of thing that sounds like an extended, distributed joke, doesn’t it? Algorithms then exaggerate the entire joke, giving someone quite the profit:

Source: CoinMarketCap

Someone held a lot of Dogecoin, no doubt, and waited patiently for the credulous “crypto-investing community” to discover or remember them. They sold out at or near the top of that peak.

I am glad I was on neither side of those trades.

There’s a class of political attacks that consists of embarrassing the targets. Here’s a very recent example:

We spoke directly to Wayne LaPierre at the NRA Convention and thanked him for all his thoughts and prayers. pic.twitter.com/EfdDrgD4Af

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) May 29, 2022

WaPo provides a summary:

“You heard [the criticism] after Las Vegas, you heard it after Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, you heard it after Columbine, you heard it after Parkland, you heard it after Virginia Tech, you heard it after Sandy Hook, you heard it after El Paso, you heard it after Buffalo. You kept hearing that Wayne LaPierre isn’t doing enough.”

But that’s not true, [Jason Selvig] said. The NRA, under LaPierre’s leadership, had given victims’ family members thoughts and prayers, “and maybe these mass shootings would stop happening if we all thought a little bit more and we prayed a little bit more.”

Then he addressed a confused-looking LaPierre.

“I want to thank you … for all your thoughts and all your prayers — thank you.”

It’s the sarcastic attack.

But do these things ever work? Maybe they’re targeted, much like debates, on the audience and not the apparent target.

But it almost seems like art in a very macabre context.

Another chisel working on that crack:

A candidate for the GOP nomination for governor of Georgia refused to concede defeat even though she received only 3.4% of the vote on Tuesday.

Kandiss Taylor, a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, came third in the race.

She received significantly fewer votes than David Perdue, who had Trump’s formal endorsement, and incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, who won by 73.7% and secured the nomination.

After the results were clear, Taylor complained that the election was “rigged” against her, The Daily Beast reported. [Business Insider]

Rather amazing how Taylor comes across as a crackpot, isn’t it? But maybe she has reason to disbelieve her failure:

“Given that my vote total currently lags my number of volunteers by nearly 20,000, I do not trust these election results and neither should any supporter of either of my opponents or candidates in any other races,” Taylor said in a press release.

Taylor received 41,027 votes.

And why does Taylor think she had 60,000 volunteers? That sounds hefty enough to have gotten her some national attention, yet I hadn’t heard of her.

If she can’t provide evidence, then to me she’s just another ME! ME! ME! candidate, despite her slogan, Jesus, Guns, Babies.

But I must say, this comes across as incoherent:

“We are the church! We run this state,” Taylor said.

The crack in the GOP widens.

Spaceweather.com has an implicit warning today:

FARSIDE SUNSPOTS: Right now, there are sunspots on the farside of the sun so big they are affecting the way the sun vibrates. Helioseismologists have detected their echoes in the latest farside map from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Don’t be surprised if we see CMEs billowing away from the farside of the sun in the days ahead.

It may sound all fine and abstract and far away – and, at nine light-minutes, give or take, it’s a long ways away.

In human terms.

But another Carrington Event would leave our power grid virtually – or possibly physically – aflame.

A latest image from SDO, not in visible spectrum:

Maybe act like a child while trying to convince your followers that a fantastical claim for which there is no evidence is, regardless, true?

Cheems:

Doge (often /ˈdoʊdʒ/ DOHJ, /ˈdoʊɡ/ DOHG, /ˈdoʊʒ/ DOHZH^[1]) is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme typically consists of a picture of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English.

Patience!

Since the inception of the meme, several variations and spin-offs have been created, including “liquified Doge”, a variation wherein the dog’s shape is morphed into other animals, and “ironic Doge”, a version where the Doge character is put into ironic and uncharacteristic situations. The ironic Doge memes have spawned several other related characters, often dogs themselves, one of which is Cheems, another Shiba Inu who is typically characterized by a speech impediment that adds the letter “M” throughout its speech. Walter, a bull terrier character who is typically portrayed as liking “moster trucks” [sic] and firetrucks, is another commonly recurring ironic Doge character. These memes are mostly present on subreddits like r/dogelore. One meme which became popular in 2020 was “Swole Doge vs. Cheems”, in which a muscular Doge and a baby Cheems are depicted as something considered better in the past, and its modern version, respectively. [Wikipedia]

Perhaps a trifle incoherent, or at least trivial. Noted in “cheems mindset,” Jeremy Driver, Normielisation:

I call this “cheems mindset”. While it’s a condition that can have fatal consequences during a global pandemic, it also has major implications for wider policy making. In many ways it’s the spiritual enemy of the Iron Maiden Britain concept I outlined in my recent piece for CapX– cheems mindset is the reflexive belief that barriers to policy outcomes are natural laws that we should not waste our time considering how to overcome.

Molly White (no relation) continues to run an extremely important blog, Web3 is going just great, when it comes to understanding cryptocurrencies and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). Here’s the latest post:

The Superlative Apes NFTs are a collection of Bored Apes derivative NFTs that feature colorful pastels. The project amassed a large following (including, apparently, the rapper Eminem), and its first collection of 4,444 NFTs sold out after launching in December 2021, netting the creators 301 ETH [Ethereum coins, a competitor to Bitcoin] (about $1.2 million at the time). They also sold most of their 8,888-piece Superlative Mutated Apes collection …

For lots more money. But here’s the important part:

The project has been plagued with issues including missed deadlines, accusations of plagiarism (somehow), and connections to another rug-pulled project. Additionally, a flawed staking contract required the team to have holders migrate their NFTs to a new contract—a slow and painful process that has resulted in most of the NFTs being “stuck” in a temporary contract. People who have questioned the project or accused them of rug pulling have been banned from the Discord and blocked on Twitter.

Because negative remarks will slow the flow of wealth from the non-wealthy to the wealthy, and we Just Can’t Have That.

This is computer-based grift. If the project personnel were honest, there’d be no banning anyone who had negative comments; instead, they’d be responded to and, if they’re trolls, permitted to twist in the wind.

The banning simply marks the project as dishonest, and possibly fraudulent.

If you have any urge, any inclination to “invest” in cryptocurrency, NFTs, or a “Web3” project, I’d suggest reading her blog for a while. Then, find a couch and lie down until the urge fades away.

“Sculpted entirely out of cake!” he boasted, the bastard.

The title The Monster (1925) may be the worst part of this silent movie, as it’s not really clear as to who is the metaphorical monster. People are starting to disappear near the little town of Danburg, leaving behind only their shattered vehicles, with little clue as to what’s happening. There are mysterious lights at the nearby sanatorium, but no one answers the door and the chief doctor and owner is out of town on a trip.

But when the kidnappers mess with young Betty and her beau, Amos, they miss the potential that pretty Betty has a second beau, and that would be underconfident general store clerk Johnny Littlegood. Johnny has followed one of the kidnappers to find Betty and Amos in trouble. Stumbling into a hidden tunnel as he runs from the kidnappers, Johnny finds Betty and Amos are now captives, and a clutch of insane minions who are former inhabitants of the sanatorium see them as toys.

And the former second-in-command of the sanatorium, Dr. Kiska, is now in control, and he probably should have been an inmate, not a doctor. Still, medical experiments are medical experiments and all that rot.

Well, everyone underestimates Johnny, and soon enough the police, sent by Betty’s father, arrive to help Johnny save the day.

So long as you don’t mind reading dialog boards, this is a fairly fun movie to watch. The acting works with the story, and Dr. Kiska is suitably evil. It’s not the greatest silent movie ever made – I liked Battleship Potemkin (1925) and The General (1926) more – but it’s certainly a credit to the genre of horror movies.

Sing soprano and I’ll cut you off at the knees, kid!

In The Sleeper (2000) elderly Violet Moon has been earning a bit on the side by running seances, those wee little dramas wherein a medium, or gatekeeper to the spirits of the dead, speaks to said dead for the benefit of those living who loved the dead.

Or just makes shit up, as Harry Houdini might have said.

But Violet neither foresees or even sees older adopted sister, Cath, acquired when her father married Cath’s mother. But, then, this is not a surprise: Cath has been in and out of prisons and asylums since the day, as a child, she clumsily bumped her mother off the top floor of a castle to the waiting stone floor, below.

Cath knows she’s clumsy because, well, her mother had told her that for all her life. Up to that point.

But at the seance, Cath, visiting from the old folks’ home with roommate Lillian, recognizes Violet. Violet, who went on to marry a dairy farmer, have a son, Fergus, and daughter, >name forgotten<, be widowed, and now is fighting to keep the farm going, despite various challenges.

Challenges that have discouraged Fergus into considering selling out, as his wife encourages.

But when Cath arrives to settle accounts with Violet, she disappears. Soon, Lillian and another oldster, George, arrive, find nothing, and are shooed away – but the nephew of Fergus has found a possession of Cath’s laying in the workyard.

And then Fergus’ wife goes missing, in the midst of a storm.

And what is going on with Fergus and who I think is his … sister?

And the poor old cops, having to deal with … poo slurry.

For all this interesting and mystifying plot, I never really got hooked by the story. Perhaps the British culture is off-putting for me, for the acting and script and sense of humor are fairly fine. But, taken as a whole, there’s a certain unpleasant sordidness to it, as if everyone has a dirty secret hidden in their knickers. Hell, even the administrator of the old folks’ home was, well, a bit repulsive.

But, as I said, it’s all nicely done. Sordidness with, ah, style?

The visual, influenced by Bloom County artistic style, though not any particular cartoon, featuring:

• manned machine gun nests on short poles, or stylos for the Greek-speakers among my readership, probably in the background;
• TSA (Transportation Security Agency, for those just awakening from that forty year coma) style X-ray machines, queueing spaces, and personnel, who are at rest, smoking cigarettes and checking their pistols;
• A pile of school backpacks in a corner, with books and guns spilling out;
• Obtrusive sign that says Greg “More Guns! More Taxes!” Abbott High School.

Caption: one of the TSA agents speaking to another, “Oh yeah? You should see the private schools. An entire Army tank battalion out front!”

No, I haven’t seen anything like this, but I also don’t see editorial cartoons. It just doesn’t happen, but I do like them when I see them, so I honestly hope someone beat me to the punch.

“Greg Abbott” is a reference to Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX), who revels in signing absurd anti-gun control bills.

My favorite cartoon strips in late teens through, maybe, my early thirties were Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County. I developed a taste for snarky surreality, obviously. No doubt SF writer Roger Zelazny contributed to it as well.

Inspired by this Daily Kos diary.

Feel free to use this idea!

A couple of night ago we visited Owamni, the Minneapolis-located restaurant run by The Sioux Chef. While I think “The Sioux Chef” is a bit cheesy, the restaurant itself, nominated for a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant, served delicious food. Our only complaint is that one of the deserts, a chocolate cake with sunflower brittle, featured a cake that was a little dry. This is our second visit, and the same could be said for that visit: delicious food.

If you can afford it, give it a try. Spendy but tasty.

Everyone should have a friend, but a cat’s head growing out of your chest is a bit outre.

Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (1947) is a movie based on the classic comic strip, featuring the police detective following clues in a murder and theft of valuable furs. He’s on the tail of a brutal and tough low-life, somehow connected to the crime scene, while the low-life is following up his own set of clues that will lead to … Dick Tracy.

Even though his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart – yes, you read that right,

T R U E H E A R T 

– barely exists in this story, despite getting second billing and doing nothing amazing, an irritating sidekick, a “friend” who I thought was Tracy’s butler, which was ridiculous, and who chewed the scenery something fierce, and some cheesy dialog, this was a surprisingly satisfying flick. This is no simple read the clues and wrap-up the problem: people dash desperately down alleyways to survive, pulling trick after trick; the clues are ambiguous, at least for Tracy, and, hey, no computers. That “war dialer” sure had sore fingers!

I won’t recommend it, but, ya know, I have no regrets watching this one. If only the lead actor had that square jaw like the cartoon strips did…

Fair use, Link