So, Pres. Biden and the U.N. and every futurist NGO are all setting up AI Advisory Councils and such, while the functional branch of Congress - the Senate (barely functional, a little) - holds hearings... and sage conferences feature hand-wringing jeremiads by many of the very same geniuses who seem so surprised that their cyber-invented entities are behaving so cantankerously! I posted about many aspects of this 'crisis' in my previous posting here. Let me now add a writeup on my 2017 speech that accurately (to the month) predicted (almost to the very month) when we'd face our "First AI Empathy Crisis." And many other aspects of the AI worry-fest that now surges all over.
And yet, despite cyber advances, it is way premature to write off the bio-organic world! Especially as it manifests in human brains... and minds. So let's dive into another bioscience roundup!
Starting with those vaunted neural networks made of squishy wet stuff.
== Brain & neuroscience ==
Can we begin with one more prediction cred? Even back in Earth (1991) I said that neurons alone could not be doing all the processing in the brain. First off, glial and astrocyte cells had to be doing more than just ‘support.”
Now comes news… “Previously, glial cells, especially astrocytes, were believed to merely support neuron functions. However, recent research highlights the ability of these cells to release neurotransmitters and directly influence neural circuits.” And probably much more!
An amazingly cool article about brain loci of memory and imagination! Where does imagination live in your brain?
Oxford researchers are developing a 3D printing method that could engineer cerebral cortex tissue to repair brain injuries.
And here's fascinating article about the brain-roots of both memory and imagination. Starting with the hippocampus and rats, we arrive at: “It’s amazing that we’re not all psychotic all the time, that we’re not all delusional, because our brains are clearly making stuff up a lot of the time about things that could be.” Clearly this researcher needs to get out and see the level of delusion in politics
Researchers have identified about 200 patients with hidden autoimmune diseases that had profound psychological effects, some institutionalized for years, A woman who has been comatose for two decades was awakened when her Lupus was discovered and treated. Fascinating tale and yes, a strong parallel with Oliver Sacks and Awakenings.
A common genus of microbe found in wet, boggy environments could play a key role in the development of Parkinson's disease.
== Biotech updates ==
The completed human genome lacked one piece, the Y chromosome. That’s finally done, with some surprises. For one, Y chromosomes were vastly different sizes, ranging from 45.2 million to 84.9 million base pairs in length. A year or two ago we also improved knowledge of past “Y bottlenecks,’ when apparently only small numbers of males got to reproduce. (That event becomes even more striking, the closer we look! It apparently happened across a very wide area, and during a particular era of transition to intense agriculture, but before large towns. And this has many implications that we might discuss in comments.)
Want more? Well, some of the genes that enable the naked mole rat to get exceptional longevity (for a rodent) have been transferred to mice with positive results on lifespan "and there are hopes to apply these results to humans." Yeah, well don’t get excited. Longevity results in mice hardly ever translate into human span-extensions, for a simple reason that I describe here.
For the first time, researchers have observed the beginnings of photosynthesis, starting with a single photon.
A Chinese team’s extreme animal gene experiment may lead to super soldiers who survive nuclear fallout, they assert. Modified human embryonic stem cells showed high resistance against radiation, according to paper by the Beijing Academy of Military Sciences.
Unlike many other species, gorillas seem to be remarkably resilient to early-life adversity or even trauma. Researchers examined whether each animal experienced any of six types of early-life adversity before age six, including losing their mom or dad, living through group instability or witnessing the infanticide of a fellow young animal. If the gorilla lived past six, its life prospects were no worse than any other.
== Tech & physics updates ==
Brian Keating's latest "Into the Impossible" episode offers terrific perspectives on J Robert Oppenheimer, in light of the recent film. My own comments on the flick were posted here, a week or so ago.
Albert Einstein in his General theory of Relativity more than a hundred years ago, said that antimatter should behave just like matter in a gravitational field, and fall downwards. Researchers at Cern have now confirmed that Einstein was right; by carefully constructing thousands of atoms of anti-hydrogen and then letting them fall. Cool stuff? Well…
DARPA is funding another look at MHD propulsion for submarines - as in The Hunt For Red October.
Wind Wings sails are made from the same materials as windmill blades, but operate as rigid sails on a few freighters. They are designed to cut fuel consumption and therefore shipping's carbon footprint. I was an investor in an earlier (now alas defunct) avatar of this company. I hope this version does good for the world.
And finally...
For those of you near retirement or looking for a side bennie-gig, there is of course the Peace Corps and similar entities. Take "Engineers Without Borders" modeled on the more famous Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. One member of this community worked from them years ago, and designed a sewer line for a village in Rwanda, from the comfort of his home.
And yes, I'll soon be nagging you about "proxy activism" or how you can live up to your beliefs and wishes for the world, at minimal cost and discomfort, by joining NGOs who will save the world for you!
Proxy Activism, the power of joining! It's getting to that time of year. I hope when I issue the annual nag, many of you will go to comments and chime in: "Already done, David! Here are MY five proxy groups using my dues to help make things better!"
Last I read up on it, the Y chromosome bottleneck for humans correlates closely with the millenia during which we were domesticating our grains. The food supply was plentiful... but it sucked and average lifespan dropped.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting about the end of the bottleneck isn't that lifespan rebounded, but we essentially invented writing tech and began to record history right around then. The correlation isn't perfect across the world, but it's close enough to strike me as curious.
Just for a sense of perspective on our future...
ReplyDeleteStarlink reports it is now at breakeven cash flow.
The majority of active satellites in orbit right now are in the Starlink constellation.
By next year, the majority of satellites ever launched... will be Starlink birds.
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That's what cheap access to space does.
What do YOU want to do up there?
Alfred,
ReplyDeletefrom prior readings, there's probably a direct correlation.
grain agriculture = sessile communities. "End of the bottleneck" may mean development of stable social stratification
large communities = large-scale grain storage = need to remember who owns what of numerous identical items (baskets of wheat, etc.)
record-keeping = basis of writing (at least in cuneiform, and I bet in hieroglyphics and also the Inca quipu strings, which didn't have time to develop into a written language)
large-scale storage of records becomes necessary = archives --> libraries
and finally, development of a leisure class allows time needed to learn the early writing systems, which are iirc difficult to learn - not coincidentally enhancing social stratification
Pappenheimer
P.S. of course, nomadic societies could have invented scores of writing systems that we would never know about, because they couldn't lug libraries around and wrote on perishable materials like animal skins and didn't store them in conveniently durable buildings. Some form of the North American Sign-Talk used between tribes probably pre-dated both European intrusion and the development of agriculture, but could anyone prove this?
Writing could have developed much earlier when our variety of hominid began long range trading with people far removed from our normal kinship boundaries... but it probably didn't. Promises represented as token would have sufficed and they are far easier to invent.
ReplyDeleteWriting could have been developed and lost to us when the seas rose again. I'm sure we've lost a whole lot of evidence due to ice melting, but I doubt we lost complex written language representations. Writing is very useful and would not have been used only along coasts.
A written language relating to a spoken one is essentially a second language. A LOT of people would have had to be involved to create it. Our languages emerge. The truth is there weren't all that many humans before the ice melted. They had the free time to invent all sorts of things, but nomadic hunter-gatherers don't accumulate useless trinkets. Art and other symbols... sure. Written records to archive spoken words... probably not... unless someone can think of a really good reason for a great many to spend the effort.
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Grains took time to be domesticated. So did our tech for processing them. The earliest grains were easy enough to reproduce, but they were far from ideal for a large population's subsistence needs.
It wasn't just a matter of getting more yield from wild grasses. We were inventing a human biome at the same time... and I suspect it took millenia to stabilize. In the meantime, a whole lot of guys in most places around the world didn't manage to have any male descendants who made it into the modern age. Pruned.
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I suspect for a few thousand years that life was kinder to nomadic hunter-gatherers, but after the bottleneck was over I think the situation reversed. A whole lot of innovation had to have happened shortly before recorded history began for that to happen.
If I were to do my life over again, I probably wouldn't pick physics as my primary interest. Biology and our history are much more interesting now that we can read genomes. It should be a wild century ahead of us.
Re: Tech & Writing:
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a correlation between the invention of new ways of communication and eras of social upheaval and even war.
Writing: Man's first empires, culminating in the Roman one and decaying into a myriad of successor states
Book Press: Breaking the church's monopoly on writing in the Western world led to protestantism, the Thirty Years War, and in the end to a few unruly English colonies who thought they could replace monarchy with a form of republic.
Radio: The rise of authoritarian rulers, enabling them to transport propaganda into every living room. But also, reinventing democracy.
TV: Formation of the American cultural Empire - Hollywood and it's spin-offs.
Internet: The current "Interesting Age'. Revolutions, Social Media, demagogues,
information.
The Future: AI and Augmented Intelligence, direct neural links, virtual worlds, drone warfare, maybe wars between nation-states and technoligarch feudal dynasties.
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ReplyDeleteAlfred Differ: If I were to do my life over again, I probably wouldn't pick physics as my primary interest
ReplyDeleteMe too. I won a few academic awards in high school and was pressured/seduced by the prestige of physics. What a disaster.
Add to that grand theory embarrassments from those years like string theory, entirely WRONG cosmology, and the near century-long Nobel paperchase for superconductivity. Life is the fourth major state of matter, and by far the most important. Biology and computational psychology were not even on my radar back then. Alas.
The only good thing is that I didn't waste my life and become totally jaded like the horde of frustrated, desperate, aging post-docs.
Homer and later even classic-era Socrates were grouchy about writing, which sullied the purity of memorized oral tradition. Ironic since Plato then studiously wrote down everything anyone could remember that Socrates said and that Plato could make up. Oral recitation was a huge part of human life, likely for 100,000 years+.
ReplyDeleteBut that’s not the point about the Y Chromosome bottleneck. Clearly, for a few hundred years, 90% of males were prevented from breeding (not females). We later saw evidence of something like it in Polynesia. Kings and their warriors took all the women, generally by killing other men.
You can only do this in a narrow range of societies. When everyone lives in tribes or scattered farming hamlets, a chief who tried to do that would get stabbed by fellow tribesmen or even bands of women. Much later, when you had kingsin actual towns controlling large numbers of villages, the king needed peace within his borders so that his kingdom would be strong vs other kingdoms, so he used his army (maybe 50 guys) and judges to keep order, punishing local bullies who killed husbands. It’s a narrow range in between… large villages with no law above them… that’s similar to Polynesian islands. A dozen or two big, nasty takers could grab it all.
It also correlates with the arrival of beer.
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Oger I have slides showing the disruptive effects of each wave of new tools that expanded what we can KNOW, what we can SEE, and what we can pay ATTENTION to. Every time, the pessimists were right, at first… then the benefits caught up.
MCS and when you are done with Goldberg’s articulately dyspeptic drivel you might go look up Oswald Spengler, saying the same tedious stuff 100 years earlier.
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ReplyDeleteI think Alfred is probably correct in his assumption about agriculture being the impetus for the written word, as it is the written word's ability to detect & predict the repetitive recurring pattern that allows the past to predict future events, so it would also follow that the written word would have very little predictive value in regard to random-outcome activities like hunting, fishing & gathering.
ReplyDeleteThat said, our reliance on the written word has become highly problematic, as it leads its adherents to certain erroneous assumptions & logical fallacies:
Firstly, the written word (which gains its utility from its ability to detect & predict the repetitive recurring pattern) encourages its adherents to assume that all patterns are repetitive & recurring when many are not;
Secondly, the written word promulgates the logical fallacy that it is the recorded past that predicts, controls & determines future events when the past's predictive value is sorely limited; and
Thirdly, the written word (also known as 'Logos') has given rise to the baseless belief that the very act of writing possesses the magical & arbitrary power to actively create our universe out of nothing.
This third assumption is perhaps the most insidious, as it may lead otherwise highly intelligent individuals to conclude that their empirically-derived predictive ability EQUALS predictive control over our greater reality, much like Samuel Johnson's hoary old story about the early astrophysicist who becomes so adept at predicting celestial body movements that he becomes convinced that he now exercises direct control over both heaven & EARTH.
Best
______
Hmmm, it makes me wonder: Since written word prevalence springs from the repetitive recurring pattern of seasonal agriculture, I now wonder if the decreasing popularity of agriculture (with a current participation rate of about 2%) is also directly responsible for the omnipresent misuse of the written word by the modern progressive who, frankly speaking, makes a lot of shit up & tries to legitimize said shit by PUTTING IT IN WRITING, as 62,400 repetitions of utter bullshit now appear to equal one unquestionable truth in our Brave New World. For, once written, the official narrative now appears to hold more power over society than any amount of contradictory empiric evidence can.
You are careful to qualify that the official narrative “appears” to hold more power over society than any amount of contradictory empiric evidence can.
DeleteYou mean to write how there’s less obfuscation in primitive societies? Animals don’t have the ability to dissemble, but humans do? The *noble savage* human being was involved in fewer layers of obfuscation than the modern human? There’s no [self] deception in the cauliflower?
You’re a champion of the obvious—the “apparent”.
Oger I have slides showing the disruptive effects of each wave of new tools that expanded what we can KNOW, what we can SEE, and what we can pay ATTENTION to. Every time, the pessimists were right, at first… then the benefits caught up.
ReplyDeleteYes. But maybe, by the virtue of knowing that, we could abbreviate. and alleviate those unpleasant times?
Oh, and NOTHING in my life will make me go through Oswald Spenger AGAIN....
ReplyDeleteOger,
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a correlation between the invention of new ways of communication and eras of social upheaval and even war.
I take it as a given nowadays. Someone invents Tool to help solve an issue. Tool has unintended consequences that results in changes to us. Someone's descendants are altered and have new issues prompting them to innovate new Tools.
It's a cycle from a couple of perspectives, but more like a wandering, multi-dimensional helix from other POV's. One thing it sure isn't is predictable in detail and unpredictable at macro-scales.
mcsandberg,
Imagine you’re an alien assigned with keeping tabs on Homo sapiens…
That alien would have to be pretty clueless and lazy to think we were just semi-hairless, upright, nomadic apes foraging and fighting for food each time. At a macro level that was true, but HOW we did it changed before the ice melted. In other words, they should have noticed that something significant happened about 70K years ago. (Maybe more… maybe less… but definitely not ALL between the last two observations.)
Somewhere along the way, those semi-hairless apes suddenly got a lot less xenophobic. They started trading outside their kinship groups. The semi-hairless apes who did not do so got supplanted pretty quickly by those who did who also broke out of Africa and displaced ALL other hominids.
If keeping tabs on Homo Sapiens was the task, they would have noticed this. They would have been alerted to a fundamental shift.
———
Authors who don't portray these changes might be ignorant of them. The knowledge we've gained about our history has been exploding in the last generation. However, it is also possible the authors just Believe that humans are what they are and have always been that. Science is proving that such ideas are inconsistent with the evidence, so be careful with books written about these subjects if they are more than about 20 years old.
locumranch,
…the written word … has given rise to the baseless belief that the very act of writing possesses the magical & arbitrary power to actively create …
I think your three ideas all boil down to the same thing. Magical thinking. I don't know that writing gave rise to it (I suspect it didn't), but people sure DO use writing when they imagine magical systems. Between writing, chanting, and wiggling our dextrous fingers, we LOVE to believe in the power of our tools to do magic.
My deep suspicion, though, is we do this with all our tools.
scidata,
ReplyDeleteI'm not totally embarrassed by the years we've spent with string theory. Well… Partially yes… partially no. I think we've over emphasized it and chased off into metaphysics when there were much closer problems and inconsistencies to address.
I think we should be having honest conversations about our underlying philosophical assumptions (logical positivism has its limits) and covering a range of theoretical possibilities that test ontological assumptions. The folks exploring entanglement are doing all that, so I'm very supportive.
The only good thing is that I didn't waste my life and become totally jaded like the horde of frustrated, desperate, aging post-docs.
Ha! I'll drink to that!
those semi-hairless apes had extremely rich oral traditions and vivid minds, at least (I estimate) since some mutation around 75000 y.a gave us the ability to re-pregram, each generation.
ReplyDeleteOger: “Yes. But maybe, by the virtue of knowing that, we could abbreviate. and alleviate those unpleasant times?”
What do you think I am trying to do!? Alas, my WIRED article about the nutty 3 assumptions now being made about AI, by the bona fide geniuses who are inventing it, has been ignored and hence we are going to pass through the Pessimistic Valley before sense prevails.
Locum is clearly still drinking better water and eating better food. IN THMSELVES – and allowing for a grumpy tone and huge incompleteness – I have no problems with any of the asserted three drawbacks to writing that he puts forward! Though yes, they are virually the same. Still.
. Of course he IMPLIES that HE is immune to the traps that he describes, instead of being an archetype example. But who knows? He may be on his way (and I wish him joy ) along the path toward that being somewhat true! It would give me a happy thought and I wish him well.
David Brin«Homer and later even classic-era Socrates were grouchy about writing, which sullied the purity of memorized oral tradition»
ReplyDeleteHomer was one (or several eventually conflated into one semi-mythical individual) dude(s) whose livelihood was entirely dependant on a capacity to remember far more orally transmitted stuff than the average person, so a bit biased I daresay.
Socrates was alongside Shang Yang the forefather of the pseudo-intellectual justifications used by wealthy failsons to justify authoritarian rule by tiny clades of dynasts and on top of my “People who should be murdered in the cradle if time machines are even invented” list. So fuck that guy and his elitist proto-randian “Only Super Geniuses with a Golden Soul like ME should be in charge” masturbatory fantasies
***
Oger:«I believe that there is a correlation between the invention of new ways of communication and eras of social upheaval and even war.»
Reminds me of the novel “Demain la Veille”: Prehistoric guy invents the axe, and is super enthusiastic about how much easier it will make gathering great quantities of firewood for the tribe to stay warm during bad weathers…
Wow, Laurent. While I despise Plato... and clearly Socrates ("sew-crates") was an incantation-spinning and apparently bad-smelling ) savanarola... it may be unfair to conflate the two completely. Still glad to see someone else sees through the platonist spells.
ReplyDeleteI was going to quibble about y-bottleneck communities facing the stark reality that 90% of their males never reproduced… but the math works out.
ReplyDeleteThe way I learned it was as a ratio of male/females who never reproduce. Typical communities today and in the deep past (we think) see ratios near 3:1 or 4:1 depending a bit on how boys are raised. During the bottleneck that ratio went to about 17:1 and stayed there for centuries pretty much world wide. The span of the bottleneck is somewhere between 8K years ago to 4K years ago with the 17:1 peak being in the middle near 6,000 years ago.
To get only 10% of the males in a community reproducing at the 17:1 peak, you'd need to have about 5% of the females NOT reproducing. 1 in 20. Is that reasonable? Yah. I think so if the food supply sucks bad enough, but keeping it down to 5% might actually be tricky with nutrition poor diets.
———
One reason I'm leery of the 'beer' explanation is that humanity is not equally resistant to alcohol poisoning yet the Y-bottleneck was very wide spread. I'd want to see if our regional alcohol resistance correlates with the bottleneck gender ratio. No doubt that our resistance improved over the generations, but so did the grains we used to generate the stuff.
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteThe way I learned it was as a ratio of male/females who never reproduce
How so. It seems to me that the extreme case is one monarch who impregnates all of the women and prevents any other men from doing so. If no other males reproduce, what does it matter if the king "got" to all the women, or what percentage of them managed to hide in their cellars or the forests? There is only one male passing genes along regardless.
Since you obviously know the subject matter, I'm not so much asserting you're wrong as asking what I'm missing
Alfred Differ said...
ReplyDelete"Just for a sense of perspective on our future...
Starlink reports it is now at breakeven cash flow.
The majority of active satellites in orbit right now are in the Starlink constellation.
By next year, the majority of satellites ever launched... will be Starlink birds.
------
That's what cheap access to space does.
What do YOU want to do up there?"
Absolutely. My only issue is that back when I was in grade school and my father brought home a stack of binders from work containing a fully detailed plan for a manned Mars mission, I was expecting us to be where we are now before I hit high school. Back then it seemed the movie 2001 would be right on the money. So much for childhood dreams.
But it really is beginning to happen now. What surprises me is how most of the world, or the US at least, doesn't seem to care or even know about what is happening. When I was a kid all things space were very popular. Now, not so much. There are enthusiasts of course, but the general public is not engaged.
It looks like SpaceX will be cleared to make a 2nd orbital launch attempt with their Starship design within a couple of weeks. They have a booster and ship ready to go at the launch table and several additional prototypes of both ranging from complete to mostly complete ready to continue their test flight program. If this system reaches routine mission use and gets even close to their design goals, it will be another step up in order of magnitude compared to F9. 200 + tons to LEO, fully reusable, made of stainless steel and engines currently cost about $1 million, aiming for $250K with high volume.
What? What? Is sanity contagious?
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased to say that everyone seems to be making valid points, even & especially Alan_B who dubs me a 'champion of the obvious', a title which I'll graciously accept as it leaves me somewhat better off than those poor unfortunate sods who fail to recognize 'the obvious' when it bites them on the nose.
To Alfred, I reply that the three magical assumptions I cited are not quite 'the same thing' as the first references the assumption that repetitive recurring patterns exist when & where they do not, the second contradicts the oft-repeated truism that 'past performance is no guarantee of future results' and the third mistakes a descriptive term for a creative act.
I'd also add that the default female-to-male human reproductive ratio appears to be about 5-to-1 in non-monogamous civilizations, and this near Pareto principle (80/20) distribution appears to be reasserting itself in western mating habits as our enlightened civilization sunsets. Google 'Pareto Distribution Dating' yourself.
And, finally, I do not mean to imply that I possess any sort of 'magical immunity' to the above fallacies, but only the mundane medical variety that one gains from repeated exposure to such infections.
In fact, I agree with most of your assertions.
I agree that the written word is an extremely powerful tool, especially in the hands of an accomplished wordsmith like Dr. Brin, but its utility is as limited as any screwdriver or hammer, as the written word's repeated misuse as a conjuring tool can in no way create the reality that it was designed to describe.
I apologize again for championing the obvious & apparent, even while acting in loco parentis. Or, is that loco apparentis? Loco aparentis? Whatever.
Best
______
@Laurent_W: Whoa there, fellow. Your antipathy to the elitist proto-randian masturbatory fantasy that only Smart People "should be in charge" doesn't play too well at Contrary_B, my experience can show you. Plus, go easy on Socrates who was as (1) anti-authoritarian as they come and (2) is on record with one of earliest known poop jokes ever told.
Everyone SEEMS to be making valid points? Apparently it does seem to be apparent.
DeleteProxy activism
ReplyDeleteThe lazy and counter productive approach to solving problems.
The lazy part is obvious: all you have to do is write a check.
It is a counter productive approach that runs afoul of the Shirky Principle.
The Shirky Principle is “Organizations will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
To give an example of the Shirky Principle look to the unofficial motto of the US medical system: “A patent cured is a customer lost!”
The organizational dynamics go like this: The first principle of any organization is Keep The Organization Going. Any activity done by the organization that threatens the long term viability of the organization is to be avoided. Employees of the organization have first dibs on the income coming into the organization.
If given the choice between activities that would “manage” the problem and retain the organization verses actions that would solve the problem and end the need for the organization. It is a very rare organization that would choose the latter.
Look at the environmental movement. All of its real success came when it was run by volunteers: Clear air act, Clean water act, Endangered species act. When professionals took over all we get are corporate subsidies for activities that at best manage the problem, although often times they just make the situation worse. A great example of that is using energy efficiency to fight climate change. We have made a lot of processes more efficient but the total amount of fossil fuels being burnt just continued to climb. Lighting has gotten much more efficient …. So we use a lot more lighting (Jevons paradox) and any money saved on lighting got used for something else ( substitution effect).
Proxy activism is perfect to virtue signal, just donate to Greenpeace then put the bumper sticker on your brand new giant SUV on your way to the airport so you can fly to Greenland to watch the glaciers melt.
Locum, not to say you are mistaken—yet what you’re writing here is merely variations on “no one is objective, not even those who attempt to be.”
ReplyDeleteWell, you don’t say. No kidding. What do you do afterwards? Do you look up to the sky and proclaim ‘Woe is me’?
“Eloi Eloi, lama sabacthani”?
I’m like that too, but what is the purpose? Such is akin to the lady in my hometown who walked around yelling,
“reality doesn’t need our permission!”
Valid, yes, but of no avail.
woe, Woe! The cosmos is enormous but we are infinitesimal. We cannot exercise direct control of both the cosmos and EARTH!
DeleteWe must surrender.
Alfred, the one thing I remain VERY skeptical about, re the Y Chromosome bottleneck, is how it could have been worldwide at the same time. Seriously? In Mesoamerica and Africa and Asia, too? If any of you find a study that supports that utterly weird aspect of a very weird event, let us know here. Because as Goldfinger said…. “Once Mr. Bond is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” Lacking any other plausible explanation, this is the 1st time I have seen something that is more consistent with Ancient Aliens than any other explanation.
ReplyDeleteWhy females surviving preferentially? One brutal rule. Feed your harem. Even if you must kill their brothers.
Beer is involved because intoxicated action gives the king his excuse to off you, when you are least able to defend yourself. This was very specifically witnessed among Polynesians. Moreover, it would help explain WHY so many populations of humans are WAY more alcohol resistant than almost any other mammal. Darwinian winnowing of the susceptible.
Darrell, if the Elon Starship totally works, then we’ll have the first of FIVE techs we need before man to Mars is at all plausible. Next. Nuclear interplanetary rockets and ISRU and massively better recycling.
Who ARE you and what have you done with locumranch? One has to squint very closely at his last couple, between the lines, to see residual nuttery, e.g. claiming to be immune to what you clearly display. Nevertheless, there are NO particular statements that are crazy in their own right! None. Even a bit… thought provoking?
ReplyDeleteWhat started as snide jocularity on my part, about improved diet, is now trending toward curiosity about genuine (and potentially medically applicable) applications. Plus, sure, an apology for the snide aspects of my comments.
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Alas, we have a replacement angry/diatribe nutter. “jim” is such a piece of work.
Dig it fellah, people who are already active in causes will not take ‘joining an NGO’ as a sudden reason to stop! Do you actually believe that crap? ALL of the folks I know who are activists are also already members of pertinent NGOs. ALL of them. Funny thing, their memberships stopped NONE of them from activism. Rather, they got contacts and resources.
Carumba what garbage.
In fact, getting 10 to 100x as many others… who are currently lazy and doing nothing … to suddenly identify themselves as ‘activists’ by virtue of donations and a nice quarterly magazine for each NGO… that creates a hugely larger feedstock of new actual activists. And if most of them stay lazy? At least they are helping to hire some of the best (activist) lawyers and specialists on the planet.
jim knows all that’s true, yet he came here to spew that bullshit, why? We all know why.
BTW The Shirky Principle is a warning of ONE of many potential failure modes to organizations. It is not a law of nature. Clay himself has said that there are countless counter examples of orgs that protect their activities from such modes, remaining goal oriented.
Jesus you are saying that EFF and Amnesty and Heiffer and all the others are impotent masturbation societies?
What an awful person. SHOW US WHAT YOU DO, that’s so much better, please. Seriously, instruct us how YOU are improving the world so much more than my friends at Greenpeace and the ACLU.
Larry,
ReplyDelete…asking what I'm missing.
Okay. Let me back up a bit.
In every community managing to produce sufficient children to sustain itself, there is a chance that a child will never reproduce. They might be eliminated by disease, war, or even an alcoholic father. Whatever the reason, they just don't reproduce.
On average, most modern communities see the gender ratio for these children somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1 male:female. If 1% of the girls born never have children then 3-4% of the boys don't. Whatever the cause, this ratio is thought to be fairly consistent through human history… except during the Y-chromosome bottleneck when it jumped to about 17:1… about 6,000 years ago.
What made me halt and be tempted to quibble was our host stating the number a different way. He stated it as 90% of males not reproducing. To get that near the bottleneck peak would have required only slightly more than 5% of females not reproducing. That's not an unreasonable estimate for a community facing poor nutrition risks lasting centuries, so my post was just an admission that the alternate POV works fine.
One way this gets stated in the science papers is as 'effective population'. Those are the ones reproducing.
———
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381518/
A paper from 2015 shows the underlying result. Data from North and South America is sketchy, so I'm careful about saying the bottleneck was a world-wide event. (However… it's pretty close.) I'm hoping more data from the New World has been collected since then, but it's probably not easy to do since small pox wiped out a large fraction of their ancestors a few centuries ago.
One other neat thing in that paper was now the effective population size jumped for both genders about 50,000 years ago and then again (ONLY) for females after the ice began melting in certain specific areas.
Darrell E,
ReplyDeleteSo much for childhood dreams.
Yah. I don't want to be too negative wrt the grunts at NASA, but the agency kinda got taken over and turned into a cash-to-contractors machine that served political purposes. Our childhood dreams got met (slowly) as a side dish to political pork.
Take a peek at Lori Garver's recent book. It is both depressing and exciting and serves to explain why some guys like me (and others from the Space Frontier Foundation) are willing to look the other way for a while wrt certain billionaires disrupting the Syndicate. We Foundationers knew perfectly well there was a great deal of fraud going on AND a revolving door between contractors and agency labs, but there is nothing quite like having a deputy administrator able to write a tell-all book.
———
There are enthusiasts of course, but the general public is not engaged.
I used to think we needed them to be engaged. I no longer do. What we need is for them to be employed or in some other financial way to benefit from what's happening. We don't have to deliver motivational sermons from on high if their bottom lines benefit from what's happening.
However, I AM amazed at how many are actually paying attention to it all… and not just in the US. When SpaceX had their live launch videos on YouTube I used to watch the live streams and pay attention to the mood in the side chat. The launches themselves got repetitive, but a lot of people along flight paths would take time to step outside and report what they saw… and then bubble excitedly about it.
locumranch,
ReplyDeletefirst: assumption that repetitive recurring patterns exist when & where they do not
second: contradicts the oft-repeated truism that 'past performance is no guarantee of future results'
third: mistakes a descriptive term for a creative act.
Okay. That makes some sense now. I can see them as distinct even when I squint at them.
…as our enlightened civilization sunsets.
Ha ha! Uhm… no. I get the Pareto distribution connection to dating. It applies broadly across many relationship types between people. That we are 'returning' to it can be debated, though. I'd challenge anyone getting into such a discussion to produce legit measurements spanning centuries that describe 'how we do it'. Without numbers, we're just engaging in a competitive feelings dance.
And, finally, I do not mean to imply that I possess any sort of 'magical immunity' to the above fallacies, but only the mundane medical variety that one gains from repeated exposure to such infections.
That's cool, but I doubt any of us have long-lasting mundane medical variety immunity either. At best I think we have spot immunity. You won't like my delusions as much as I like them… and visa versa. The path to broader immunity requires that we all trust each other just a bit so when someone tears apart our delusions we lean toward abandoning them for some other possible delusion.
…as the written word's repeated misuse as a conjuring tool can in no way create the reality that it was designed to describe.
Heh. Yep.
Reminds me of map makers who produce a product used in making military plans.
Did this world-wide Y chromosome bottleneck include Australian aborigines?
ReplyDeleteThey didn't have beer, or agriculture (as we know it, at least)
However, they did appear to have flour milling technology. Perhaps a form of ergotism, or spermicide that had it in for Y genes?
locumranch: the written word's repeated misuse as a conjuring tool
ReplyDeleteThis is indeed the crux of the history of civilization. It forms the watershed between scripture and science.
Good advice, with relevance to the "indignation high".
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/opinion/resilience-bad-news-coping.html
...
Third, this tragic mentality encourages caution. As Thucydides would argue, in politics, the lows are lower than the highs are high. The price we pay for our errors is higher than the benefits we gain from our successes. So be careful of rushing headlong into maximalist action, convinced of your own righteousness. Be incremental and patient and steady. This is advice I wish the Israelis would heed as they wage war on Hamas. This is advice that Matt Gaetz and the burn-it-all-down caucus among the House Republicans will never understand.
Fourth, the tragic mentality teaches people to be suspicious of their own rage. “Rage” is in the first line of “The Iliad.” We immediately see Agamemnon (whom we detest) and Achilles (whom we admire) behaving stupidly because they are filled with anger. The lesson is that rage might feel luxurious because it makes you convinced of your own rightness, but ultimately, it blinds you and turns you into a hate-filled monster. This is advice I wish the hard left would heed, the people who are so consumed by their self-righteous fury that they become cruel — desensitized to the suffering of Israelis, because Israelis are the bad guys in their simple ideological fables.
...
It takes an evangelical to finally state the obvious...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/opinion/maga-mike-johnson-christianity.html
It turns out that the Bible isn’t actually a clear guide to “any issue under the sun.” You can read it from cover to cover, believe every word you read and still not know the “Christian” policy on a vast majority of contested issues. Even when evangelical Christians broadly agree on certain moral principles, such as the idea that marriage is a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman, there is widespread disagreement on the extent to which civil law should reflect those evangelical moral beliefs.
scidata:
ReplyDelete"the written word's repeated misuse as a conjuring tool"
This is indeed the crux of the history of civilization. It forms the watershed between scripture and science.
It's also the fallacy upon which the society of 1984 stood. That changing all of the records changes reality. True, O'Brien's conceit is that "running into reality on a battlefield" is a non-issue, as the Party never expects to be actually threatened by their frenemies. Seems like an awfully thin reed to expect to last 1000 years or more.
Oh David you are projecting your anger upon me.
ReplyDeleteI am not angry, nor am i delusional or suffering from megalomania (unlike you).
Back when Greenpeace was putting their bodies between whalers and whales they were actually doing some good. But that was decades ago. No real accomplishments in decades, but hey, they are still focused on bringing in income.
And Amesty International they certainly took a lot of steps to protect the rapists in their ranks.
And hey what about the grifters at Black Lives Matter, or the Trump Foundation, or tax doge and power grab that is the Gates Foundation or the thousands of other NGO grifts?
As for myself, I don't share your megalomaniacal desire to force the world to do as you wish. I focus on what i can actually control... myself and how i live my life.
Although i do still have the guilty pleasure of needling pompous blowhards online.
And by the way do you feel any guilt about all the effort you spent to get Joe Biden elected? the destruction of Ukraine that Biden help bring about? Or the act of international terrorism that Biden ordered (blowing up the Nord stream pipelines) or the mass murder of children in Gaza that Biden supplies the bombs for? Or the attempts to start a war over Tiawan?
Nah probably not.
You can control yourself, but not how you live your life; outside forces won’t allow you to.
DeleteWe’re like rabbits surrounded by wolves.
jim:
ReplyDeleteAnd by the way do you feel any guilt about all the effort you spent to get Joe Biden elected? the destruction of Ukraine that Biden help bring about? Or the act of international terrorism that Biden ordered (blowing up the Nord stream pipelines) or the mass murder of children in Gaza that Biden supplies the bombs for? Or the attempts to start a war over Tiawan?
Nah probably not.
And when did you stop beating your wife?
Not a word of that above is true. I'm not the greatest expert on the intricacies of international affairs, but I would take these bets:
Putin began the destruction of Ukraine.
Putin blew up the Nordstream pipeline.
Hamas is responsible for the human shields they hide behind.
Biden attempts to avoid a war starting over Taiwan.
How does it feel to be 100% wrong?
David Brin«Darrell, if the Elon Starship totally works, then we’ll have the first of FIVE techs we need before man to Mars is at all plausible»
ReplyDeleteI’ll believe the “We’re going to Mars!” The day there’s on a Lagrangian point a long term space habitat with over 100 people with enough stockpiled resources to let them spend an entire year in comfort without needing a single resupply convoy from Earth. Until then I’ll treat the promise of putting a Human foot on Mars in my lifestyle as a pipe dream at best and a scam at worst.
Given the size of outer space and how hostile it is, there’s no point about talking about human exploration until we’re able -and willing- to build vessels able to sustain a large number of cremates and passengers for extended periods of time. (I’m staunchly in the “The Future of Humankind won’t be an archipelago of terraformed planets but many banks of McKendree cylinders soaking up the lights of the stars they orbit” school of thoughts)
***
Larry Hart«It's also the fallacy upon which the society of 1984 stood. That changing all of the records changes reality […] Seems like an awfully thin reed to expect to last 1000 years or more.»
One thing about 1984 is that, in the end, its dystopia is not that different from many “boring”, ordinary dictatorships found IRL. How many despots thought that if they could just stop people from taking in public about their regime corruption or incompetence, it would make revolts impossible and ensure their regime’s safety?
***
Putin began the destruction of Ukraine.
Putin blew up the Nordstream pipeline.
Hamas is responsible for the human shields they hide behind.
Biden attempts to avoid a war starting over Taiwan.»
“Putin began the destruction of Ukraine.”: True
“Biden attempts to avoid a war starting over Taiwan.” Also true
“Putin blew up the Nordstream pipeline.” That one’s not certain but Putin is certainly one of the main suspects
“Hamas is responsible for the human shields they hide behind.” bullshit
First when there are terrorists hiding in a residential area, you send a swat team, you don’t burn the whole neighbourhood down: you wouldn’t have approved burning down the Twin Lakes neighbourhood in LA because that’s where the Manson family had its compound, you wouldn’t have approved sending the airforce bombing Kingman, Arizona because Timothy McVeigh lived there, you wouldn’t have approved the destruction of several neighbourhoods in American Suburbia just to get the guys who committed the January 6 coup attempt and you should really try to not find excuses for massacres when the people massacred for having lived close to murderers aren’t white people whose first language is English.
But more importantly it’s bullish because it ignores the intents of the people in charge. The Likud/Kahanist coalition is not bombing the shit of Gaza and killing thousands of locals because “Hamas leaves them no choice”, it is doing so because without the state of war and rallying around the flag effect there would be a million protesters in Tel Aviv demanding Netanyahu’s head on a pike, in a non-metaphorical way, it is doing so because a sizeable chunk of its core electorate get a fucking hard-on when they hear about Arabic-speaking Palestinians dying in great numbers, it is doing so because so long as there’s fighting in Gaza, Western powers in general and the US in particular, won’t dare exert too much pressure about the violences being committed by far-right settlers in the West Bank, it is doing so because its elected officials and many of its voters hope to forcefully remove a sizeable chunk of the Gazaan population so it can build on the strip new subsidised settlement that will attract people from Israel’s three poorest deciles and bribe them into becoming far-right voters.
Laurent Weppe:
ReplyDelete“Putin began the destruction of Ukraine.”: True
“Biden attempts to avoid a war starting over Taiwan.” Also true
“Putin blew up the Nordstream pipeline.” That one’s not certain but Putin is certainly one of the main suspects
“Hamas is responsible for the human shields they hide behind.” bullshit
I'm not on board with everything you say that follows, but even if I were, the point I was arguing against was the appropriateness of "feel[ing] any guilt about all the effort you spent to get Joe Biden elected" considering "the mass murder of children in Gaza that Biden supplies the bombs for".
Not getting Biden elected would have gotten Trump elected. How would that have benefited the Palestinians? Would the original questioner, jim, have felt any guilt about getting Trump elected had that come to pass? I can't read minds, but I'm guessing no.
First when there are terrorists hiding in a residential area, you send a swat team, you don’t burn the whole neighbourhood down: you wouldn’t have approved burning down the Twin Lakes neighbourhood in LA because that’s where the Manson family had its compound,...
You're seriously equating domestic tactics against a small set of individuals with those needed against a widespread army deployed throughout a civilian population?
and you should really try to not find excuses for massacres when the people massacred for having lived close to murderers aren’t white people whose first language is English.
You're inaccurately reading my mind, which is no way to win friends.
But more importantly it’s bullish because it ignores the intents of the people in charge. The Likud/Kahanist coalition...
I actually won't argue with you on this point. I wish Netanyahu would resign, even though I know it won't happen. But I contend you're being awfully one-sided in talking about the intents of the people in charge and not applying that to Hamas. They didn't have the lives of Palestinians in mind when they launched a barbaric terrorist attack either.
I read OGH's article about life extension, and came up with a difficulty. One speculated route to rejuvenation is to upload one's mind into a computer, keep it there awhile, then download it into a fresh, young body. I leave aside the unsolved problems of uploading minds, or of maintaining them in a digital platform, or of downloading them. What I wonder is:
ReplyDeleteWhere do those fresh young bodies come from?
In Zelazny's "Lord of Light", people routinely reincarnated into young bodies. Zelazny never mentioned where they got those young bodies.
Just grow them? Fast, like mushrooms? Doing that is an unsolved problem, and it's never witnessed in nature. I suspect that a human body needs a human mind to direct its development. Maybe bodies grown fast like mushrooms would misdevelop into nonviable monsters.
How about the old-fashioned way? Take 20 years to grow a 20-year-old body. That's a while. Well, maybe Rejuvenation, Inc. has a stockpile. But that body will have a mind of its own, one that would not wish to be over-written, i.e. killed.
Which brings me to this speculation: that reincarnation would be possible, but a crime.
Paradoctor: reincarnation would be possible, but a crime
ReplyDeleteSimilar issues were nicely explored in the Star Trek episode "Return to Tomorrow" (1968). Separation of mind and body seems like a Cartesian fallacy.
Too true...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/opinion/trump-allan-bloom-republicans.html
...
Mr. Rauch’s book “The Constitution of Knowledge” examined the collapse of shared standards of truth. He suggested that the incentive structure on the right has played an indispensable role in its epistemic crisis. Right-wing media discovered that spreading lies, inflaming resentments and stoking nihilism were extremely profitable because there was an enormous audience for it. Republican politicians similarly found they could energize their base by doing the same. Initially, the media and politicians cynically exploited these tactics; soon they became dependent on them. “They got high on their own supply and couldn’t stop using without infuriating the base,” as Mr. Rauch put it. There was nothing they would not defend, no exit ramp they would take.
Many of those on the right, dependent on the web of lies and the nihilism, have twisted themselves into knots in order to justify their behavior not just to others but also to themselves. It’s too painful for them to acknowledge the destructive movement that they have become part of or to acknowledge that it is no longer by any means clear who is leading whom. So they have persuaded themselves that there is no other option but to support a Trump-led Republican Party, even one that is lawless and depraved, because the Democratic Party is, for them, an unthinkable alternative.
...
Paradoctor:
ReplyDeletereincarnation would be possible, but a crime
So I suppose only Republicans would be allowed to do it.
scidata:
Similar issues were nicely explored in the Star Trek episode "Return to Tomorrow" (1968). Separation of mind and body seems like a Cartesian fallacy.
Kurt Vonnegut had a short story called "Unready to Wear" in which minds could free themselves from bodies, and temporarily re-animate bodies stored in body banks in order to experience pleasures of the flesh.
In the story, the point was made that the mind outside of a body was not influenced by hormonal emotions like rage. But it seems to me that in reality, there would be no aspect of human consciousness which is not in some way influenced by the body, the senses, or the physical brain.
Larry Hart:
ReplyDeleteDemocrats would also be allowed to commit body-theft, if they are rich.
In Vonnegut's "Unready to Wear", where were the body banks replenished from?
What would the 20-year-olds, awaiting mind-wipe, think of this? When the cops shut down Reincarnation, Inc., then what do they do with the previous customers? Mind-wipe them and put the original minds back in? What if those minds were lost?
Imagine the courtroom dramas. For instance, the DA proposes putting the invading mind back into the computer, but that person pleads to be erased entirely, for the innards of a digital machine is no place for an analog human mind.
Now imagine an entire society based on body-theft. They will need to raid other societies for young bodies, because they would be disinclined to raise their own replacements. Eventually this will mean war.
Paradoctor:
ReplyDeleteIn Vonnegut's "Unready to Wear", where were the body banks replenished from?
As I remember the story from many years ago, most people preferred to live free of bodies most of the time, so their abandoned bodies were stored in body banks, available for anyone to inhabit at will. I don't remember if there were special means of preservation, or if they just sat there, but that was all handwavium to the story anyway.
A reader comment under this article:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/opinion/trump-allan-bloom-republicans.html#commentsContainer
As a conservative, I totally agree that the Republican Party has disintegrated and supporting them will lead to ruin. But I also lament how the Democratic Party offers nothing as an alternative...which is why the polling shows that a dangerous criminal like Trump still has a fighting chance.
Just nominate a normal, left center person, literally anyone, and we will come running to vote for them in overwhelming numbers. Otherwise it's my 3rd consecutive election of write ins.
This is exactly what our host laments about non-Trumpy conservatives who just can't admit that Democrats are not worse than their own party. Biden won in 2020 because he is the normal, left-center person this writer is thirsting for. If this conservative who supposedly doesn't like Trump can't bring himself to vote for an old white Catholic male from the state in which corporations incorporate themselves, then what is he looking for?
I wish people like this could give examples of a Democratic candidate they would be comfortable voting for against Donald Trump. No doubt, that same person would soon be as unacceptable in their eyes as Biden has become in three years.
Trump is bluffing when he says he wants the Justice Dept to investigate Barr and Kelly when (he believes) he’s back in the saddle come ‘25. Why create more enemies out of his former subordinates?: he wishes to be known by his enemies.
ReplyDeleteAlan Brooks:
ReplyDeleteTrump is bluffing ... Why create more enemies out of his former subordinates?
I don't think so. Trump considers anyone who doesn't support him 100% on everything to be an enemy, and he envisions the Justice Department as the presidents private enforcement division.
I can't imagine him not trying to prosecute anyone he has the smallest grudge against. Except Ivanka.
If tRump wins next year, he might try to woo Barr and Kelly back to the fold. His advisors might tell him to.
Delete@Larry Hart: re the collapse of shared standards of truth.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am no futurist like OGH, I postulate something from current trends which I call “curated reality.”
The premises here are:
1) There IS an objective reality which can be demonstrated through experimentation.
2) There is NO objective PRESENTATION of reality- AI-driven selection algorithms give people very precisely what the senders feel they should have by iteratively tailoring their results toward what will produce an optimal outcome,.
3) EVERYONE/EVERYTHING has a motivation when presenting something, even if 100% altruistic or perfectly hidden from themselves.
What a person reads, sees, hears, etc. will not only vary in form (idealized font, size, brightness, contrast, tone, style, sound volume/audio balance, length, time of presentation, etc.) but in content (from 0-100% objectively true). It’s analogous to when two people perform the same Google or LinkedIn searches and get different outcomes and I believe this will over time become as accepted as normally as we do with the various search results. The only experiences which people can say are “pure” to them are those they experience with their own unaugmented senses, and as we know: even these can be effectively manipulated for various purposes.
@Scidata: Tools like these are how you get results from psychohistory, and not just predictions.
@Dr. Brin: I would expect that if we get GAI, it/they would use these tools (and others) to improve their situations viz-a-viz humans, because as we know from the 33rd Rule of AIcquisition: “It never hurts to suck up to the boss.”
Keith D Halperin:
ReplyDelete2) There is NO objective PRESENTATION of reality- AI-driven selection algorithms give people very precisely what the senders feel they should have by iteratively tailoring their results toward what will produce an optimal outcome,.
There's still the objective reality that you have to run into, often on a battlefield. No matter how fervently "Comical Ali" insisted that American troops were nowhere near Baghdad, it didn't prevent those troops from storming in.
The only experiences which people can say are “pure” to them are those they experience with their own unaugmented senses,
I've often said that the colloquial usage of "subjective" and "objective" is exactly wrong. Almost any assertion of fact can be believed or disbelieved based on subjective preferences. Your 3-year-old asks "Why?" about everything, and questions every answer with just another level of "Why?"
"Why is the sky blue?"
"Because the atmosphere scatters the light so only the blue reaches your eye."
"Why?"
"Because blue waves are shorter."
"Why?"
etc.
The chain is endless until the parent finally responds with, "Because I'll smack you one if you keep asking!"
AHA! Objective reality at last.
Tony Fisk,
ReplyDeleteSo… I finally followed the links to the supplemental pages for that article.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381518/bin/supp_25_4_459__index.html
This page shows the graphs broken out better along with data tables. Lots more material showing where the data is skimpy too.
I'd say the Australian aboriginals are under represented if they are in there at all. Same goes for populations in the New World where three sample groups from Argentina were taken as representative of 'Andes'. So… I think I have to pull back from my belief in this being a worldwide event.
———
However…
Supplemental Figures S4A and S4B are VERY telling.
Figure S4A shows the effective populations for men and women broken out by region. It's pretty easy to see that the impacts were far from equal. In some sample areas, the bottleneck doesn't look like much of anything. In others it is more pronounced, but there are strong variations on what was happening to women. For the Andes data it actually looks like the bottleneck never happened. Men actually saw more reproductive success during the bottleneck era experienced by the rest of the world.
Figure S4A also shows that the effective population of males didn't really drop much in most places. It just failed to keep up with the women. In most places that failure starts before the ice melted. Where there is a sharp drop if effective males, it's quick except in South Asia.
Figure S4B shows the relative story of the effective population ratio using 12K years ago as a baseline. Areas where farming showed up first were first to see the impact. Some regions spent millennia in the trough. For example, for South Asian populations the bottleneck stretches for 5500 years. In Europe it's about 1000 years while the near-East dealt with it over 3500 years and was the first to recover.
Well… I'll stop here. The graphs tell a better story than I do.
So far, it looks like a good night in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
ReplyDeleteStill up for grabs in Virginia.
Laurent Weppe,
ReplyDeleteYour description for Timothy McVeigh fails miserably. No one needed to bomb Kingman, AZ because McVeigh was caught in OK during the getaway. He wasn't hiding behind human shields at the time. It's true we wouldn't have bombed a city where he was hiding, but if he HAD been using human shields when they caught up to him, it wouldn't have been safe for him or them.
You are stretching your analogies so far it is painful to watch. Someone is going to pull a hamstring and wind up on crutches.
———
I'm not vilifying or justifying what's happening in Gaza.
I am calling bullshit on the emotional barb in your analogies.
Issue 1 ensuring abortion rights in Ohio's constitution and Issue 2 for legal recreational/grow your own marijuana both passed.
ReplyDeleteIn Red State Ohio.
Big loser?
The GOP.
Gov. Beshear - a democrat in the red state of Kentucky - won an easy re-election against a GOP candidate dedicated to an absolute abortion ban.
The abortion issue will kill republicans next year, and motivate the democratic base to get out and vote in massive numbers - if only to prevent a republican federal ban on abortion.
If Biden was 5 years younger a Blue wave would mop up the floor with the GOP next year.
But he's not and that is unfair and unfortunate given the great job he has done as president.
So how about this.
Biden still runs, but Kamela gets the job of secretary of state (actually a promotion).
You see, Biden's age issue isn't about him per se but about Kamela becoming president should something happen to Joe.
She's not popular, I get that (even among Blacks, and the Left wing progressives hate her - because she put a lot of Black men in jail in California).
Biden picks Beshear as his running mate and emergency back up president - maybe even hinting at retiring halfway through the next term.
Then Beshear is perfectly positioned to run as a sitting president and win in 2028 and 2032.
By 2032, nearly of Trump's MAGA base (mostly old white bigots) will have shuffled off their mortal coils.
And America will be saved from becoming a dictatorial, racist Christian version of Iran.
As for Issue 2, I look forward to becoming a pot head to ease the pains of my joints as I get older.
I prefer edibles because my wife is an excellent baker.
Paradoctor,
ReplyDelete"Lord of Light" featured "Nirriti the Black" former starship chaplain, who took a stock of med tech with him when he withdrew from society (religious differences). He was able to mass-manufacture a soulless army that marched and killed on command, despite having no real population base. So the assumption I made is that the bodies were being tube-grown, pretty much from DNA scratch. How? not even handwaved, but this ain't exactly hard SF.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Props to Zelazny for having Yama, Lord of death, meet the (true) Buddha in the road. And kill him.
Larry,
ReplyDeleteGood news about OH/KY. OH would is actually more purple than it's considered, but is horribly gerrymandered. I have kin there and I don't think the state will throw off GQP control for at least a generation. Be happy to be wrong, though.
Pappenheimer
Larry Hart 5:49 pm:
ReplyDeleteI call it the Why Game. It's played by small children, philosophers, and other pests. It has three endpoints:
1. "Because!" Usually not stated that baldly; instead the chain of explanations goes around in a loop. This saves the explainer the effort of constantly making up new explanations. Its main disadvantage is that it teaches the child how to B.S.
2. "Shut up or I'll hit you!" This stops the Why Game right quick. Its main disadvantage is that it teaches the child how to threaten.
3. "I don't know!" This too stops the game, and moreover is honest. Its main disadvantage is that the child wins the Why Game, and will soon play it again.
Unknown:
ReplyDeleteZelazny also wrote the line:
"And then the fit hit the Shan."
Yeah,
ReplyDeleteHe also put a deserter (bandit) named Dave into an Amber book. Who wouldn't let anyone into his cave, which smelled bad. I only noticed that on the second reading, when I also noticed a member of the Amber guards guarding the Pattern named Roger, who was writing a book...
Pappenheimer
mcsandburg:
ReplyDeleteIf the Supreme Court is consistent, they would strike down a federal ban on abortion
What makes you think today's Republicans are consistent about anything? They don't even consider consistency to be a virtue any more.
Paradoctor:
ReplyDelete"Shut up or I'll hit you!" This stops the Why Game right quick. Its main disadvantage is that it teaches the child how to threaten.
My point had little to do with whether smacking a child (or threatening to) is a good thing to do. It was that all of the previous answers to the questions are really "subjective", even though we don't usually use the term that way. The kid can believe or disbelieve as he wills.
The "smack!", OTOH, is objective fact. There's no denying that it hurts.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAlfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteIt's true we wouldn't have bombed a city where he was hiding, but if he HAD been using human shields when they caught up to him, it wouldn't have been safe for him or them.
McVeigh is one guy who at worst is hiding in one place. Hamas has thousands of fighters actively attacking while hiding behind an entire city's worth of civilian areas.
We did take down terrorist enclaves which included civilians at Waco and Ruby Ridge. I think the feds did the right thing in both cases. And the terrorists and civilians in those cases were white and spoke English, so so much for mind-reading.
mcsandburg:
ReplyDeleteI don’t think today’s Republicans are consistent. The Supreme Court tends to be.
The current incarnation of the supreme court (I no longer capitalize it) is the judicial arm of the Republican Party.
I suppose they are consistent in overturning their own previous rulings, but I don't think that's what you meant by the term.
@mcsandberg I suggest you look at the case you cite. Sounds like the SC was following gop doctrine on muzzling the EPA, as Larry claims.
ReplyDeleteDP,
ReplyDeleteThey aren't going to remove Kamala Harris without pissing off California. She has many detractors here, but never forget that we chose her as our Senator anyway. Most importantly… don't forget that we supply a LOT of money to elections.
[Her detractors come from the furthest left side of some of our communities. People closer to the center had no real issue with her beyond her early political affiliations. She was our AG… so of course she put a lot of black men in jail.]
We already know who the Democrats intend to run. Short of someone dropping dead or saying they've had enough, that's a given.
Larry,
Hamas has thousands of fighters actively attacking while hiding behind an entire city's worth of civilian areas.
Yes… and I imagine they know a thing or two about providing cover fire for each other. Sending SWAT-level forces against such formations would be suicidal.
Waco and Ruby Ridge certainly count, but I don't think we've actually had to deal with the level of violence Israeli's face. It doesn't matter* who is right or wrong because after enough years of stress, everyone responds to loud bangs with artillery and automatic weapons fire.
* I've got English relatives and in-laws who react badly in Irish pubs located here in the US. One pub in a city nearby has some historical images on the wall and captions with a distinctly Irish POV. The bombings might be over, but forgiveness is not in the cards for this generation. If we in the US had to deal with some analogous recent conflict…(cough)… I don't doubt we'd be more barbaric about it.
Whatever the Supreme Court’s reasoning, they were reigning in our rogue federal government.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the SC's reasoning would not reign in 'their' federal government... and I hope that suspicion doesn't have to be put to the test.
Alfred - "They aren't going to remove Kamala Harris without pissing off California."
ReplyDeleteThere is no danger of California ever turning red.
mcsandburg:
ReplyDeleteThey have been pretty consistent about stripping power from the federal government. Look at West Virginia V EPA.
I admit one could look at certain decisions and see it that way.
One can also see instead that they've been pretty consistent about stripping power from Democrats. "Citizens United" and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act lead me to see things the latter way. How does a federal institution overturning state gun laws constitute "stripping power from the federal government"?
DP:
ReplyDeleteThere is no danger of California ever turning red.
Look at the 20th century. California (and Illinois) voted for Republican presidents more often than they did for Democrats. California of The Grapes of Wrath was more right-wing than the federal government at the time.
Not to say they're likely to flip next year, but the idea is not unimaginable.
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteIf we in the US had to deal with some analogous recent conflict…(cough)… I don't doubt we'd be more barbaric about it.
The right wing is acting as if they're already in that situation.
Nonetheless...
ReplyDeleteNo one is yucking my yum today. Good news from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia!!!
I'm not used to things going my way.
Larry, A Blue tsunami (caused by the abortion issue) swamps all Red candidates - including Trump.
ReplyDeleteDP:
ReplyDeleteA Blue tsunami (caused by the abortion issue) swamps all Red candidates
Be fair. Republicans did hold onto the Mississippi governorship.
Alan Brooks: We’re like rabbits surrounded by wolves
ReplyDeleteBunnies can pack a punch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg
(Monty Python - Holy Grail)
Alan Brooks:
ReplyDeleteYou can control yourself, but not how you live your life; outside forces won’t allow you to.
While I get your point, I can't help thinking...
"It's not a question of 'letting', Mister!"
Jim could try an experiment right now: leave his bicycle or car unlocked; his apartment or house unlocked.
ReplyDeleteSee what happens.
DP,
ReplyDeleteCalifornia doesn't really vote blue right now.
It votes 'We actually have educations!' 8)
Watch us squabble about what should be done to fix this or that historical wrong and you'll see those educations in action. The demise of our local GOP is largely the result of them sticking to lousy historical choices… like "English Only" or some other anti-immigrant stance. That doesn't mean urban Democrats have viable solutions to big problems (we have a LOT of homeless people right now), but we generally won't tolerate old, ignorant decisions.
———
Sure. We shall keep voting blue for a while, but it's our money Democrats really need. That is what might be slowed if choices are made that piss off some of us. Proxy activism.
Just watched the debut performance of my PLAY at Caltech. Better than I ever expected and the audience loved it!
ReplyDeletecurrently at the Future in Review conference.
----
“Where do those fresh young bodies come from?”
Zelazny assumed an artificial womb reactor that builds a full body+brain in mystery ways. The newer possibility is 3D printing… which would have to involve a lot of photo+cehmical intervention at every layer, to ensure proper cell self-ID. But it is imaginable.
Much nearer term - and scary - the scenario shown in the excellent and under-rated flick THE ISLAND.
“Now imagine an entire society based on body-theft.” SHECKLEY’S GREAT TALES: IMMORTALITY and MINDSWAP.
“Biden won in 2020 because he is the normal, left-center person this writer is thirsting for.”
Exactly. BIDEN IS NOT UNPOPULAR! These polls are almost totally about the reflexive compulsion of many liberals to never display enthusiastic loyalty. Brasher in Kentucky just won by emphasizing that Democrats (except their nutty wing) are pragmatists. Biden can do that…
…though I again say he should do a dozen things, including opening the dem primaries in a way that emphasizes collegial discussion and to display the dems’ deep bench WHILE JoBee says “I intend to be the nominee.”
—
Breshear is not the heir apparent. Increasingly it is Gavin Newsom who is impressing folks more and more. Some tradeoffs re Kamala, against whom I have no grudge.
“Whatever the Supreme Court’s reasoning, they were reigning in our rogue federal government.”
ReplyDeleteUtter bull! They have one priority, to end the FDR era social contract that emphasized science and egalitarian competition and citizenship, opening the way for return of feudal rule by inheritance brats, restoring 6000 years of rule by privileged sons.
Pragmatically that includes defending gerrymandering and every other cheat to prevent actual democratic rule by informed US citizens.
Dr Brin:
ReplyDeleteBIDEN IS NOT UNPOPULAR! These polls are almost totally about the reflexive compulsion of many liberals to never display enthusiastic loyalty
Biden is not extreme enough for the various extremists in the party. It's like he's everyone's second or third choice. But that's the thing. He's EVERYONE's second or third choice. Other possible Dems appeal more intensely to a smaller faction, but Biden is the only one who is acceptable to all, including to Trump-averse independents and (grudging) Trump-averse Republicans.
No one else in the Dem stable can pull off that combination of broad (though tepid) appeal and broad inoffensiveness.
Whenever I see Biden being portrayed as a dictatorial strongman, I can almost hear Perot's 'giant sucking sound' as the votes drain away from DT. Strange strategy.
ReplyDeleteIf he wins, he’s potus—if he loses he’s still a kingmaker. Heads he wins, tails we lose. He’s not Dolt 45, he’s a crafty SOB.
ReplyDeleteBiden is a crafty SOB
ReplyDeleteYES!
And the Dems need to USE the "Dark Brandon" image that the GOP have been stupid enough to give them
For cryingoutloud,
DeleteTRUMP is the crafty SOB.
Alan Brooks:
ReplyDeleteTRUMP is the crafty SOB.
Except for the crafty part.
Sorry, Trump isn't playing three-dimensional chess. He's not even playing checkers. He's playing tic-tac-toe.
Trump is playing pin the tail on the donkey.
ReplyDeletePlease don’t confuse Biden with Trump in my comments, such is how rumors get started; MAGA Mike tells other MAGAs how he liked Jimmy Carter a little. After it gets around, the rumor is,
“Mike said he voted for Carter!”
ReplyDeleteTrump is playing pin the tail on the donkey.
Yeah, walking blindfolded with a sharp object is about right.
But he's the donkey. Or maybe The Mule.
(These things write themselves)
He’s all miffy because Big Bird pecked him, and the Cookie Monster ate his pecan sandies.
DeleteAlan Brooks
ReplyDeleteTrump is an SOB - but never in a thousand years a "crafty" SOB
Biden in contrast has played the GOP like a fiddle on several occasions - definitely "crafty" but less of an SOB
And "Dark Brandon" is superb - just what you guys NEED
A tyrannical JB, weaponizing justice against a hapless, frightened defendant is a GQP own-goal. Trying to arouse pity and empathy from nihilist zombies is like begging a rabid Colosseum for a thumbs up. Monsters gonna monst.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"Of all the surreal scenarios that the American public finds itself in, perhaps the most unbelievable is that Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Every time I see this mentally deficient prune of a human being, I realize anew that the story portrayed in the “Manchurian Candidate” has actually happened. It may seem uncomplimentary that I have referred to Trump as a meat puppet, but he is nothing more than a front man in a play that he didn’t write, direct, or produce."
I fixed your spelling for you.
@mcsandburg,
ReplyDeleteSorry, but posting gibberish from right-wing tools isn't going to dissuade any of us on the pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian side to change our minds. The appeals to authority relative to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Viktor Davis Hanson, and Ayn Rand aren't helping.
Here's a better quote to describe what the Biden presidency has been like:
Listen, surely I've exceeded
Expectations. Tried for three years.
Seems like thirty. Could you ask
As much from any other man?
Seriously, what has the guy not done other than walk on water and then turn it into wine?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteElon Musk's "superpower" is that he "unleashes the Kraken" and lets his thousands of engineers loose to fix things
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to the industry norm which is to keep such dangerous people under tight control just in case they - shock horror - change things!
It strikes me that "Sleepy Joe" has a similar "superpower" in that he appoints competent people and lets them work
AND when "Sleepy Joe" has to directly interact with the GOP he plays them like a fiddle and hands them their arses
If "Slo' Joe" is dumb then the GOP congress critters must be incredibly DUMB as in every TELEVISED encounter he has just outthought them
ReplyDeletemcsandburg:
ReplyDeletethere is literally nothing else I can say.
And yet, I'm sure you still will.
Sorry about misspelling your nym. I see that now.
ReplyDeleteMcS,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I remember about Biden before he ascended to Dark Brandon was that, in the opinion of other politicians, he was too sharp for his own good - he had trouble keeping a lid on his sly sense of humor, and this would keep him from attaining the presidency. That diagnosis is from the 90s. Your bias is showing. (I voted for Liz Warren in the primaries, BTW: I was not an early partisan.)
Regarding him being the dumbest person in any room, he has been in rooms with:
1) Mike Pence, well-known goober
2) Louis Gohmert, a man who brings the average IQ of Texas down a notch
3) Donald Trump, a man who once suggested, to his own Surgeon General on live TV, introducing bleach and UV light into the interior of Covid victims in intensities sufficient to kill the virus.
Pappenheimer
mcsandberg has nothing else to say.
ReplyDeleteI do.
Despite being an octogenarian, Biden strikes me as still being sharp as a tack.*
Trump is ten years younger, is continually confused as to his location, and can barely string two coherent sentences together.
McConnell has now gone catatonic mid-sentence on at least two occasions.
The gop appear to have nothing else to offer.
I'm not crowing about this: either way, the US looks set to becoming a one-party state, at least for a while.
As for Musk, while I am quite familiar with the 'fail fast' strategy:
1. it has limits when material damage is a possibility**
2. it doesn't mean the 'Kraken' can't learn from the mistakes of others (a proper launch pad being covered by Rocketry 101)
* Paul McCartney (another octagenarian) is doing a farewell tour, sans mobility frame.
** I shudder to think how Musk would approach a nuclear drive, which... he's going to, isn't he!?
If I were Lusk Nemo, and REALLY wanted to get to Mars before I died, I'd be investing in ex-Soviet warheads, reconditioning them on some island in the Indian Ocean, and building a secret launch facility in the Somalian desert - close to the Equator, far from government oversight. you'd need a private army, and a white Persian cat, but when your Orion Drive lifter fleet hits orbit, you can wave goodbye to the radioactive plume drifting across Ceylon towards Singapore...
ReplyDeleteIPO in the Strossian sense: Install Planetary Overlord, just on Mars.
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer
ReplyDeleteAn Orion drive was about the ONLY way to get lots of mass into orbit without spending Trillions
Then came the Falcon 9 - which cut the cost by a factor of 5
The Starship (silly name) will cut the costs by a further factor of 10 - possibly as much as 50
IMHO planet Mars is a silly idea - Mars ORBIT and using Phobos and Deimos as sources for materials makes a LOT more sense to me
Orion drive wasn't a solution. It was another disaster to fund until we determined it didn't make sense. Senate jobs program.
ReplyDeleteBefore F9, the only way to cut costs would have been to shoot the aerospace contractors when they spent too much. The Senate was NOT in for that, though. Those contractors had employees in pretty much every state and district so even the House had to play along. A tiny fraction of both houses understood that, but it was politically painful to oppose the fraud.
Space was expensive after Apollo because it was mostly about pork. The automation we see with F9 would have been difficult a couple decades earlier, but the approach to building them and the hardware experience we could have gained was NOT beyond us. Our defense contractors CHOSE not to pursue that path for the same reason car makers bought and ditched early competitors to IC engines.
Perhaps the next time Elon is bored, he might consider bringing the "Dymaxion house", as described by Arthur C. Clarke in "The Hammer of God" into reality, particularly the recycling and auto kitchen capabilities. He needs it for his interplanetary ambitions, we'll need it here when climate instability complicates agriculture.
ReplyDeleteLarry Hart said...
ReplyDeleteBiden is not extreme enough for the various extremists in the party. It's like he's everyone's second or third choice. But that's the thing. He's EVERYONE's second or third choice. Other possible Dems appeal more intensely to a smaller faction, but Biden is the only one who is acceptable to all, including to Trump-averse independents and (grudging) Trump-averse Republicans.
Exactly this. I see the polls that say (something like) "70% of Democratic voters would prefer a different candidate", but the problem is that there is no other one candidate who is preferred to Biden my a majority of voters. His support may be "a mile wide and an inch deep", but the support of the others tends to be "an mile deep and an inch wide".
Pappenheimer:
ReplyDeleteI voted for Liz Warren in the primaries, BTW: I was not an early partisan.
I also wasn't a Biden fanatic back when. I was glad he was the nominee only because I felt that he could appeal to--or at least not drive away--working class voters who had gone to Trump in 2016 because Hillary was unpalatable. Most of the other candidates that progressive Dems were excited about seemed to have similar baggage in swing states--too gay, too female, too socialist, etc.
Biden wasn't exciting, but he was the safe choice*. And remember how important it was not to re-elect Trump.
But once he took the office, he impressed the heck out of me. Seriously, what is it that the guy hasn't accomplished with the Congress and supreme court he's stuck with that anyone else could have done?
Are we still upset about the price of eggs? Or lumber? Even gas is back down to the levels that Trump brought it up to when he brokered a deal with Russia and Saudi Arabia to save the oil industry.
* Somehow, the meme has been turned around today, so that Biden is presented as the only Democrat who could lose to Trump. I don't see it. The electoral dynamics haven't changed that much.
Tony Fisk:
ReplyDeleteTrump is ten years younger,
More like three or four, isn't it?
LH, about three and a half years younger, but "Drumph!" doesn't look it or speak like it.
ReplyDeleteLike Larry, Biden has really surprised me. He was not my first choice, or my last. I really would have preferred someone from a younger political generation. I really liked mayor Pete, except that being gay seems to still be a negative among enough voters to be a risk. But now, I can't imagine a better choice for POTUS than Biden given the circumstances.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that doesn't surprise me (depresses me, but not surprised) is how so many even among liberals seem to have no clue about the achievements of the Biden administration and seem to buy into the "Sleepy Joe" myth.
What I don't get about attacking Biden on "genocide". Emphasis mine.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Nov09-4.html
Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) have Joe Biden in a bind. They have real power—the power to elect Donald Trump president, who will then carry out policies that both of them despise with a passion. Such is politics...
In a sense, Tlaib is both the more dangerous and less dangerous of the two. She is more dangerous because she is from the key swing state of Michigan, where about 5% of the voters are Muslims. She could singlehandedly flip the state from blue to red and elect Trump, who as president would tell Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu to bomb Gaza until all the Palestinians are dead, thereby actually triggering the genocide she is accusing Biden of abetting.
...
Tim H:
ReplyDeletebut "Drumph!" doesn't look it or speak like it.
"covfefe"?
And that was several years ago.
Ever see him walk down a ramp or try to hold a glass of water?
If Trump doesn't appear old, feeble, or senile, it's because the media are protecting his image.
ReplyDelete"If Trump doesn't appear old, feeble, or senile, it's because the media are protecting his image." As they have done for many years.
Larry Hart«Not getting Biden elected would have gotten Trump elected. How would that have benefited the Palestinians?»
ReplyDeleteJust so we’re clear, I absolutely adhere to the notion that Biden at his worst (and his worst can be pretty nasty) remains better than Trump at his best.
Trump in charge would have been worse for Palestinians and Israeli alike in so many way that merely enumerating them feel like a sisyphean task.
***
«You're seriously equating domestic tactics against a small set of individuals with those needed against a widespread army deployed throughout a civilian population?»
Yes I am, because at the end of the day the enormous death toll in Gaza is no mere tragic consequence “tactical necessities” or whatever one may want to call it, but very deliberate destruction, ordered by discredited politicians for not very avowable reasons, a civilian death toll so enormous that even if the IDF somehow managed to kill every active Hamas members, the organisation would reconstitute itself like a Ship of Theseus built from new recruits motivated by trauma and revanchism for the death of their relatives and loved ones.
Israel is not Ukraine fighting a heavily mechanised army larger than its own, it’s an occupying power fighting a violent insurgency using heavy handed methods that won’t succeed in doing what its ruler pretend they want to do
***
«I wish Netanyahu would resign»
I wish Netanyahu and his allies ended in a dutch prison cell after being sentenced in The Hague for crimes against Humanity. We could put them on one side of the corridor and the Hamas leaders on the other side and let them hurl insults and death threats at each other till they had a syncope for all the shouting.
***
«I contend you're being awfully one-sided in talking about the intents of the people in charge and not applying that to Hamas»
There’s a good reason I’m so “one-sided”. Between the two belligerents one has a lot of firepower and enjoys friendly relations (as well as military cooperation) with the Western Hemisphere. If there’s two bullies and one has a lot more of power and support than the other, especially when that powers and support comes from MY corner of the globe, I focus on the stronger bully.
***
«There's still the objective reality that you have to run into, often on a battlefield. No matter how fervently "Comical Ali" insisted that American troops were nowhere near Baghdad, it didn't prevent those troops from storming in.»
What’s often forgotten about the pathetic collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime and its military is that the lie that collapsed, this day, the tall tale of Iraqi military excellence, lasted for a good quarter of a century, from the 70s, back when Saddam was still hailed as a “modernizer” in the West all the way to 2003, despite clear signs that this myth had no grounding in reality, as shown by Iraq’s failure to defeat isolated, embargoed Iran despite an 8 years long campaign and its quick military defeat in 1990.
It doesn’t matter how pathetically a myth collapse if it lasts long enough; the Divine Right of Kings might be ridiculous, but it allowed many powerful dynasties to justify their wealth and powers for centuries
***
Alfred Differ«It's true we wouldn't have bombed a city where he was hiding, but if he HAD been using human shields when they caught up to him, it wouldn't have been safe for him or them.»
“we wouldn't have bombed” Precisely: You know the US federal government would never have thrown missiles and mortars before saying “tough luck” to the relatives of killed bystanders instead of more retrained methods that may have presented a risk for the bystanders in the immediate vicinity but not been a certain death sentence for many.
Re: Monty Python & King Arthur
ReplyDeleteIf only all cultures could lampoon their defining mythology like this.
Re: Biden:
ReplyDeleteNobody has done more to hinder a genocide in Gaza than Biden, by the virtue of sending a CFG. And I believe nobody curses that ships and troops more than Bibi.
Laurent Weppe:
ReplyDeleteIf there’s two bullies and one has a lot more of power and support than the other, especially when that powers and support comes from MY corner of the globe, I focus on the stronger bully.
Understood.
I focus on the bully committing the more heinous acts.
Different strokes.
Laurent Weppe:
ReplyDeleteIt doesn’t matter how pathetically a myth collapse if it lasts long enough; the Divine Right of Kings might be ridiculous, but it allowed many powerful dynasties to justify their wealth and powers for centuries
I wasn't arguing that a false reality can be maintained for a period of time. Just that it isn't impervious to actual reality.
Laurent Weppe:
ReplyDeleteBetween the two belligerents one has a lot of firepower and enjoys friendly relations (as well as military cooperation) with the Western Hemisphere.
Well, yes and no. Sure the United States supports Israel militarily and diplomatically, but "the people" seem to have a different attitude as seen on the streets of cities and college campuses.
Often, the arguments I've seen against Israel play out as such:
"Look at incident-X (say the hospital bombing). No matter which side you're on, that is so egregious that Israel must be condemned!"
Turns out Israel didn't do incident-X. Maybe even that the Palestinians themselves did.
"Ok, but still, Israel must be condemned!"
Also breaks down to personal preferences: if one prefers to visit or live in Ukraine or Israel, rather than Russia or Shiite/Arab nations, one would tend to support the former. Personally, I wouldn’t fly over the latter countries, in case the plane had to make an emergency landing. Russia isn’t a bad place to live, unless you’re being conscripted. (as in ‘Until near the end of the play, Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed it’)
ReplyDelete——
Going by DSM, although Trump is of average intelligence he has the emotional control of perhaps age 14.
Narcissist, messianic, Caesar complex. Moderate paranoia. His father told him that no one can be trusted.
"Caesar complex"
ReplyDeleteYeah, about that.
Julius Caesar took over as sole, temporary dictator in a crisis that lasted for (carry the two) 1499 years. Most of the early Caesars proclaimed their intent to restore the Republic, but even lip service stopped sometime after the reign of Claudius.
There are always people eager to seize power over others. A few of them catch the right tides, usually periods of civil strife and economic hardship...I remember the tale of a ex-soldier turned bandit who attained the throne of Imperial China for about 5 days.
Pappenheimer
The Roman Empire was powerful, but the Roman people were rabble. Things have changed. We believe in ourselves, not in our stars.
ReplyDelete…Laurent Weppe,
ReplyDeleteYou know the US federal government would never have…
Uh… be careful with any statements like that. If the good people of Oklahoma had spent the last couple of generations raining rockets down on their neighbors in Texas or some other nearby state and THEN McVeigh tried to hide behind of bunch of them, it's not a good assumption that the feds would have shown restraint.
Never forget Sherman's march to Atlanta.
———
Tim H.
Perhaps the next time Elon is bored, he might consider…
You raise an interesting idea. So… let's consider his example with Tesla. He essentially recognized that cars are sold with sex and then pushed the Roadster design to get at least some cash flowing in.
The question we should be asking ourselves is what would sell a hugely improved recycling system… or auto kitchen capabilities. If they are pitched as 'hair shirts', not even Musk will be able to sell them. Can kitchens be sexy? What sells better and bigger kitchen appliances?
If WE can answer the marketing questions, WE can get things started. Tesla was already initially funded before Musk came along. So was SpaceX. He came into the picture after others had already started the ball rolling. WE could do that.
Alfred
ReplyDeleteTesla was "funded" before Musk increased the funding by a factor of 10
SpaceX was all Musk right from the start
Alfred Differ to Laurent Weppe:
ReplyDelete"You know the US federal government would never have…"
Uh… be careful with any statements like that.
I seem to recall a neighborhood in 1980s Philadelphia being firebombed to get at an inconvenient organization headquartered there.
Oh, yeah. This:
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/move-bombing/#:~:text=On%20May%2013%2C%201985%2C%20the,homes%20in%20two%20city%20blocks.
Five fire trucks pumped gallons of water through the basement and tear gas was thrown into the windows of the home. SWAT teams tried to blast holes in the walls of adjoining houses to gain entry. MOVE members hid in the basement of the home, holding children in the air to avoid drowning in rising waters. The all-day standoff led to the city dropping a C-4 bomb on the rooftop of the home. The bunker did not fall, but the roof of the home was engulfed in flames. Sixty-five neighborhood homes were destroyed and over two hundred residents lost their homes.
Lest one imagine that this could only happen to black people, there's always Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Aye. But that was then, now we have to plan ahead as to what to do if the Cookie Monster from Mar-a-Lago gets back into the White House.
DeleteIn that scenario we might well get worse than Move Massacres, Ruby Ridge, Wacos. Not that you need to be told.
Truly, reality doesn’t need our permission.
Everyone talks re Sherman’s march to the Sea (not Atlanta) as if he invented that kind of war. Germany was burnt to cinders by surges of Catholic & Protestant armies in the 1600s. But closer in time, Confederate armies ravaged Kentucky stem to stern in 1862, two years before Sherman’s march.
ReplyDeleteAll armies can be that destructive and worse. The British army at Badajoz broke into the city after a horrific fight and their officers lost control. Tilly was seen at Magdeburg desperately trying to keep his men from burning everything. Sherman himself blamed much of the crime on the March to the Sea - theft, rape, arson, murder - on deserters who shadowed his army, but his intent WAS to devastate the rebellious countryside in the old meaning - to make it useless to the enemy.
ReplyDeleteIt's fair to say that an army at war is a mechanism for delivering crime to the enemy - and often, anyone else in the vicinity. One of my favorite fiction moments is Sam Vimes arresting both armies.
I could write depressing near-future fiction about urban vs. rural terrorism and insurgency in the US. It's probably going to happen. But it doesn't have to be everywhere. Much might depend on exactly how hard climate change hits. The idea of deliberately sabotaging power networks in a big city just as a massive heat wave hits - that could kill literally tens of thousands.
Pappenheimer
The idea of deliberately sabotaging power networks in a big city just as a massive heat wave hits - that could kill literally tens of thousands.
ReplyDeleteThis is currently concerning Ukrainian authorities, although it's not a heatwave they're worried about.
There is a continuity of deadly quarrels, from personal crime through criminal gangs to terrorist organizations up to states. The levels of violence follow a Poisson distribution.
ReplyDeleteAny definition of terrorism will also, if honestly applied, describe the routine behavior of states at war. Therefore the true crime of the terrorist is that he makes the continuity undeniable.
Sometimes a gang tries to rise from criminality through terrorism to statehood. This promotion is difficult and troublesome, for the states are in an exclusive club, one that they will beat any wannabees over the head with.
If Hamas survives the present war, then it will be the de facto Palestinian state, in terms of the one language that states respect: force.
now we have to plan ahead as to what to do if the Cookie Monster from Mar-a-Lago gets back into the White House
ReplyDeleteIMHO that statement, unfortunately, understates the threat. Cartoon villainy is not so funny when you encounter it in real life.
I am not from or in the US, but I am struck by the people who have DIRECT knowledge of authoritarians and are writing and saying things along the lines of 'believe them when they tell you what they are planning'.
Here's my question for the regulars. How many people in the US do you think might actually feel they would need to leave the country if Donald Trump was re-elected? I am fairly sure the answer is not zero.
Some of it is bluff on the part of incels and the others, yet bluff does have a way of getting out of control. John W. Booth talked so big about his plans, that he wouldn’t tolerate losing face by backing down.
DeleteNow there’re too many comforts for too many to risk everything. Many Jan 6 convicts became tearful, sobbing ‘sorry sorry’.
Not saying things won’t get Nasty—however it might become so next decade or in the ‘40s.
Or after we’re gone.
Duncan,
ReplyDeleteThanks. I should be more careful with that one.
What was going on in the back of my head that never got onto the page was how SpaceX benefited from the work of other start-ups that didn't make it, but DID develop the talents of certain engineers who later showed up at SpaceX. While there was no continuity of corporate structures, there was an evolution underway wrt the talent.
I saw similar things happen at other space-related start-ups. Roton never flew in a big way, but stuff got built and some of those engineers showed up at XCor Aerospace where they built actual rocketplanes.
So... even when people like Musk DON'T step in with new funding and management, they can snap up bits and pieces of failed organizations in a new one.
Heh. The way I was taught about Sherman was probably inaccurate, but it was portrayed at burning a path to Atlanta and then... what the hell... let's keep going. Now we are at the sea? What's next? Well... let's keep going because the Rebs still have some fight left in them. 8)
ReplyDeleteObviously dumbed down for the kids... which I was at the time. 8)
I picked on Sherman to make a point that the US is not above mowing through a civilian population we think of as an enemy. Many of us object. Strenuously. Things are heading in the right direction even, but it would be a mistake to go the next step and say it wouldn't happen here.
I remember VERY clearly as we were moving forces to the Middle East for Gulf War I some of our elected officials making it clear they'd rather nuke Iraqi forces over facing them in a tank war. They look stupid in hindsight, but they were honest in their desire to avoid US military casualties.
------
Anyway, the point I'm making is to warn off people who hold up exemplars of the moral high road to take in war... when those don't hold up to scrutiny. Killing civilians in war is generally bad, but it's not uncommon. Try not to get all preachy about it because the better way is to do something constructive. Get the civilians out of the path.
ozajh:
ReplyDeleteHow many people in the US do you think might actually feel they would need to leave the country if Donald Trump was re-elected?
I'd want to have an escape route ready.
The problem is--who would take us (permanently)? Thousands "felt" they needed to leave Germany in the 30s, and were returned after being denied entrance everywhere.
Paradoctor:
ReplyDeleteAny definition of terrorism will also, if honestly applied, describe the routine behavior of states at war.
By posting this repeatedly, you seem to have an agenda that I can't quite figure out. What are you trying to convince us of? That Hamas indiscriminately torturing and slaughtering civilians, taking hostages, and hiding behind their own civilian population is no different from Ukraine killing invading soldiers?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe Roman Empire was powerful, but the Roman people were rabble. Things have changed. We believe in ourselves, not in our stars.
ReplyDeleteI believe things haven't changed so much. Even moreso, I find that wealthy westerners who chant "immigrants out" and "let them drown" and vote Nazi even less civilized and more unforgivable than those Roman mobs who at least were angry about existing socioeconomical disparities and had no experience and education to where this agitation would lead.
I find the demise of the Roman Republic quite interesting in such that there seems to be a flaw inherent to many types of democracies that leads to polarization, especially when they are on the verge of becoming a powerful state. We have mitigated this problem by separation and dilution of power, but still can barely keep it in check.
I also find it an interesting coincidence that at least one member of the First Triumvirate - Marcus Licinius Crassus - was a estate mogul with shady business practices who failed both as a politician and ultimately as a military commander.
Bottom Line: If you are really rich, you can still
- sway the public opinion,
- incite violence and upheaval,
- corrupt elected office holders,
- have a "stay out of prison" card,
- hire armed men
- overthrow a democracy.
Things haven't changed so much.
The primary weakness of democracy is that the very things they are intended to provide also provides opportunities for liars, cheaters and stealers, and would be dictators, to do their thing. The trick for democracies to figure out is how to regulate things so that those bad actors don't cause too much trouble, and without also infringing too much on everyone else.
ReplyDeleteDer Oger: Things haven't changed so much
ReplyDeleteBut bread and circuses no longer guarantee escape from accountability.
Just another example that shows that we are very close to a tipping point in the US right now.
ReplyDeleteTrump says on Univision he could weaponize FBI, DOJ against his enemies
"Yeah. If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse,” Trump told Acevedo, according to excerpts of the interview.
“What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box,” the former president continued, adding, “You know, when you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.”
“They have done something that allows the next party … if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump continued."
Make no mistake, we really are at a crossroads. I wonder if Mitch (Fucking) McConnell is proud of what his leadership has helped create? To the delusional and the chronic bothsiders (but I repeat myself) the above means nothing, both sides do it and the Democrats are obviously on a witch hunt. To anyone still retaining a tenuous correspondence with reality the above is merely one more of hundreds of examples of how ludicrously unfit for office Trump is. Any true patriot of the US would be sickened to see Trump in the office of POTUS.
My personal evaluation at the moment is that Trump will not be re-elected. But there is, of course, still a possibility that he could be. Even if he isn't, the danger will still be there, though diminished. The RP and their core supporters, the deplorables, will still be here.
scidata:
ReplyDeleteDer Oger: Things haven't changed so much
But bread and circuses no longer guarantee escape from accountability.
What's changed is exemplified in the line from Cabaret. They no longer can control them.
But bread and circuses no longer guarantee escape from accountability.
ReplyDeleteDid it ever? Even in Roman times there must habe been some individuals who saw what would come. Like, Brutus and his co-conspirators.
And our Circus ...well, while we don't do blood sports anymore (except in virtual worlds), we have way more distracting entertainment, even a more opportunities than the Romans. For the Most of us, it is still about making ends meet (=bread) and consume of pleasures (=circusses), Most of which must appears totally decadent toba member of the Roman society of old.
Side Note: there is a political joke or habit in Germany that unpopular laws get best rammed through Parlament unnoticed during soccer championships.
Larry Hart 6:26 AM:
ReplyDeleteMy agenda is nothing other than what it appears to be: insistence on the continuity of violence from crime thru terrorism to war. If you wish, you may call that anarchism or pacifism. I prefer to think of it as naturalism; the human animal observed with scientific objectivity. It is an implication of the suspicion-of-authority that our gracious host so wisely recommends.
I derive support for this view from the "Statistics of Deadly Quarrels" by Lewis Fry Richardson, a Quaker. I speculate that any genuine psychohistory would rely on the data in that book.
Is Hamas equivalent to Ukraine? No. I do not believe in moral equivalence, but I do believe in moral agreement. Two beings can share a moral characteristic without being equivalent. For instance, a cat is a predator, and a shark is a predator, yet a cat is not a shark. They are both okay with killing and eating beings with faces, but cats cuddle and sharks do not.
You ask about "indiscriminately torturing and slaughtering civilians, taking hostages, and hiding behind their own civilian population". The indiscriminate torture and slaughter of civilians is ab-so-lute-ly normal state behavior. It's true that Ukraine, as a territorial defender, harms no Russian civilians - at present. But if they find it militarily necessary to fire into Russia, then slaughter of civilians for sure, albeit as "collateral damage", a fine euphemism used by all respectable states. Also torture, if you count being buried under rubble as torture. I need not remind you that Russia does do those things.
Hiding behind civilians? Also absolutely normal state behavior. It has been a long time since kings led their armies, sword in hand, personally chopping down enemy soldiers, at the risk of being chopped down themselves. Nowadays all heads of state lead from behind. It's the practical thing to do.
But taking civilian hostages, now... that is innovative of Hamas. (Well, actually it's a revival of medieval practices. Everything old is new again.) It's super-effective; already the families of the hostages are pressuring Netanyahu to cease fire. You might even call hostage-taking relatively civilized. I speculate that war colleges across the globe are now re-considering this method.
As long as I'm mentioning military innovations like kidnapping, dig:
ReplyDeleteLaser weapons! Israel is breaking out its latest toy: the Iron Beam laser weapon. Hundreds of kilowatts, range of kilometers, cheap shots, unlimited magazine, seconds to destroy any incoming rocket, drone, or UAV. It will complement the far-more-expensive Iron Dome. The USA is working on similar technologies. The future is now.
If Israel sends one into orbit and starts a forest fire with it, then we'll have to apologize for laughing at Marjorie Taylor Greene. If.
Nuclear Assassination! Peter Zeihan says that Putin has been informed, in no uncertain terms by the American intelligence community, that they know his exact location at all times; and that if Putin orders a nuclear strike on American territory, then the first retaliatory nuke will be directed at him personally. Zeihan has been right, and he has been wrong; but I find this a fascinating innovation if true. The American military has been practicing missile assassination of terrorist leaders for decades now. But if they know Putin's exact location, they don't need a megaton, or a kiloton, or even a ton: a drone with a gun would suffice.
A future war fought with laser beams, hostage-taking, and drone assassins would suuuuuck, but in a novel way.
Missile defense comes in a few forms. Directed energy beams are relatively new to the public, but they are like stealth tech to the military. They've been around a few years while people kept their mouths shut.
ReplyDeleteThe world has come a long way since Star Wars/SDI.
ozajh,
ReplyDeleteIt's more likely we'd burn a few cities than leave. Immigration of all kinds might slow to a trickle, but a lot of Americans would just get hostile with each other.
THAT'S Putin's objective. He can't beat us any other way.
More likely a violent war of words in America. Much more to lose today than 16 decades ago.
DeleteBack then, life was so difficult that for some soldiers the war was almost a vacation. Plus looting; when they came across a field of tobacco, it made their week.
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteIt's more likely we'd burn a few cities than leave
I suspect that ozajh's question--on the anniversary of Krystalnacht, no less--was about people who'd feel the need to escape before a new Krystalnacht, tolerated if not perpetrated by Trump's authorities.
It is not "we" who would be burning cities in that scenario.
Paradoctor:
ReplyDeleteMy agenda is nothing other than what it appears to be: insistence on the continuity of violence from crime thru terrorism to war. If you wish, you may call that anarchism or pacifism. I prefer to think of it as naturalism; the human animal observed with scientific objectivity.
I'm sure you would prefer to think of it that way. It comes across to me as defending terrorism as just another behavior that civilized people engage in, maybe more egregious than street crime, but less egregious than war.
Do you differentiate at all between war as defending against attack and war as attacking? Does the criminal side of your spectrum have an analogue to defensive war?
The Allies and the Nazis both shot at each other, both bombed cities, both took prisoners and such during WWII. I don't see them as equally at fault, for the very reason described by Captain Kirk:
"You offered me the lives of my crew."
For instance, a cat is a predator, and a shark is a predator, yet a cat is not a shark. They are both okay with killing and eating beings with faces, but cats cuddle and sharks do not.
More importantly, my cat won't kill or eat me. A shark very well may.
You might even call hostage-taking relatively civilized. I speculate that war colleges across the globe are now re-considering this method.
Keeping them relatively well-treated and alive for their leverage value? Possibly. Torturing and killing them? The very definition of uncivilized.
As a military tactic, it would/will soon become obvious that the terrorists have no incentive--and are actually incentivized against--returning all of their living hostages. They'll always need someone in reserve to hide behind and use for leverage. So encouraging that behavior by giving into it is a fool's game. For one thing, it creates a situation where the side who cares more about their people must always lose a war.
The taking of Israeli hostages isn't a new thing. Israel used to have a policy (at least publicly) of never negotiating for hostages, and instead making the hostage-takers know that they'll pay a disproportionate price. They've relaxed that policy lately, and are in a weaker position because of it.
Peter Zeihan says that Putin has been informed, in no uncertain terms by the American intelligence community, that they know his exact location at all times; and that if Putin orders a nuclear strike on American territory, then the first retaliatory nuke will be directed at him personally. Zeihan has been right, and he has been wrong; but I find this a fascinating innovation if true.
That would explain the lack of nuclear escalation to date. Maybe more plausible than my theory that Russia doesn't have any actual nukes that still work.
Hiding behind civilians? Also absolutely normal state behavior. It has been a long time since kings led their armies, sword in hand, personally chopping down enemy soldiers, at the risk of being chopped down themselves. Nowadays all heads of state lead from behind. It's the practical thing to do.
Sorry, but you're straining to find equivalence. A leader staying safe in a hidden or well-fortified location is not the same thing as actually attacking from behind civilians, so that any retaliatory fire must go through those civilians first.
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeletea lot of Americans would just get hostile with each other.
THAT'S Putin's objective. He can't beat us any other way.
We should never have allowed the movie Captain America: Civil War to be released in Russia.
LH,
ReplyDelete"More importantly, my cat won't kill or eat me..."
keep that food bowl topped up. Day's not over yet.
Pappenheimer
@LH have you read or seen Gaiman's 'Dream of a Thousand Cats'?
ReplyDeleteSharks may not cuddle, but I wouldn't outright say they are incapable of affection. Some divers have long standing relationships with favourite reef fish, who seem to recognise them in turn. Remarkably, there are cases of crocodiles doing the same.
(Mind you, I wouldn't try this at home!)
Tony Fisk:
ReplyDeletehave you read or seen Gaiman's 'Dream of a Thousand Cats'?
I love it. Both versions.
First a news item. Utter wretch and Putin-buddy Jill Stein, the two-time Green Party presidential nominee, is running again in 2024. “She could pull voters from Biden.” Um, duh? That’s the whole idea.
ReplyDeleteIt will be up to us to spread a grass roots meme of “Oh, no you don’t!” to all the junior wretches who she – and her oligarch masters – hope will idiotically follow her pied piper incantations.
Other matters: There are various sci fi novels set in a future hot civil war. I liked TEARS OF ABRAHAM and OUR WAR.
----
Alfred, till he captured Atlanta, Sherman’s priority was to fight a classic war of advancement vs the CSA Army of Tennessee.
Once he had Atlanta, Bragg (an awful general whose name is off US Army bases, at last) tried to attack Sherman’s supply route northward, leading to Bragg’s disasters near Nashville. Sherman decided to eliminate Georgia’s (& Florida’s usefulness to the CSA. Topmost simply by wrecking the rail system. Also by foraging to feed his own army, and only lastly to burn, which was deliberate at just a few big plantations and elsewhere by those deserter brigands (some of whom were hanged). Only when the army reached S Carolina did it become active vengeful policy, resembling what CSA forces did to Kentucky, two years earlier.
----
American bad karma was more than sufficient with the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the latter without any reason except to daunt the Soviets. Filthy humans. Culpability is graded on a curve, though, so we still had the moral high ground.
----
Re fleeing a new Trump era… Naw. If he &/or goons come after me – same as a lot of other nerds – they are in for surprises. Also, AIs will record it all. And later generations will remember who fought treason and evil.
---
Currently in Tucson for a sci fi convention.
Oh, 4 days ago my play (at Caltech) was far better than I thought! Not just a 'reading' but terrifically dramatic acting (and comedy) while the actors did have cheat sheets. Fantastic. Especially after just one rehearsal ...
While paradoc is stunningly wrong to dismiss relative scales in the “morality’ of human conflict, he is right about laser weapons. If they exist, then our children may survive the next phase of cold war brinksmanship. If not, then Kim will likely (or a desperate Putin) try to spasm the world.
ReplyDelete“my theory that Russia doesn't have any actual nukes that still work.”
This may be the real reason VP withdrew from the test ban treaty.
Nothing – not one thing – better proves Trump is VP’s tool than his withdrawal from the Overflight Treaty.
Alan Brooks:
ReplyDeleteNow there’re too many comforts for too many to risk everything.
Probably no shooting war between armies, a la 1861.
I'm more concerned about a new Kristalnacht. I can imagine the stormtroopers being cheered on by both the KKK/Nazi deplorables and my fellow "river to the sea" liberals.
Tom Lehrer's "National Brotherhood Week" was funny because it's true:
Now, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.
It is true,
ReplyDeleteone McVeigh can
ruin the whole day.
As for Russian nukes, they might launch, but in the wrong direction—what if one hit somewhere in China?
Dr Brin:
ReplyDeleteUtter wretch and Putin-buddy Jill Stein, the two-time Green Party presidential nominee, is running again in 2024. “She could pull voters from Biden.” Um, duh? That’s the whole idea.
In 2016, Stein voters (and maybe herself) could convince themselves that a protest vote against Hillary would send a message without doing harm.
Today, it's a different situation, and the whole point of a vote for Stein is to showing disdain for Biden, because that is more important to the voter than keeping Trump/Republicans out of the White House.
Actual Trump voters are going to vote for Trump, not Stein, so Stein voters typically justify their choice by asserting that there's no difference between the Democrat and the Republican--they're equally bad. So they can't vote for "the lesser of two evils", and whichever evil wins makes no difference to them. In 2016, that may have been a defensible position. In 2023/2024, it is ridiculous to think that Biden and Trump are "equally bad" and that there is "no difference", no matter what your pet issue is. That's just doublespeak for "Punishing Biden/Democrats is more important to me than defeating fascism."
When people my age and older finally die off and my daughter's generation gets to be in charge, they have got to somehow get rid of the way candidates acquire a state's entire collection of electoral votes with a mere plurality, even though more voters in the state didn't want that candidate than did want him.*
* Until I see a woman win with a mere plurality, I feel it's safe and accurate to use "him" in that sentence.
Larry,
ReplyDeleteIt is not "we" who would be burning cities in that scenario.
Urg. I wouldn't count on it. The cops who beat Rodney King were acquitted and that sparked the last round of riots in Los Angeles. The burning, killing, and looting didn't occur in the home town of those cops. Look it up and you'll find Koreatown was heavily damaged when riots spread from south central LA. Why? There were racial tensions AND the cops closed off streets on the other side of Koreatown protecting richer, whiter neighborhoods.
Weird crap happens when people get really pissed off. The old neighborhood ethnicity laws in LA which restricted who could own what and where created tensions and fear that exploded on that day even though the residents of Koreatown had nothing to do with the cops who delivered the videotaped beating.
Only in the movies where stories have to be linear enough for audiences to understand that justice has been delivered do you see the bad guys get their comeuppance. Real life might deliver it too along with all sorts of other confusing results that only make sense much later when everyone calms down and explains their actions to investigators.
We should never have allowed the movie Captain America: Civil War to be released in Russia.
Ha, ha! It's an old idea. The Zimmerman telegram falls into the same category because Mexico would have had to tap people inside the US to follow through. If you squint a bit you'll always find factions in the US who might leverage external instabilities for internal change. Old, old idea… and the only one left to those who would dare to topple us.
David,
ReplyDeleteI think my up-through-high-school education regarding Sherman is lacking. Time to go watch Ken Burns for a while I suppose. 8)
Larry,
Maybe more plausible than my theory that Russia doesn't have any actual nukes that still work.
The thing to watch is how their space launch skills persist… which depends a bit on a relationship with Kazakhstan for regular proofs of existence.
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteIt is not "we" who would be burning cities in that scenario.
Urg. I wouldn't count on it.
...
Only in the movies where stories have to be linear enough for audiences to understand that justice has been delivered do you see the bad guys get their comeuppance.
I think we're talking about two different things. I was certainly not suggesting that bad guys would get their comeuppance in a Kristallnacht scenario. Pretty much the opposite thing, in fact.
I was explaining the urge to flee if it appeared that a Republican government would sanction violence against groups they don't like. I imagine that the Klan/Nazi types would be the ones burning cities, with a complicit DOJ standing down if not actively participating. "We" would be the victims.
Larry,
ReplyDelete"We" would be the victims.
If DoJ stands aside, there would just be more blood. Too many of us suckle at the Hollywood teat for me to believe we'd actually run away.
So... nah. The Klan/Nazi types would try it a couple times and then weird crap would happen. Too many of those they'd try to burn are actually armed.
The last set of riots in LA are instructive there too. Only about 2% of the population rose up and the local police couldn't act effectively. They retreated to where they could wall off Beverly Hills because those residents weren't shooting at them. Only 2% and LE has a heck of a time. We sent in the Guard just to get the violence to stop. By the time the Army arrived it was all settling down without that step, but that's probably because the Guard wasn't using excessive force against black residents like LE had done for ages.
Weird crap would happen.
Darrell E,
ReplyDeleteThe trick for democracies to figure out is how to regulate things so that those bad actors don't cause too much trouble, and without also infringing too much on everyone else.
Regulate from above AND below... as in 'make regular/normative'.
It's the People who do the heavy lifting against bad actors. We are the ones with the most eyes to see what's happening. We are the ones who can get LE to look as well. We sit on juries.
Re: Stein:
ReplyDeleteStrange. Over here, not voting for the Greens would be a Vote for Putin and Xi.
(Though the conservatives and libertarians surprised me by their support for Ukraine.)
Oger:
ReplyDeleteOver here, not voting for the Greens would be a Vote for Putin and Xi.
It's our "first past the post" system. It's not that a Stein victory would be a win for Putin. It's that her votes are probably coming from people who don't want Putin...I mean Trump to be president, but by refusing to vote for Biden, they're helping Trump win.
Also, remember that Trump doesn't need a majority of electoral votes to win. As long as no candidate has a majority, the House of Representatives gets to anoint him. Weird that in a multi-candidate contest, a candidate can pick up a state's electoral votes with less than a majority, but a candidate can't win the presidency with less than a majority of electoral votes. But here we are.
The system as designed is like rolling dice that are loaded in favor of Republicans. It's not that Democrats can't win, but the odds of the contest are nowhere near even.
...That's why it's so annoying when Republicans in general and Trump in particular complain about the system being rigged. It is rigged, but in their favor. What they're whining about is that it's not quite rigged enough in their favor. It's still possible for them to lose. That's what they mean by "rigged".
ReplyDeleteI read a good one today:
ReplyDelete"If 'gaslighting' is denying you said what you said …. 'Gaza-lighting' is denying you did what you did—after broadcasting it broadly to the world."
Maybe more plausible than my theory that Russia doesn't have any actual nukes that still work.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't bet the world on it, but a test launch was recently held. It did not go well
" It's not that a Stein victory would be a win for Putin."
ReplyDeleteI used to deem her a useful idiot, till I saw the pictures of her with Flynn and Putin. No. She is an outright agent.
Tony Fisk:
ReplyDelete"Maybe more plausible than my theory that Russia doesn't have any actual nukes that still work."
I wouldn't bet the world on it, ...
I didn't used to dare even say that out loud, because I certainly wouldn't bet on it being the case, but it's my secret hope, and it wouldn't surprise me.
* * *
Dr Brin:
" It's not that a Stein victory would be a win for Putin."
I used to deem her a useful idiot, till I saw the pictures of her with Flynn and Putin. No. She is an outright agent.
I won't dispute that, but I don't think Putin's strategy is to get her into the White House. It's for her to help get Trump elected.
Is a fellow-traveler an outright agent? Want to know, I voted for her in ‘16.
DeleteIs a fellow-traveler an outright agent? Want to know, I voted for her in ‘16.
ReplyDeleteNot an agent - just a mug
Now if you voted for a spoiler in 2020 then you are more than just a mug
Was asking if Stein is an aware agent, or a fellow-traveling naïf.
DeleteAB it won't matter, if we can't persuade the left to stop sanctimony addiction betrayal of the only coalition that stands a chance of saving the world.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope so...
ReplyDeletehttps://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2023/11/democrats-win-just-about-everything.html
...
All over the country, school board candidates backed by the savage hatemongers Moms for Liberty lost bigly. The Moms want your kids ignorant, crazy Christian, pregnant with no choice, and hiding their true identities while not allowing them to read any books that have kissing in them. They are just the fucking worst and deserve all the scorn that can be heaped on them like piles of manure. But, man, they lost so bad everywhere. In Iowa, they supported 13 candidates. Only one won. In one district, they just had to get in the top four vote-getters to get a seat. There were 8 candidates, 4 supported by Moms for Liberty. They all fucking lost. So they can fuck off all the way back to whatever crusty old bible they crawled out from under.
And in New York, Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five who was imprisoned for a horrendous crime he did not commit, on whom Donald Trump once took out a full-page ad calling for his execution, who was exonerated 2002 after 13 years in confinement, won a seat on the New York City Council. Yeah, that's right. Soon, Salaam will be an elected official and Donald Trump might die behind bars. That's karma in a perfect form.
It's okay to feel good today, Democrats. It's okay to ignore those shit polls for Joe Biden (which, c'mon, a year out, who the fuck cares?). It's okay to celebrate that we might just have a future.
I am writting from italy, I was cured by Dr Jekawo a traditional herbal doctor whom has cured many diseases like hiv/aid,herpes,diabetes,parkinson,als,hepatitis, cancer. I was told by a friend of mine to contact Dr Jekawo and after i contacted him he then prepare a herbal medicines for me that cured my hepatitis and prostate cancer completely after drinking his herbal medicines for 15 days. I am so grateful right now and I feel like sharing this here so anyone can get heal by Dr Jekawo. his email contact details is : drjekawo@gmail.com he cure so many disease and they call him a great healer.
ReplyDeleteThank you blog admin.
Dr. Brin: She [Stein] is an outright agent.
ReplyDeleteLarry Hart: I sure hope so...
It may backfire. Stein, and crazed Moms, give the trumpy, grumpy, 40-watt, 'America is broken', older woman a way to stay true to her tribe while secretly evading the monster. These maladroit splitter attempts appear to be growing more desperate.
@scidata,
ReplyDeleteMy comment, "I sure hope so..." was not about Stein or Putin. It was about the column I quoted underneath. I meant "I sure hope" the Rude Pundit is right.
Stein, and crazed Moms, give the trumpy, grumpy, 40-watt, 'America is broken', older woman a way to stay true to her tribe while secretly evading the monster.
Yeah, but the point the Rude Pundit was making was thay were LOSERS!!! Not just a little bit either. They've got to be tired of losing by now. They lost so much, they should be put in charge of losing.
@Alan Brooks,
ReplyDeleteAnd what I think our host was getting at is that the video of Stein along with Michael Flynn and Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) being feted by Putin in Moscow on July 4 (of all things) 2016 makes it hard to credit that she's anything other than aware.
LH/AB
ReplyDeleteRe: Stein, Would her conduct and political decisions be any different if she were not Putin's conscious tool? "A difference which makes no difference is no difference." (Alfred Korzybski/William James/Spock), take your pick
Pappenheimer
P.S. The recent elections were indeed a hope spot and confirmed my suspicion about recent polling - dissatisfaction with democrats doesn't necessarily equal votes for the GQP when the GQP persists on pushing unpopular themes
Oh, and happy Deepavali, folks.
ReplyDelete(I see they also call it Diwali)
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer:
ReplyDeletedissatisfaction with democrats doesn't necessarily equal votes for the GQP when the GQP persists on pushing unpopular themes
In 2016, I think liberals who were dissatisfied with Hillary were willing to risk Trump being president in order to show her what's what. Many Bernie supporters were so angry about the nomination being "rigged" that all they cared about was punishing Hillary and the DNC. Many lefties who thought Hillary was too corporate-friendly and too military-friendly could really believe that there was no qualitative difference between Hillary and Trump, and so they honestly didn't care if one of them or the other won.
After living through a Trump presidency and the fallout of three Trump-appointed members of the supreme court, only the most obtuse could continue to believe that it's harmless to register dissatisfaction with Biden (from the left) by enabling Trump to be president again.
At the time, had thought Stein was a harmless social democratic vegetarian cat fancier.
ReplyDeleteAlan Brooks:
ReplyDeletea harmless social democratic vegetarian cat fancier.
The effect of a Jill Stein run has very little to do with what her particular preferences are. She has zero chance of winning even one electoral vote.*
What her presence in the race, like that of Cornell West, is to give voters who would otherwise reluctantly vote for Biden against Trump an excuse to vote for neither, therefore diluting the Biden vote and helping Trump win. The only disruptor in the race who might siphon voted from Trump instead is RFK Junior.
In our system of "plurality wins", the ironic effect is that the more candidates in the race who are kinda-sorta on your team, the less likely it is that someone kinda-sorta on your team will win. If there are four liberals and one conservative in the race, and liberal voters vote for the liberal who they personally like best, then the liberal vote is split four ways and the conservative muddles through to victory. That's the whole reason for having two parties who select a candidate each and then have voters choose between them. Third-party candidates simply subvert that dynamic, and at least since Ralph Nader, they've either done so intentionally or been played very well by the other side.
A candidate doesn't win the electoral with a plurality. A majority is required. A speaker of the House isn't elected with a plurality of House members voting, A majority is required. We really need something like instant-runoff voting or some such method that insures that candidates for president don't win all of a state's electoral votes without a majority also. Until that happens, there's a direct negative correlation between how many candidates you don't hate and the chance that the one you hate the most will win.
* Got to hand it to George Wallace in 1968. He actually won five states.
Sure, it was merely to write how seven yrs ago Stein appeared harmless.
DeleteI wonder if this 'Dr Jekawo' has a herbal remedy for sanctimony.
ReplyDeleteVoting only helps to ease the symptoms.
If anyone is interested in the y-chromosome bottleneck, Cat Bohannon's new book, "Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution" brings up some really important ideas that don't get much attention in the debate. One of them is taking on the idea that human males are natural-born rapists who automatically build harems. By comparing human anatomy to the anatomy of species that actually build harems, she shows why it is that harem-building, while common to many human cultures, is always a small minority, while most of the people practice a more promiscuous lifestyle. With the possible exception of Ghengis Khan, no human anywhere has ever acquired control of all available females, unlike gorillas - whose alphas don't tend to live long.
ReplyDeleteShe also has an interesting argument for how alternate sexualities might have evolved. Human babies are far more difficult to raise than anything else in the Animal Kingdom. To keep the species alive, humans need a whole lot of alloparents and others who can take over their other roles while they a bulging and nursing. People who have their own babies can't do that, so by redirecting some people's sex drive into non-reproductive forms, those people become available to assist those who are reproducing. Humans are rather strange animals.
https://www.amazon.com/Eve-Female-Drove-Million-Evolution-ebook/dp/B0BR51FB12/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1699822243&sr=8-1
Paul SB
re Re: Stein, Would her conduct and political decisions be any different if she were not Putin's conscious tool?"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely!
She (and Nader) would have said "I am staying OUT of the following 5 battleground swing states and urging my supporters to vote Hillary (or Gore) in just those state, because yes, the alternative IS worse.
Her EFFECTS were exactly what her masters wanted from her. Effects that have devastated the world she claimed to want to save. And she can go to hell. And take Ralph with her.
Paul SB that sounds like a cogent book. Tempting ..
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Eve-Female-Drove-Million-Evolution-ebook/dp/B0BR51FB12/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1699822243&sr=8-1
Tony,
ReplyDeleteDr Jekawo can cure hepatitis and cancer, but sanctimony? Damnit Tony, he's a doctor, not a metaphysician!
Pappenheimer
@Alan Brooks,
ReplyDeleteStein appeared harmless because it seemed certain that Hillary would win with over 400 electoral votes.
Alan B... I understand but it is a case study in liberal delusion. The sanctimonious addiction to viewing any display of partisan loyalty as uncool.
ReplyDeleteAnd as Oswald wrote in his diary,
Delete“Russian propaganda works well.”
@Pappenheimer, I'm sure Jekawo's herbal remedies include a tincture of dark materials that might establish fractal quantum resonances to control the patient's sanctimonious mindset.
ReplyDeleteThe experiment should be attempted, FOR PSEUDOSCIENCE!!
As the Lincoln Project point out in their latest ad*, authoritarians always begin by presenting as harmless goofs, until they aren't.
I think the Stein gambit is a little too transparent this time around.
* Actually a holdover from 2020 which they didn't use because they thought it a bit too strong at the time.
Tony Fisk:
ReplyDeleteI think the Stein gambit is a little too transparent this time around.
To those who are paying attention, painfully so. However, to the low-information voter who only knows that both parties suck and it's time for a change? Not so sure.
* * *
The sanctimonious addiction to viewing any display of partisan loyalty as uncool.
I used to be one of those who proudly proclaimed, "I vote for the person, not the party." I have a certain sympathy for independence, for not simply following the party's dictats. But, I've become a pretty strong believer in anti-partisan loyalty. It's not a question of "cool". Anything that puts Republicans in power is bad because they're the party of autocratic fascism. Therefore, anything that keeps power away from Republicans is good.
As Homer Simpson once said*, "It's a scientific fact."
* Referring to, "Everyone knows rock and roll achieved perfection in 1974."
Tony Fisk:
ReplyDeleteAs the Lincoln Project point out in their latest ad*, authoritarians always begin by presenting as harmless goofs, until they aren't.
* Actually a holdover from 2020 which they didn't use because they thought it a bit too strong at the time.
Do you have a link? I can't find it just by that description.
It was seven frigging years ago,
ReplyDeletethe statute of limitations has expired;
no one told me about Stein in ‘16.
The propaganda was:
Vince Foster
Rose Law Firm
Benghazi
Killary...